Holding on Tight in 2013

It's a new year.  And like every year, I think about what I should have done in the year past and what I am going to do better or more often on this 2013 palette.  This year it is all laid before me without even a thought.  I of course am going to fight off the holidays pounds by meeting back up with my exercise self tomorrow morning.  I will sadly look at the mess I've made the past weeks and hope that some slight change happens quickly enough to reward my early efforts and keep the enthusiasm going.  But beyond the hope of getting into my jeans without the tugging and subsequent squattings, my life is about to make some very big changes and having said yes to it all, I am simply holding on tight.  This year I will change my address, my job and likely career, my home town, my children's schools, my cat's home, my tax status, my name...my life.

It is the most wonderful thing.  My family of four is joining a family of three..add two cats.  The hardest parts are behind us; sharing the news with all who might see challenges before beauty.  The shared home is under construction to create a place we can all call home.  We look at his furniture and at mine and figure out where things will fit.  We have even figured out how to top the Christmas tree with both adornments.  The children have found their way around one another and it feels as though everyone can see that it will all be ok..and it will even be better than ok.  It will be a place of laughter and mess ups and pick ups.  But I think, what I hope, everyone will see is that having more people to love and to be loved, supported, and celebrated by can only make our worlds majorly brighter.

So, if someone mentions my leaving, or asks who will take over my job, or talks of my selling my beautiful old home, they will for sure see me well up.  I have grown up here...not from childhood, but in my adulthood.  I have become the woman someone else is willing to change it all for too.

Hold on tight..here comes 2013!!

12 days a week

In my world there are twelve days in a week.  Twelve days of soccer and bag lunches.  Tweleve days of rushing to the bus with partially combed hair and a bagel in hand.  There are twelve days of tuck into beds with the I love you Forever song and twelve sleepy wake ups...well make that 10. 

As a single mom sporting the classic "every other weekend" deal, it seems that 12 days make up a week.  For 12 days in a row I have complete responsility for the 3 beings I brought into the world.  It is a mighty task as any parent knows, single or otherwise.  Most of the time it means simply getting the job done with little time to analyze or be retrospective.  But there are times when the enormity of the job over takes me.  This can come in two forms.  The first and most pleasant is a feeling of success, a "Wow, I have three really great kids and I have a nice home and a worthy job and mostly we are happy and playful and enjoying life!"  The other, not so pleasant epiphany is the, " OH!  I am responsible for these three kids and a house and a job filled with lots of other peoples kids and did I hug my kids enough, do they know I love them, did I handle that well, and am I working hard and effectively, how will I get the siding done on the house, and I would love to put dormers in because these kids are not getting smaller, and how can I afford that, and how am I suppose to get this one to soccer, and when is that doctor's appt., and ..and ..and...AHHHHH!"

I can usually talk myself out of option two or call up one of my lifelines to do that for me.  But it is a tough area of the playground to hang in.  It is easy to see how enormous a job parenting really is when you disect all the pieces of it and consider that you will not even know the results for many, many years.  And there are no redo's.  In 20 years, those kids are who they are and my mark, good or bad has been left.  So when the two X days come at the end of my 12 day week, I breathe out.  I have two days to regroup, revise my strategy, and decide which smile to wear.  It has to match anything and be able to handle any kids of weather, so the choice is critical.  I generally choose the largest one, figuring that if it shrinks a bit, I can still squeeze into it for at least 12 more days...

Wear Sunglasses in the Rain

When you live where the seasons change, you tend to get desperate for just that.  The season to change.  The first snow of winter is a thrill and the last is met with eye rolls and "Ugh". (And often some #%(*#$  kind of language that I will spare you).  So, we are all waiting for spring.  I guess nature takes over regardless because the grass is green, the trees have leaves, and my hummingbird is hovering at my window reminding me that I now have another little one to feed regularly.  Although this one I get to spoil with lots of sugar!

So what doesn't feel like spring around here is the temperature.  Oh make no mistake, I am settled into my flip flops for good.  But at the same time I am wearing my winter ski jacket to lacrosse and softball games, just to balance things out. It seems likes weeks since we have seen the sun.  OK in reality it was gracing us last Friday.  But that was it!  One tiny day and then back to rain and just about rain and thinking about raining and dreary cold enough to flurry kind of weather.  I have been thinking of lighting a fire each night,  but seem to have lost my pioneer woman edge so late in the season.  I just can't get up the fortitude to go and get the wood.  So I snuggle beneath a blanket or maybe my Wonder Woman Snuggie (oh yeah I have one!) and wish the cold would go away.  The forecast isn't with me on this.

