In the late spring of 2005 I took a couple of days off work and drove to North Carolina to paint a bedroom for someone I already loved but had not yet met.  Cotton Candy-ish pink walls and a fresh coat of white paint on the trim in a space that was to be soon occupied by my first grandchild.  The night before I left for my long drive  my neighbor gave me a cd she mixed for my journey….she drew stars and swirls and moons all over it with a marker and titled the mix “Feel to Believe.”  I listened to it several times on my drive south and I listened to it over and over and over the day I painted that room.

When my daughter got married the June before, one of the last things I said to her before she left for North Carolina was, “whatever you do, don’t get pregnant” but that following Halloween, that’s exactly what she did…and while part of me felt sad for her; the loss of freedom, the incredible expense, both financial and emotional, of becoming a parent, I also knew that much like when they decided to get married, they were taking complete responsibility for their decision and truth be told, I was pretty excited with the idea of an infant in my life again.

Only two artists and three songs in the cd mix were even familiar to me…it was all more of a folk genre than anything else, not something I knew but the lyrics to some of the songs became so special to me over those days, as I thought about who this person was going to be, and what she was going to mean to me, that now, these years later,  I can’t  think about that time in my life, the anticipation of her birth, without my brain sort of making a quiet soundtrack in the background of those memories…it must have been the right time for me to hear these songs, because they became so much a part of my excitement of the idea of this baby, this girl child I already loved and could not wait to meet, that when I hear the lyrics of these songs still today, mixed among my “usual” music in my ipod, I can’t help but think of this little girl who fills so much space in my heart…  “you don’t need a preacher to talk to God, I think that whole idea ought to be outlawed, just dance with the children, the kids got it figured out.”  “Go ahead, push your luck, find our how much love the world can hold.”    “You’re never gonna tell me where to fly, you’re never gonna tell me what to sing, and if I end up lost and all alone at least I know I got there on my own two little wings.”    “I won’t forget when Peter Pan came to my house, & took my hand I said I was a boy; I’m glad he didn’t check.  I learned to fly, I learned to fight, I lived a whole life in one night.”  “don’t try to control me don’t try to fix me up, a sacred tantrum is the medicine I need, take me as I am, or leave me alone.”

On the night of July 17th in 2005 I was at a tiki bar not far from my home, listening to my friend Dave make beautiful music, and I got a text message from my Mom that said, “9 lb 5 oz” and that was it.  No details, no information whatsoever, just that…evidently my daughter had given birth.  I was a Nana and my child was a mother and my whole world changed with a text message.

Today I am taking the day off work and taking this brilliant, beautiful, and unique wonder of the world on a date for her 8th birthday.  I call her Sweet-Ti and she calls me Nana and I’m reminded when I spend any time alone with her that she is one of my most favorite people on the planet.  She is love.  I found the cd.  I am going to play it for her in the truck while we are out and about, and I am going to tell her about the day I painted her nursery, and remind her that I loved her before I knew her, and share with her these songs sung by women, for women, about women, and what it means to be a woman, and she will remember this day for the rest of her life…the song dared me to do it, to push my luck, to find out how much love the world can hold…and so I did…

I was at my parent’s house last night for a short while to celebrate my sister’s birthday.  My daughter arrived late, coming directly from work, and as the back door opened, I noticed the magnificently beautiful perfect faces of my granddaughters literally light up as they heard the door knob, and the both cried out joyfully, “Mommy!!!” and jumped off their chairs into her arms…that she had only been away from them since 3:20 that afternoon when she left for work, and it was not yet dark, made me laugh that they greeted her with enthusiasm as if she had been gone for days and I thought to myself, I raised a child into a woman good enough and wonderful enough and kind enough and lovely enough, to be loved, THAT much.

It was a good feeling, that this, THIS human being, this woman who was standing in front of me who sometimes still, as in her teens,  rolls her eyes annoyed at me, who sometimes still mutters under her breath annoyed at me, and who sometimes still sighs exhaustively annoyed at me, is the best thing that I ever did…I loved and nurtured and tried my very hardest to be a good mother in a, for the most part, and certainly for the first several years, bad situation, and despite my youth, inexperience, lack of money and lack of a good or dependable or kind or hardworking partner for the first few years of her life, I guess to be clear, any of her life, she turned out just fine.

