I have been trying to find myself for as long as I can remember…while this might sound to your ear, self-absorbed and esoteric, it is the truth.  I suspect that when one is a daughter, then a wife, then a mother, then a divorcee, all before her 20th birthday, it can make a girl/woman a bit “confused” about who, she herself, is…right around the time most young women start to become who they are going to be, I became the carer for another human being and everything I wished to be, or experience, or create, became secondary to my obligation and responsibilities to this somebody else, namely the big fat healthy perfect baby who is now a thin gorgeous woman who is my next door neighbor. 

When my fellow twenty-somethings were jumping in the shower at 8:00 to get ready for a night out, I was reading Where The Wild Things Are for the umpteenth time (full disclosure; I now know it like a beloved poem and can recite, word for word, the whole book, without looking at the pages) and getting ready to shower and go to bed. When they were planning vacations and researching travel details with girlfriends to get the most fun or adventure for the least money, I was researching what day-care or babysitter offered the most hours for the least dollars, and planning my college schedule and work schedule with my family so that somebody was always available to care for this little girl.  When they were having exciting experiences that shaped them into the women they were becoming, I was focused on shaping the mind of a little girl,   when, it turns out, I was not much more than a girl myself. 

It is the truth, my truth, that NOW, eight or so weeks before my 50th birthday, I am not really needed by anybody anymore for anything.  It appears that all those years I thought I was missing out on so much, I was just living a different reality than girls, women, my age, and we all still became who we were to be.  Some of those women are now having to plan for after school programs and summer day camps, or trying to work ballet classes and traveling soccer camp into their household budgets,  or sorting the details of what SAT class is most affordable, and how to find the best college scholarships, but I am done.  My job of mothering is over and  I am no longer “needed,” and my long search for travel and adventure and my quest to find the meaning of my life, can begin…It seems that I might have simply been a late bloomer.

It’s a little bit funny, I don’t even know what I am looking for, or if  I’m “looking” for anything anymore!!!  A long search for what?  my brain asks itself…I have love, I have my house, I have my job, I have my family, I have friends…Whew!  I have so much more than I ever thought I could deserve, and that  baby grew into a woman I am glad to call both my neighbor and my friend…frankly, as I near this birthday of the  “big 5-0” I actually feel more complete and fulfilled than I have ever felt in my entire life.  My adventures are just coming with some gray hairs and hot flashes, instead of highlights and hook-ups.   Maybe I’ll even make mischief of one kind, and another…and the walls will become the world all around…All those years I felt like I was missing out, I come to discover that it just wasn’t my time then, yet, for adventure…“let the wild rumpus start!”

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.”
“I don’t much care where –”
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
* Alice in Wonderland* by Lewis Carroll

“Having your hands full is a ludicrous blessing.”  I read this sentence on Instagram recently, written by a woman whose books I have not yet read, and whose blog I have not yet followed, but when I read that sentence all I could think of was, ‘why could I have not written that?!’  It was like the most brilliant string of words I have read in a long while and I wanted to cry out, “yes, yes yes!”  I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what is on my plate, the figurative not the literal, and assessing my life, where I am now, where I once was, where I thought I “ought to be” by now, versus where I actually am…I do that, perhaps too often, but examining your place in the world is not a bad idea now and then.  It’s the dwelling on “where you are not” rather than the embracing of “where you are” that is the killer.

I was thinking, when I read that sentence, what a lonely life it would be to not have your hands full.  Having to cook for someone, having to comfort someone, having to provide for someone, having to care for someone, or many some-bodies, means that you have people…People to love and people who need you.  WHAT an extraordinary gift, to not be lonely or feel alone, or feel empty or bored, or be uninspired or apathetic.  It really is ludicrous how enriched I feel by the fullness of my simple little world.

Sometimes, particularly this time of year, I find myself daunted by how much I have to “clean up” in my own life, when I spend nearly all of my waking hours and energy literally cleaning other people’s vacation houses and yards, and so little time tending my own fire, and I feel like my hands are so full sometimes, with stuff to do that isn’t even my own stuff, that I get to feeling overwhelmed…AND I hate that word.  BUT then I think about where I actually AM in the world, on the planet, and I remember that I get to work in some of the most exquisite homes on the beach!  AT the BEACH!  I can listen to the ocean and have the sand between my toes 7 days a week if I so choose and I can, if I want to, sit on the patio or deck at  any number of waterfront homes, ANY day of ANY week and see sunsets that often take my breath away.  I get to be on an island that some people in the mid-west might dream their whole lives of seeing, and never get there, and here I am, there I am, day in and day out, and I realize, every time I do this, I am so blessed.  Those thoughts wash away the malignant ones that make my heart heavy and my brain over-think, or my worries and woes get the best of me. I think about how my hands are full because I am busy with a job I love, that it allows me to keep a roof over my head, and pay for air conditioning, and food, and my truck to get me where I need to go… AND-AND-AND the abundance…having your hands full means your life is abundant and that is rich, no matter what the balance is in your checkbook.  I needed to rethink what “busy” means, and for that initial opening sentence, I am thankful.  It shifted my perspective.  Eight words can totally modify your way of thinking if you are open to understanding them.

