Meet Trouble as a Friend

Where has Lisa been?

Peeling Foreclosure notices off her front door.

Educating herself on how to file the correct million forms to stay in her house long enough to sell it so that she might be able to buy another one some day.

Delivering flowers in a big white truck she needs a stepladder to climb into and beating off dogs with bad manners to earn a few extra bucks to pay her corrupt divorce lawyer, who likes to stand in the hallway of the courthouse and tell jokes to the other lawyer while the three hours allocated to settling her case with the judge ticks away. 

Wondering when she might wake up from the bad dream that is suddenly her life.

But also . . . . .

Reading inspiring notes from caring friends and relatives.

Developing a stronger bond with her youngest daughter that comes from depending on each other and facing hardship together.

Learning a hundred new skills she let someone else do for her and thought she would never need.

Developing empathy for people who live their entire lives with the demons that she is only getting a glimpse of: depression, poverty and despair.

Learning, like Oliver Wendell Holmes talks about below, to Meet Trouble as a Friend.

“If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I wouldn’t pass it around.  Wouldn’t be doing anybody a favor.  Trouble creates a capacity to handle it.  I don’t say embrace trouble.  That’s as bad as treating it as an enemy.  But I do say meet it as a friend, for you’ll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it.

“No, trouble isn’t the scourge of the world.  The world has its ups and downs.  So have people, and all the speechifying that breath can produce won’t change things or make the millennium come an hour sooner.  You can’t run away from trouble.”
 “Accept it.  Don’t worry about it.  Have faith – and do the needful.”

Love is Stupid

My youngest daughter took a trip on an airplane to visit her dad last weekend.

I didn't really want her to go. I knew that they would do lots of  fun things that I can't afford to do with her and that he would buy her lots of great stuff that I can't afford to buy her.

And that is exactly what happened.

She jumped in the car at the airport full of stories of his great new condo where she has a bathroom attached to her room. She pulled darling dresses and new books and art supplies out of her suitcase to show me that he had bought her.

"Dad made me breakfast this morning!" she said, reciting the elaborate menu.

"I make you breakfast every day." I wanted to say.

But instead I just said: "That is great, honey. I'm glad you had fun." Even though, I will confess to you: I was not glad at all.

For a while I have been struggling with the fact that my kids don't blame their dad at all for the breakup of our family. They see the struggles that his actions are causing me, but yet they still maintain their relationships with him. They still seem to see him as the funny, carefree dad that he always was for them.

For a long time this made me really mad. But now I am starting to see what it is about.

They don't want to choose sides. They want to believe that he is a father to admire. They want to keep loving him. And I am trying to be O.K. with that.

I am trying to put myself in their shoes. I think of people I love, who sometimes disappoint me and do things I think are wrong and I remember how I keep loving them anyway because I think of it as my job to love them in spite of their shortcomings.

Somewhere along the line, I lost the ability to do that with their dad, probably when I was hurt one too many times.

But they are still doing it. And it isn't fair of me to expect them to give up their relationship with him in order to prove that they love me.

They are loving past the point where it makes sense. And that is one of the funny things about love.

Rightsizing

This is Chuck and Gerry. Yesterday I sold them my dining room set.

In a couple of months I will be moving from this 3,000 square-foot house, where I raised my four kids with my husband, to an 800 square-foot apartment, where I will finish raising the last one by myself.

There are so many things that are hard about that. One of them that is really hard is getting rid of sentimental things.

Many of them are not even being used. They are stored in the attic and the crawl space for when they might have been needed again: The dog cage from our loyal Basset Hound Belle, the wagon we pulled the kids around the neighborhood in every Halloween, the grave stones my second daughter made with her dad to scare the trick-or-treaters.

Many things have proven impossible to part with: The rocking chair where I breast-fed our four children will get drug around with me for many more years, I think. I'd like to someday pass it on to my oldest daughter Abby, who carried her dolls until she was 12 years old and dreams every day of being a mother.

But there are things like the dining room set that have to go. Emptying the drawers yesterday I found some momentos to keep: Place cards made for the Thanksgiving table by my youngest daughter Bridget and the original receipt for the furniture that we found one day when all six of us took a trip to Amish country.

Chuck and Gerry are moving to Texas to be near their son and his grandchildren. For Gerry, it will be the first time she has ever owned a formal dining room set.

She is excited about the family being together at the holidays and eating meals at that beautiful table.

I am trying to remember that the table is going with her, but the memories of our many meals there are staying with me and can never be taken or sold.

I am trying to remember that my life isn't just getting smaller, it is getting more authentic.