I did not do this alone; I moved back into my parent’s house and back into my old bedroom, divorced and uncertain about EVERYTHING before she was much more than two.  My parents and my sister are equally responsible, perhaps even more so, for this beautiful person…I worked full-time and went to college at night and on my days off for years…my family did a lot of babysitting and even after I moved out into a home of my own a couple years later, and I was still working full-time and still going to college at night and on my days off, they were still who I depended on for help.  It does, as Hillary wrote, take a village…

As I stood last night in my parent’s charming kitchen in their charming house I took notice of my sister and my mom and my dad, and thought, these are the people who more often than not bathed my daughter, read to my daughter, and wished her sweet dreams and a good night’s sleep when I was at school, who spent every weekend caring for her and playing with her while I was at work.  They are the people equally responsible for creating the beautiful woman who stood before us.  I looked at my daughter’s husband, who took her away from me when she was only 18 and hit the road to North Carolina with her only weeks after she graduated from high school.  I was in a room full of people who love my daughter.

I am not fond of country music, but it is what my parents love and so mostly what was playing in our home growing up and in their home today.  As I looked at my daughter squeezing her daughters and laughing last night while saying, “Geez, I’ve only been gone three hours!”  I thought, I loved her first…sure it’s a country song, narrated and sung by a father as he watches his daughter get married, and it is, as so many good country songs are, a tear-jerker when you listen to the lyrics, but I was thinking about how good it felt in my heart,  for me, that they have her, who came from me, and that they adore her so much.

It was nothing but a “blip” in time, but I will remember it, particularly in eight or so years when they are telling me how their mother does not understand them, how she does not get them, how she must not love them because she won’t let them do…[ fill in the blank ] The day will come, it always comes when teenage girls are involved…I remember when mine was a teenager and thinking to myself, how can I love this person so much and dislike her so much at the very same time??!!  I know my mother must have felt this when I was going through my hellish years and surely my daughter will feel this in the future…but I will remember last night’s moment, their eyes lighting up even brighter than they usually are and their joyful grins and the squeal of happiness in their voices as they jumped out their seats and into her arms, and I will tell them when they are teenagers, when they complain to me about how awful she is and how she is ruining their lives and, oh I just remember the drama & angst still so well…the door slamming, the I hate yous, the whys, the I wish you were like so and so’s Mom…I will say to them, “I loved her first, and you will, I promise, love her again one day, and believe me, she does understand you, she does get you, and more than anything she does love you.”

There are many expressions people often use that are really completely true, for example, “it’s like riding a bike,” to mean of course once you learn how to do it, you do not ever forget.  I have no memory of the day I got my training wheels off, but I do remember very clearly the August afternoon I took my daughter’s off when she was 5, and last summer on a hot August day when my granddaughter who had recently turned 7 decided to trust her balance and let me remove hers.  It’s a sensation that one is never supposed to forget…trusting your balance.

Until yesterday morning at 6 a.m. I had not been on a long bike ride since I rented a bike with a friend on Block Island in 1994, and the last time I had ridden a bike at all was in 2003 when I was moving from the west side of town back to the bay side of town and the bike would not fit in the back of my Pathfinder, no matter how I tried to configure the back seats or twist the bike’s wheels.

I got a bike for Christmas from my boyfriend.  It sat in the garage untouched with tags still attached for months.  I was either too lazy to get started, or too scared to fall or just too busy with other things to get on it, but last week my daughter informed me that at least two mornings a week she rides with my sister to the end and back of the trail that we have in town, and then through town, around four schools, and then back home and that they go at least 20 miles and that I should join them.  “TWENTY MILES!!!!” I thought, no way can I do that…but yesterday, I did, plus one 😉

I charged up my air compressor the other day and filled the tires and my seat and handle bar heights were adjusted by the purchaser of this bike and I sucked up my fear of being unable to keep up and yesterday morning met my child and my sister in the middle of the driveway before most of our neighbors were even awake.  It felt good to ride a bike again.  As I watched my sister painlessly pedal ahead of me, I kept hearing her voice, as a 4-year-old, “here I come on my bike, better run before I strike”  it was one of her first poems and she uttered it often in our youth on our bike rides.  It made me remember being a kid and spending all day on our bikes in the summer.  It made me remember the birthday I got THE bike…the one I begged for with the monkey handle bars and banana seat.  As I watched my daughter painlessly pedal beside her I kept thinking of myself, running, for what seemed like hours, behind her on her bike when she was little, holding onto the back of the seat as lightly as possible trying to steady her enough so she could find her own balance, and the sensation of joy when I finally let go, and watched her go…