You have to love where you live and you have to love your life or you will spend way too many moments of your time on this planet in a state of unsettled unhappiness.  I don’t know about you, but I feel, the older I get, like I don’t have time for that!  I don’t want to be unsettled and I don’t want to be unhappy, so my brain must keep me thinking about THINGS, PEOPLE, LIFE, in a way that shifts to the upside, every time.  My brain is in charge of my feelings and I must keep practicing good brain health, to keep all my pieces and thoughts heading in the right direction.

When you feel, oh how I loathe the word, “overwhelmed,” I’ve decided it is perhaps better to think of yourself as Juggling, as it’s a happy circus-like word, and it’s true, you are juggling, and that sounds stronger, and certainly like you’re far more talented than the word overwhelmed does.  I associate that word, overwhelmed, with being weak and unable to cope, whereas juggling, well that is an awesome skill! Right??!!   Keeping all those balls in the air, each one being touched at the precise moment necessary so that they are all in the air when they are supposed to be.  When I read that sentence, “having your hands full is a ludicrous blessing” I understood how true it is, and perhaps twenty or thirty years ago, I would not have understood the gorgeousness of those words.  My hands are full, my plate is full, my heart is full and my life is full.  This way of thinking is good practice for contentment, shifting the way your brain thinks about being busy and having your hands full!  Thanks to Instagram, and my reading that one sentence, yet another shift is occurring for me.

When I was in college one of my pre-law professors did an experiment, which we the students did not know was an experiment at the time…in which a student came into the class during a lecture and was rude, loud, and verbally abusive to another student and threw a pencil at the professor when she demanded he leave her classroom at once.  When she gathered her thoughts, and our heart rates seemed to fall back to normal, she asked us to write down what we saw and what we heard…I assume you know where I am going with this?  Nearly every single one of us wrote down some details that were different.  Some completely different than the person sitting directly beside us!  Sure, we all noted the color of his hoodie and the color of his skin, but the words he said, the tone in which he said them, his manner, the incident itself was different for almost all of us in the room.  HOW is it that a group of twenty young adults could be in the same place at the same time during the same event, and all see, hear, and experience something different?  To say that, decades later, we as a nation are in a version of that classroom experiment right now, is perhaps not stretching the truth too far.  I am baffled and confused, almost daily, indeed weekly, as to how it is that I can watch a speech, hear an interview, read an excerpt or a transcript, and come away with a COMPLETELY different assessment of the person speaking and the subject matter and the content synopsis, and come to a conclusion that is the opposite of yours.

The English language is filled with words that have multiple meanings and subtle uses that certainly can make some of use one adjective or another to describe a person, place, or thing, but to hear a person speak in real time, and to then read the speech, and come away with a totally different conclusion about both the speaker and the subject, than the person sitting next to me, is causing me great unease.  Am I not understanding the words coming from the speaker’s mouth?  Am I not comprehending the sentences?  Am I not well read, or educated or erudite enough to find a person to be a vulgar buffoon, with little mastery of language, and indeed an inelegance for public speaking that I find to be horrendously unpleasant to my ears, but yet you think this speaker and the speech is terrific?  HOW can that be?  It seems that this college experiment I was part of in my twenties is a real-world-scenario in the year I’m turning 50!!!  Every day I watch some news on television, every day I read some of the newspapers on the internet, every day I listen to NPR, and yet every night I go to bed with different thoughts than most of the people to whom I am related and many of the people who I care about.  The same hours in the day, the same things happening in those hours of the day, and not one common thought about what transpired.  Totally different conclusions about the exact same things.

