My new, old relationship

It's weird to feel like a daughter again. For so many years, I was only a mother, a sister, an aunt - I never really thought that I felt something was missing. In the wake of my parents’ divorce more than 30 years ago, the relationship with my dad was so painful and fragmented that I just let it go & decided to live my life without him in it. After all, there were many tumultuous years prior to the divorce and maybe I was using those as an excuse to excise him from my life. I know one thing. The minute my mother died, I felt as though I ceased to be a daughter of anyone.

Following her death in 1983, I used to dread my dad coming back to San Francisco for a visit.  I resented him for being the one who was alive when my mom wasn’t, for leaving her five years earlier, for causing my nuclear family to implode like a mushroom cloud, leaving so much emotional debris everywhere. Time passed, life went on, and the relationship remained tattered and tenuous. 

And then, in 2007, my dad turned 80 and something I didn’t anticipate happened: I decided to finally visit him. My sister and I flew to Portland, rented a car and showed up for this milestone birthday. It was peculiar, as neither of us felt particularly close to him, and yet we both felt it important to mark the occasion, and going together made it that much easier. Soon we found ourselves sitting in his living room way up in the northwest corner of Oregon, talking about the past and listening to him talk about his life.

While he was talking, I watched him and listened intently to him talk of dreams both met and unfulfilled and his hopes for the rest of his life, "no matter how long that might be."  I felt an overpowering and undeniable sensation in my chest. I realized that it was my heart starting to crack and break. For the first time in close to 25 years I realized that I actually did love my father. The reality of his one day passing away and my never having expressed my love for him was suddenly unimaginable to me.  The more I opened my heart, the more able I was to accept him and all his eccentricities. 

When I came back home to San Francisco, two-way communication started slowly and then began to flow. I talked to my own kids about what happened that weekend, and the more accepting I was, the more they began to open their hearts. Much like my realization that I might actually need my father, my kids realized that they enjoyed the idea of having a grandfather, too. My dad played the role well and with passion, remembering everyone's birthdays with a calligraphy card, making each kid feel special with his beautiful artwork.

Now, some four years later, the love has blossomed and the dread of his visits is gone, replaced by anticipation and happiness. This year, despite breaking a hip in January and then having a stent inserted after a heart attack in November, my dad still wanted to make the trip down to see us. He can still be aggravatingly righteous, imparting spiritual principles by which he lives his life and thinks that everyone else should too. But I can forgive this and accept it and now feel comfortable enough to tell him how I really feel about his proclamations - that they sound like so much b.s. to me. And that type of honesty, generally only reserved for those you feel closest to feels great. It's real, like an authentic relationship.

I guess the lesson is that people really do change. As my friend Jeri says, sometimes it takes 80 years to really grow up. But it's also about my role in the dynamic between us and my ability to forgive, to understand, to feel compassion and to give this new relationship a chance to breathe on its own. And I admit, I like the feeling when I ask him, "How are you feeling, daddy?" and get to reclaim my role as daughter.

Anchors "Away"...

I once asked my friend Shari what, if anything, she felt was her family's anchor? That is, the one thing she felt brought her family together as her kids got older. Much to my surprise, she said, "Breakfast." Closing my eyes for just a moment and imagining the chaos that was my house early in the morning, I implored her to explain. She said that whatever time her two kids got up, she & her husband would simply get up 1/2 hour earlier and they would eat breakfast as a family.

As unfathomable as that was in MY world, I pictured a sleepy but warm gathering around her table and a lovely way to start the day. I know that each family is different but I do believe that families that tried to create some type of 'anchor' whether it was sitting together to watch baseball or football or eat Sunday brunch together, were families that felt close - even if it wasn't a daily or weekly ritual, but the attempt at togetherness often being enough.

Our anchor was always Friday night dinners. Loathe as I am to admit it, it was the one night a week that everyone was guaranteed a sumptuous, home-cooked feast. It's not like I didn't cook them dinner during the week, but with four kids, it was often a spaghetti (everyone go upstairs & put on a red shirt), grilled cheese sandwiches or breakfast-for-dinner. No one complained but on Fridays, I pulled out all the stops and the atmosphere just felt, well, different.

I knew everyone would show up. You only missed Friday night dinners if you were out of town, or had an inflexible event. But most Fridays everyone showed up and the ritual pandemonium was unleashed. In those few hours, we were connected to each other. Anchors are elements that ground us and ours did just that. The anticipation of seeing my kids around the dinner table was something I did look forward to. It helped create a feeling of belonging and a sense of rootedness for us and those are cool values to be able to impart merely with a chicken dinner.

