Here We Go

OK, so yesterday didn't work out like I planned. "The best laid plans..." I realized then, as I realize now that I can either go with the flow or buck the system and end having a melt down. Yesterday, I started with the melt down first. Hey, I am only human and have the tendency to do what comes naturally, throw an all out temper tantrum. After I did, I took a long look at myself and realized I am my own worst enemy.
This isn't going to be easy. I am not living by myself. I am not single, living without children or pets or accountability to hearth and home. I am going to have to adapt when necessary. I can't sit around and wait for my life to begin, or acknowledge that my life is here, right now, exactly where it is. My "plans" dealt strictly with me and how I am and how I feel. I forgot to take into account the other people who are in my house and what they may be feeling. I am reactionary to their moods. I set my self up for failure. I recognize this because it is not my first time down this particular road. So it's back to the drawing board.
I used to feel the failure of a moment and blame myself for all that went wrong. Brilliant. Self recrimination is a great way to encourage change! Now, the way I want to approach this as it's no body's fault. I can't blame my family for falling into old habits. I set things up so they are dependent on me, so how can I blame them for being dependent? I can't. What I can do is see where things went awry and tweak the project. This plan of mine has to be flexible or I am going to have to take thee to a nunnery. I am no nun, so flexible it is.
I did accomplish some things. I got my flabby behind on the treadmill for the first time in 8 months. My companion, Bobo didn't have as much success. Bobo is my cha-wienie, who like his owner has packed on a few pounds and has some bad habits. He is in dire need of change, too. I tried to get him to walk with me on the treadmill, but he freaked out and had his melt down much earlier in the day than I did. He also requires a plan B. I will attempt to get him back on the horse, so to speak until he realizes that this is good for him. In the mean time, I am watching his diet like a hawk and will be walking him with the other dogs when the weather is on our side.
I became very aware yesterday that quitting would be so much easier. I don't owe anybody anything, right? Wrong!!!!! I owe me a better state of mind than I have now. I owe myself the chance to be the person I was born to be. I tell my kids they can be exactly the person they were meant to be, but when it comes to myself I see me as being unworthy of having the life I thought I would have when I was still young enough to dream. Why is it that we are so willing to throw away any opportunity for more when we get older? Why is so much easier to stop dreaming after the age of 25? I know life experience teaches us that adversity will stop you in you tracks when you have made plans. It's no small matter being up against the wall. But I also know that the very adversity that causes us to feel paralyzed in one moment, can be the very thing that helps us through another somewhere down the road.
I woke up today. So? Don't be so cynical, sometimes waking up is the best thing that will happen all day. It beats the alternative. I have the chance to try again today to do more, be better and feel happy that I got the chance to even try. My lesson yesterday was that I have been too hard on me about not achieving every goal I have set. Being goal oriented, I set myself to fail , so I then can beat myself up for the rest of the day about how undeserving I am. And that my friends, is just plain stupid. Today isn't about my end point in this. It's about the place where I can have a new beginning every day. This is more about me not giving up on me than it is about whether or not I lose some weight, meditate more or have the time to finish reading a book I have owned for 10 years.
I have my list of the things I need to try and accomplish. Chances are better than not I will not get everything done. I gave myself an attitude adjustment, so in this case if I don't get the gold star for succeeding at everything, I do get the medal of courage for taking the opportunity to try. Did I learn something about myself yesterday? Yes, I learned that just because I want something now, doesn't mean I can have it, but the great thing is I gave myself permission to want it in the first place and for me that is real change. Part of this process is for me to be able to learn new things, so in that case I am a whopping success. But like my dog Bobo, I am reticent to change, even if it is what is best for me.
Today is a new beginning. Instead of spending my time feeling bad about what I cannot change, like yesterday's failures, and be happy that I get the chance to give it another shot. I don't really give a crap how many days it took Rome to get off the ground. This is about me and whether or not it takes a week , a month or ten years, I am finally getting the hang of the idea that I am worth the wait.

Me,Me,Me For the Next 30 Days

Today is the first day of my plan to be different. I have been a mom now for 23 years. I have loved it, but the truth is between husbands and kids, houses and pets and every other sundry thing I have been left out in the cold.
I am the one guilty of not taking care of me. I have ignored myself for far too long and need to up my game. I am going to be a little self involved. For 30 days I am going to work on my spiritual life, physical life, intellectual life and my emotional life. Every day for the next 30 days I am going to do things for me.
My family can take care of themselves for 30 days for Pete's sake.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. If you're a wife and mother you know that is ridiculous! But the truth is they can handle things better than I had originally thought, so I really can take the opportunity to let them do things that have been traditionally my jobs just because...

