Posted on by She Never Sleeps

It’s Not About The Waffles

I’ve taken a step back from journaling my life. I do that every now and again. Depending on how badly I want to hide from reality at hand is directly related to how long my sabbaticals last. I’ve been trying to push myself more lately, delve into the things which are currently spinning my head and heart into debris flecked tornadoes traveling in opposite directions… despite my natural ostrich-like instinct to bury my head in the sand.

But that isn’t progress, is it?

So. Since my husband and I have been in counseling, I’ve dug my heels into my marriage and have been full throttle, “We’re Gonna Fix This!” Perhaps it’s just the Virgo in me. Or Oldest Child Syndrome. Or a smattering of this, that, and the other. Who knows, we are who we are. However, it hasn’t been lost on me that this has slowly turned into a one person effort and now I have been left to pick apart and analyze what’s worth fighting for and what isn’t.

It often helps to have a person to bounce such things off of. A living breathing sounding board to offer their own insight and perspective. I have long been a person who will come to my own conclusions on my own time, not swayed by others thoughts and opinions on how I live my life. ( Just picture the “I Do What I Want” meme and you’ve got a clear idea of my personality) However, this doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate the input of others experiences. In fact, lately I’ve been seeking exactly just that – other people’s own struggles which I consider similar to mine, not for advice or definitive answers, but for some unconventional form of catharsis. I recognize and value the worth of their own encounters, their personal stories. I consider it an absract variation of education. Learning through the trials and tribulations of friends, family, and strangers by osmosis.

I met with a friend not too long ago. And this was exactly that kind of situation. Commiseration over food and coffee. (That always helps) During the back and forth, he shared a story from decades past, when his 3 yo child asked him if he’d like to sit and have waffles with her. He politely declined, saying he wasn’t very hungry for waffles. She responded, “It’s not about the waffles, Dad.” Aside from learning his daughter was a tiny Confucious, it also was a lesson in Basic Life Meaning. After sharing that very amusing and profound anecdote, we discussed how that is a general application to any close human relationship. A few more laughs, a bit more coffee, and I left having a touch more perspective than with which I had originally arrived.

We’ve had Therapist Recommended *coughassignedcough* Date Nights. I’ve attempted to include him more in the activities I enjoy. There have been more-than-I-can-count Days and Nights where the politeness and courtesy is suffocating and I would just like an ounce of genuine person to person interaction. And while driving yesterday, when I asked (since he wasn’t working) if he’d like to show up to my pool match this week, I half-hoped there’d be a Yes to quiet the volume rising truth which my Heart has already known. Instead, “No. I’m gonna stay home. Why waste money on a sitter.”

In the back of my head, as my eyes teared up behind (thankfully) shielding sunglasses,  “It’s Not About The Waffles” danced around all the fragmented bits of my rationale. My Heart kicked me in the shins, muttering “I told You so.” I remained silent for the rest of the car ride and felt the familiar vacuity of loneliness. Intermingled in all of that, a memory (one of the very few) of my Dad telling me about a breakup of his while imparting onto me some sageness which I did not fully comprehend until years later.

“I stopped respecting her time. She invited me to a party and I said, No. I didn’t feel like it. She’s a busy person and she didn’t have to include me in her plans. I clearly didn’t think that was important enough for me just to spend some time with her and I realized this wasn’t going to work anymore. When someone stops caring to make Time for You or to appreciate the Time you are making for Them, then do each other a favor and stop wasting each other’s Time.”

Cold. Very. But the truth is seldom warm.

Posted on by She Never Sleeps

Lately

It is May 21 and the weather outside could have me fooled into thinking it is October. I don’t mind it. I’ve always loved the damp and chill, an opportunity for big thick comfy sweaters, many mugs of steaming beverages brimming with warmth and the excuse for not having to travel out into world unless absolutely necessary.

Though, it would still please me if I had to.

The light drizzle dampening denim covered legs, sliding off muddy soled, screaming red red rain boots, misting my hair like tiny beads of early morning dew on wispy blades of grass… I enjoy these small details. I don’t even mind the cold which comes with it. There is a freshness, an awakening, something which just shouts in your face, “HEY! You’re Fucking Alive!” Nothing like the burning, lazy, heat soaked days which leave you sticky and stagnant. A sweaty mess of discomfort. No. Days like these, I cherish.

On days like this, I am reminded of Lancaster. And Bristol. And almost all of the rest of England and of the love at that time which took me there. I am brought back to a period of adventure and curiosity. Of passion for Life and Living. And while that former version of self has long since grown and become something other, there had long been many instances where I missed that part of Me. I had chalked it up to furthering myself into adulthood. Into a new 2.0 representative of who I had become. I was fairly certain that the Woman of the past was no longer in existence.

Yet, not long ago on a colder Saturday night, I found myself free of immediate obligations. No husband. No small children. I was able to just go out and wander a bit, if I wanted to. I, naturally, didn’t feel the urge. I wanted to drown in streaming programming while I knit and kept the company of my cats. Yet, appealing to the logic of when was the next time I’d have this kind of freedom, I headed out.