I am counting on the fact that one day there will be for me another home, and another special table where I will gather on special days with all the people that I love.

Make A Date With Your Kid

Due to recent unforeseen and ridiculous circumstances, I am raising my 16-year old daughter by myself.

That is O.K. She is a very nice teenager and she is taking it very easy on me.

But we don't have the kind of relationship that some of the mothers and daughters in my favorite movies have.

You know, they are best friends and tell each other everything. The daughter does not forbid her mother to sing in the car or talk in front of her friends. The TV daughter does not "borrow" her mother's favorite sweaters and leave them in her locker at school.

Sometimes, when I am eavesdropping on conversations she is having with her dad, I get upset to hear her telling her all the details of her life that she never mentions to me.

A friend of mine watches T.V. every Thursday night with his three kids. Two of them are living on their own, but still they show up to watch their favorite sit-coms with their dad. Every Thursday I get a little bit jealous thinking about the three of them spending time with their parent voluntarily.

So, last week I decided to be a copy-cat and get some of my own one-on-one interaction with my teenager. Since it was clear she wasn't going to spend time with me voluntarily, I pulled the parent card.

I told her that every Thursday night from now on we were going to have dinner somewhere. She had to leave her cell phone in the car. We were not going to Dave's Cosmic Subs every Thursday. We were going to have long dinners at nice places. We were going to spend some quality time together.

So last Thursday we ate outside at a nice restaurant in town. Many nice things happened:

She learned how to put her napkin in her lap at the start of the meal and to not chew her ice.
She learned her mother was not annoying to everyone when a semi-attractive man sitting at the bar sent me a over a glass of wine.
She told a couple who stopped by the table her plans for college (who knew?)
I learned her favorite dessert was creme' brulee and she learned mine was chocolate mousse.
We both had fun.

I think I am really going to like Thursday nights.

You can do it!

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The Sweetness of Doing Nothing

I went to the movies this weekend. I hardly ever do that. It feels a little too luxurious to me, like I am wasting time.

I kind of have a problem with that. I wake up in the morning and I try to lie in bed and pet my cat and meet the morning, but in my head the giant list is already talking to me. It knows I have just an hour to:

Start the coffee
Make the kid a hot breakfast
Water the plants
Feed the cat
Pack a lunch
Make my bed
Get ready for work
Drop the kid at school

Even on a morning when I have the day off I am up-and-at-em:

Cleaning the workshop
Shopping for groceries
Doing the laundry
Paying the bills
Writing the blog

Sometimes when I am emptying the trash at the flower shop where I work, I see a couple across the street about my age sitting and talking in their chairs on the front porch. I wonder why they get to do that while I am working. When I get home, I see two women I know walking together through my neighborhood while I am pulling weeds by my mailbox. I am puzzled: Why aren't they pulling weeds at their houses?

But finally I have figured it out: They are resting because they choose to. They have given themselves permission to do something I haven't. And that is what my friend Jimmy calls Playing at Life.

In the movie I saw called Eat, Pray, Love, Julia Roberts goes to Italy to recover from a divorce. She meets a lot of Italians who eat too much pasta and sit around with their friends talking with their hands. She is accosted by an older Italian man who says that Americans work too much and can't appreciate il dolce far niente, which is Italian for The Sweetness of Doing Nothing.

I think he is right.

I worked really hard all of my life to get to an end that I won't get to have anyway. Looking back it seems like I probably should have let the weeds go and taken a few more moments to Play at Life.

It is late, but it is not too late for that.

Yesterday I watched Jeopardy while eating ice cream and walked a community garden just to look at the flowers.

Il dolce far niente I say with my hand in the air.

Can I Get a Smile Here?

I did something I never do today.

I quit a job on the first day.

I wasn't going to. I mean I hated my new job. All of the people there were so crabby. There was a shop cat and even he was crabby. He got yelled at for drinking out of the toilet and the water buckets.

I knew exactly how he felt. I got snapped at for far smaller sins all day.

I mean, is it so hard to just explain in a nice voice how you would like things done? I am a flexible chick, I can change the way I do things.

Still, I was going to go back tomorrow. It might get better, I thought. It is possible I can cheer the whole place up.

But then I started thinking: "Why is that my job all the time, to try to make everybody happy?"

It would be a nice change of pace if people were worried about making me happy.

Then my very good friend, who always makes me happy, suggested that I didn't HAVE to go back for more punishment tomorrow. He pointed out that I have not given notice at my other job. I could just go back to the job that isn't perfect, but where my boss treats me with kindness and sometimes buys me a fruit and yogurt cup from McDonalds just to be nice.

So that's what I have DECIDED to do. For now.