Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman

Helping My Daughter Enter Dateland

I entered Dateland without a talk. Not only did my mother not understand the unrestricted nature of the 70s, she barely understood dating in her own buttoned-up 50s. And my father, well, obviously fathers don’t do those girl talks; although, it seems to me that their insights into the minds of teen boys would probably be the most worthwhile thing to hear. So I was completely unprepared the first time a kiss became a grind and a contest of wills far more than a testament to romance.

 

“Mom! Guess what?” My daughter’s deep brown doe-shaped eyes and effervescent smile were, for a change, passionately-pleased to see me and so very close to my face that I breathed in her excitement and in a rush I breathed out my response.

“He asked you out.”

“To Homecoming.” Her scream came out as an overwhelmed whisper. Even though she had told me that she was no longer interested in this boy and there had been no talk about Homecoming, there could be nothing else that could have brought that degree of passion to my generally staid young lady, now a senior in high school.

I could barely sleep that night. I was so excited for her. Her first high school date. A date with a boy she has liked for more than a year, but both of them too shy, up to the low-key, “Want to go to Homecoming?” to do more than daydream. At first I channeled myself as her. What will she wear? Will he drive or will she? Will they go to dinner first? What will they talk about? Will they be too shy and sit in silence? But sometime in the night I awoke as a protective father, sweeping all thoughts of romance and first kisses, tongue or no tongue, aside. “No more than a peck good-night. Don’t rush anything. Don’t let him touch you—anywhere.” Was I having a father’s thoughts since her father isn’t around? Or did I realize that it is my responsibility to prepare her for dating as I had prepared her for playdates and kindergarten. 

 

How do you prepare your daughter for the thrill of love and lust and not burden her with your own insecurities? I want to protect my sixteen-year-old daughter from letting her insecurities wall her up into a cocoon of protectionism that would stifle her development as a loved and loving young woman.

My older daughter, now 21, was so distant in her teens with the pain and bitterness of our divorce that I was unable to do “the talk” with her, other than to repeatedly warn her never to let a man—anyone—talk to her the way her father talked to me. So when she called me, six months after moving to LA to attend college, that she was in San Francisco for a few days with her boyfriend, who I had never heard about, all I could say was, “I hope you’re using protection. You don’t want to get pregnant or STDs.” To which she responded, “I know, Mom,” as if we were continuing a conversation that we had been having since she reached puberty.

My own fear as a teen was that someone would discover what I perceived as my physical abnormalities and so I reverted into prudishness. And even when I rounded second base, and no words of shock or disgust were uttered for my innie nipples, I was still embarrassed for my overwhelming body faults. I certainly didn’t look like the women in the Playboy magazines my brother had shoved under his bed, as I assumed everyone looked.

A healthy sense of my physical sense could have prepared me for the overwhelmingly-physical nature of dating. My parents subscribed to the child-rearing philosophy of “praise spoils a child,” so you neither praise for internal qualities nor for external ones. In that scenario, the only way to create a healthy sense of self is through years of trial and error. At 51 I do believe that I am finally accepting of my thunder thighs and gently rolling tummy, and my now drooping breasts.

For years I have been telling my daughter how beautiful she is, because she is. I don’t want her self-esteem be tied to what a man says to her. No, I want her to value herself and build her own realistic self-assessment. Of course, this has been in concert with talking about her intelligence and her sweetness. It seems just as hazardous to ignore a child’s physicality as it is to over-emphasize it. This way of raising her seems to have worked. She will shyly smile, say “Thank you,” and then look down when given a compliment. She can wear yoga pants or sweatpants, a body-hugging dress or one of my worn-out size L sweatshirts and look equally herself. Comfy in her skin seems to have been accomplished. What else do I need to give to her so that she is prepared to hold onto herself and fall in love at the same time?

 

The night before the Homecoming date we had a five-minute mini-lecture in the kitchen. Surprisingly, she didn’t resent my speaking to her, and the kitchen turned out to be the perfect location since it wasn’t a solemn sit-down in the rarely-used living room, rather it was a casual chat in the one room where we meet most often.

I had hoped to mentally write and rehearse my speech on my way home from work, but no ideas or phrases came to mind. It was disappointing; I had thought a steady stream of ideas would come. But they didn’t. So I ended up doing what I generally do: wing it. And, I must admit, what came out of my mouth was far more insightful than anything that casually popped into my head since last week when I knew I would need to have this talk, and even since I had daughters who reached their teens and the inevitability of this talk, with someone, became apparent.

“I need to talk to you about dating.” She rolled her eyes and her eyebrows went up, but she didn’t resist; rather, she looked at me as an athlete looks to a coach. “As a general rule, and I’m not saying this against boys, it’s just the way it is, they will always want to do more than you will want and it’s up to you to push his hand away or say ‘No.’” That felt so true and so unknown before I said it that I surprised myself with my insight. 

“Mom,” was all she said because she was listening.

I continued, still not knowing what would come out until it did, but pleased with the accumulated wisdom of 39-years of boy-girl interactions. “It doesn’t matter if he pays for dinner or what he buys you, your body is your own and you decide what you want to do. No one deserves anything just because he paid for a meal. Your body is yours.”

“I know.”

“Don’t let anyone try to pressure you into doing something that you’re not comfortable with. Only do what you are comfortable doing. Move his hand,” and I moved my hand over the lower and then the upper girl parts, “and say, ‘No,’ otherwise he’ll continue.” She looked embarrassed. This might have been too much for a girl who hadn’t been confronted with a kiss yet, but if I couldn’t be blunt now, when would I be? “And if you’re ever in a situation where you’re uncomfortable, call me. Thank goodness for cellphones.” I wasn’t sure if I should go there, but I gave her a watered-down version of my scary date story. “One time I was in this guy’s apartment, somewhere in Buffalo, I wanted to leave but I didn’t know where I was and I was afraid. Afraid to leave and afraid to stay. I ended up staying. If I had a cellphone, I could have called a taxi to take me to the airport rather than wait until the morning for him to take me. It was scary. I don’t want you to be in that situation.”

Those doe eyes of hers were finally reflecting some compassion for me. “Okay.”

“I mean it. You don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to do.” Was there anything more to say?

We stayed in the kitchen for another couple of minutes talking about the logistics of the next night’s Homecoming and then she went into her room.

I followed her to say one last thing. On her bed was one of her best friends.

“Did you hear our conversation?” I was annoyed, not that she possibly heard what I said, but that our poignant mother-daughter moment hadn’t just been between the two of us.

She shook her head.

“So I had ‘the talk’ with her while you were here?”

“I wish my mom would talk to me,” was her response.

That made me feel less bad about having lost the absolute intimacy of the moment. In my mother-to-all / teacher voice, I reiterated, “Your body is your own, that’s the most important thing to know.” With that, I left them, hoping that my daughter would be my surrogate to her friend and add some more of my wisdom. I was particularly pleased with my realization that men will not stop unless you stop them.

I did what I could do; now it is up to her, and to the men in her life to respect her and her protective mechanisms, as every woman deserves to be respected and heeded.

 

I wonder what the boy’s father said to him. I hope that he told him to respect my daughter by not seeing her body as a baseball diamond, and that he told his son that the key to happiness with a woman, at 16 or 50, is not based on what you can get or how you’re feeling, but on how you make her feel.  

Guest Blogger: Author of "Never Marry a Momma’s Boy and 62 other men to avoid like the plague!"

Thank you for allowing me to do a guest post on your blog!  I am very excited to have this opportunity!

I have recently published a book titled “Never Marry a Momma’s  Boy and 62 other men to avoid like the plague!”   This book deals with types of men and the problems they automatically bring to a relationship.

Now don’t get me wrong-I really like men-I have been married 4 times (yes, four-I am the eternal optimist!).  Men can be interesting creatures-they see the world differently than women, have different interests, and can be fun to be around (not to mention the sex thing!). 

But “Being around” a man and marrying him are two different things!  Marriage changes everything-you are stuck with the whole person, not just the fun parts!

Men and women are very different (in case you haven’t noticed!) Men tend to be shallower and more rooted in the moment.  Women tend to be more introspective, caring, and nurturing.  We plan more for the future, and just generally have a much deeper nature in all ways.  It makes me laugh that most of the famous philosophers were men-the women were probably at home caring for the family and guiding him in his deep, deep thoughts (that he got credit for!)  Anyway, back to our topic…

Some men are genuinely wonderful people (in some ways). Sometimes you would swear this same man had the brains of a nit- and just about as much compassion and understanding!