I kept up with them yesterday better than I expected, and while my thighs burned up Rose Hill, the only high spot in our very flat town, and my knees hurt when I fell, twice, and I almost fell  in soft spots on the trail trying to duck under overgrown branches, I realized that your body remembers, your muscles and your bones and your spirit does not forget the fun of being a little kid and having freedom and getting somewhere on your own by your own power.  I felt sore when I got back home yesterday morning, but I felt excited…that I did it, that I liked it, that despite falling I had a fun time, that the sweat felt good, the muscle burn felt good, that it felt nice to spend some time with my daughter and my sister…You do not grow too old to love the feeling of propelling yourself forward, hoping no bugs fly into your mouth, laughing when you fall down and knowing you have to brush yourself off and get back on, but mostly I realized you never forget that you can trust your own balance and when you find you might be slipping, only you can readjust, nobody can do it for you, and for that memory more than any, I am so glad I joined them…

*” Tell me what you want, what you really really want “*

My Id and my Ego have been asking this question for months.  It’s a banter in my brain that exhausts me.   The narcissist in me has very clear requirements for happiness and contentment, while my magnanimous side is rather pleased with all this patient benevolence and unending kindness and support to others.  I suspect that if we all came with some sort of  ‘owner’s guide’  that we could present to people when we meet them, like a Chilton manual for human beings,  life would be much easier.

I have been accused, many times over many years, of being discontent…or is it ‘malcontent?’ whatever word is the correct word, well, surely you understand where this is going… I can no longer argue or pacify myself that this is an inaccurate or unfair description of me, since it has been a repeated refrain during the adult years of my life and frankly I don’t know what to do about it, or how to ‘FIX’ it…I keep making the effort, I am many things, but lazy is not one of them, and my frequent & diligent attempts notwithstanding, I continue to lack success in this area of my life.

I have a nice house that is so fabulous to me that I often get giddy when I enter my driveway.  I have a nice job that is so fulfilling to me that I often can’t believe my luck that I am not stuck in a cubicle in some miserable Muzak filled office and actually love the jobs I do.   I have a nice boyfriend who is so handsome and fun to be around that I often get a silly grin and goosebumps when I look at him.  My world is filled with niceness, so much so that I just can’t understand my angst, or why I’ve got any in the first place??!!  It is clearly self-induced  and sabotages many of my otherwise nice days.

I am very much a believer in a -D.I.Y.- approach to living.  I try to do anything without help, and only ask for help as something of a last resort.  I am sure I could go to a doctor and share & explain that I am feeling anxious about all sorts of things and I could probably get an affordable prescription for Lexipro, Xanax, or Paxil, but then what??  Then I am forced to use chemicals to tweak my brain when I am sure if I just try harder, I can tweak it myself. I read magazines where famous people often explain how their therapist is their lifeline, but it just seems silly to me…I HAVE to find peace with my thoughts, or change the thoughts I’m thinking.  I’m tired of myself, lord only can imagine that everybody else in my life must be tired of me too.

I am often envious and angry, well maybe not angry but upset,  over things that have positively nothing at all to do with me and do not have any sort of direct bearing on my world.  This is perhaps a sort of madness or insanity.  I get frustrated over things that I have positively no control over, which is pointless.  We all have problems and this is one of mine.  I ruin perfectly good days because I think things, and then get myself all in a tizzy and have sleepless nights over these thoughts.  I know what I think I want.  I know what I think I deserve.  I know that makes me sound like an asshole.

I’m not broken, just bent, as the song says…the straight side of me wants to be square and plumb though too.  I try to look at every situation I get myself into, or find myself in, as a tool for learning.  I try to view all my “regrets” as a lesson.  I try to say what I want to say and write what I want to write and not have any hidden meanings.  I try to express myself honestly and clearly, always.  I have learned too many times that once words are spoken, they can’t be taken back.

My parents have been gloriously in love for all my life.  They are what many would say is a “perfect match.”  I can count on one hand the number of times in my childhood they had ‘fights.’  I asked my Mom once, when I was a heartsick teenager why they got along so well, why did he love her so much…she told me that early in their marriage, because she did not know any better and was young and did not have much of a guide for married life, she would deliberately pick fights, or say things with the purpose of getting a rise out of my Dad, only to learn later that it was silly and immature, that a real love, a real relationship, has no games…no fight picking, it has only respect and love and friendship at its core…my Dad never took the bait…he would let her have her 20-something freak out and then get on with the business of being a happy loving couple…I know then, from watching them be in love all these years, that when I deliberately say things, or do things, or write things, to this man I say “I love you” to, that have no purpose whatsoever, other than to “pick” a fight, I’m just being a silly stupid girl, and not a strong confident woman.  I had good guides for being in a relationship, my parents.  I know better.  I wannabe be better at being part of a couple.