I understand that we all color our world with the thoughts we already have.  We might never agree on anything in my own family, my town, and this country.  We might always be divided, nearly down the middle, about everything.  There are many men and women far more brave than I, who are voicing their opinions, loudly these last months, about the climate and the country, about insurance and injustice, about civil rights and Russian wrongs, and are writing and saying words that I often think but do not express.  I have many loved ones and many friends who think nothing like I do about these subjects.  I have many loved ones and many friends who have totally different views, opinions, beliefs, and visions of a future than I do.  So I have had much on my mind these last many months, really the last year, and I have just tried to let things play out, let things unfold, and see where it goes.  I have heard smart loving people say to me, “people are not giving him a chance” and I have had to simply agree to disagree.  I choose to not add to the divisiveness in my family and my community and so I remain quiet most of the time about most things.  But, I see what I see, and I hear what I hear, and I read what I read, and I am horrified most days that anyone can think anything but what I do, but they do.  I may not be brave enough to speak out against the madness, and I may not be brave enough to take action, but I have come to the conclusion that when I hear words that cut through to the very core of what I think is right, decent, and just, it’s okay to loathe those words and the mouth from which they came, even if everyone around me thinks I am wrong.

If I told you how many times I listened to my record of ‘Puff The Magic Dragon’ in my childhood, you would think I was joking, but I’m not.  Even as a little girl, I found that song so sorrowful, how Jackie Paper grows out of his love of Puff and turns away from childish things as he grows from a boy into a man.  I loved the song and still do, despite how sad it made me.  I’m thinking about Puff this morning, as I think about my granddaughter, who in the early morning hours of today turned 12, and how just like that, it feels like it’s over…other people and other joys occupy her world, like Jackie Paper, she is growing out of what was, into what will be…

Maybe “over” is too harsh, but things have changed and shifted, as I knew and expected they would, but I’m left with a strange ache that I did not anticipate.  It came so suddenly, at least it feels sudden, or maybe I was not noticing the shift.  She hardly calls me anymore, and her texts are less frequent with every passing day, and she seldom wanders over here just to talk like she once did, and the last few months of her school year, when I got her off the bus, she sometimes had no more than a sentence or two to say to me.  As she grows, her time is spent more and more with less and less of me.  I understand, and I realize it’s the way of things, it’s simply natural progression, and I’m happy she is growing out of the adolescent and child stages, and coming into the young lady and woman she will be one day, but still…

A dragon lives forever but not so little boys
Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys
One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more
And Puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar

The child who I used to speak to or see every day, now goes for days, even more than a week with nothing more intimate or personal than a wave if we pass in the driveway.  I was going to buy a new cordless phone for the house a few weeks ago, until I realized that the old answering machine messages asking, “Hi Nana are you there?”  still stored an eight year-long history of her voice, as it grew from the four-year-old next door, into the girl with her own iPhone, who texted instead, would be lost.  AND I admit that once in a while if I am feeling low in some way, I press Play> on that answering machine, just to hear her little voice.   I fully accept the loss of what once was, I guess I just didn’t expect it to feel like it has come so quickly…suddenly it is her birthday and this is the last year before the numbers end in the word ‘teen.’

You won’t believe me until it happens to you, but the love you feel for the child of your child is profoundly different from what you ever felt as a parent.  It is better and richer and more fulfilling than any love you have ever known before.  That is a universal truth.  Okay, maybe I am exaggerating, but it might just be my truth.  And it could very well be that it feels different for me because of how close I am to the girls in my life; having bonded with them like I did for those first weeks and months of their lives, and in real proximity as we have been next door neighbors for eight years now.  It is one of the most deeply felt bonds I’ve had the good fortune to know. I am grateful for this girl in my life, even though the girl has begun to slip and drift away, as a young woman slowly emerges.

She is still one of my favorite humans, no matter how many times she mutters under her breath or rolls her eyes at the adults in her life.  I hope that she will always know she can turn to me, and my arms and mind will be open towards her, no matter how far she might turn away from me and leave childhood behind.  I will be forever thankful to her, for unlocking my spirit and breaking open my heart to accept a love like that on the day she took her first breath.  She might be moving on to other people and other joys but I won’t stay sorrowful, I won’t go back inside my woeful cave like Puff the magic dragon, I will celebrate her growing, and wish for her as she matures, to find and connect with people who are joyful and creative and interesting and talented, just like she is, and I will hope her friendships are fulfilling and fun, and I hope she finds people to share her time with who make her feel positive, and who keep her honest, and I will be happy, and lucky, that I had all those years of being one of her favorite humans too.

If any man on this earth has a daughter, and that daughter grows up to think of him with the appreciation, love, and respect I feel for my dad, he would be blessed beyond measure.  I know of no  formulaic equation for appreciation, love, or respect.  We grow to love some people, or find ourselves growing to dislike others, and while that seems simple enough, the “either we love that person/ or we don’t” of relationships, it isn’t simple at all.  Today is Father’s Day but I am grateful every day for the man who fell in love with my mother, wished to make her his wife, and shared with her every dream for a future together, and then did everything to make that future come true.