 With all this said, many categories of men come with predictable problems, not just because of the man.  Certain problems are just inherent with different habits, families, personalities, or occupations.

This book has been the result of years of observations made as a Public Health Nurse, also working in the ER, Labor and Delivery and teaching Psychology.  As the years passed, I noticed, as many of you probably have also, that many men tend to fall into categories, with each category having its own set of problems.

This book was triggered by an event at work-the Momma’s  Boy of a co-worker was engaged.  Looking at the invitation sent to our office(with a lovely picture of the couple) was a horrifying experience-I saw myself years earlier, and knew exactly what kind of hell that poor girl was going to marry into!  That started a cascade of thoughts about types of men to avoid.

At around the same time I emailed an author about a book of hers that I loved, mentioning that I liked to write.  She said “Only you can write your book.”

Well, this book took over my life-I would dream of types of men-and wake up to write them down.  In the bathtub, types would pop into my mind, and I would scribble them down as soon as I stepped out.  I wanted to be done, but kept thinking of different types. 

I felt that if I could save ONE woman from a bad marriage, then I would be happy!

So here I am, sharing this on your blog-I hope it helps someone, or at least makes you laugh!  If you read this book, please email me your thoughts at susanconner99@gmail.com-I would love to hear from you!

Here is the link to my book:  “Never Marry a Momma’s Boy, and 62 other men to avoid like the plague!”

 

My Ex-Husband Is Homeless

“Don’t hit me! Don’t hit me!” my ex-husband yelled, his face red, veins popping from his neck, spittle sticking to his lips. He stood inches from me in the hallway outside the master suite—his room—with our two daughters down the hall in their rooms.

“I didn’t touch you!” I yelled, stepping back, opening my hands in front of me.

“Don’t touch me!” he shouted again, stepping closer.

For years I had feared that his words would morph into fists, but this accusation of violence scared me. I had done nothing. Was this a set-up so he could hit me in self-defense? “You’re crazy! What are you talking about?! GET AWAY FROM ME!” I cried, stepping back into my room, locking the door, turning up the radio so I couldn’t hear him screaming that he’d call the police. Was he preparing for some imaginary courtroom drama where our daughters could claim I hit their father?

This twisting of reality had become my reality in the four years that it took to get divorced and sell the family home. His mind could contort the turning up or down of a thermostat into an offense—as it could with the volume of a radio or even an open door. Now, he had created a threat so he could continue to embitter my life because I wouldn’t just walk out, abandoning our daughters, and leaving the house to him.

“Turn it down! I can’t read!” my older daughter yelled, banging on our shared wall. My daughter, who used to respect me but now despised me for my weaknesses. Her shriek coincided with my heartbreak—“Crazy woman!”

 

I couldn’t have predicted this 30 years ago when he sat next to me on a bus in Israel—happenstance generating the spark that would join a 21-year-old American tourist and a 19-year-old Israeli soldier. He wooed me in letters after I left Israel three days later, and when I moved from New York to Israel nine months after that. His intelligence, vitality, and infatuation with me made me bless that serendipitous moment.

For two years on Friday afternoons when he had Shabbat leave (he was an officer completing his service), we would go to the beach in Tel Aviv, rolling with the waves, embracing with our limbs and through our dreams, letting the hot sun and cool waters of the Mediterranean forge our relationship. Afterward, we would eat hamburgers in pitas with hummus and pickled baby eggplants—adding to the sense that life in this place and with this man would be an adventure. And it was.

Initially, he was my guide to all things cultural and bureaucratic as I learned to live in Israel. His push to incorporate me, his reserved girlfriend, into his thriving life of friends and interests, helped me find my place. The lure of opposites lasted twelve years: we married, he became a successful lawyer, I was a writer in the high-tech industry, and we had two daughters.

But the excitement of having a yin/yang partner who was competitive to my passivity and confident to my self-doubt turned on me when I grew into myself.

Initially, I thought his driving or walking past Do Not Enter signs showed his sense of curiosity and adventure—a bit of that wild side that I found so exciting. But years later, when we were entering an outdoor festival with our daughters and I was reaching for my wallet, he suggested we walk around the entrance where he spied an opening. I looked at him in disgust and walked up to the ticket table and bought four tickets.

When we bought our first car in Israel, he handled all the negotiations. I didn’t think that my Hebrew or my understanding of the way things worked were up to the task. Fifteen years later, when we moved to Virginia, I spoke up in the car salesman’s cubicle, only to have my husband tell me, in Hebrew, to shut up, that he would handle it, otherwise we wouldn’t get a good deal. Maybe it’s true, maybe we wouldn’t have gotten the faux leather seats and the sunroof, but what of the cost to my ego being put-down so publicly. The salesman didn’t need to understand Hebrew to know what was said. The same thing happened when we bought our house—he told me to be quiet or I would ruin the deal.

I started to view his confidence as arrogance after we moved to Northern Virginia in 2000 for my job relocation. Perhaps my confidence finally thrived—no longer held back by a language that was never my own and a sense that I would always feel like a visitor, even after 17 years in Israel.

He found a job in business development at a DC law firm. But our jobs didn’t survive the economic bust: I lost mine in less than a year, and he lost his two years later. Right before he lost his job, I told him that I wanted a divorce. He asked me to wait until he got a job. I agreed, but I had assumed he would move out or at least move into the basement, but he refused. As the abusive behavior intensified, I thought of moving out, but I was afraid I would lose my daughters. I couldn’t afford to live in their school district or near their friends and I feared that they would choose to stay with him, so I never asked. How could being away from him be good if it meant being away from them? So I stayed and endured for four years.

Becoming a financial consultant didn’t work out for him: he was laid off in 2008. Then, according to our daughters (because we had stopped talking since you can’t have a conversation if neither of you will listen to the other), he worked independently.

When we moved, our older daughter went to college out of state and our younger daughter did the custody dance, until she didn’t.

“Why are you here?” I asked one Friday when she was supposed to be with him. I had been looking forward to a quiet weekend without her nastiness. It seemed that she was doing with me what I had done with my mother. One day my mother commented that I was taking out my stresses on her because she would always be supportive.

“He can’t pick me up. He doesn’t have a car,” she replied, arms crossed.

“I can drive you.”

“No,” she said, staring at the carpet.  

“Why not?”  

“Don’t you understand? He has no money!” she yelled, running to her bedroom and slamming the door.

No, I didn’t understand.

That was in June 2011.

Later that day she told me that he was hoping the big deal he was working on would come through.

At the end of August the conversation continued in the car. The deal hadn’t worked out and she needed to go to his house for a few hours on Saturday (she had not been there the entire summer). “He’s being evicted on Monday. I need to,” she paused, looking out the window, “get some things.”

“Why not stay there for the weekend?” I thought she’d want to spend as much time as possible with him before he—. Evicted. It didn’t make sense.

“I don’t want to be there when,” she paused. More staring.

I was stunned, how could this have happened to the man I once idolized; who had been such a good provider? We continued home in silence, crying. I was not a mother able to console her child. It occurred to me that perhaps I was stronger, more resilient than he was and that he had needed more support than he ever let on or that I could give him.

My older daughter told me that her sister said he was going to California because, as he said, “It would be easier to be homeless in California.”

Days after getting her things, my younger daughter told me she felt guilty that she was not with him on a bench somewhere. “He’s my father, I should be with him.”

With that the pain of jealousy pushed out sympathy—it had come to pass—she picked him over me. Her compassion for her father was wonderful, but I felt betrayed. Now I had tears of self-pity. “Sweetie, you can’t feel bad that you’re not there. He’s got to take care of himself, and you—that wouldn’t be good for you.”

“I know.”

“If you ever want to talk about it--.” 

She looked at me, and then out the window. “I know,” she said quietly.

No one has heard from him since then.

I am not my ex-husband’s keeper, but I cannot help but feel guilty. After all, we moved from Israel because of my job. He had supported my writing and my creative projects: he helped look for publishers for my children’s books and outlets for the games and toys I developed. I initiated the divorce.

I used to think that there was a balance between us: I supported him when he went to law school and he supported us when I stayed home intermittently with the girls. I lived in his country and then he lived in mine. Now I realize that most of those decisions were mine. He was overbearing in our day-to-day lives, telling me what shoes to buy for the girls and myself, and where to go on vacation, but those things don’t outweigh having imposed such big changes on him.