What can you do? It is beyond my control and yet the weather can have some control of me.  Whose with me?  Who out there has to fight the blues when the sun doesn't shine?  And I am OK riding that train for a day or two....grumbling to people and with people about the weather making me feel sleepy and down.  But at some point I do have to motivate!  And so in a complete defiance of nature... I wear my sunglasses perched upon my head even when weather.com firmly assures me that there is absolutely without a doubt no need.  I retain doubt.  Perhaps its the smallest of things, but it gives me hope... it invites possibility.  Without my sunglasses, which in reality are a part of my actual hair do, I am agreeing that today the sun won't come.  I am following as a drone and allowing myself another day displaying  mediocre personality and less then stellar energy into all that I do. 

In the words of Judith Richards, my amazing cooperating teacher and college instructor, "If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem" (An African Proverb).  And so I choose to be part of the solution in my most basic of ways. When that sun does shine through, I will tilt my head to the light with the brightest of smiles and soak it in, ready and having believed it would come.  Weather it is sunglasses, flip flops, or a colorful parasol join me and do what you do to make the sun shine your way. Invite possibility.  In fact...why settle for just a little weather change?  Invite possibility!   Let's just see what it can do...

Would the Real Betty Please STOP!

My older two children shuffled about the kitchen getting their breakfast as I cut cantelope and packed lunches and snacks, thoughtfully balancing healthy food, enough food, and today a brownie for a treat.  Ok...I will fess up on the brownies because it is actually self serving that I am being such a Betty Crocker Mom. 

I baked brownies for my son's lacrosse team to have after their first game on Sunday.  (Yes, I am trying to get the other kids to hack at his ankles less..shhhh!)  So we, in our cute family cooking way, made a double batch of the family size box. (NO!  I do not ever make brownies from scratch.  And for some of you, no...box-o-brownies is not scratch) Anywho..the game was cancelled!!  I was left with all those brownies!!  I realize this is not the biggest problem one could have.   However, consider the timing.  The sun is out...eventually it will be warm...flip-flops have made their debut.  Do you see where this is leading???  Eventually I will need to be wearing the dreaded, and yet so desired bathingsuit!!!!

So brownies...bathingsuit.  You with me?  Unless you have the self control I completely lack, you now see the problem I am facing and my attempt to combat it.  In addition to the issue of my probable walk-by-brownie-munching, my children (due to responsible parenting on my part) do not do this.  They are reasonable eaters...well 2 out of 3 are.  It would take them a month to eat all the brownines I could scarf down in an evening leaving me with chocolate in my teeth, regret in my head, and a change in bathing suit style.  "Do you carry those fanny hugger kind that take ten pounds off?"

So yesterday was bring a brownie to your teachers day, today was bring a brownie to a friend day...  Keep in mind that the freshness level is wearing off, which means nothing to me in my time of need, but certainly changes who we can pawn them off on.  Suggestions? 

Saturday is now the new first game.  I will naturally be baking brownies again!  If it does however rain, would you all support my cause and graba  brownie as you drive by!!!

Hiding Behind...

Anyone using social networking knows it can be an amazing way to reconnect with people from our past.  I sat at my computer one day, perhaps on a Freedom 45 weekend and her name popped into my head.  "I wonder where Anouk is these days?"  And there she was.  My primary suite friend from the years in Haiti.  The moment we reconnected it was electric.  We laughed and talked and planned how to see one another.  We are only 3 1/2 hours apart!  Her children are the same ages as my older two.  Ahhh another FB wonder.

And that is when she began to tell the story.  It is the kind of story that we all should have about compassion and camaraderie.  She told the tale of being afraid to begin kindergarten all those years ago.  Anouk was so timid she hid behind the piano! (Hardly the woman I now know and love).  She would not come out for the teacher.  She would not come out to play, and she certainly wasn't coming out for a lousy song.  The story continues with a child so compassionate and caring that she too hides behind the piano.  She stays there the whole time until Anouk is ready to come out. And they are forever linked.  She has told this story over and over again throughout the years.  Even her children know of the girl who joined her behind the piano.  Her name was Carolee. 