I wannabe laughter for somebody’s tears.  I wannabe comfort for somebody’s troubles.  I wannabe the one to make somebody’s world brighter.  I wannabe content with what I have. I wannabe hopeful for the future but I wannabe satisfied with what is here and now.  I wanna be grateful with all that is, not angry over the few things that aren’t.  I wannabe missed when I am gone.  I wannabe joyfully anticipated, not solemnly dreaded.  I wannabe thought extraordinary not dismissed as mediocre or like all the others.  I wannabe a good friend and I wannabe a better partner.  I wannabe a rose in somebody’s garden of thorns.  I wannabe more confident and less insecure.  I wannabe a rainbow to somebody’s cloudy day. I wannabe thankful that we exist, together, right now, and it is enough.  I wannabe better at being.

I work on a small island where I see people running and walking every day.  Some I have noticed for years and others are new this season.  I have made up names for many of them.  It makes the drive to each job somehow more enjoyable and I feel happy when I see these people.  Some I have seen for ages and one I just noticed this spring.  It was not purposeful to name them, the names just sort of jumped in my brain and they stuck.

‘Dead Man Running’ is one I have actually met.  His name is Tony and when he is standing or chatting with me at the little market where I go almost daily for coffee he looks very much the picture of health…but when he is running, well, he looks half dead, like it is so painful and laborious for him to take another step…yet he does, for many many blocks, almost every single day.

‘Walking with Newspaper Man’ is really skilled at doing this task.  I happen to get violently ill when I am in a truck or car or boat and look down to read ANYTHING, even a glimpse and I get so sick, but this man has the amazing ability to read while he walks and I have even seen him turn the pages!

‘Tiny Weights Stepper’ is a woman who must be training for SOMETHING, God only knows what, as she is out at three different times of the day…I have seen her early mornings on my way to a job, in the afternoon when I am heading to another or going for supplies, and at the end of the day when I am leaving the island.  She can’t be 5 feet tall and she can’t weigh more than 90 pounds and she jogs the tiniest slowest steps I have ever seen and always carries small dumbbells in each hand.

‘Holding Hands Couple’ is my favorite.  They must be year round residents here as, like the post office, neither the rain nor the snow nor horrid humidity, stops them.  They often wear matching clothes and they are always holding hands.  I have never seen them side by side and not hand in hand.  Yesterday I watched them avoid a pot hole and step up onto a broken curb and noticed that they both had to adjust their pace…and I wondered, do they hold hands because they love each other so much, or as they are rather old, do they hold hands for balance?

‘Hot Mamma’ is a new one this season…she has long blonde hair and a rockin’ body and is pushing the most fabulous orange stroller I have ever seen.  She walks, jogs, and runs.  She appears to have no giggly bits whatsoever and giving birth to whatever is in the stroller did nothing to ruin her figure.

On my way home from work last night, tired and aching after a very hard day, I swerved into the shoulder, and when I straightened out, noticed ‘Tiny Weights Stepper’ on her evening jog and laughed, wondering if she has names for all the people she notices every day too…maybe to her I am “too big silver truck girl.”

I suppose much like a favorite tree, or great architectural masterpiece, or broken bench that other commuters notice every day on their rides to work, these people are my map markers.  I know I am in Surf City when I see ‘Holding Hands Couple’ and I know I am in Harvey Cedars when I see ‘Dead Man Running’ but mostly I guess I know where I belong…seeing the sights of my day, day in and day out, week after week, making my way in the world, even if my world is just a tiny barrier island…

It’s not insignificant, to love somebody…to open your heart, to share your secrets, your fears, and your wishes.  Opening yourself up like that leaves us vulnerable.  If you, as I so often do, wear the proverbial hearted sleeve, then you know how easy it is to have your hopes dashed, your silly dreams shattered, or your heart broken. You want a person to want to tread carefully on your dream path and you hope, with every new relationship, that the person won’t stomp all over it.

I know two women who are still in love with the boy they fell in love with as teenagers.  They don’t have to share secrets or fears or wishes, as their partner has been with them every step of the way.  With those of us who try and fail repeatedly to find “the one” or at the very least a right one, we have to go through those motions again and again…how much do I share?  how much do I tell?  do I tell him my deepest wishes and wants?  do I keep my dreams to myself?  I’ve read a quote many times about how we all have baggage and that the trick is finding someone who wants to help us unpack…those who have long-term relationships filled their suitcases together, we who stumble through the obstacle course of love time and time again accumulate more and more as we grow older…the baggage, the skeletons, the regrets.  I think most of all we simply want somebody to love us regardless of the weights we carry.