His outward bearing of absolute autonomy never revealed doubts, and so I assumed he could handle the changes that came his way.

Thinking of him alone on a bench somewhere, while I have a good job and the respect of our daughters, makes me realize that perhaps I brought more pain to him than he brought to me. So as much as I hate him for how he abused me and for walking out on our daughters, more than anything, I feel sadness for what he has lost.

 

A Small Family

Both of my daughters are here, and later in the week my mother will come down from New York for a few days, which means that my whole family will be together. Four women, three generations: a family, not as much modern as realistic.

The men are missing. My father has passed away. My boyfriend is gone, somewhere. My ex-husband is gone, somewhere. My brother is where he always is, in his house that is 30 minutes from where we grew up, with his wife and two children; he seems incapable of expanding his active compassion to more people.

So it is the four of us.

My older daughter is visiting for a week; last month she graduated from an LA-area college with a BA in English and next month she is headed to Vienna to study German and possibly stay there permanently. She will be going with her boyfriend, who, since he is much older, I refer to as her man-friend. In August my younger daughter will be going to college, probably in Colorado. My mother is in the process of selling the apartment in New York where I grew up and moving year-round to Florida.

There will be a dispersal of us women, but not a disintegration. It saddens me that my family doesn’t fill my dining room table when we sit round it for a meal. It saddens me that I couldn’t give my daughters the boisterous family full of close cousins and aunts and uncles that I had dreamed of for myself, but didn’t get, and so had hoped to create for my children. It did not come to pass. It is we four.

A cousin of mine recently adopted a baby, but she never notified me. Another cousin did, which is good that at least one person has a sense of keeping a link alive, but that is all it is, a tenuous, very occasional email link.

The sister of the cousin who adopted the baby tried to friend me on Facebook about a year ago. Since I don’t use Facebook, I contacted her via email, hopeful about reconnecting a childhood friendship. It turned out that she just wanted me to be a Facebook friend/number and possible client of her artwork.

My ex-husband’s two sisters are not in touch with my daughters; it seems that they decided that since their brother is not around, they have no hold or responsibility toward his part of the family.

But while I might feel inadequate about this paucity, my younger daughter gave me her decidedly different perspective. She had gone to a friend’s grandparent’s house for Christmas dinner. Round the table were relatives who her friend only sees at the annual holiday meals, but they felt it incumbent upon themselves to tell her what to study in college, what college to go to, and what to do with her life. There was arguing and interference, and my daughter was appalled; “I’m glad we have a small family” was her reaction.

I looked at her, stunned, that she wouldn’t want something that I thought would be so integral to her desires and that she was endorsing her life—which is what I give to her. It’s hard sometimes—okay, always—to separate your desires and perception of their needs from your child’s, and it’s hard, too, to learn from your children. But that was a good lesson. The grass over here is the grass she knows, and that is comforting to a child. They want—at least at the fundamental level—what they have, because the unknown is frightening.

So the next time I have family-envy, I need to remember that the four of us sitting round the table means a bigger piece of pie and talking time for each of us. 

Young-Womanicide

How much can a society violate its young women?

How much can a society free its young men of blame for violating its young women?

Is it an equation: a woman sacrificed for a man?

Is this our version of female abortion or infanticide—young-womanicide?

Are we standing before a pyre, with flames that are stoked through the clearest of skies by the twisted and the seemingly-sane?

If these men—and their enablers and supporters and bystanders—violate all that once was held sacred and we let them, then what are we?

How can I not hate these people who are so arrogant as to think that sons are better than daughters; that the despicable actions of boys are of greater worth than a single tear/tear of a girl’s?

Are there any mirrors to look into that don’t cloud over with shame and anger, and regret?

Who let these boys and men enter our public places as beasts?

How is it that their excuses and blaming drown out voices of remorse and sorrow and repugnance?

Go for a walk run jog. Attend a party play concert. Wear pants shorts skirt. Fear of being raped should not accompany every woman every day everywhere forever. 

Defensive Mothers and Innocent Sons

The world has always been as we know it now: violent, cruel, inequitable, and ceaselessly pressing upon us. Has there ever been a moment of Garden of Edenesque tranquility, except in individuals at moments of supreme joy? Why is there always a battle for supremacy—in everything—rather than a field of wildflowers stretching beyond the horizon? It’s stultifying to acknowledge that this is how the world is meant to be; it’s also stultifying to think that this is how it will be past time imagined.

Is the reason for this pre-evolutionary way of being to be found in a simple explanation, or at least a logical explanation albeit with an, as yet, unknown way of resolving it?

 

Every year since I started teaching about ten years ago, there has always been one problematic student. That student has always been a boy. This is the student who would not take directions from me; not only would he not listen to me, but he seemed determined to undermine my authority and take it for himself. That student was often of African or African-American descent or Muslim, though not always, last year’s bad boy was white. I am a 51-year-old white Jewish woman. In the past I have commented, part jokingly, that those students had a hard time accepting a woman’s authority—dominance—over them. I’m not joking any more.

When the student would disrupt class, I would send him out to the hall for a one-on-one talk with me, and then, after the next time and the next time, I’d have his counselor speak to him, and his assistant principal, and I’d meet with the parents (though more often than not it was only with the mother). But rarely was there lasting change.

At the beginning of the school year I have my ninth grade students write an essay about someone they know well. In my second year of teaching, one student, as many do, wrote his essay about his mother. Generally, these essays exalt, with a tiny critique, the mother. Not this boy. His perception of his mother, as it came out in his essay, was very condescending. That perception of his mother seemed to carry over to how he treated me.

Two years ago the mother of the student I couldn’t manage or teach asked why I was failing her son (as in putting in the grade book the Fs he earned). This was during a conference with him, his mother, his assistant principal, his guidance counselor, and me. Everything that I said to her in explanation of adhering to my grading policy (which is based on school policy) was irrelevant to her, since she only saw me as undermining her son. Never mind, apparently, that her son didn’t do his work and what he did do was of poor quality, and that he came late to class, and cursed me in class. Never mind, she implied, for surely I was trying to deny his essence with my insistence that he adhere to my rules, which did not accommodate him.

Last year’s problem son suffered, apparently, from me being too hard on him. You know, expecting him to be quiet in class and not talk back.

I haven’t yet figured out or been told what this year’s problem son’s issue is. Perhaps it relates to his coming to class without a pencil and not paying attention. It was when I was speaking to his mother recently that I realized that herein lies the problem of mankind—yes, mankind: the mothers of these problem boys are always defensive of them. The boys are never at fault: it’s always either the teacher, or the system, or a diagnosis.

This light bulbish moment came to me less than a month after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. There was so much talk about how the murderer’s mother had tried to do her best for her son. She looked for the right schools and the right programs and, it seems—from so far outside of their truth—that she ended up helping him create his own cocoon.

Are these mothers who protect their sons against the impositions of the world helping them or hurting them, and, consequently, hurting all of us by setting upon the world men who are boys—boys who think they are above reproach. Once among us, instead of being sheltered by their mothers, they are the storms from which we need protection. They have been sheltered for so long that their interactions and reactions are off-kilter, but only if you aren’t looking at the world from the prism of their own eyes.  

I wonder if the mothers who create this barrier around their sons do so from love or need. It seems odd that, at least according to my perception, these fierce momma lions come out with sons and not with daughters. (Disclosure: I am the mother of two daughters.) Could it be that women are lacking something from the men in their lives and the only way to get it is through their sons?

When I talk to my mother, and if I happen to casually bring up the fact that my brother does not visit her or do enough for her, she will generally brush it off with excuses for him and the myriad constraints upon his time. Yesterday, tired of me and my barely-veiled accusations against him, she simply put a wall between my criticisms and my brother by saying, “Stop turning the screw.” Once again, the mother took the fall for the son.

The question to be asked, I realize, is not why he doesn’t visit her, but what happened in his childhood that made him think that he didn’t owe her anything? Friends have noted this about their brothers or husbands (ex or present): they are often disengaged from their parents. Many have said (and I said it myself) that the vast majority of these grown boys would never call or visit their parents without their wife’s prodding. These mothers devoted their lives to wiping their son’s noses, and yet demands are placed on their daughters, to whom they passed the box of tissues, and not the sons.

