Thursday, May 23, 2013

happy family

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Leo Tolstoy

Happiness is hunted and pursued, sought diligently, maybe even recklessly. It has become a commodity, packaged and marketed to those desperate for fulfillment and contentment and peace.  The more happiness is pursued, however, the more fleeting it seems to become.  A hunt is not equivalent to a journey.  A hunt looks for blood, but a journey is a quest for discovery.  As people search for happiness as if it were an acquisition, it begs the question:
Is it possible to "acquire" happiness?

I believe the general consensus is: no.  We can not purchase happiness or manipulate happiness or contrive happiness.  It just is.  Not accidentally nor arbitrarily....especially in family.

I'm always on the prowl for families that work.  Every family has
ups and downs, but some families avoid unnecessary drama, some families continue to find ways to grow together and stay together.  I know I have little to teach and much to learn.  I have always longed to be a student of others success.  When I come to know a family that works, I plague them questions.  I want to know how they "tick."  I want to know if it's just for show, or pulses deep within their family dynamic.

This is what I have come to determine:
Successful families have one consistent quality: respect.  Regardless of circumstance or age or culture or economic status, they respect one another.

Respect, as defined in the dictionary is:  "esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability."

I suppose there could be little other goal of a family than to recognize and value the excellence of one another, and to bask in that recognition in return.

Respect, then, weaves a tapestry with threads of love and positive communication and validation.  Respect becomes a platform for all to excel, and when all excel, meeting or even exceeding potential...that is success.

To compare or contrast ourselves with others can lead to reflection, and reflection is good because we must challenge ourselves, our comfort zone, our pride or our crutches.  Acknowledging the success of others creates an honesty, when excuses fail to perpetuate vicious cycles that could continue to eat our own families alive.

Parenting is ever evolving and I think that is what makes it so exhausting...nothing is ever "figured out."  And, the point isn't that I want to become another family.  The point is:  if I can celebrate success, and give pause to the genius of others....if I can be willing to admit that anyone of pure motive can be my teacher...if I am humble enough to see beyond ourselves...
we could, in effect, stand on the shoulders of giants and find our way a little closer to the stars.

Monday, May 13, 2013

spring rain

The Spring rain falls
like tears
that cleanse the cluttered soul.


I crack.  I cry.  I spill my guts to my husband.  I go to bed.

And, when I stir in the morning, still thick and groggy, I drop my feet to the floor and begin padding my way forward toward the day, before thoughts can crowd my mind...before reluctance can slow  progression toward the kitchen, toward the cat food, toward the washing machine as water begins to cascade into the basin.

Sometimes it all seems like too much.
And...what is "it all"?
"It" is anything.
And, "all" is a lot of it.

Too many demands and expectations.  Too many voices telling me what to be and how to look and what to cook and how to re-purpose an old dresser from the neighbor's curb. My "own skin" feels too boring, too ordinary.  Too many children needing personal, academic, artistic, therapeutic, medical, and disciplinary attention.  I sense the unraveling...  A thread of emotional distress tied to the female pendulum of emotion, hormones and fatigue colliding into one another, until something silly and inconsequential becomes the proverbial "straw" that breaks the momma's mind....oh, wait...I meant "back." 

Sometimes it's never enough.
"It" would be any natural or material resource.
And, "enough" would be a black hole of deficit.
Never enough time, energy, creativity, patience...money....



I cherish order.  OCD is in my DNA, and I face an uphill, no...up-mountain battle for order every day.  My world is not sterile.  It is a moving, sticky, sizzling, bubbling, muddy, snotty, bloody, oozing, groaning, moaning, laughing, squealing, crying, barking, meowing, engines revving, feet stomping, bicycles flying, roller skates spinning, cars crashing, milk-spilling kind of world.  I feel like I'm holding back a tide of chaos while simultaneously attempting to facilitate an enjoyable, pleasant arena for relaxation, discovery and, even, adventure. 


Talk about juggling:
To paint without getting it in someone's hair....
To encourage learning and achievement without engaging in a battle over school work.
To play board games without tears of losing dampening the joy.
To take the family out for a meal, for a day at the beach, for a weekend at your sister's home without taking out a second mortgage....