I suffer with the illness of hopeless romanticism, I always have.  Some would say it’s a serious character flaw, to be so dreamy-eyed and hopeful when everybody knows that half of all marriages fail, so surely more than half of all relationships do as well.  But perhaps others would say it is brave, to dream of romance in a world where there is a never-ending cycle of unhappiness for so many.  Brave to, again, try to find somebody who fits me, somebody who wants to share my life, somebody to make plans with, wish on shooting stars with, maybe grow old with.  I know some just give up…but then what?  Love fills us to overflowing when it is new…the excitement, the spontaneity, the wonder of it all…but when it is no longer new it fills us with something else…ease, contentment, peace, a feeling of “belonging” to somebody.

It has been one year and one day since I got a text message from a friend that a boy wanted my phone number and was it okay to give it to him.  This boy and I had just “met” on Facebook, and we had written each other a couple times, we were in the -getting to know each other- phase.  Unknown to each of us at the time, we had both recently come out alive from draining relationships.  Maybe we jumped in too fast, maybe we got caught up in the excitement and in the newness we took off too quickly, maybe we were both just so happy that there was another chance for us both…I don’t know, but it all happened rather swiftly and we both had a lot of baggage.

I always said I would never date a man with kids, I used to think that if we were on a sinking ship, he’d grab his child before mine…but now my child is a wife and a mother, and I am in love with not only a man but with his child.  I anticipated this time of my life as having total freedom, no more obligations to anybody but myself, but now that has changed.  I love a man who still has 10 years or more of parenting to go.  That is a price I guess to pay, for love.  I now have all the freedom I ever dreamed of, but love a man who does not.

I have helped him this year to unpack and he has helped me tame some of my silly girl dreams.  I love him very much and I like him very much, and to me they are very different things.  He is my friend above all and that means the world to me.  We both often say or write things to each other in haste, and we both apologize too often when we hurt each others feelings, but every day I know him I want to know him more.  I am well aware that there is nothing binding us together, no shared rental agreement, no marriage certificate, no jointly owned dog…there is nothing that makes us “stay” together but the desire to continue to try to grow in love.  It’s not been a smooth year, for either of us…we’ve both had some twists and turns and some highs and lows.  I will just write that I am going to work very hard to focus on what is, not what isn’t, be mindful of the present and attempt to not dwell on the past or anticipate the future.  With two words either of us can end this, “I’m done” speaks volumes.  It means I am no longer interested in making this love work, I am no longer interested in working on this love.  I have never said these words and I hope I never do.  Relationships are dark and light, good days and bad days, affectionate days and distant days…but over time the good is more than the bad, and that tells me it is worth it…whatever it is.  My heart is brave and I wake up every day and think to myself, I care for this person, and I am going to appreciate this solstice season for all that it is…the longest days of light, the shortest nights of dark.

It is no exaggeration, and I can double-check with my sister if my memory is accurate or if my mind is playing tricks, as gray matter often does, to write that I can count on one hand the number of times in my whole life I heard my father raise his voice.  Sure, we got punished when we misbehaved, but he never EVER lost his cool…no yelling, no curse words, no exhaustion over his screaming, bickering, disrespectful, or unruly daughters…none of that.  All we heard, slowly and succinctly and without a hint of regret was, “one… two…three.”  If and when he got to ‘three’ the next three words were the most unbearable for our wee ears to hear, “get the stick.” 

We had this thin long stick, and it was the choice object with which to spank us in our house and it was just one –whack!– seldom on the butt cheek, almost always on the palm of the hand…and it STUNG so much, but in retrospect, it did not sting nearly as badly as the knowing we had made our father mad.  I can still see my own little hand and my sister’s with our fingers balled up tight and hear my Dad’s voice saying, “open up your hand, it’s going to hurt more on your knuckles” and we, fearfully and hesitantly opening up our palms for the one sharp smack!  It hurt us more to have upset him, despite his truly remarkable skill of never appearing to be or behaving as if he were upset, than it did to get spanked.  His ease of cool and calm and control was I’m sure part of what made us so dearly want to be good for him.

I’m quite sure a Freudian scholar would tell us, when I next write about how we frequently deliberately misbehaved for our poor mother, mostly because she did so often lose her cool, calm, and control, that it was a classic Oedipal/Electra complex, that we so desired to make our father happy and so frequently made an effort to make our mother go ballistic.  I can only make an assumption that we learn how to parent by how we are parented.  My Bigdad, my Dad’s father, commanded so much respect from us, with, what appeared to be so little effort on his part, that I guess my dad just learned how to achieve this through his own childhood.  Very often in my daughter’s life, as I had no partner or husband with which to balance me, I found I was a mix of both my parents on any given day…I was sometimes super cool and my daughter respected me very much and I was sometimes a total wing nut, screaming and yelling and door slamming, I am sure making my daughter snicker that she had made me go ballistic, and not respecting me one single bit.