Obviously this is too big of a theory to figure out neatly in a short essay, but the reality of so many sons mistreating (or not treating properly) their mothers, has led to our world, a world in which men oppress women—in country after country, and generation after generation—and in which there is always so much imposed suffering. I have to wonder if the source of this anger and pain and struggle is to be found somewhere in mother-son relationships.

 

Suicide Threats after Love Is Gone

Not long before Kenny left, we took our last Saturday drive together. As usual, we stopped at the 7-11 near the house, but instead of the usual extra-large coffee and two apple fritters or donuts, he only got coffee. I got a plain donut and an extra-large coffee, so that he could finish it later. I was clinging to old habits, but he wasn’t.

We drove in silence a couple of hours south to Montpelier, Virginia, to see James Madison’s house (aptly named Montpelier). Unlike our early-romance silences that were comfortable and interrupted with the occasional conversation, revelatory or observational, this was a two-people-in-their-own-world’s kind of hard silence. Even when I drove down a country lane leading to a farm’s fruit and vegetable stand, there wasn’t any banter about what we would find—it felt like we were going to the supermarket.

When we finally ended up at Madison’s estate, we discovered that the entry tickets were $18 each. Since neither of us felt like spending so much money to wander around what had once been a plantation that we were only going to use as a backdrop to whatever conversation had been percolating within each of us during the drive, I turned the car around and continued driving. We got lost some more looking for a place to eat, until we found a country store selling barbeque. The barbeque wasn’t ready yet, so I ordered a Virginia ham sandwich and potato salad. Kenny didn’t want anything.

When I finally got my sandwich and finished talking to the proprietor (something I never did before Kenny came to town), we sat at the picnic table in front of the store. Sure, there was a tractor parked there making a lot of noise, and we were facing a two-lane road, but there were farms all around and the tractor added the appropriate background white (really black) noise to the scene, so we sat down.

I ate and he cried.

It is odd to think that you are an emotional and sensitive person, only to discover that the man in your life is more emotional and sensitive than you are. It makes you feel like a Beast, inside and out, while he gets to be the Beauty.

He told me, as I took a bite into my thick ham and cheese sandwich, that he saw no reason to live if he wasn’t able to make me love him. Looking out, past the tractor and the road to the sunlight trees lining the fields beyond, and then to the dirt under the bench, he said that he was contemplating committing suicide.

I was shocked, and then I was scared, hurt, and angry. I’m just a woman, I thought, as I tried to figure out what to say, why is he giving me more power than I have, and why is he making me feel guilty because of the way I feel. His statement was so supremely selfish that I was tempted to walk away, except he was obviously in so much pain.

When he moved here twenty months earlier he had said that his intention was to make my life easier because he had always loved me (we had been friends 28 years earlier) and because he was devastated by what I had told him and what he had read (on my blog and other writings that I gave to him) about my relationship with my ex-husband. Much of that was about how my ex-husband had tormented me emotionally, and how I perceived the origin of the abuse as his need to control me and my inability to move my STOP IT! thoughts out of my head and into words and actions that would have stopped him before there was nothing between us except the gulf between the moment we met and the moment he said he would spit on my grave.

When Kenny told me a few weeks earlier that he would be leaving, he said that it was too expensive for him where I lived and that he felt it would be better for us (or did he say for me?) if he moved. I had thought that things were good between us, but as soon as he said that, I knew it was right—that living with him was not right for me as a woman or as a mother. It was as if I had been at the optometrist’s office for endless hours of “Which is clearer: A or B,” but nothing was ever clear, until that moment of absolute clarity. Since then I had only seen clearer why I needed him to leave.

It had been too hard for me to make that realization since he had moved so far to be with me (from Belfast to Northern Virginia) and completely changed his life-plans in that move (graduate school in England to a great unknown). It was also hard for me to formulate my thoughts because he kept telling me that he loved me with all his heart and that I was all that mattered to him. After a while, hearing that didn’t make me feel loved, it made me feel imposed upon. Maintaining and protecting his love took precedence over whatever I might feel toward him. His love was not for me, but for himself—it became an unspoken demand for me not to do anything that would hurt him, that would open the open wound of his love for me because, after all, all that mattered was me.  

If my divorce had taught me anything, it had taught me to be clear about my feelings and thoughts and to not suppress them, but knowing that and acting on that turned out to beyond my ability. Not only because Kenny was so sensitive, but because I still put other people’s emotions above my own.

The first time that I told my ex-husband that I wanted a divorce, he said that he would commit suicide.

Between these two declarations of suicide there was all manner of working on relationships, and readings, and writings (a lot of those) focusing on faults (theirs and mine), with the occasional nod to strengths.

At the moment of Kenny’s despair, I reached for the compassion that he wanted, but I didn’t have any. My supply of you-first was gone, as was my sense that he was a sensible man. At that moment he was the desperate child that he kept telling me was hiding within him, ruined by a brutal childhood that he was never able to overcome. In arguments I had been instructed how he must be handled. I had tried to fit my needs into his, but at that moment I couldn’t—I felt manipulated, not consciously and maybe I only think that because I failed him and I am trying to take care of myself, but I had reached the point when all I could do was hand Kenny back to Kenny, and me back to me.

 

Things only went downhill from there until he left. I withdrew and he tried to take back his leaving. For me there was no going back: I needed him to leave.

Too Many Tragedies on My Mind

As I go about my life, enjoying the peacefulness of winter break, I can’t help but feel the tiniest bit of pressure on my heart from two gruesome tragedies. The unbearable sadness that must now weigh down the mothers and fathers who lost their children in Sandy Hook Elementary School and those whose daughter was so viciously abused and killed on a bus in New Delhi, have, for a time (hopefully forever) become part of my awareness. Another layer scratched away from the perception of goodness and innocence that we are born with, but live with so very briefly.

Knowing that we live in a world that contains such commonplace cruelty is unbearable. There is never a moment untouched by its opposite: tenderness-cruelty, kindness-malice, succor-hurt, yes-no—love-hate, right-wrong.

Guns. The sold-out stocks of rifles appalls me, but shouldn’t. It is all a continuum from the place that breathes from the heart to the place that suffocates hearts.

Who gives and who taketh away?

How do we live so exposed moment by moment to the flipside of whatever good we try to be?

Rape. Women as spoils of war. Women as tools of war. Women as carcasses for the needs of the perverse. Women unable to fulfill their destiny to be loved.

How is the word innocence still in our lexicon?

It is hard to know what to do besides cry and feel the echo of the hollowness that the grieving parents must be living within.

How does the world take away a mother’s child, a father’s child?

There have been so many other tragedies of incomprehensible violence in our lifetimes (even if we are only a month, a week, a day old), and yet I have continued to sit and cry and turn the page of the newspaper to the next story. But I don’t want to. I am ashamed that this is my world because as much as it doesn’t reflect me, how can it not? What is a world—a conscience—composed of if not all the assemblages of dust? It is all too much.

I cannot settle for signing petitions and donating as a reaction. My heart will beat with that emptiness, but it must be accompanied by more purpose than merely conviction. I need to be able to face my daughters and my students, my self, not as a complacent adult, but as one who cares more for them than comfort of habit. There is what to do, and do I must.

 

“Gimme Shelter”: This song might have come out of the Vietnam War, but it resonates so forcefully today—in this battlefield we live in.

Guns Do Kill: “Another Day in the (gun crazy) USA” and Slate’s tally of the people killed since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School at nine in the morning on December 14, 2012. 

Overwhelmed by an Overwhelmed Sister

A few days ago I was talking to a colleague who is the perfect embodiment of “I got it”-ness. With her Vogue-in-the-classroom look and absolute dedication to going above and beyond the call of duty for her students and all of the students in our school, she is a failure-free go-to gal, who clearly revels in that role—and reputation. But that morning her smile was tense, and her laugh-whatever-off ease was strained. What had put her over the top was not administration, with all its glorious decisions. No. It was family. What a shock, huh? Why is it that the people who are supposed to be our mattresses offering endless support are often the people who give us beanie bags?

That day her bottomless pot of things she “got” overflowed when her sister volunteered her—because she’s so good at it—to get their father’s gift, less than a week before Christmas. Her husband protested, but she preferred one-more-thing-in-her-pot than to deal with another ‘round and ‘round conversation that she would have with her sister that would deflate her more than the search for the perfect B&B for his gift. So she took on one more task, once again.