My mouth drops.  She cannot wait for her kids to meet me.  She cannot wait to tell her family that she has found the long lost friend who gave her the courage she needed to come out from behind the piano.  My heart races.  I mean Anouk and I really click. This is an amazing discovery and I feel that this friendship is busting with greatness.  I see our kids calling each other cousins (as true little Haitians would) and the trips to visit and her intelligence and spirit lifting me up!  And yet in this moment I am terrified, in a most childish way, to lose her...I truly believe that if she knows then she will not want me.

And so I say nothing.  The story will fade and we will just be the greatest of far away friends, I tell myself.  But it doesn't.  It comes up each time we speak.  I arrive at her home for the first time ever.  I am without my children.  The drive was filled with anticipation as I navigated one street at a time towards Anouk.  I arrived and ran to the door.  She opened it and out popped the words; "Wow! You are so tiny."  I never occurred to me that she could be shorter even then my sister.  We hugged forever and it was like no time had passed.  The children came running to meet their new aunt!  The one who had crawled behind- you guessed it- the piano with their Mom.  Their faces lit up. I shriveled up.

The lie was eating at me and I hadn't even told it!  Of course I hadn't untold it either...  How could I risk giving up this greatness?  Perhaps the magic of the friendship would be lost when I told her I wasn't in Haiti for kindergarten.  I joined the class in second grade.  The piano girl was not me.  I mean I would have been the piano girl if I were there!  I definitely would have been the one to notice her need..wouldn't I have?

The weekend is all I could want.  We laugh, we play, we dance!  Oh how I loved the dancing.  We danced until 6 am when my feet completely rebelled against the spiky heels they had so dutifully allowed me to pummel them in.  And then we fell asleep on the couches giggling and  eating spinach pizza.  To any one reading this, I would guess it would seem obvious that my not being that kindergartner is a foolish fear.  But still I worried.

It took all of my courage, as my heart raced to stumble and trip over the words, "I did not go to school in Haiti for kindergarten".  Anouk's face flashed surprised and then she in all of her beauty, burst out laughing.  "Then who was she???"  Relief...and the awareness of my foolishness set in.

I'm sure I don't have to sum up the chemistry of a real friendship and all that blah blah.  So I won't.  Just enjoy a good story and a chuckle at my foolishness.   And don't be afraid to share your own friendship stories.  ;)

Desperately Seeking My Groove

I am recovering from my daughters' illness.  I will spare you the details, suffice to say it was the messy, not pretty kind of sickness.  One daughter was sick for a week leaving me to scramble with how not to be at work and yet how to be at meetings and complete paperwork that needed doing.  Friends and sitters allowed me to steal a few hours and here and there.  Of course technology helped.  But all in all the public relations part of my job suffered and the people I work with had to take on more to make up for my absence.

And in the course of it all, I feel as though I have lost my rhythm.  Especially here.  I have begun to write at least five pieces and have published none of them.  I am generally the type of writer who simply has the words pour out.  If they don't, the piece doesn't usually happen.  I did come up with one very fun idea that will hopefully engage you all. I have the amazing luck having of two brilliant women on my side with ideas..so look for the unveiling of that in the next week or so!  In the mean time.  Thank you for your patience while I locate my groove...and PLEASE let me know if you have seen it!!!

We are following each other...

My family often tells of how as a child I would stroll along the beach or anywhere else, and collect friends.  They say I would have a line of followers playing whatever game I had created.  It seems I was not the bossy leader, but just looking for people to have fun with, and to make some friends along the way.  Some of these friends lasted only the day and some are people who still brighten my days.

This blogging thing isn't so far from the beach of my childhood.  I am bouncing along looking for some people to share a story with, make some friends, and I am looking for them to "follow" me along this journey.  Some of these blogging "friends" are ones I have know for so long, and some...well ok.  At this point, I know you all pretty well.  In weeks to come I hope to bring in some new friends to our beach party. Though I don't so much want to be followed as to walk beside and talk to some great people who know just what it feels like to have to brush the sand off of yourself after taking a digger.  So thank you for "following" and hey invite anyone you want to join us!