When customers sometimes say to me, “you’re just like your Dad” I don’t know that they realize, one, how much it means to me, and two how wrong they are.  I know they are referring to my love of work and my desire to do a good job and I take it as the greatest compliment.  There are however so many ways in which I am not at all like my Dad, it takes much more than one hand to count them.  For example, there are things about both my parents that perplex me, like how they have the money and the time to travel anywhere, but don’t care to, that they have the money and the time to go out to dinner and try any new restaurant and any new meal on any given night, but don’t care to,  like that they never voted for Bill Clinton but voted for George W., twice!!!  The differences could take both my hands and feet for counting!  The fact is, despite what I think are some of our major differences, my desire for a happy life & a loving family & a beautiful home &  work that provides both  joy and income & my understanding of making ‘plenty of deposits in my karmic bank‘, remind me that in these ways, I am just like my Dad.

There is nothing I would not do for either of my parents.  Despite my frequent clashes with my mom, as I’m told is so common between mothers and daughters, I still love, honor, and respect both my parents, and appreciate them deeply.  I know so many women my age who have no parents, or had terrible parents, or had only one or the other, neither of which proved to be an advantage, and I know how lucky I am, I truly do.  I watched my mother closely last week after a freak accident at home, in which my father was badly injured, keep her cool, calm, and control, in a way that I did not expect.  She impressed me, tremendously…It was the first time in my life I have ever seen my Dad scared, and it scared me nearly to death, but my mother stepped up and did not convey any of the fear that I think she felt, she was so awesome, and I realized, she was so awesome for my Dad more than for herself.

I realized that perhaps part of the beauty of their 47 year-long marriage is that they both desire to please the other, they do not want to disappoint.  Similar I suppose to being good parents, raising children who do not want to disappoint, loving and disciplining children in a way that creates respect and a desire to please those they care about.  I guess I understood that it’s not a parenting issue,  it’s simply a love issue: We wish to please those we love, and I think I concluded that anyone who wishes to displease me, or did so deliberately in the past, does not or did not love me.  It was like a hospital waiting room epiphany.  I hope as I grow older I continue to find my own balance between the calm and the ballistic, the control and the freak-outs,  my Mom and my Dad.

If you, as I, have seen The Princess Bride dozens of times, you laughed a little when you read the title to today’s post.  If you have not seen this film, then it is lost on you totally and there is really no sense whatsoever in you continuing to read any further, unless perhaps you are bored or sleepless and if that’s the case, enjoy this little homage to my Dad and Mom.  June 11th, my parent’s anniversary, is always a day for me to think about what love means to me, what it means to a family, and how it makes or breaks a life lived as well as possible.  There are loves that are simply destined to fail, cause great heartache, end on very bad terms, or leave both or more parties gasping for a breath of air, and then there are those that just manage to thrive, despite the odds against them, or get better with time and patience, continue to grow and evolve, and straightforwardly manage to exist in a world that often makes it very, very hard for them to be.  On June 13th, it will be my daughter and son-in-law’s 9th anniversary.  I happen to be a person with the good fortune to be surrounded by love.

My father was once engaged to a different gal before he and my mom fell in love.  My parents were friends over many years; he being a summer boy and she being an island girl, back when this barrier island to which we here at the shore are all connected, was not quite so populated, and most everyone knew or was at least acquainted with everyone else, or so I am told…and the story goes that my Dad was letting this fiance  be in charge of saving for their future, and months later she took all the money they had saved and bought a guitar, and then he broke up with her, suffering (I can only assume) the realization she did not have the common sense that he was looking for in a mate…so it’s possible that I might have been a much cooler girl, had my mom been a guitar toting hippie chick from the beach, BUT I would not have the good fiscal sense and responsible money management ideals that I do have because my father ditched the hippie chick, weeks later went to the Ship Bottom  pharmacy bar and had my mom make him a soda, asked her out on a date, and fell in love with her, and only eight weeks later they married; a polite, kind, organized, sensible, practical girl from the beach…life mate material.  I’m quite sure neither of my parents ever gives a thought about the others past.  I think they are just glad every day that they found each other, fell in love, and made a life together that they continue to take care of.