I asked how busy her sister is. She shrugged, unimpressed by her sister’s busyness, and commented that it’s normal. Then she added, with a hint of scandal in her tone, that when her sister needs “me” time, she takes the day off and does nothing for anyone—she tends only to herself she practically whispered. A concept she found hard to fathom, since she is never able (willing?) to slough off responsibility.

“So,” I said, “she’s overwhelmed by the ordinariness of life.”

She looked at me with a “Bingo” look and laughed a laugh that doesn’t stop until you’re ready to lose the aha-ness of the moment.

That’s when I realized that I am like her sister because so often I, too, am “overwhelmed by the ordinariness of life.” How else can you explain the medal I expect after I finally call to question a charge on a credit card bill, or actually check my cell phone bill before paying, or bring the car into the garage for regular maintenance? Far too often life, even in its basic configuration, is overwhelming.

The other day, the mortgage broker at my credit union (I’m apartment hunting) told me that I shouldn’t have gotten another credit card (I don’t want to use the Bank of America card anymore) because it doesn’t look good when my credit score is checked, and also that I should not have let the balance on my credit card four months ago be more than 50% of the limit, even if it was paid off on-time. How was I supposed to know that regular activities would count against me in my credit rating and possibly in the mortgage rate I would get? Maybe I should have known this, but it’s darn hard to pay attention to the important and the trivial, and remember which is which.

I joke with my students who are anxious when they receive a failing grade on an essay, that we are not born knowing how to write a five-paragraph essay. I reassure them that it is okay, that I will teach them and work with them, and that they will have a few years to perfect it before they move onto other forms of essays that they will need to perfect. So much of what we need to know is not intrinsic: experience trumps intuition. And there is so much experience to meet and master.

I’m not sure where the root of the overwhelm problem lies, but I’m sure that we are all overwhelmed at some point, some of us on a daily basis. We are expected to do too much and know too much. Just living life requires more skills and knowledge than a person can comfortably handle.

But there doesn’t seem any stopping. Now that I’m looking to buy an apartment, I’m thinking of all the do-it-yourself things I might have to do. Maybe I shouldn’t have watched the home repair show that made fixing the kitchen look so easy, but I did and now I wonder if I should learn to use drills or saws or whatever those cutting tools are. Another colleague said that a friend of hers has become a competitive crafting mom; she blames Pinterest for that—a combination of keeping up with Ms. Jones and wanting to be, at least, on par with all the other mothers. Seriously, spring blossom cookies in white and pink fondant or a tower of white Christmas tree cookies—what happened to Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies using the recipe on the back of the bag?

Who is enabling all the overwhelming?

The expectation that we learn and then do so many things exceptionally well is turning out to be too much for too many of us. The other day I heard a scientist talk about a field that he had started and how now, not even 50 years later, he is unable to keep up with all of the information and discoveries in his field.

Every year I have about 150 students. I learn their first and last names in a week. I remember their names for a year. But once the year is over, their names are as the names of the stars in the sky—unknown to me. That seems a good way for my mind to handle the overload. How many people did Neanderthal woman know? And how many routes to how many houses and supermarkets and stores and types of restaurants (Thai, Chinese, Mexican, Greek, Vietnamese, barbeque, breakfast place, fast food, and deli) did she need to know? No wonder people are picking up yoga and meditation where the goal is to silence the mind. At least I think it is (I should check that).

While I am overwhelmed, I am also astonished by the things that overwhelm others. Yes, I excuse myself and not them. I guess that makes me a hypocrite, but it also makes me a person trying to give herself a break and a bit of a lift at the same time. A coping strategy for someone who doesn’t do the lotus position or hum ohm, and needs to stay away from those cookies, fondanted or not.

 

“Overwhelmed by the Ordinariness of Life” is going to be a regular feature because it’s important to curtsey to ourselves in recognition of all we do and laugh at how some people are stumped by the very nature of putting one foot in front of the other—which really is laughing at ourselves, which we really need to keep doing so that we, too, can keep placing those feet one in front of the other. I’m not sure why, but this feels critical to me. Maybe it’s because I am not a doer and the degree of doing that I do in a day must be acknowledged so that I don’t keep thinking that I have done nothing. It may also help me better value people, like my brother and my mother, who bother the heck out of me by how overwhelmed they are by the ordinariness of life. But more on them in future posts—this is my curtsey to self.

Quote of the Week (1)

“This is our first task, caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged.” President Obama

Book Review: Finding a Man for Sylvia

A friend and fellow writer, Margaret Lesh, has just published a wonderful book: Finding a Man for Sylvia. In the past I have reviewed books when I was approached; in this case, I approached her and told her that I would review her book and recommend it because I loved it so much. Five-star read recommendation! It's available on Kindle, but I think that there's a Kindle cloud option, which means that you can download it for any device, even a laptop. (Check this out, though, I may be wrong.) 

I absolutely love the world that Margaret Lesh has created in Finding a Man for Sylvia. I wish I could dive into the book (and I did—I couldn’t put it down) and have the heroine, Julia Hawthorne-Florez, pour a margarita or two for me and then find a match for me! I’d move to LA in a minute. Julia is truly a heroic character, in the way that women see other women as heroines for their depth of character, perception, and fun.

This book is a charm. The writing is wonderful, the characters, from the clueless Ted to the powerhouse Lisa, are just the right amount of over-the-top to be entertaining and believable. But it’s not just about the characters, there are real insights to be garnered from Julia, who shines as the woman you want to be friends with. While she might ask, “Why do some people have such a hard time finding love?” as she tries to understand why the people she loves can’t find love, and why she is compelled to fix that by matchmaking, she also has great confidence to follow her heart. She has great insight into herself; as she thinks of her husband, the lovely Javier (I’m hoping that there’s a real Javier I can meet), “In that moment, I felt grateful for everything, but perhaps most of all, I felt gratitude that he’d saved me from a life of searching, disappointment, and loneliness. I’m an acquired taste, I know this, not a person easy to live with, let alone put up with for any appreciable amount of time.”

Finding a Man for Sylvia is the essence of a good read: interesting characters, plot that keeps moving and focuses on providing valuable insights into people, and on top of it all—lots of good food!

One Woman Roaring

Just a couple of months ago we women were on our way to ruling the world, what with the end of men and all. We were even arguing about what it means to have it all, because we were at the point in our societal evolution of hair splitting the definition of “all.” Now we can be found in binders, which certainly adds a new twist to the idea of having it all—for men, I mean, certainly not for women.

I want to know why, in October 2012, are so many men still bullies and cowards toward women? Recorded history of their wars and conflicts and pillaging and raping began more than 5,000 years ago; you would have hoped that at some point they would have put aside their little man-scepters and let us girls play, too, on a level playing field so that, perhaps, all the animosity and power-mania that they do so well could be tempered with thoughts of compassion and not aspirations of greatness.

It’s as if they are born with an endless bag of M&Ms in their hands and they won’t let women have any, not a brown one or a red one or even a yellow one. Nope. It’s their bag and they don’t have to share if they don’t want to. So they don’t, because who are they to listen to their mothers about the importance of sharing and caring?

Am I talking about the boys and men in Afghanistan and Pakistan where they are trying to tie girls—body, mind, and soul—to the kitchen and bedroom? No. I am talking about here. All the brouhaha about romney and his comments about “binders full of women,” and us ladies being granted the privilege to get home by five to cook for our little men, and the inability of single women to control the violence in their sons has not been met by the proper degree of disgust and condemnation. Sure, there are funny memes and tweets and witty comments about Avery binders, but where has the serious discussion been that 50% of the people (going on the tightness of the presidential race) in this country have their minds wrapped in turbans and have joined the Taliban. No wonder we can’t defeat them.

I guess it’s so addictive, this power that men have over women, that it’s too hard to relinquish.

Legitimate rape. Acceptable rape (military style). Shut-down systems. Forced vaginal ultra-sounds. 77 cents to the dollar. Ladies issues. Vagina as a four-letter word. And apparently we’re causing penises to go petite.

I don’t care if the crazy is limited to the republicans or the tea party, what I care about is the damage these ideas and actions are having on my present and my future, and on the present and future of my daughters—and of our sons. How many more generations will be forced to send their children to war because the men in power only know power? Why are women being put en masse into a ducking stool? These are not separate issues, they are one and the same.