I have known many women in my life who have had dads who were, let’s just say,  ‘not great,’ and whose frequent bad decisions and perpetual poor choices provided these girls with a childhood that often seemed uncertain, and I imagine that is not an easy way to grow up.  I’ve read enough memoirs and have had enough friends to know too that many girls grow up with a list of questions that go through their minds when their dad is expected home… “will dad be mad, will dad be late, will dad be drunk, will dad be mean, will dad make enough money for mom to pay the bills…”  My life was never this way, not even a little bit…My dad was never mad, late, drunk, or mean, and he never missed work.  I know to some this example might make my dad seem kind of boring, but I assure you, he is one of the most interesting men you would ever have the good fortune to know, and what he was in my life was stability, consistency, and reliability, and I know this, it is in great part what has made me crave these simple pleasures in adulthood.  There is nothing wrong with a stable, consistent, reliable way of life.  The fact that my  fatherless daughter got to have my dad step up and fill those same needs in her life is something for which I am forever thankful.  The fact that my father has never stopped loving my mother is another thing about him that I appreciate, love, and respect.  There is no way to measure that level of gratitude, for the stable, consistent, and reliable life his presence allowed me to give my daughter too…If there are really 50 Inuit words for snow, then if I could, I would imagine a language where there are 51 words for thanks.

I wonder sometimes, when my brain goes off on these delightful journeys, if there could be some brilliant, measurable formula, that we simply have not figured out, for what makes us love and why?   What happened for my mother and my father never happened for me and that is simply a truth in my life.  I  have never loved a man who was enough like my father to compare them, and if my father was the standard to which I compared all men, I wonder why I never was able to find one who fell in love with me, wished to make me his wife, shared with me every dream for a future together, and then did everything to make that future come true…

My father never taught me to bait a hook, surf, swing a golf club, cast a line, play poker, or catch a crab, but the man I am currently dating has taught my granddaughters and his own daughter to do all of these things.  My father has never, not once ever, sat inside on the sofa or in his chair during the day and watched a game of any sport on television, but the man I am currently dating would, if given the chance, sit on the sofa for hours, watching any sport in which the moving of a ball is involved, on any day of any week, regardless of the weather any time of year.  It’s true that when I ask my dad to do something for me I only have to ask once, and let’s just say that when I ask the man I am currently dating to do something, I often have to ask much more than once.  This at times makes me curious, how I can love two men so much who are so different in so many ways.

I suppose the appreciation formulation comes to me from the ways in which these two men are more similar.  I always loved about my father that he would vacuum if the house needed vacuuming, or cook when dinner needed to be cooked, or do laundry when clothes needed to be washed, the same kinds of so-called “women’s work” that the man I am currently dating does whenever it needs to be done.  I appreciate, very much that it’s what I have always known in my father, and presently have in the man with whom I am sharing my life.  I know some women who never had that kind of man in their lives, ones who just expected the women to do the ‘women things’ and if she did not have the time or the energy, then those things did not get done.

My gratitude was sparked this past autumn by a memory of my mother when she twisted out her back when I was a young child, and the care that my father showed her, as she cried out in agony, as he tenderly got her into the bedroom and how he did all the chores and all the parenting, for days that I recall.  I thought about this time in my past after I had surgery in November that did not go as smoothly as anticipated, and how the man I am currently dating tended to my health and my comfort, my needs and my wellness, and cared for me as if he were the doctor, the nurse, the housekeeper, and the chef.  It turns out, those things really matter when you are sharing your life with somebody.  His tenderness towards me reminded me so much of that memory I have of my father.

I have many memories of getting hurt or banged up as a little kid, and my dad never losing his cool, and just always calmly doing whatever needed to be done, and I have watched, many times, as the man I am currently dating has scooped up his own daughter, as well as each of my granddaughters, from the driveway after a fall, or pulled them from waves and currents that grew too strong too fast, or wiped their tears, and cleaned & bandaged their knees and elbows, and stroked their heads and held them and put ice packs on their wounds, never losing his cool and always calmly doing whatever needed to be done…Tenderness is something that goes unnoticed sometimes in this busy life we all live, but showing tenderness is another way to show love without saying one word.

This man I am currently dating, well the fact is that we met too late to create together, even a little bit, the life we could have imagined.  The choices we both made before we knew each other puts our chances of shared dreams ever coming to fruition at slim to none.  So my dreams remain mine and his remain his, and if we find one or more that we can possibly pull off and make happen as a couple, I will consider it a success.  If I could dream of one thing coming true for him,  it is for when his own daughter is a woman, nearing her 50th year on earth, that she might think of him with even half of the appreciation, love, and respect that I think of for my dad…if that happens for him, this man I am currently dating, it would be a dream come true.  There might not be any formula to measure appreciation, but I do know that no matter how you organize the equation, it always equals thanks.