Neither of my parents does anything, well, there is no other way to put it, half-assed.  If you ask my father to put in a shelf, run a water line, install a junction box, build a bed, fix a crack, design a picture frame, help you build your dream house…he does whatever the task at hand is with the care and precision of a genius surgeon, and to be clear, a master carpenter is exactly like a genius surgeon, but he puts together objects other than organs, skin, or bone.  If you ask my mother to hem a pant leg, sew a button, fix a tape dispenser, find an error in your checkbook, put new covers on your barstools, help you draw your blueprints for your dream house…she too returns to you a professional job of anything she’s been asked to do.  It seems to me, in this week of their anniversary that they love and care with the same attention to detail that they do everything else.  Ergo, I suppose what I learned most from my parents is that you can’t expect top of the line results if you don’t look at the problem, job, task, or situation, from the perspective of a person who accepts only top of the line results.  You have to want a positive outcome to get a positive outcome, be it in carpentry, sewing, or relationships.

I am the daughter of a great love story.  My daughter is the daughter of something akin to a tragedy.  Her daughters are the daughters of a boy and girl who fell in love at 18 years-old within days after meeting in South Carolina on spring break, a dramedy.  We are all characters in this tale of love.  Each of us has played roles at which we were quite skilled, Oscar nod worthy perhaps, and some we needed to develop more fully to even be considered for a Razzie …we act out our parts over the days of our lives in this family, we express ourselves with intense passion at times and with disconnected apathy at others, we are all flawed humans, but we are bound by the one thing that has no right way or wrong way to be...”this is true love- you think this happens every day?”

She wasn’t looking for love, let alone a prince, she just wanted a chance to get out of her work clothes and wear something lovely and go to the party…Cinderella has always been one of my favorite Disney movies, and truth be told, many times I have “blamed” some of these fairy tales of my youth for my occasional confusion about this ‘happily ever after’ business…  That she escapes in time to try on the shoe, and that it fits, oh my!!…the joy and excitement it brings out in me, still…she’s been working so hard, she is so kind and so loving…she deserves this…well, let’s just say to this day I get excited when her foot so elegantly slips into that glass shoe…

Last summer, eleven months ago today actually, I was not looking for love and did not expect to meet a prince,  I just wanted a chance to get out of my work clothes and wear something lovely and have some fun. I wanted to meet new people and see new things.  I wanted nothing more and had no expectations.  That I unexpectedly met a person as beautiful on the outside as he is on the inside was quite a fortuitous event.

My desire for a happy life in love notwithstanding, I had been “suffering” with a gratitude attitude problem for months…(can I call it ‘suffering’ if it is self-inflicted and purposeful…I’m thinking, no.)   This is not new to me, this inability, or really this resistance to accepting and appreciating all the good in my life: I am not unable to, I seem to choose, all too often, this twisty rut-filled muddy path rather than the manicured and trimmed and nicely edged with pavers path.  I am well aware, and have honestly always been, that I ought to simply be appreciative of all the wonderful, and to cease even recognizing, let alone contemplating, any of the not wonderful, and truth be told, there is and has always been, very little of the not so wonderful…

I get into such an internal rage sometimes that I am sure I could explode somebody’s head with my thoughts…I get into such an emotional funk sometimes that I just want to sit in the dark in my yard and deeply wish that the nearest human was miles and miles away…I get into such a teeth grinding eye rolling irritability that I say things in haste and then regret them.   A couple of weeks ago I worked alone for nine hours, there were no working exterior outlets for my ipod so I had music for only a couple of hours of battery life, and I can tell you, five hours with just the thoughts in my brain is not the best company…but, my thoughts began to change…

I started to not only realize, but to accept, that the WAY that I think and what I think about was and is infiltrating every aspect of my existence.  I started to force myself to stop the thoughts when they turned envious or ugly and to rethink the thoughts with a twist to the positive, to the optimistic.  And you know what?  Right!  It has started to sink in, deeply and thoroughly, and has made all the days of the last couple weeks better, and every day my thoughts seem to be better than they were the day before.  It’s working.

I’ve been told by a few people of my past that I had a “problem” that my problem of being unable to be -PRESENT- was my problem…nothing else was wrong or bad in my life, but my inability to think rightly.  It’s a gift, I have finally learned, and am learning to give myself, it is the best present, learning to be present.  Contentment with all that is good and all that is now is something precious.  I always knew this, I just could not seem to BE this.  I’ve ready plenty of books telling me, “it will work” but I suppose, like every living thing, it has to evolve on it’s own time to get to it’s full potential.  Early last weekend, I became teary eyed watching television; seeing the suffering people in a small town in Oklahoma sort through tons of debris that once was their lives, while I was sitting on my extremely comfortable Crate & Barrel sofa in my dream house…and then a short story of a family with five children, all of whom need heart transplants, suffering with worry…and I realized I was tearing up, with this odd mix of sadness and happiness.  So sad for those who have so much trouble and so happy for the life I am living, right here, right now.  I felt so much gratitude, like it was oozing through my veins…