Deciding to meet up with some friends, I spent a half hour looking for parking in a part of town booming with Trend and Cool. I hated it. I was already rueing my decision to make the trip into the city. After that battle, I found them in the bar, already filling up with people. And I hated that, too. But I was determined to see through the evening, if anything for the novelty of something different. Oh but wait – there’s a band playing and you know the guys and we should go check them out? At this point, I was considering calling it a night, but no. I agreed.

Here’s where my heart had a change. Three of us, walking to the next place, and my two friends stop to talk to a guitar player and his girlfriend with the ukelele, both sitting on the sidewalk, guitar case open for monetary gifts. They have a dog and he looks sleepy, but loved. They offer up a song and my friends say, Sure.

It’s about 40 degrees out, give or take. And this thin, scraggly looking guy starts playing one of the sweetest songs I’ve ever heard. His girlfriend, reminiscent of free love and hippies, joins in with her ukelele and soft fairy-like harmonic voice. My friends begin to dance and I am moved to take some record of this occurence.

And I realized I was smiling. Happy. Relishing this presence of spontaniety and True Beauty. I held up my phone to capture the best I could what was transpiring before my eyes… I didn’t do too well because I, also, was wrapped up in the vibrancy of the moment. I was vaguely aware of cars driving by, everyone walking past rapidly, in a hurry to get to the next bar/club/whathaveyou. For a brief interlude in time, I felt like all 5 of us were in a bubble, some magical window into a mirrored dimension of being able to experience and enjoy the Here and Now with no outside interruption.

Nothing lasts forever. The song ended, my friends gave them some cigarettes and cash, we kept going to the next place – but my heart felt lighter.

Joyous.

Alive.

So.

Lately, this has been on my mind. Of course, days like these… Days which remind me of previous excursions, long past days of foolhardy carefree whimsy, days which bring to mind bits and pieces of  the romantic and idealist I used to be… I am encouraged to once again find the magic and wonder of Living as opposed to simply Existing. I know now that those fanciful qualities I thought I lost to youth have only been shoved aside, forgotten and unused. The older a person becomes, the harder that feat. With age also comes some cynicism. Some convenience. Comfortablilty. All things which would hinder the search and stunt the growth of a curious soul. However, nothing which has been worth having has ever come easy, or so I’ve been told.

*shrugs*

I guess I’ll see.

 

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4/5/18 Maternal Guilt, In Short

Motherhood was never a driving goal of mine. Even as all my high school friends were off being impregnated by future absentee fathers, my only aspiration was to get out of my shitty poverty stricken neighborhood and maybe one day see the world.

Of course, youth + stupidity squashed those hopes fairly quick.

I wasn’t meant for motherhood. I knew it right away, although I couldn’t accept the bald truth of it. This is not to say that I did not love my first son – I have never loved any living human as much as I have my first child. Just looking at him every day broke my heart in different ways in which I had no idea how to handle. The overwhelming pain I felt in thinking that I wasn’t good enough to be the mother to this amazing tiny ball of perfection still lingers, 21 years later. Only in hindsight and more self-introspection that I care to admit, have I realized how much the absence of my own parents  affected my demeanor towards my son.  Of course, anyone on the outside looking in would say I’ve done a great job. How wonderful that he and I have such an amicable relationship.

They do not know that I walked away from him when he was 6 months old. That I thought he’d have a better life without me in it. They do not know that when he was a year old, I willingly handed over physical custody to his father and never legally fought for him because I was too scared that I would lose. The courts would see I wasn’t the right kind of “mom material” and I’d be deprived of any real communication or time spent with him. They do not know how much I drank (so much) while he was gone just to black out my guilt of not being the cookie cutter mold of what a “Good Mother” was supposed to be, that my status of Weekend Mom not only belittled my character in the eyes of others, but in my own as well.

But I loved him, albeit from a safe distance. In solitude, the ache of his absence would send me into fits of uncontrollable weeping. A handful of poems I wrote remain as a reminder of those times, but not one more than that because any attempt to  encapsulate my feelings about my life without his presence in it would spiral me further into a depression in which I was not keen to visit. Throughout the years, I never questioned that I still wasn’t worthy and constant arguments with his father (the “good” parent) didn’t help. The weight of my fears and doubts tempered any desire or attempt for the closeness I longed to have with my son.

However, as each year passed, as he grew into a young man and his childhood days receded as an ebbing tide, I accepted that imperfections and all, I was His Mother. I would like to say it was an overnight transformation in which I woke up and Voila, All Makes Sense and is Well and Good!, but that is not how life or personal growth works. I still wrestle with my guilty days, especially as I am now raising my two youngest in such a different manner. I find while I am spending time with them, running errands, singing songs, sewing up injured teddies – I am also ruing all of which I’ve missed from my first child’s formative years. However, I am also aware that even as just a weekend/summer mom, I tried the best I knew how to build a bond between the both of us. And as long as I am alive, there will always be room for improvement in that relationship.

We joke, we laugh, we text, we message.  We do have a better relationship than most. He has assured me time and again that he harbors no ill will towards me, that he never thought I was a “bad mom”. He has made it clear that I’ve always been Good Enough (and it makes him sad to know I felt any other way), which I still mostly struggle to believe. It is not something in which I’ve completely come to terms with, though little by little it sets in. He has grown into a man whom I am proud to call Son and I hope that one day I am the woman who he is proud to call Mom.