This weekend is the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Supreme Court civil rights case which invalidated all laws that prohibited interracial marriage, Loving v Virginia.   The groom was white and the bride was black and they were in love but could not get married in the state in which they lived, as interracial marriage was illegal…It was against the law, a crime, for Mildred and Richard to marry the person they loved because the person they loved had skin that was a different color than their own.  Let that sink in…This case was a big deal, a very big deal.  This weekend also marks the 51st anniversary of the marriage of my parents.  The groom wore black and the bride wore white and Mary and J got married at a small church in a small town called Surf City, and had their small reception party at the small home of the bride’s parents in a small town called Ship Bottom, and nobody told them that they could not get married,  there were no laws preventing them from starting a life together as lawfully wedded adults, it was not at all a big deal and just another random wedding in June at the Jersey shore.  It seems rather unfair that J and Mary could just get married because they wanted to and Richard and Mildred had to contact the ACLU and fight all the way to the Supreme Court.  It’s hard enough to find somebody to love in this world, harder still to find somebody who loves you back, and then to find somebody who loves you back enough to want to make and share a life with you, and become your lawfully wedded mate is really, when you think about it, almost impossible…what a cruel joke it must have felt like, to be a man, with the last name “Loving,” in love with a woman who loved him back, and wanted to make and share a life with him, and to be told that their marriage was unlawful.

What if it was illegal to marry somebody who was left-handed if you were right-handed?  What if you were ambidextrous and had straight hair but could not marry the woman you loved because she was born with only one hand and had curly hair?  What if there were laws against marrying outside of your own height, weight, or what about the length of your toes???  My father grew up “well to do” and my mother, well she didn’t, and his parents had a summer beach house on the small island where my mother grew up…what if there had been rules or laws like an Indian caste system here in south Jersey, my mother and father would not have been able to marry, despite how in love they were, both with each other, and with the idea and dream of creating a life together.  In this modern American life, I can’t imagine such gross levels of intolerance, but I studied law, I know how real it was, and for too many, still is.   Too many do not understand, even now, that we are one human race, despite our visible differences.  Those who see the differences, more than the sameness, are in my opinion, more often than not, a far bigger problem for a civil society than those of us who just want us all to love each other and live in peace and harmony.  Can you just imagine what it must have been like for a man whose last name was LOVING to be prohibited, BY LAW, from marrying the woman he loved??!!    I am very old-fashioned about a number of things and thinking that marriage matters is one of them.  I feel as strongly about the right for blacks to marry whites as I feel about women to marry women or men to marry men.

The world and the people in it can be very ugly.  When we love each other, everything can be more beautiful just because of how we feel inside.  This idea might be a little bit too much Mr. Rogers’  Neighborhood for you, but I think it’s true.  Love and kindness and inclusion and acceptance and all those feelings that some attribute to being sappy or weak, are really what makes all of us stronger.  Being loved, truly and deeply, like how my dad loves my mom for example, makes us humans far more capable to handle life and all that it throws at us.  Why some adult consensual love is legal, allowed, and celebrated,  and some is considered wrong or criminal, is just nuts to me.  I think love should be encouraged and applauded because we live in a world where there is just too little of it anyway…

Not all of us have the good luck my parents did, to find ‘their person’ and make a life together that is loving from day one.  I have a number of friends who have been married to their person for more than twenty years, something I always dreamed for, to have something even remotely similar to the relationship and life and family my parents built,  but it’s an area where I failed miserably, time after time.  That I know people who are doing it right like my parents did, makes me very happy, to know that it CAN be done, even though my happiness was always shrouded by a twinge of envy because it was ‘my something’ I never managed to do for myself…When I write that I am the daughter of a great romance, a line I once stole from a Dar Williams song, I mean it on many levels.  When you grow up in a loving family, you have to really try to NOT be a loving person in adulthood, I mean you have to really make an effort to not be a person who loves deeply…I think that whole nature vs. nurture idea is very real; if you are raised by parents who are deeply in love with each other, and really love you, it sure takes a lot of effort to NOT be full of love for others and for your life.  Wanting to find ‘your person’ to love becomes as important as being on the receiving end of  love…it’s like you are filled up with so much that is good and wonderful, that you just want to have somebody who you can share it all with…like Freddie Mercury sang, Find Me Somebody To Love…it has always mattered…and it always will.