Friday dinners created a forum for family debates, the sharing of experiences, listening to each others stories and laughing. Table conversation was not exactly deep or philosophical in nature, but touched on such far-reaching concepts like the hilarity of farting at inopportune moments or what Homer Simpson might say about a given subject. Man I miss those conversations. 

With the four of them out now out and each living in different cities, I'm a little like a ship without its mooring on Friday nights - maybe a bit adrift, though not entirely lost, I find myself feeling pathetically nostalgic and wishing for the security, the weight of that anchor. But at the time, its role to connect a vessel and prevent it from drifting out to sea I think served its purpose for all of us.

This just in...Kids move out, puppy moves in!

I swear I didn't mean to- I was just walking by one of those sidewalk puppy fairs. The ones where you know not to stop, lest you feel tempted. I stopped. I got tempted.

It had not even been 48 hours since my son left San Francisco to move to New York. After a ridiculously teary goodbye (and I wasn't the only one crying) I watched him drive down our steep hill in a stranger's '98 VW beetle, (one of those win-win arrangements made via Craiglist) driving a stick-shift after a quick 2-hour lesson, and knowing it would be a pretty long time until I saw him again. Oh, and it was raining.

Though he hasn't lived in my house for years, I still felt a palpable silence. Now that I think about it, maybe that was inside my head, but it was present nevertheless. I spent the rest of the day moping about, watching poor TV and tearing up a lot. Though the logical half of my brain (at least I think it takes up half) reminds me that this is a positive development, a perfect time in the life of a 24-year old to experience something new and different. It's what I would have done. It's what I did do.

So two days later I found myself walking down Market St, I saw the puppy. She was so needy, so thin, so...hungry looking...in that cage that I had to take her home just to feed her. I found out that we actually shared a name, albeit for odd reasons. She was being called "D.D", short for ditch dog where she had been found. She was under a year and she needed some love from a foster family and I nominated myself for the job. My husband was surprisingly OK with the plan and we took her home, immediately renaming her Bella and introducing her to our 6 year old dog, Izzy.

After a week of fostering, I now recognize a few things about myself. One- I am a sucker (I wish I could say this surprised me), Two- I get very quickly attached (again, stating the obvious here) and three- I should not keep her. She's been a grand diversion, so she's fulfilled her role in my life. And I have fulfilled mine. Her ribs no longer show.

But it was an important lesson for me...for all moms really when we go through this sea-change with our grown kids.  I know that my kids will always need me on some level (my son called me from Ohio for help in finding a supermarket). It's just not in the same way I've been there for them for all these years. It's a drastic job description change.

And I know that now, I need to start taking care of myself. In understanding what that means, my mind drifts to all the times I have flown. The tedious safety instructions are always the same - word-for-word on every airline. "If you're traveling with a child, place your mask on your face first, then assist your child."

That's not as easy as it might sound. Yeah, on an airplane I get it. But extrapolating that wise advise and applying it to my life is a bit more challenging when my maternal instinct has always been to help my kids first and think later.

I may have had to say goodbye to my son and I may have to say goodbye to Bella, but I learned a lot this week and I know they are very important lessons in my "mom education". Just when I think I am oh so smart, another lesson gets thrown in my face. Where the hell did I put that oxygen mask?

Susan Sarandon and me

One of my favorite actresses, Susan Sarandon once said, “When I turn 80, I’d like to know that my life has been completely spent. I’d like to know that I’ve loved, I’ve help the world become a better place, that my kids are happy, that I’ve tried.”

Damn I love her thinking.

For 30 years, I have been consumed with watching as my kids grow up and then as we know happens, move out. The idea of their happiness still fills my thoughts and my heart. Some things never change. It’s like one of those old-fashioned jobs where people stayed with the same company for their whole lives, giving it their all & remaining loyal and focused. I don’t need the proverbial gold watch because watching them really is its own reward for a job I believe I executed well.

But I do remember going to social gatherings years ago & being asked ‘So, what do you do?” What a weird question, if you think about it. If I really told them what I was doing on a daily basis, it would have taken hours. Suffice to say that when I responded with “I’m a stay-at-home mom”, I would watch their eyes immediately scour the room for someone, something more interesting than me. What could I possibly contribute to a normal, intelligent adult conversation if I wasn’t out in the work world actually pulling a salary. No co-workers, no admin assistant to dump off my paperwork, no boss about which to complain. I was simply raising and nurturing my four charges, tending to their every need and trying to mold them into the best and happiest people I possibly could. Try putting that into a concise, party-friendly response.