I remember singing, “I am woman, hear me roar” back in 1971; who would have thought that we would still be roaring now, and even louder than before because now we are so much closer to where we should be, but we are being told to go back, to go back to the wonders of being barefoot and pregnant. (Contraception access restrictions anyone?) Okay, so the guys who say that are Neanderthals. But that’s an awful lot of throw-backs that we have in this country. Why is that?

Do we have any hope left of ever having it all, where “all” refers to the same choices and opportunities as the boys have, without giving ourselves gender-neutral names and becoming as aggressive as men?

We can laugh about those binders, but the comedy doesn’t go very deep before the pain throbs.

I know this will sound naïve, but I honestly don’t understand why any man thinks that he is innately better than any woman, or even why any person thinks that he or she is better than anyone else, or anything else, if I’m going all the way in my thoughts.

Arrogance. It’s so much easier to be arrogant when you can be because you hold the levers.

No one wants to serve when it is not a choice. No one wants to be told how to act and how to be by someone who only issues commands. No one wants to be boxed in by the dimensions of another person’s mind-box.

We can roar, but we cannot be invincible if we are thrown under the bus of men’s ambitions. In that case, who wants any of it, never mind all of it?    

A Single Lady, Her Dog, Her Girl-Chats, and Her Epiphany

On weekends I live in a virtually segregated world. There are no men around, unless you count the men servicing me—my groceries, I mean. It’s odd, but not a bad way to live. It’s as if I’m living on the flip-side of Taliban-enforced segregation but rather than in a remote Afghan village, I’m in a close-to-the-epicenter Northern Virginia neighborhood.

My ex-husband is gone. My boyfriend is gone. Even the man who just wanted to have sex with me is gone. And for some not-difficult-to-discern reason, I’m not seeking a man with whom I can attempt yet another failed relationship.

I know that there are families and couples in my neighborhood, and some barely-viewed single men, but their schedules don’t coincide with mine, so they are not a part of my world. It seems, though, that most of the single women around have dogs or at least keep similar hours as me, so we meet and chat as our dogs sniff each other’s not-so-private parts or as my dog sniffs and pees on one square of grass for ten minutes.

And on the home front, I have two daughters, so whether talking with my daughter at home or my daughter away in college, all our talk is from a woman’s perspective. For phone conversations there’s my mother who is always available for a recap of her day, which mostly involves discussing her women friends and their issues, especially since my father passed away two years ago. The one man still in my life, my brother, I call once every few months after I have despaired of waiting for him to ever call me, but our conversations barely make a flicker in my weekends of women-talk.

So there’s this constant brief interchange of stories and ideas that feeds my need to be heard and to hear. Since most of these conversations are unplanned, they represent the cream of conversations: concern for the other, telling only what is utmost in one’s mind and heart, and expressions of empathy—in short, conversations that recognize the value of the ordinary rhythm of life.

 

It occurs to me as I think of these open exchanges that there’s a reason why I’m single, and the blame doesn’t fall solely on the men who are no longer in my life—or never made it into my life. Maybe I’m just more myself with women. With men, there always seems to be a limit to my honesty. With my female friends I never try to figure out what to say to please them or to make them like me; there’s never any pressure to impress. It’s me in all my blunt and interrupting glory.

It could be, too, that I do better in small chunks of time rather than unending time together. There’s a big difference in who you are when you have two minutes every couple of days or two hours every few months than when you have dinner together every night, and breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack time on the weekends. For goodness’ sake, all the good stories have long since told and retold by the time a relationship’s second anniversary rolls around and by the weekend every day has been thoroughly examined. When you only see a friend once in a while, there’s always something new to recount. For two hours we can each put forward the best aspects of our personalities and our lives. It’s certainly not worth it to be grumpy when it will soon be back to the grind that caused the grumpiness in the first place.

Maybe the best way for relationships to survive is to redefine them. My marriage might have lasted if we only met once a week and sex was upon desire, not convenience.

But maybe not, because I fundamentally act differently with men, so the whole two-hour weekly visit practice might still have backfired on me. After my boyfriend, who had been my friend 28 years ago, became my partner I rose to the occasion by considering his feelings and needs before my own, which turned out not to be good for our relationship. With friends I pride myself on being forthright, so why can’t I do that with men? Sure, the stakes are different: no more coffees together versus no more retirement plans together. But I do I wish that I hadn’t felt the need to protect him from my honesty; I wish, too, that I hadn’t felt so much pressure to make him happy.

With friends there are no expectations beyond the moment, so there is no reason not to be forthright. It should be possible for me to act like that with a man, especially if I want to be in a relationship and, surely, I have learned by now that without honesty, there is no staying power.

Not needing or expecting anything could be the key; although, I’m not sure it’s possible. Isn’t reciprocity the very essence of a relationship? Indeed, I know that I don’t want a relationship that is as casual as a conversation on the corner. The problem might be in the hoping and the wishing that this man, whoever he is, could be my knight, even though I have learned that I am the only knightette I can depend on, and that I don’t want to be anyone else’s knightette.

The added value of these all-women weekends is not for me to safely retreat, but to have realized that my essence contains no subterfuge and that I need to live that truth—in or out of a relationship. 

Missing Words: the Quandary of Being 50 Plus

 I’ve been forgetting things for a year. Is this what’s supposed to happen when you turn 50? It was like clockwork: I got my invite from AARP to join the party and I started forgetting things. Not things, per se, I can still find my keys and my car (not counting supermarket parking lots), no, I’ve been forgetting words. Not all words, not words when I’m writing, but when I’m speaking. All of a sudden, in the midst of a conversation, when it’s my turn to talk, I freeze up. I become, sorry Mom, my mother: a picture of confusion, a pause one two three four five six and then back to the conversation. Or right in the middle of my talking the next word will suddenly—poof!—disappear as if a magic wand had suddenly descended upon my internal dictionary. I’m not happy about this development or reverse development, as the case seems to be.

One day in school I was standing in front of my class discussing The Odyssey and how Odysseus’ ship was sunk in the storm that Zeus sent as per the request of Helios, the Sun God, because Odysseus’ men had a bbq with his sacred cattle, when the word “sunk” disappeared. I stood there in front of 28 teens whose brains are in the midst of expanding watching me visibly losing some synapses. The word “drowned” popped into my mind, but I knew it was wrong—people drown, not ships. Still standing there, pretending that this wasn’t awkward, I searched some more, when it occurred to me to just say “the ship went down.” A few seconds later, thankfully, the word, “sunk” came into view, but too late for me to prevent a fearful insight—I am beginning my decline.

The other day I was at a sports store with my 16-year-daughter. As we walked around looking for a sports bag I told her that I was anxious that I was forgetting things.

“Oh, Mom, I forget things all the time,” she noted with that trademark exasperation of the teen.

“No, this is different. It’s an age thing.” Why is it that we always talk about sensitive topics in the car or public places?

“Mom, you’re being dramatic. Now, ask them where the drawstring bags are, and don’t call them cinch bags, that’s not what they’re called.” 

Sure, she doesn’t want to deal with thinking about her mother as less than the lady who can take care of things for her; after all, I am the only adult in her life. I’m her rock, but I’m crumbling.

I walked right over to the sales clerk and asked, “Excuse me, but where are the cinch bags, uh, I mean drawstring bags.”

As we walked over to the soccer balls, where the drawstring bags were located, I said to her, “You see, I didn’t mean to say ‘cinch’ but it just came out.” It’s confusing and upsetting this whole word-replacement thing. I have lost control over my brain.

When I was younger (yes, that’s how old I feel right now that I can say that with confidence) everything worked without being aware of the parts—of the magic of creation and how amazing it is that the mind and body work so well. I heard a scientist on the radio recently talk about how much work goes on in the brain just to bring a cup of coffee to our lips. I can still do that, with ease, but still, this visible change is hard.

I used to walk by older people, going at their extreme snail’s paces, visibly concentrating on each step, wondering how they can be so slow—I don’t any more. Now I marvel at their ability to keep going in spite of all the stuff that’s becoming unglued and dismantled inside. I don’t see “them” so much as I see me down the road. Hopefully I won’t forget the word “road” and that I need to keep truckin’ down it.

'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all

Kenny is gone. He left five weeks ago. Maybe he’s in California. Maybe he’s in Oregon. I don’t know. I doubt I will ever know. I don’t think I will hear from him again. But who knows; after all, two years ago I heard from him after 28 years.

All was well, until it wasn’t.

It was wonderful, then it wasn’t.