You want to know what love is?  I took my granddaughter to church this morning.  My sister took her last week.  My granddaughter is nine and expressed an interest in learning about religion and so, despite the fact that I am not a christian, nor do I believe anything I was taught in CCD class, I spent my morning today at catholic church with a little blonde girl who means the world to me.  I love her with almost all of my heart.  Her sister gets almost the rest of it.  One would think my love was spent between those two girls, but here I go again, loving more and more every day…There was a guest speaker, a nun from France who works with a missionary group in west Africa and you know what she said today, she said “love matters, the more we love each other, the better the world is, when we include our brothers and our sisters in our love, the world is better” and I thought to myself, see, that little French nun gets it.  I grew up in a house full of love and I bet Mr. Loving just wanted that too, to live in a house full of love.  I know that was the plan my parents had.

This world is filled with a whole lot of hate, and I think if you have love in your life you should celebrate that today, and in your thoughts, wish my parents a happy 51st and thank Mr. Loving for thinking that it mattered, that he should have been able to marry his person, in any state he darn well wanted to.  If you are unsure if there is enough love in the world, I encourage you to do something today that you don’t really want to do, but will do it for the person you love.  If you are looking for love, well, I hope in this Loving weekend, you find it.  The world is a better place with more love in it, which are words I wrote the other day when I started this blog,  and this morning a little French nun, from a west African mission, at a church I don’t belong to, in a religion I don’t believe in, said almost the exact same words…so there you have it…Loving versus The World should be a total knock out…Love will always win…

I sometimes have such angry thoughts that I’m sure if they were words imprinted on my face or my body they would make me one of the least attractive people you might ever meet.  These thoughts are strange and upset me, mostly because I am really generally such a pleasant, happy, upbeat, joyful person, and when these thoughts begin to sprout and grow and take root, they occupy so much of my brain so quickly and I think, as I am thinking them, “who is THIS person with such vitriolic thoughts?!”  I do not like her very much, this angry woman, but she shows up now and then and it takes so much out of me; I mean it literally exhausts me when she’s around, as if I’ve exerted all sorts of energy and I feel sapped and used up and like it’s hard to get out of my own way…Like this morning for instance, I woke up tired and with aches all over, and yet I started a great new book and fell asleep quickly last night, but it matters not, because those horribly unattractive thoughts I was thinking weigh me down and make me feel unwell, both in body and spirit.

When I feel at peace and confident that all my parts are working as they should, and content that my brain is braining as it should, I have a calmness that I can’t describe but I sure do feel it.  BUT, when I feel uneasy or “off,” I’m many things and calm is not on that list of adjectives.  What makes me feel unsettled is my cross to bear, and what makes you feel unsettled is yours, and guess what??  We both have every right to feel what we feel about whatever the heck we want as  our paths are our own!  The way you get to your destination, and what you hope to achieve in your life, or dreams you wish to fulfill on your life path are yours, and mine are mine.  That is the beauty of it, and let me tell you, it is very much NOT beautiful when I feel myself stumbling or veering way too far from my destination, dreams, and path.  When I feel myself slipping into that abyss I know it is time to get some clarity and situate myself back on the path that feels best for me.

Before I was born, Justice Stewart famously stated, “I know it when I see it,” when he was explaining his position on whether or not something was obscene, and while you might think this is a silly way to reference what I am feeling, it’s my truth; when things are feeling wonky, I know it when I feel it, is how I best understand that I need to find some better balance in how I am managing myself;  my physical and mental selves, how I mingle among others, how I manage my home, my work, my relationships…when something feels amiss or seems amiss, it probably is.  There is a best seller right there if ever there was one!  A one page book in the Self Help section at B&N, If Something feels amiss or seems amiss, it probably is.  Best to get back on your path.  The End.

When you meet somebody who is new to you, where you are on your path and where they are on their path can be completely irrelevant to your connection or friendship or attraction or common ground.  We meet people wherever we are, and they connect to us however they are able based on where they are, and whether we can move forward together is what makes our connections fuse or disintegrate.  I have had many interactions with people where friendships formed but then simply fizzled, some sooner than others, and yet however long or short a relationship, there is hardly ever an instance where we meet somebody whose path is the same as ours, but yet with some we find enough similarity to move ahead, and with some there is too little and so we simply move on.  Sometimes we meet a person with the desperation of a drowning man, suddenly finding solid ground beneath his feet, either in our own desperation or theirs, but the result is the same, part gratitude and part relief.  Certainly there are other times when we meet somebody and we immediately feel ourselves finding our inner antelope, who senses a hunting lioness is near, and our fight or flight responses rise up like a great big bonfire!  Not by any measure to imply that all relationships are either or, but I do think they lean nearer to one type of connection or the other.  I have, like most, experienced both kinds of meetings, and although I am of an age where I ought to “know,” I still can’t say with any level of surety that one is better or worse than the other, or that I am better prepared for one more than I am the other.  We meet and sometimes we click and sometimes we don’t.