My biggest complaint with social media, at this point, is the perceived concept of a community of friends and family in perpetual nirvana.  It begins to feel like my family is the only one that is bored and ordinary, or my children are the only ones that whine and argue, or our home is the only one that wouldn't be featured, bright and glossy, in House & Home. 

And, so it goes...
too much and never enough.

"Never be afraid to fall apart because it is an opportunity to rebuild yourself the way you wish you had been all along."  -Rae Smith

There are so many encounters, challenges, deliberations in life that seem to slowly erase the person I know I am deep within.  She is free and light and clear and driven.  She was present in my younger days, to the point of being my very identity.  But, as my identity has become more Schizophrenic as a wife and mother, I have occasionally lost the reference point to the me of which I'm most proud.  The part that isn't riddled with doubt or insecurity or fear.

When I want to tear away all obstacles that seem to stand in the way of seeing myself, knowing myself, I suddenly realize that they are the very things that identify me more than anything could.  My responsibilities will speak to my commitment.
My husband will speak to my friendship.
My home will speak to my gratitude.
My income will speak to my ingenuity.
My friends will speak to my individuality.
My pets will speak to my tolerance.
My bank account will speak to my priorities.
My work will speak to my pride.
My children will speak to my sacrifice.


Take stock of who you are and what you have, and smile.

When the tears have shed their weight, and all is new, I find refreshment in a life that is all my own.
 

The Spring rains fall,
like us all,
and puddle...
to reveal a depth and reflection to ponder.




Monday, May 6, 2013

wave length

"Mom, my worm died!" my three-year-old cried, as I jammed his freshly laundered and balled socks into the dresser drawer.

"yeah, yeah....I'm sorry, honey..."

I had no idea what he was talking about, but you get used to that with kids.


"Kennedy said she's going to bring me fifty dollars tomorrow."
       "Oh, really?! Well, that's great..."
"Sydney says I can't be a diver because the sharks will eat me."
       "Sydney!  Just let him dive already!"
"Mom, I need to cut out your feet for school!"
        "Uhh....okay...."  (What does that mean?!)

Children will collapse in emotional distress over the most insignificant things, at least, insignificant to those of us paying bills.  And, when they come to me for refuge or resolution, I admit, I tend to be pretty lame with the whole sympathy spectrum, especially for the obscure topics of seemingly little relevance.  Kids surprise you with relevance, however... 

Slowly, I came around... The mulch bed in the corner of the drawer came into focus as I followed his eyes toward the eventual worm death-bed.  Now, two weeks later, I am embarrassed to admit that the habitat is still in place amidst his socks and pj's, and the worm has never been discovered, probably because it has never been sought.  Poor worm...and, I flashback to a scene, the day before, as I dug into the soft ground with great eagerness to landscape, handing worms to my son as we discovered them in moist lumps of crumbling earth.

Same son was playing in the large utility sink in the laundry room, and came in search of help with what should have been crocodile clean-up: irrelevant.  But, no...the sink had been plugged and water was cascading over the edge, flooding the laundry room quite well: relevant.

On another note, sometimes it's not the bewilderment as to what they are talking about that reaps disaster, as it's the losing track of what they are into.  Moms turn their backs.  There!  I have revealed the deep, dark secret to which every social worker is well aware.  We're not even talking about the cooking-home-made-meth kind of neglect.  I'm talking about cleaning-oatmeal-out-of-the-stove-grates, or camping-in-the-bathroom-while-you-potty-train-a-3-year-old, or nursing-your-newborn-while-trying-to-keep-crumbs-from-falling-on-her-face-because-it's-the-only-chance-you-have-to-eat kind of negligence.  These are the moments that afford opportunities for those with fast feet and uninhibited curiosity.

Once the silence is so loud and the pit in your stomach so deep, you must address the foreboding truth and find the children that have disappeared, only to uncover the science experiments or survivalist training or alternate uses for everyday household products.  Tonight, we had to confiscate switch blades from our older children, hopped up on "Man vs. Wild."  They had constructed a crude lean-to and carved spears to combat the small birds and bunnies that frequent our backyard terrain.

Children are definitely on a different wave-length from us, but that's what makes them so surprisingly charming and, frankly, intriguing to observe, as they slowly come to terms with truths in life like physics and water damage and tensile strength and irony and the definition of the endless objects and ideas flowing freely in and out of their minds and imaginations.