It was a beautiful feeling, and a strange sensation…I realized I was becoming, finally, mindful.  I was perhaps starting to grok the concept of ‘isness.’  I did not need three fairy godmothers and no magic wands were involved, nobody had to sing Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo to me.  I was just hanging out on the sofa with a boy who loves me.  I started reflecting upon how lucky I feel that I feel more “me” (the good me, the true me, the authentic me) with this person than I have ever felt with anybody.  That together we share these three beautiful little girls, none of which are mine, and that they are smart and clever and funny and healthy.   That we have all that we really need and most everything that we really want. On Sunday I decided to give myself a gift of being totally present and doing only what I wanted to do, not anything that I had to do.  I took a short nap in the sun, I read a book, I listened to music, I walked around the yard and rather than look at a single weed that I chose not to pull, I looked at all the buds, the new bright green growth, the intense colors of the flowers that are already out, our veggie garden that is already double in size, the strawberries in the galvanized tub that were just hours away from turning their true full color…and I felt content in a way that I truly had not felt in a very long time, perhaps ever.  I felt a bit like all those strawberries, just being, patiently growing until it is the exact right time for them to ripen…

I had dinner and cocktails this weekend with my first friend from 1st grade.  I feel regrouped and revived and more ‘myself’  after spending some time with her.  I don’t know why, other than that she has seen me at every stage of my life; this fall it will be 40 years that we have known each other, and perhaps because she has known me always, she sees through any and all of my delusions, or bullshit, and cares not for anything but authenticity.

I realized Saturday night, slightly drunk on perfectly mixed margaritas and extremely full on homemade Mexican, that I am so NOT alone, I’m every woman…we, she and I, and us, women of our age, have so much in common, so many similar things going on at once, that there is nothing I have felt or wondered about that she, or any of you, have not.   We talked about women we know, women we know of, women to whom we are related, and ourselves…and I realized, perhaps for the first time in a long time, there is not much at all different about us, ANY of us.

We all share the same insecurities, dream the big dreams, laugh and cry and love and loathe…Some of us do it privately and some of us do it publicly.  We talked about money, family, gray hairs, wrinkles, skin, sleeplessness, energy or lack thereof, responsibilities, relationships, worry, elation, and envy…we talked about how we  have all kissed so many frogs over the years and some have found a prince and some are still searching, hoping there is another pond or stream she hasn’t found.  We talked frankly with one another, shared things that were on our minds, issues that were bothering us, things that had recently made us laugh or smile or cry…I got a lot off my mind that has been heavy in my heart for months, said things that I had to get off my chest and she listened, commented, nodded understandingly, asked valid questions and most of all, did not judge me…she just let me be, and I extended the same courtesy to her.

I realized in my hours with her, we all, us women of the world, are so much alike, we suffer with feeling criticized, we struggle with wanting to be the best versions of ourselves, we look at the pictures in magazines we look at each other in the grocery store, most of us look in the mirror before we leave the house and think, “well this is the best I got, here I am world.”   I realized while spending time with this lifelong friend that we are all guilty of perpetuating the madness…in that we ALL see each other every single day and think what we think, you know you do it too…and we have to stop.

We have to be kinder to each other, we have to be more supportive of each other, we have to judge less and accept more.  We are “sisters” and we have to be nicer to each other.  I too roll my eyes when I see women ‘too old’  to be wearing clothes and shoes made for 17 year olds, I too snicker in my mind when I see women going up to the beach with more hair spray and makeup on than I’d wear to a coronation, I too grin when I see the covers of the rag mags with stars looking not at all camera ready, I too sigh when I am annoyed by some old lady moving too slow either in her car or with her shopping cart in front of me..but I don’t like it, and I understand, more clearly with each passing year, that I will be her someday…

We are all at some time in our life, not enough, or too much, and I think the world would be so much easier to live in if we all, we women, we sisters, could just be comfortable in our skin, every day and accepted fully…too fat, too skinny, too much makeup, too many wrinkles, too fancy, too frumpy.  I decided yesterday morning that I am going to try to compliment every women with whom I have direct contact from now on if at all possible.  Say something, say ANYthing, positive, or uplifting, or kind, perhaps even be kind in silence, like a smile or a nod or an understanding glance.  I know that I am a better person and act like a better person when I feel good about myself. PERIOD.  I am a better partner, friend, and mother when I am happy with myself.  I suppose we all are.  So my effort is to try to make others happy too, by being happy, by being kind, by being understanding and accepting…I’m every woman, and they are me.