Today I start walking again. During the renovation I would do all kinds of physical work on the house and fall down exhausted into bed. Manual labor is not exercise. I feel stagnant and I have gained weight. I didn't gain tons, but it makes feel uncomfortable so it's got to go. My bigger issue is just being in shape. I have never been stunning so I am not trying to change my genetics. I just want to feel good and be able to bike ride, snow ski, roller blade etc. These are things I have always done and I don't want to lose the ability. Today I do yoga again. I had gotten out of the habit , so today is the first day to start that habit back up. I will also be using a hula hoop.
I will be meditating for 5 minutes today. I pray every morning, but sometimes I blow right past the meditating part. It gives my mind time to heal, my thoughts time to let go. I plan in the next 30 days to increase this time to 15 minutes by the end.

I plan to read more, play my trumpet and guitar and really start to sing again. I will never be the next American Idol. I don't have to be to love doing it and keep pushing myself to be better at it.

This is about being the best me. It has to be about me because I am the only one who can truly take care of me. I haven't been doing my job. If I were my own child I would be in foster care by now. It's pathetic that I let things get so far out of hand. I have the obligation to myself, my family and mostly my Creator to take care of the mind, body and spirit I have been gifted.

If you are interested in the 30 day challenge let me know. It isn't brain surgery, but it's gonna hurt like it. ;)

So that is my plan. I had originally done a video diary and I couldn't get it to work so I had to write it out. So learning how to work my camera is another thing I have to master in the next 30 days.