Perhaps some romances are only meant to be temporary.

Perhaps some people are better alone than in a couple. 

I am sad that he left, but there’s also relief. I don’t have to feel bad when he withdraws into himself. And I don’t have to try to draw him out. He will take care of himself, and I will take care of myself.

But it is so sad. It was such a perfect romance. We had been friends, then we were lovers. I felt embraced by his love. But then it started feeling confining. But I couldn’t talk about that with him. He made so many sacrifices to be with me—shouldn’t I have been able to do more for him? I tried, yet once again I found myself trying to fulfill my partner’s needs rather than my own.

I have spent the last few weeks writing and thinking about Kenny and our relationship. I have realized that I need space and time to myself, and if I ever get in another relationship, we should each stay in our own apartments.

It’s funny, he said he was purely guided by his desire to make me happy, but that ended up not being as wonderful as it sounds. What if his efforts didn’t make me happy? What if I didn’t want to receive his efforts when he wanted to give them? It was sweet and it was bitter.

May he find joy in himself and in his life.

Envy-Free at 51?

I’m at the age when I should have stopped looking around to compare myself and my life to anyone else’s, and certainly not to everyone else’s. It’s time (51 is definitely after the supposed watershed moment) for me to rejoice in ME! I am free to discard all thoughts of limitations, weight issues, and life lackings—because, apparently, just getting to this point should be enough of an ego boost to last the rest of my lifetime!

HA!

And the trick’s on me because, unfortunately, this is just one more thing for me to feel bad about having failed: apparently I am the only woman who has failed in the “Look World, No Envy and No Jealousy! I Love My Almost Green Lawn Now That I’m 50!” stage of development.

Woe is me.

It’s not that I haven’t evolved at all, but there’s just no way a lifetime of thinking that I’m the smartest/stupidest/most attractive/least attractive/nicest/meanest woman around can be dismissed, or wished away just because THEY say it should be gone. You see, I’m still dealing with the darn THEYs of the world.

Even writing this has me fraught with comparisons because I am not writing the way I am supposed to. I can’t stay focused for more than ten minutes (I lied, five minutes) before I need to click to see if I have any emails or if there’s some undiscovered news to read. If I were a real writer, I’d focus fully for at least two hours without letting myself be tempted, even by the need to re-re-reheat my coffee. Alas, failure again.

And what of my being beyond all thoughts of could haves and should haves. I have found in my teeny tiny bit of research that it is the women who have checked off some accomplishments (besides the children, I mean, but that’s not exactly a unique accomplishment) who are able to lay claim to that “universal 50+ trait” of not comparing oneself to any other woman in the room. Is it that I am supposed to be content with not achieving any of the achievements I had dreamed of just because I’m 50+? Does it mean that I’m supposed to be content with whatever it is that I have done and not worry about falling further and further away from what I think I am capable or want I want to do? If that’s the case, doesn’t it assume, sort of, that I have given up, that I am no longer going to push myself because I have done all that I can expect from myself? But I am not ready to throw in any towels—I’m still here and hope to be for a while to come.

The real difference for me, pre and post the dawning of this marvelous age of the new Middle Age, is that I have less of a speak-up suppressor. The hand-over-mouth synchronicity that was there from my teen years to not so very long ago has vanished—POOF! The big mouth I was when I was still wearing dresses and Danskins is back, but the big difference is that in 3^rd grade it was just a need to talk constantly, now it’s a need to say what I think—even if it’s not my turn to speak and even if it’s not censured for proper company. The topics are often of the “think but don’t say” variety; it does feel good, I admit, to have overridden the what-will-they-say internal censor.

My skin. Apparently my skin is supposed to be very very comfy right about now, but I look in the mirror and I see that my face is fuller than it’s supposed to be and not as bright as it’s supposed to be. In my mind, I am the woman of my wedding pictures. I was 24 then. I am not now. I’m not even married now. Yet that’s my mind’s image of myself. How the heck am I supposed to change from perception to reality? And, really, are all those other happy-with-their-lawn women really seeing themselves in the here-and-now or are they trying to trick me for someone else’s good? Is it really bad that every time I peek in the mirror I am disappointed that I’m still me, as in puffy-and-tired-faced Laura? Isn’t it, in some sense, a good thing that I am not willing to forsake my hopes and dreams just because I have reached an age milestone?

Why am I feeling bad that I’m not aging the way I’m supposed to?

Is it self-esteem issues, still? Or is it that this magical glory-be-me revelation isn’t something that we all get to share? Perhaps, as in all things, it happens for some while for others it just doesn’t happen with exclamation marks or over tea with my closest, dearest friends since kindergarten.

What’s wrong with a bit of envy? Isn’t it a bit of a driving force? Can everything really be completely internally driven? Do we all become yogi masters when we step over the 50 milestone? Maybe the key is that by this time we have made our own internal recipes where we can adjust what we need with what we have and what we can still get, as opposed to thinking that all’s well, couldn’t be better, I’m where I’m supposed to be without really believing it—or afraid to believe it.  

Appreciating Teacher Appreciation Week

I know that it’s Teacher Appreciation Week because there’s free food at school. Last week, in preparation for the big event, we were feted with, as one colleague put it, mayonnaise-five-ways. Okay, there was pulled pork to go with the mayonnaise salads, but still it was a July 4^th meal two months early. We’re professionals and sadly/gladly, we were pleased not to eat our Lean Cuisines and leftovers one day during our lunch half-hour. This week, so far we have had a lunchtime barbeque, donuts, cake on a stick, a Costco cookie, and coffee. (I must admit, coffee brought to me on a cart was quite the treat.) Not that I don’t mind all the food-based treats, but I wonder if there is another way to show appreciation for teachers besides with food?

Here are some ideas.

1. Each and every student will say at least one nice thing to each of his/her teachers. A few suggestions popped into my head. “That was an interesting lesson, thank you.” “Now I get it, thank you.” “I’m sorry that I didn’t do a good job on the assignment, but I have redone it, without expecting a higher grade but just to show you what I am capable of and what you have taught me that I am capable of. Thank you” “You look lovely today, as always.” “You are the best teacher” (this can be said, without any irony or contradiction, to every teacher).
2. Each and every parent, no teamwork here, must write a Thank You note to his or her children’s teachers—for every single teacher of every single child. To do this each parent must know the name of his/her child’s teachers, must know the subject the teacher teaches, and must know some specifics that can be mentioned in the note. This information could be gleaned from your child. Surely, writing the note is something all parents know how to do since they have told their children, on various occasions, to write Thank You notes.
3. All parents and students will refrain from sending any emails that are thinly-disguised or not even vaguely-disguised rants at a teacher, and if any are sent, they will certainly not be CC-ed to assistant principals, principals, or superintendents. Honestly, you can assume that it is not the teacher’s fault that your child is failing, and it is not the teacher’s fault that your child is not doing his/her work and it is not the teacher’s fault that your child plagiarized a paper. Generally when a child is not doing his or her work, it's because things are not quite right at home--so parents, look to yourselves before you start blaming teachers.
4. For the entire week, parents would need to help their children with their homework. Not to do it for them, but to sit there and explain  c a l m l y  what he didn’t get at school. And if, for whatever reason, he still doesn’t understand what you’re explaining ever-so-thoroughly and effectively, figure out another way of getting the idea across so that he can feel good about himself and his learning. For each of the week’s sessions you will never voice your frustration, nor will you express your frustration by leaving the room (other than to go to the bathroom), until the learning is done. At absolutely no point will you use the S-word (as in stupid) or the L-word (as in lazy).
5. “If you can read, thank a teacher.” I’ve seen that bumper sticker—and I think it holds true. Every person in this country should acknowledge, in some way (see above and below) the positive impact that teacher’s have had on his/her life. (Yes, there are teachers who are not good, as there are parents who are not good, but who takes away a Mother’s Day Card from a mother or a Father’s Day card from a father? Positive thinking, we are positive-thinking.)
6. For one week let us teachers teach without the dual requirement to entertain the masses. This is not stand-up comedy and this is not a sitcom. (Wait, it probably is a sitcom. Every single classroom could easily be the basis for a sitcom.) Grammar is not fun. Writing essays is not the most enjoyable of activities. SO WHAT! It needs to be done. There are skills that need to be mastered, and not just for tests that dumb-down, but for life that invites possibilities. Do it! Do your work. Yes, it’s called work—school work and home work. But if kids would try for just a moment to focus on the learning—on what the teacher has to teach—and not on the fact that they would rather be connected to some gadget, learning may occur.
7. Pay a one-day babysitting fee for your child. Let’s assume a babysitter these days makes $11 an hour and a school day is 7.5 hours, so $82.50 would be owed for each student to be paid to a teachers’ fund at your child’s school. This money could then be used at the teachers’ discretion; of course, a professional community would be established to decide how to use the funds. Luxuries such as coffee machines, microwaves, refrigerators for teacher workrooms, or even “teacher chairs” that don’t look like they trickled down from the Principal’s Conference Room two principals ago could be considered.
8. And one thing that did happen this week that I truly appreciated: students wrote nice thank you comments on paper apples and gave them out to teachers. Too bad that most had exactly the same comments so there was a hint of insincerity, and that mine had a misused contraction. But here, at least, there were no calories involved and there seemed to be an honest note of appreciation. THANK YOU STUDENTS!