I am happy with my work. I liked my job back then and even today I am always in awe of how the job has morphed and changed and continues to challenge me.. It sometimes feels like a moving target, but I think I’ve got the formula now.

So I’m with Sarandon here.  Like her, I have loved and done so more intensely than I ever thought possible.  Her last wish, hoping “that I’ve tried” touched me because I know that I try harder to be a good parent than I’ve ever tried anything else in my life. And that’s all I really have- the trying - because I figure if I care that intensely and for that long about something, it’s sure to come out extraordinarily well.

Fog, lovely fog

I love the sound of the foghorns. They remind me in a very visceral way that I live in a lovely, gray place that cools me off when the heat gets to be too much. Sometimes the fog sits so heavily that I can’t see 10’ in front of me and that can be precarious. But it’s also a challenge and having lived here all my life, I can say with confidence that eventually, the haze will clear and so will my vision.

It is said that children choose their parents in order to learn a lesson they need, but I know in my heart that we choose our children as well. Is life really, as they say, all about lessons? I am convinced each day that it is and as my fog lifts, I do understand that my kids have taught and continue to teach me critical, life-changing and yes, difficult lessons. Apparently, that’s why I chose them.

One of my most important lessons? Acceptance. And I mean acceptance in its classic definition. Feeling OK with a decision, a move, an action and having a calm heart around it. As I observe my kids, it's not as easy a lesson as you might think. That fog can start to roll in and cloud my vision and then acceptance becomes a huge challenge.

And then as always, the haze starts to clear and I begin to understand the lesson. Like that moment in an algebra class where you just don’t get it, don’t get it, don’t get it and then VOILA, the coin drops, the lightbulb glows and you have that satisfied feeling of fully understanding. That is a great moment.

  

I still love the fog and sometimes, when I don’t feel that state of grace, it can be a lovely hiding place. But it always clears if I wait long enough and the vistas can be truly stunning.

Imagine that...Darwin was right!

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

That, in essence, is one of the keys to successful parenting. Changing as they change, adapting to their growth and doing a bit of growing myself. Oh, and learning the art of acceptance. 

When one of your kids says he's going to join an ashram, it's hard not to feel a sarcastic barb coming on. I bit my lip, held my tongue and nodded my head. Oh my God that is all a lie. I freaked out, I cried, I yelled, I questioned and then I cried some more. Why would he want to move so far away and begin a lifestyle so foreign to anything he's known for 28 years? Why would he want to give up (at least temporarily) women, going out for beers with friends, living in a vibrant, fun city? Why wasn't I more aware of the internal struggles he suffered so that I could help him?

OK, that last question has a very obvious answer. Because I couldn't help him. Because he needed to live his life and figure out his own issues and work on quieting his soul. There are some things even the most conscientious mother just can't do for her kid. Especially, when  he's not a kid anymore.

As he explained his leaving, he had a pretty sharp barb of his own to throw my way, saying something that at the time, seared so deep it took my breath away. "You know, we can't all live in this house together forever." Yeah, that was hard to hear. But it was a true statement and though I was fortunate enough to have my kids around for longer than most people, it almost made it tougher as they have each forged their path and left the cocoon.

And that's another thing. Do not EVER refer to my house as an empty nest. I truly feel an urge to smack people when they ask me about my 'empty nest'. Firstly, it's never really empty. Secondly, it connotes a void, a vacuous space, hollow, devoid. In other words, quiet. I hate quiet. When my four kids were small, I never got any quiet. I longed for it, yearned for it but I learned quickly enough to be careful wishing for that, for the moment it started to become a reality, I turned my stereo louder. 

As I watch them develop into real human beings - young adults with ideas and passions and goals of their own - I feel a sense of completion and contentment. After all, this was my original goal in becoming a mom. Nuture the hell out of them and then be brave enough to set them free. Sounds like an easy and fool-proof plan. But throughout the years, I hadn't really considered the fact that in my success, I also lose them to the world a bit and I have to be OK with that.

I am still learning and growing and figuring out how to truly (and I mean TRULY) accept their choices. They don't always make it easy, but I'm gonna pass this class and eventually, I'm going to get an A.

Fessing up...

OK. I'm admitting it. I'm Jewish. Now don't get me wrong. This is a fact about which I am very proud. But there is no doubt in my mind that it drives much of what I do, much of what I eat and how I parent my four kids. No doubt.