Precious and Lovey

I write non-fiction. OK, I write mostly non-fiction. I will admit there are times when I wax poetic or I embellish very little to the stories of my life. The facts are all there, but the descriptions and names change to protect my innocents. My innocents are my family and friends. Oddly enough, not everybody wants to be in my blogs or books. Sometimes the truth in the stories can hurt them and I NEVER want to do that. The truth at all cost is not my thing. It's not that I will lie about the facts of the story, but I will do whatever I can to protect the people I love, so they are never victimized by what I write. Not everybody wants their lives on display for all to see, judge and analyze. It is with the utmost respect for those I love that I guard their privacy and protect their hearts.
I have two girlfriends that have had for over twenty years. They are my best girlfriends. When I was younger, much younger, I really didn't have a best girlfriend. I wanted one, but found myself unable to form that particular attachment. As a small child I had girlfriends, but once I got into high school, I found that I was much more comfortable with boys than girls. I had trust issues with women. The back story to why that is, is still unknown to me. I just didn't have the ability to tell my secrets to any one girl, who I trusted completely with my heart and soul. In college that changed. I found my female soul mates and have been with them through thick and thin. They know all my dirty laundry. They know my heart and my soul. They have born witness to my confessions of all of my transgressions as a woman growing into her own skin. They rallied around me when Danny died. They traveled many miles to be with me when I was pregnant touching my unborn children through my expanding waistline, sending them love through their flesh and mine. In turn I have tried my level best to be there for them when I could. Out of the three of us, I was the only one to have children. My children are their children. Had I passed away when I was 28 during the delivery of my last child, they would have been the female influence on my kids. They would have been the keeper of the story of us and me. I love them as family. I love all of them, for exactly who they are, at any given moment, good or bad. I do this because they offer this to me. I will refer to my female soul mates as Precious and Lovey. That is who they are to me. That is who they will always be to me. They are my heart.
I met Precious first. She was perky, pretty, popular and represented my wilder side. Precious cannot be shocked. Her non judgmental attitude toward people is reflected in her sparkling eyes. She sees no wrong, only what is right with a person, place or thing. She is living hope. Precious has this infectious laugh that draws you in. Men and women want to be as close to Precious as they can possibly get. With open arms, she allows them in, with no forethought of malice or suspicion. Precious ( a name I have given her long before any movie came into the main stream) is as beautiful outside as she is inside. I don't think she ever realized fully her effect on the opposite sex. She, having wide eyes and smiling lips, was merely being her happy self. She is not one dimensional, as she is described here. She has faced her own demons, lived her own darkness, had her own stories of horror and heartbreak. She and I have spent hours on the phone laughing and crying at each others current fates.
Precious, Lovey and I share a love story of sisterhood. Precious and Lovey didn't know each other,except through me, but have over the years grown to guard the others heart when it looked as though it needed it. Lovey went through a time when she was isolated from us. She had hid from me and those who loved her because she thought of herself as unlovable. Precious and I would talk as I would cry because I missed my Lovey so very much.
"Give her time to come out of hiding. You know she loves you, right?" Precious would gently guide me back out of my selfishness. "Yes, but I want her back. I miss her and I need her." I cried as if I were abandoned child. "She will come back. Give her the love and time she deserves to figure this out. Can you do that for her? Would you do that for me?" Of coarse I would do that. I would give them body parts if they needed it. Eventually, Lovey did come out of hiding. I got her back and then some. Precious had held my hand, helping me be strong enough to wait it out. When we got Lovey back, I called Precious and told the joyous news. She and I danced together on the phone as I regaled the long journey of our Lovey and how well she was doing now.
Recently, I have had news from Precious that she is sick. Not just any kind of sick, but cancer sick. She has breast cancer. When she first told me, I froze. I became paralyzed at the notion that she had cancer. My personal experience with cancer is everybody I knew who had it died. I tried to sound upbeat when I spoke to her. I tried to feign optimism but feared she would hear the fatalism in my voice. In my family, cancer=death. Precious had a lumpectomy, went through chemo-therapy and was doing well. She had spent months being tired, weak and unable to fully engage in a conversation. I prayed for my Precious. I spent hours on my knees begging for her life to be spared. I was terrified of getting the same answer I had gotten with Danny, but much to my surprise things were going well. Precious healed and went back to work, socializing and life. The last we spoke on the phone, we declared our everlasting love for each other. Our bond has outlasted both of our first marriages, the raising of the 4 kids, funerals, sickness and weddings.
Precious is once again ill. She is religious about her check ups. The results of this past one were more spots and one in particular was invasive. She will have radical surgery in a few weeks. She sent me an email with vague information and ended it with "everything will be fine". That is her way of getting me not to panic. I will be strong for Precious, because it's the least thing I can do. I will hold vigil for her in my prayers until she is completely healed. I will spend my meditation time seeing her in my mind's eye healthy, happy and dancing. I will squash my pessimism and I will call Lovey and cry. I will sob gut wrenching tears, drenching my phone allowing all my fear, panic and heartbreak to escape in my other safe place, the strong arms of Lovey. Lovey will cradle my heart and remind me that all things have a reason, even the things we don't want, or think we cannot bare. Lovey will console me, guide me and love as she has done every day I have known her.
We are sisters, these women and I. We share something more binding than blood or heritage. We share each others hearts. It is remarkable that I have been so blessed to have not one, but two such close dear friends whom I have shared my entire adult life with. Even Oprah only has Gail. As I write this I begin to feel better. I feel more hopeful than I did when I first heard the news. My fear is sliding further away from me and I feel the internal warmth of my friends arms around my heart. That's the thing about friends, they can be miles and miles apart and we can still feel the love, as if they were right here with us, holding our hands. My only priority is to make sure Precious and Lovey feel the love they have from me.

Celebrate Good Times, C'mon!