What appeals to me in a person, either platonic or romantic in nature, is my truth and what appeals to you is yours, and there are not any rules that any of us have to follow.  Sometimes it just feels right and sometimes it feels just too wrong.  It would be nice if we all knew who we were, and what we liked and didn’t, where we were on our path, but I think in many ways we are all still learning who we are, the constant evolution of the species, and perhaps never quite sure what we want, or need, no matter how old we grow.  I find myself thinking about this when I see stories on tv or read in magazines, about famous people or couples who seem to “have it all” and yet they move on, and in and out of relationships, thus letting the rest of us know the truth of the matter is that ‘having it all’ might very well mean much less than we think.  If you think it is financial success, travel to exotic destinations in private charter planes, a house for each season of a year, Louboutin pumps for every occasion, precious jewels, or invitations to the best parties that makes relationships thrive, well, I can show you decades of examples from the covers of magazines where famous couples un-couple to demonstrate how this clearly is not the case.

Some people’s paths are filled with dishes in the sink, closet doors left open, lights left on, weeks old sheets,  un-vacuumed floors, and unmade beds.  That is fine for them, but would not be fine, at all, for me.  My path might be too rigid, not relaxed enough, not fun enough, not lighthearted enough for some, but it feels exactly right for me, like knowing the perfectly folded linens are behind the doors of cupboards, and beautiful objects are in their rightful place, and that there is nothing wrong with wanting to read on a Friday night and go to sleep when I am tired and be under no obligation to do anything other than what I want to do.  The older I get and the more life experience I get the more I suspect some couples can un-couple over a misplaced remote control, just as easily as the bad choice to stay out too late or with whom.  I suspect many relationships, both romantic and platonic, end because of too many edited thoughts, bit tongues, or half-truths.  Lies of omission and saying “it’s fine” when it is not at all fine are good ways to find yourself off your path for sure.  If your path is filled with potholes and ruts, but mine is recently plowed, weeded, and raked,  it doesn’t really matter how much I wish our paths would cross and intertwine and from two become one, because some paths just don’t cross in the way we wish for.

Paths don’t have to jive only in romantic relationships either.  Great loving friendships fizzle too.  I know, I have had that happen also, where you think your friendship is deep and fun and filled with joy, and then one day it is over, you are blindsided,  and you had no say in the matter.  So I started writing today about negative thoughts, and the saying of bad things, and how it makes me feel like crap when I find myself there, and somehow got myself into a stream of consciousness about paths.  I felt uneasy this morning when I awoke, that I said and thought things yesterday that were unkind, and when that happens with any frequency whatsoever, I know and I feel, that it is time to readjust my sails so to speak.  To realign myself to my truth.  I am not sure how best to harmonize my thoughts, in fact I never am sure how to proceed,  but I do know that I have found myself tripping up of late, and so I must make some modifications, however great or small need not matter, just that changes get made is the right start for me for progress.  I suspect for you as well.  I know that when we think ugly thoughts they show in the form of wrinkles and frowns,  hunched backs and sad eyes, snarky responses and quickly igniting arguments, and I also know, because I read it, so it therefore must be true, that  “A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”  So here’s to moving forward in the loveliest way possible, sunbeams are always a good thing, and clarity never goes out of style.

I was thin and loved my figure, I loved all of my parts actually, before I started my experience in motherhood, and truth be told, 31 years later, I have yet to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight, or to the act of loving all of my parts.  So unlike the movie stars, fashion models, and singers who manage to do bikini photo shoots nine weeks after giving birth, decades after giving birth I am still not back to anything remotely similar to my pre-baby body.  No, I still carry too many pounds of baby weight even though my baby has been alive for more than three decades and is a mother herself.  I am hardly happy about this but it is my reality.  This time of year, pretty much every year, I think about the job I have done as a mother and all that has changed about me since becoming a mother.  I also think about  how I am still so far away from any of the wishes, dreams, and plans I had for my life.  I am neither rueful nor complaining but simply addressing the thoughts I have, that despite my hard work and great efforts in all areas of my life, over all of this time, I never “got” to where I hoped I would be, physically, emotionally, professionally, or relationship status-ly.  Other than achieving perfect grades in college, not one thing I set out to do worked out for me…and when I find myself falling into those patterns of thought, also known as NOT Looking On The Bright Side, or zoning in on what is not right, I have to pull back tightly and refocus…because so much IS right.

So today, this Mother’s Day morning, I am thinking about the weight of my heart…while I have not celebrated the number on the scale for more than 31 years, I am well aware of my blessings and the possibility that my heart might very well be the heaviest part of my body, it is THAT full.  I have friends, many, who are sad today…some longed to be mothers and never were, some have lost their mothers, a few are mothers who have lost children…my heart is heavy for their sadness today while I rejoice in the weight of my own.  Motherhood, mothers, mothering…all of those words carry so much different meaning to all of us, some so positive and celebratory, and for others, so dark and sad.