I know there are a lot of parents of different religions and ethnicities that think they have the crazy- parenting market cornered, but I believe that the Jews raise that neurosis to a whole new level. We worry more (especially about things of which we have absolutely no control), we lose sleep, we over-protect, we hover, we feed hungry people and continue to push food towards the sated.

And many of us still hope that our kids will find Jewish partners to love. That's a big one. It's not easily understandable nor is it justified. When questioned about this hope, it's really hard to explain. In the most logical perspective, my greatest wish is for them to find decent, smart, funny, kind-hearted people with great values, who will treat them with respect and love. I just want them to be Jewish, too.

Now don't get me wrong- if they bring home a non-Jewish partner, I will open my house and my heart to them. But I think that their lives will be more complicated and that their future decisions will be more difficult with two different religions with which to deal.

But again, like most of those afore-mentioned "things over which we have absolutely no control", my kids will make their own choices, based on their own needs and desires. I know they respect my opinion and that does count for something. But in the end, their lives really are their lives, their choices their choices, not mine. That's a tough fact to accept sometimes, but a necessary one if I want to keep that respect. And more than anything, I do.

Who's the boss here?

So yeah, I've been a mom for 30 years and that makes me feel old. Hard to look back to my life Before Children (BC) and remember how I felt, what I imagined this journey would be like and in my wildest imagination, couldn't have fathomed such high highs and such low lows in my life as a mother.

Granted, my low lows have mostly been about my own personal failings to see something, to detect a problem in one of my kids and the self-berating that ensued as a result. I could only hope to not repeat my mistake, at least not with the same kid, and hope I didn't do too much damage.

It's true that each child comes into the world kind of, for lack of a more sophisticated term, half-baked. That is, they arrive with their own set of quirky behaviors, unusual personalities. Angry or not, gentle or not and it is up to us to nurture the positive aspects and gently guide them away from the harmful ones - if we can.

And every time you think you're so damn smart and have that rather smug "I've dealt with THIS before," well, you haven't. At least probably not with this kid. What works with one, doesn't necessarily work with all. That said, don't worry...there's still hope. Every kid, no matter what type of personality they show up with, needs love, unconditional support and discipline. And it's up to us to know how to do that with each child and more importantly, when.

I always felt that "going back to basics" works for most scenarios. The three areas of which we never have and never will have control is when and how they sleep, when and how they use the bathroom and how they choose to feed themselves. This is as true at 2 years old as it is at 16 years old. Hell, I even had this conversation with my 30 year old and let me tell you that that didn't go too well either. So they do have us rather painted into a corner and once you accept that as a fact, you proceed with the knowledge that yours are merely suggestions and that the child will always, always have the say in those three areas. Sleep, poop, food. Not necessarily in that order.

My job as their mom was to guide, cajole (yes, depending on the mood, that can work) and ultimately accept and things go much smoother. Provide the tools and then get out of their way, I always say. And we can't take it too personally, as this is not about us, but about them asserting their right to their own bodies, even at the age of two. Especially at the age of two.

And when your kid is thirty and you think he's eating too much cheese and you have the audacity to tell him so, you deserve what's coming to you. I mean, to me.

Musings? What musings??

Yes, I looked at a Thesaurus and it states that MUSING is "continuous and profound contemplation or musing on a subject or series of subjects of a deep or abstruse nature". Wow. I should have read that before I named my blog- it's a lot to live up to. And there...just like that I've ended a sentence with a preposition.

I have a lot of musings (admittedly, they are sometimes just simple thoughts) but they are all about the subject of being a mom and all that that entails. Who knew 30 years ago that I would be sitting here today, writing about my four kids who are decidedly not kids anymore. But they're MY kids and they'll always be MY kids. I love that about them.

It's a whole new experience sitting across from your kid, having a cup of coffee and talking about life's ups and downs. But it wasn't always like that. There were times where I was pulling my hair out in frustration, felt sick with worry, and felt almost inept at the task of parenting. I learned and I grew alongside my kids and when I look back, I am quite proud of the job I did. I have four remarkable human beings to show for my parenting resume and this blog will be a forum for me to talk about how I did it, why I did it and what I actually did for the past 30 years that brought me to the place I'm at today.

I hope most of all, that other parents will read my words and commiserate, contemplate, maybe, I dare say, even learn from my mistakes and my successes. Stay tuned for more "musings"....