I was talking to my daughter yesterday about how she and I are having a life moment together. We are both about to experience a once in a lifetime freedom at the same time. She is just starting out in her life and soon will be able to travel, live anywhere in the world she wants and discover new adventures for herself. I am about watch the graduation my last child and will have the exact same opportunity as my eldest child, to do and be anything I want.
When Danny died I was constantly reminded that the safety of my children hinged on my personal safety. I couldn't sky dive, swim in treacherous water, or do anything dangerous because I was the last remaining parent. I wouldn't want my kids to be orphans, would I? It has sat firmly on my shoulders for all of these years. I had thought, back when I first lost Danny, that when I turned forty seven I would be able to regain some of my freedom. My kids would be raised and I would have the opportunity to travel, see things, do things I had always wanted to do without the voice of doom ringing in my ears. Back then I wondered if we would all would survive the trek to the magical 47th birthday. This year on Mother's day I will turn 47 and a few weeks later Betty will graduate from high school. Michael and I will be letting out a collective sigh of relief.
I am excited at the prospect of being different. I tell my kids all the time if you want to be different, then be different. I was happy to see the janitor from Scrubs repeat the same thing on an episode and validate my hypothesis. Change is hard, I think we all know that, but it's hardly impossible. It will take some work on my part to start this chapter of my life and be a different version of me, hopefully a better version of my existing self. I am totally up for the challenge. I am currently conducting a little psychological and physical experiment for myself. I am allowing myself to morph into something I have never been before. I am allowing myself a little selfishness. I am putting my needs ahead of others for the first time in my life. As a nurse, I was a caretaker of the elderly, the terminally ill, the weakest and most feeble of mankind. I bathed them, fed them and looked after every aspect of their daily life and well being. As a mother, I did the same thing. I never questioned why I should, I only looked at each day as what was necessary for everyone's survival, except mine. My daughter, as the eldest child, has had much the same thought process as a care taker. Most eldest children take on the responsibility of their younger, less experienced siblings. She has taken care of her friends while she has been in college. I am trying to get her to see that we sent off to college to eliminate some of her responsibilities and she needs to be a little selfish now, before she gets married and has kids of her own. I want her to celebrate her independence and her ability to go anywhere she wants, be anything she wants, do anything she wants. She is going to blink and this will all be over and she will have to wait another twenty five years before the opportunity presents itself again. I mean no disrespect to motherhood, or being a wife. I wouldn't trade my life and all of it's chaos for anything, but I see very clearly how important it is to take advantage of any opportunity I have to celebrate just me. Having lived the other side of the coin, I have no regrets, but I do not want to miss out on spending time living exactly as I have always wanted to. I don't want her to miss that either.
While talking to my eldest child, my voice rose in excitement about what all we were going to be able to do. I spoke to her about traveling together to Europe and seeing incredible sights, drinking wine and appreciating great art, and dark haired, mysterious men. I spoke to her about all the things she could do on her own. I told her of my plan to do some things on my own , as well. I squealed and giggled with my child as we enjoyed my sometimes overly enthusiastic plans for our futures.
I am not privileged in any conventional sense. My privilege has always come from the friends I have made, the family I so dearly love and the pets who cuddle my feet. I have had to work long, hard hours for very little money, so creature comforts has not been my privilege. Do I wish the past different? I used to. I used to sigh and wish things had been easier for me. I sometimes regretted my decisions and wished I had been smarter, more open, less naive, and more savvy. Recently, part of my metamorphosis has been about letting go of any regret. Failure produces knowledge. Whether we are smart enough to learn the lessons are quite another thing, but the absolute byproduct of having tried something and failing miserably is knowledge. Surely, by now, I must be a genius.
This is a year to celebrate for me. It really should be a year to celebrate for everybody. If you got up this morning and drew breath, then trust me, you are having a good day. If your limbs still work and your mind can focus, mine starts right after the coffee hits my stomach, then you are having a great day. If you have people in your life that love and care about you, then your life is made!

I Have a Confession to Make...