 

 

Book Review: Love for Grown-ups

Book Review: Love for Grown-ups: The Garter Brides’ Guide to Marrying for Life When You’ve Already Got a Life by Ann Blumenthal Jacobs, Patricia Ryan Lampl, and Trish Rabe

A big recommendation goes out to women and men to read Love for Grown-ups. This book is about how we, the “over the hill” folks, are not so over the hill, or once we’ve all made it over the hill there’s a sensitivity and kindness that weren’t there on the other side—or at least there’s the acknowledgement that that’s what it’s all about: being loving, finding love, continuing to be loving, and finally being maturely loved (as in loved and respected for all one’s qualities—and personality quirks). What’s so wonderful about this time of life, as the Garter Brides describe in their book, is that both women and men have decided that kindness, consideration, and good sex are all things to want, to search for—to deserve and to expect. No longer are we to believe those adages about women over 40 and their chances of marrying being akin to winning a Vogue make-over. No, we are to listen and heed all the happily-ever-after stories of the many midlife women they have compiled in this book, including the three authors’ lovely stories, to make us know that we are the winning ticket! 

This book is listed as being a Self Help book, but as a non self-help book fan, I can say that this is not a simplistic do this and this will happen type of book. It’s more that Blumenthal Jacobs, Lampl, and Rabe laid out their stories and invited the reader into the lives of so many other women so that the reader can think that “you know, maybe it could happen to me too, maybe I can still be happy in a relationship.” And that, truly, is more honest help than I got from friends who just tried to pick up my spirits saying that I deserve happiness (which is true for all of us). But that’s not the same as showing how it has happened and how it could happen to me.

And now that I am in a relationship, although I don’t know if it’s going to last more than another month, there is a security that I feel because of this book, and it’s not necessarily that I will marry again, which is not my goal. No, the security is in the fact that Love for Grown-ups puts all those horror stories that I lived through via on-line dating into context—that there is a reason to believe that it could happened to me too.

While up-beat on the whole, the book tries to be realistic, but since the writers’ stories are so positive-in-the-end, “look we got married!”—it’s up to the reader to add her dose of doubt. The section on blending kids and families was, for me, not as true to my reality, but who’s to say my tough teen is not the exception? I did appreciate, though, that they did lay out the problems that arise and how they and other couples handled them. That, surely, was insightful.

So if you need to read some real life 40+ love stories, this is the place to go.  

The War on Women: Foot First

Sure, a woman’s ability to not get pregnant, stop a pregnancy, care for her body-mind-soul, feed her children, support herself, house her partner, tend to her parents is being undermined, curtailed and impinged upon, but at least she can buy all the guns she wants!

And a woman’s ability to be judged fairly, without any bias based on what she doesn’t have between her legs is being thwarted, but at least she can understand her place and not fight against the little men with their little fill-in-the-blank who inhabit the hollow—I mean hallowed—chambers of representation across the land!

No, my indignation is directed toward the real War on Woman, namely the War on Women’s Feet. How on earth have women agreed—paid of their 77-cents-to-the-dollar-earnings—to be strapped to five inch heels? What does this say about us that we have let this happen—that we have not forced shoe stores and shoe-sites to return these woman-hating shoes back to their designers with the heels sawed off! (A shoe castration, if you will.)

What is attractive (read sexy) about a woman taking itty bitty steps and needing to hold onto a man who is wearing quarter-inch heels because otherwise she couldn’t even attempt to walk straight to the nearest seat? (I know the answer to this is obvious, but still, for my soul, I need to cry out the question in protestation.)

I have to admit, there was a moment in the middle of a DSW when I thought that perhaps I was wrong—one of those “if everyone’s doing it, it must be right” moments. But then I attempted to try on a pair and came to the rapid conclusion that this style is yet another form of disempowerment.

I took off my well-worn black flats and prepared myself to mimic the stars on their red carpets and us ordinary women at the mall. With one five-inch shoe on, my other foot hovered above the ground—I held onto the shoe display for dear life. It felt like I was training to walk on stilts, only there wasn’t a circus performer there to instruct me how to maintain my balance. Quickly, before I should fall and be expelled permanently from the Woman of the World department, I put my shoeless foot back on terra firma, put the stilt-shoe back in its box and said goodbye to extreme fashion, goodbye to thinking that high heels are what defines a woman’s sensuality.

Was I not woman enough for this or was I too much a woman? Why is this the style now, now when women’s rights are being rescinded law by law? Why, when it had seemed passé to even talk about feminism (my teenage daughter mocked my even discussing it) is this backlash coming at us—first our wombs, then our feet? Why are they trying to manipulate us back to the times of bound feet and cobbled expectations? Why, when so many men and women respect each other as equals, is this undermining happening?

Is the extra height an extreme message that we have forgotten what we’re really valued for—or what we should value about ourselves? And why has walking on stilts come to be equated with one’s sexiness?

Women—let’s show those shoe purveyors and trendsetters what we think of their attempts at objectifying us into some kind of uber-stilted-Barbies and put our two feet down on the earth, walking right to the voting booth.

(I wonder if the Koch Brothers are investors in Louboutin?)

 

The Education Philosophy of 0=50

“What does doing 0 work but getting a grade of 50 teach a child?” No, this is not a rhetorical question, neither is it a hypothetical one. It is a question that teachers across the country seem to be dealing with (well, maybe not across the country, but at least in Virginia and Colorado).

“Why would a student get a 50% on an assignment that he did not do?” is a better question. Or perhaps: “Why would a teacher be told/directed to give a student a 50% on an assignment that was assigned but which the student did not do?” From what I understand there are two main rationales.

One: not to damage the ego of a child because, you know, getting 0% for the 0% effort he put into his schoolwork would cause his self-confidence to plummet. This is as opposed to doing 100% of the work, and working hard at it, and getting a grade that makes him proud of the work he did—or at least aware that effort is rewarded, and that you learn and improve the more work you do. That, apparently, isn’t such a sound idea these days. Perhaps it is too much of a retro idea and education theorists and philosophers are all about continually re-inventing the education wheel.

Two: too many Ds and Fs look bad for a teacher and, more importantly, a school. What would the pie charts and the bar graphs and statistics look like if a school has too many students at the bottom end of the grade alphabet? No, that’s not good because then schools would have to worry about being labeled low performing or not improving student performance enough, which is worse, apparently, than actually figuring out why a student is not doing his work and working with him—so grade inflation is the way to prevent that. (I love the word “performance,” which is as appropriate as “are you still working” when you are eating in a restaurant. Shouldn’t the word be knowledge or understanding, you know, something related to the learning process; and in relation to the restaurant, shouldn’t it be “eating,” as in are you still eating that apple pie?)

“No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top,” in their efforts to raise the educational level of all students, sure have resulted in some skewed practices. I understand and fully support believing in every single child in this country and giving him or her the best education possible, but encouraging kids to be lazy seems to be faulty—or lazy—logic to me.  

I have taught high school freshmen who are stunned when they receive 0s. Seriously, they are upset and confused that I don’t give them credit just because they’re such wonderful and cute kids. Someone please tell me what real-world lesson this emulates that wouldn’t result in someone going to jail—or having resulted in having some really great coupons?

Why should 14-year-olds first be learning that work=grade or that there are consequences for their actions/inactions? Wouldn’t it be better, for all of us now and into the future, if we taught kids that they are as accountable for their grades as we the educators and the parents and the administrators and society are?