I suppose that motherhood is something many people wish for, dream of, and plan for and never achieve, so I guess I could, or should, feel lucky beyond measure, when I look at my life from that perspective.  I have so much love inside of me and around me and near me that I could burst, but yet, my heart still grows.  I feel that I get so much love every day out of this life, but more importantly I get to give it away as well… My heart seems to get bigger and stronger and fatter and heavier every year on this earth since that cold January morning when I became a mother.  Hearts seem to stretch and expand and fill up in ways that are inexplicable, and perhaps can’t ever be proven by science, and yet, it is real, or at least it feels real.

When my granddaughters hug me it is like electricity zipping through me and I have said it too many times to count, that I had no idea there was that much love inside of me until they were here on this earth.  When I read to them or they to me I feel a completeness and contentedness wash over me like a joyous fog.  When my boyfriend and I laugh together or catch each other’s eye over a private shared thought it is like a spark in my belly,  and when he smiles widely at me with those perfect teeth and happy eyes, I still get a tingle in my spine that goes through to the tips of my toes.  When my daughter needs me to help her in some way, any way, and I manage to do so with speed and efficiency or without complaint, I feel something like Wonder Woman, and when we find ourselves chatting in the driveway and catching up and laughing together, it fills me up to overflowing that my daughter has become a treasured friend.  When my mother and I talk and compare notes about a great deal or fantastic sale we stumbled upon, we so enjoy how frugal and practical we both seem to have become in our later years, or when we discuss a book we both loved or both loathed, or remember something happy or funny that happened long ago, it’s like getting a hug from the inside out…and I have grown to learn that all of those little things add up to a lot of weight.

There is nothing that I like about being so far from those numbers on the scale that actually make me happy, but honestly it seems that drinking wine, having half & half in my coffee, enjoying diner breakfasts with my grandchildren, and going out on dinner dates with my boyfriend make me happier, or I would clearly make different choices.  There is nothing that I like about extra weight that I don’t want to keep carrying around in the next chapter of my life, or the 11 pair of jeans that I keep but still can’t wear, BUT when I think about how much of that weight might just be my heart, I feel so filled with light…and that isn’t heavy at all.

I know a number of women who begrudgingly celebrate Mother’s Day.  I also know a number of women who miss their mothers so much that they ache on Mother’s Day, despite joyfully being mothers themselves.  I know a few women who harbor so much resentment towards their mothers that they seldom, if ever, speak of the women, but I also know a few women who gladly count their lucky stars, regularly, because they have a mother who was, or is, a  good person.  I am one of those women.

To be clear, my mom and I have butted heads many times and have raised our voices to one another and slammed doors and barely spoke for short periods of time, but you know what, off the top of my head, on this morning in my 49th year on the planet, and the start of her 72nd, I don’t remember details of any one specific event that caused us trouble.  What I can tell you for sure is that the few times in my life when I felt as if I was just about as empty inside as a living person could be, a hug from my mother and reassuring words from her brought me back to feeling full of life.  Today  on her birthday I am blessed and lucky to be thankful that I’m one of those women for whom Mother’s Day can be any day.  I think that must be in large part what made me want to be a good one, and it surely in some way, maybe many, is responsible for my daughter being a good one too.

My mother does not drink coffee or wine, does not enjoy cleaning, gets no pleasure whatsoever in food shopping and preparing food or cooking of any kind, EVER, so it’s possible to think that we have too little in common, as I love all of those things, but we both love to read, we both love my dad and my daughter, and our yards and flower gardening bring us both a great deal of happiness.  It turns out, over the seasons of all the years, that is enough.  My father turned 75 this year and still had his mother, my boyfriend had only just turned 15 when he lost his. I know from both of these men that having a mother matters, no matter how close, long, or distant the relationship might’ve been.  My mother’s relationship with her own was very strained for most of their lives, and I know from both of them that that can be as difficult, perhaps even more so, than not having a mother at all…

There have been times when my mom made me nuts, and there are times (many I suspect) when I made her crazy, and for us both, our annoyances during those difficult times were very hard to hide, and the tension was unpleasant, but those hurdles in life just get jumped over and we keep on going…”press-on,” as my mother often says.  Suddenly I am old enough to have a granddaughter on the edge of driving my own daughter nuts and causing her annoyance, and it’s funny, how it just keeps rolling, generation after generation of mothers and daughters trying to live with each other, learn from each other, and love each other through decades.