I have this little confession to make. Easter is my least favorite holiday. I can't really tell you why. Maybe, it's because I am not a fan of pastel colors. Maybe, it's because where I come from this time of year was usually filled with melting black snow and mud. Maybe it's because it represents a time when my savior was treated worse than an animal and hung on a cross. Maybe, just maybe, it's all those reasons.
As a Christian I have a reverence for Easter, but the music isn't as good as Christmas and all the talk of of crucifixion makes me grossly uncomfortable. I find the last part funny, since as a Catholic we wear Jesus on the cross around our necks and have him front, center and very large in that position in the front of the church.
Christmas, for me is joyful and full of hope. Easter, on the other hand, represents man's inhumanity to man. I know we believe He rose from the dead. I know Easter is supposed to represent eternal hope for all mankind. Cognitively, I am aware of what I am supposed to feel, but viscerally, in my gut I feel great sadness of death of any kind, so this is a season that makes me shake my head in awe that Jesus had to suffer the the fate He did at the hands of the very people He was trying to save. And I thought my life is ironic.
Every year on Good Friday, the church bells ring at the exact time of Jesus death. I would sit in church and pray. I would fast, and spend my day thinking of having to give up my life or the life of my son for the greater good. Jesus asked God that if it not be His will that God take the cup from Him and spare His life. The answer He got was a solid "No!" I have gotten that answer myself a few times. I can't imagine carrying the cross that I knew would eventually kill me, but not until I was completely humiliated and tortured. Maybe, that's why Easter is my least favorite holiday.
I will tell you, that out of all the Christian holidays Easter holds the most meaning for me. It is the holiday I learned the greatest lesson of how to be a better human being. I learned by example from Jesus on what to do when things look as though they are hopeless.
I meditate in the morning. I pray and think of all the things I love. It is in this that I find solace, forgiveness and hope. I have several mantras. I learned about mantras from doing yoga. The mantra "Ohm" means God in ancient Sanskrit. Being a modern day Christian, some times I change things up. My most used mantra comes from Easter and the story of Jesus in the garden. It is very simply, "Your will not mine". It is my reminder that I am not here for just me. It is my reminder that I am a mere speck on earth and any time I am allowed should be spent doing good, thinking good, asking for help when I need it, giving help when I can give it and always being grateful that I was here at all.
Bunnies, chicks and pastel eggs really don't do it for me. Baskets full of chocolate don't either, even though I have addiction issues with chocolate. For me, Easter has a more somber tone. God bless those who put a million blow up bunnies in their yard and fill their rooms with pastel decorations and decorated egg shells. My kids used to love this. I wish I had been more open to all that. I provided Easter baskets for my kids, but I never really got in the spirit of all the other stuff. The one tradition we did have was watching The Ten Commandments on TV, hardly as much fun as all the cute bunnies, chicks and ducks.
I was praying this morning remembering that it is Holy Saturday. My mantra became "Your will not mine". My church is in the news again for child molestation. It is another horrific blow to the Catholic church. It is criminal. I think if the priests had less arrogance they would have prayed my mantra. Too much power on any level never seems to be a good idea. Power seemingly corrupts. I say that not with 100% certainty, since I have never wielded it, but it certainly paints that particular picture. I pray for the people of the Catholic church. The people are the church, not the institution in Vatican City. My heart goes out to the victims that have carried this burden far too long. My heart also goes out to the priests who have never done anything wrong and have spent their lives trying to good for others. Maybe now something will be done to protect our children in the Catholic church. Maybe now every head shall bow and knee shall bend in humility that we are only here to work, to help, to pray, to be kind to each other, and to honor the sacrifice that was made so many years ago.
Tomorrow there will be ham, deviled eggs, and lots and lots of chocolate. Tomorrow we will argue about what mass has the least amount of traffic and whether anybody wants to go at all. Tomorrow we will celebrate bunnies, chicks, ducks and pastel eggs.
But for today, I will celebrate sacrifice. I will celebrate giving of oneself to others in any way they can. Today I will try very hard to smile at each and every person I meet, remembering that one smile may very well be the only one they get today. Today I celebrate the privilege of being alive.

I Pray

Every morning I get up, make the coffee and sit at my kitchen table and pray. The first thing I ask is for forgiveness. My prayers are simple. Mostly I just ask for the strength to be a better wife, mother and human being. Mostly, I ask to be forgiven. Like a mantra, I say, "Lord, please forgive me, please forgive me, please, forgive me. For the rest of the day, I try very hard to forgive myself.
I sat down this morning and began my ritual and I realized that Sunday is Easter. "Holy sh*t!" I said in my head. I had not realized that another holiday, or Holy day had sneaked up on me. I have not been to the store. There are no signs of Easter having been drug down from the attic. There are no signs of anything but the remainder of our eight month renovation. As the idea of allowing another holiday to come and go with a half-assed effort on my part, I felt the guilt and shame of not being prepared for the family hit me square on my head. I laid my head down on the kitchen table and cried. The pressure of all that has happened to me and my family took all the room in my heart and left me feeling completely sad. I cried because I am re-doing a house I will not get to live in. I cried because I am positively exhausted. I cried for all the things that have happened to my kids in the last six months, that in order to protect their privacy, I will not write. I cried for all the weak, fearful moments when I am sure nothing will work out and I will have forced my family to live in a cardboard box, all because I wanted to try and live a dream that may not be "realistic" anymore. I cried until I had not one more drop of water in me.
I believe in signs from my God. I hear the cynics, who think I am naive and insipid for thinking that a greater being is listening to anything I say. But my faith is always bigger than my skepticism. I have seen miracles that came from dust. I have witnessed the grace on a persons face at the end of their life, when they have felt the hand of God lead them home. I believe, because I have seen things that science and logic could not produce. I believe because even when things are going horribly wrong, I am always given a single moment of grace that shows me my faith in God, although not an easy road, is a rich and fulfilling one that will lead me to being a better human in this world I live in.
There have been no Easter miracles this season for me. No magic eggs cooked and dyed themselves. The freezer didn't magically produce a ham for dinner. The calendar didn't jump off the wall and smack me in the face to remind me that, ready or not, Easter is two days away. My miracles have never come that way. The things that remind me that the world is not about me or my selfish want to be perfect, are of nature, beauty and heart.
Houston suffered from a harsh winter this year. Now, before you Northerners start to snicker at us and our unusually cold temperatures, please, be kind and remember we are not set up for any of this. Hot we do with ease, but cold and snow throws us into a complete tizzy. Our houses are set up for the dog days of summer. We have temperatures that would make you weep like a child. We all lost thousands of dollars in landscaping. Pipes burst, roads were damaged, but the plants suffered most of all. Most of us have zone 9 tropical plants. My hibiscus bushes are brown and brittle. My palms got singed and then there was the greatest loss of all for me.
I had gotten a coveted tree from Argentina from a dear friend of ours. It was an Argentinian silk floss tree. It's nickname is the drunk tree because it's branches stick straight out and go every which way. I got the tree because it was tropical and could with stand our Houston summers of 106 heat index with 90% humidity. I had been homesick for fall and fall colors. I wanted something in my yard to change with the seasons. My Argentinian tree was to bloom in the fall with big beautiful pink blossoms. It was young standing only at six feet tall, but it was statuesque and I could hardly wait for it to grow. The tree's entire trunk was an olive green with large spiky thorns that covered the base. I loved that tree. It was one more thing that my Michael had gotten for me to make me happy. And it did.
My tree died this winter. They are rare and I am not sure I will get the opportunity to own another one in my lifetime. We had planned to take it with us to the next house. I have not dug up the corpse of my dead tree yet. I was still hoping that something, anything would save my beloved tree. There are no signs of life and on the last day before we sign the contract I will dig up my deceased tree and let it go. In the mean time, I have watched most of our landscape struggle to survive. What we had spent years cultivating and tending is mostly shriveled and dead. It would take approximately two thousand dollars to recoup what we lost. We have neither the time nor the money to fix what has been broken.
One morning this past week I had gone outside in the morning to check on another young tree, our tangelo tree and see how it is doing. Much to my surprise it, standing only three feet tall, it was covered in blooms. It has three times as many blooms this year as last. I was shocked it was thriving. I walked to the front and viewed our flower beds that used to be lush, full, green beds with flowering bushes and vines. It is full of brown twigs and dead leaves. I brushed away the leaves and saw the wisteria vine on my trellis had tiny buds on it's twisted trunk and then I looked up. Above my head were beautiful lavender and purple blooms, tons of them coming out of the loquat tree, over the trellis and near the ground by the trunk. I was gobsmacked at the amount of blooms it produced this year. The smell is simple divine. I stood under the trellis for ten minutes just taking it all in. I felt giddy, even a little drunk, on the perfume from my surviving vine. That is the moment I felt my sign. Not everybody gets to survive the winters of life. Not every person, plant and animal has the strength to continue after they have been frozen out, but I do. I have survived lots of winters and ended up blooming twice as much as before. I have grown so much because of my personal winters and would not be the person I am today without them. Adversity builds character, strength and compassion. So even though I forgot it was Easter, I believe the miracle is that I get the chance to keep growing, keep reaching and keep praying that tomorrow I will have the chance to be better.

My Girl

Everything I seem to know about kids/children I learned from my children. Oh, I so love irony! They have been the ones to reel me in when my head and heart aren't making the connections they should. I raised them to be outspoken and opinionated. I was in fact, a success if that were my only parenting goal. I have been saying the same speeches for years. They interrupt me as I am about to lecture on whatever subject we are in the middle of and say word for word verbatim all the things they have heard me say in the past. It's unnerving, but it makes me laugh. They know me better than any other person on earth. Even Michael doesn't see me like they do. In some respects, my kids and I are war buddies. We were together during the very thin times when life ceased as we knew it. I think about all the things I was unable to provide and the guilt overwhelms me. It is in these seemingly insignificant moments that they stop me in my tracks and tell me to let it go. They tell me I have been a good mother and they never felt unloved. That is something isn't it? But as their mother I still suffer from the guilt that has existed since the dawn of time.
Right now, I have all my kids at home, minus one. My minus one has been gone now for about four years and isn't going to be coming home, at least for the next year or maybe ever again. She is my oldest. She has been my experimental child. I made all the big mistakes on her first. Not having a manual at my bedside to refer to as each new stage occurred, I was dependent on apologizing and her endless forgiveness. She has been very generous with me over the years.
I have a unique relationship with all my kids. It didn't take much work, all I had to do was let them be themselves. As individuals, I sat back and watched them form into very different people, who happened to have the same parents. You can see the likeness on their faces, but that is where it begins and ends. No two have the same political views. No two agree on everything together like some goofy double mint commercial. Each is very different from the next, except when it comes to their loyalty to each other. They are fierce when it comes to protecting each other from any outsider who dares to cross the line. I never worry about what will happen to them once I am gone. They collectively, are my voice and will take care of each other.
Christy, my oldest, has the loudest voice, the largest heart, the brain that remembers every fact she has ever read, meanest temper in the moment and the innate ability to get every body's attention. You know she is really angry, I mean totally pissed off when she sits back, folds her arms and says absolutely nothing. Inevitably we have all fallen victim to what comes next. As the person she is dealing with you think, quite mistakenly that she is giving you an opportunity to say what you want uninterrupted. MISTAKE!!!!!! What she is doing is slowly but very assuredly erasing you from her personal blackboard. When my beautiful girl gives you "the look", and trust me you will know when you get it, it means she is officially done and you will spend the next several weeks groveling your way back into her life. She wields her power with grace much of the time. She is not quick to anger, she waits to see if there is hope for the situation before she begins to tally the good and bad and execute her next move. She sounds so calculated, huh? Because she is. She gets that from her father. She is definitely her father's child. His DNA is all over beautiful face and her calm demeanor. Make no mistake she is one of the kindest, most forgiving people I know. That is IF one is smart enough to apologize. If someone makes the mistake in thinking she will forget or just get over it, they could not be more wrong. What I like about this attribute the most, even though I have suffered because of it, she is just. If she gets to the point where she is that angry, it is always because some grave injustice has occurred and she is unwilling to tolerate it.
She calls me out. She has the guts of a pro football player and looks like Scarlet Johanssen. It is unsettling at first meeting when someone mistakenly thinks her femininity is a replacement for raw moxy. I have watched her turn young men inside out before my very eyes. It isn't pretty, but they never forget that moment and learn instantly never to do that again. I, personally, think there are many high school and college boys who owe her a debt a gratitude. Had she not let them know in no uncertain terms that she and no woman was ever to be disrespected, they may have gone on to make that same mistake a hundred times. She belongs to a fraternity. That's right, I said fraternity, not sorority. Few women are ever asked to join, but she was and has been a brilliant "brother" ever since. We have a tape of her wrestling someone on a slip and slide in 45 degree weather while someone used a hose to spray them with. She beat a boy. She is tough, smart and as girlie as they come. She also has the strength of ten men when she needs it, thanks in part to her brothers, who tried to torture her as a child. As her family we are very aware that that girl has balls. Her brothers are the first to warn strangers.
I miss her so much. She is busy getting a dual degree in her senior year of college. She works, participates in her frat and is writing her senior thesis. She is getting ready to travel, around this country and abroad. She takes care of her own baby, a rabbit named Tuvia, who was taken from the wild to a pet store and she rescued and is now trained. Tuvia is so smart. She can ring a bell when she wants out of her cage. She is potty trained, leash trained and knows how to open cupboards to get any snacks that seem appealing. I watch Christy with her baby, our family Easter bunny. That bunny knows she is Mama. The bunny is loyal and guards her when she is sleeping. I walked upstairs and checked on my girl one morning when she was home and Tuvia was stretch out on the bed next to her guarding the door. Tuvia will charge at you if you go near the mama. It made me laugh so hard to see a bunny as a "guard dog" that I woke Christy up.
This Easter I will not get to see Christy because she will be busy working at her job, making money. Our own Easter bunny, Tuvia, will be with her at the apartment guarding the door, waiting for her to come home. Her empty seat at the dinner table will be sad for me, but I will try and not show it. I will try and get over myself, as she likes to say, and make it a nice Easter for the family. Christy would like nothing better than to come home for the holidays, but for her it a time when she can make the most money, so she stays for the greater good. It is just one more thing she has taught me over the years, to be patient.
For her I have nothing but time.