Does a Clock Worry When it's Time to Unwind?

Motherhood clockworks:
the balanced pendulum swings 
in constant motion. 

Tug the weights too much
- pendulum energy shifts - 
wrecking ball mood swings. 

Inspired by all the mothers we celebrate this month, the amazing women of Mommitment, as well as this week's prompt from Haiku Horizons. 

one for my babies & one more for the road

Give me another. 

Slice of cake? Coffee? Wine? No. 

Hug mom - one last time. 

Inspired by my dear friend The Shy Poet, as well as this week's prompt from Haiku Horizons. 

Lifesavers & Lipsticks: Starting Small

Somewhere I have a black and white photo of my mother’s purse, hanging off a tree limb, on the edge of a beach in Maine. It’s not a particularly great photo. But I still remember the moment I took it, thinking it looked odd and a bit lonesome. 

We’d been at my cousin’s wedding in New Hampshire. The day after the wedding was overcast and rainy. Instead of driving south to head home, Mom first drove north. Just so we could stop for a while at a beach. She needed to see the ocean; walk in the sand. Like the photograph, there's not much to the story. It was just a very “Mom” thing to do. Like hanging her purse on the tree. 

As parents I think we all know those glittering, undeniably exceptional moments when you want to stop time. People often talk about that split second when the gauze slips over your vision & you want the world to just stop so you can soak in all the perfection. No crying, kiddos giggling, everyone content & enjoying the same slice of time? 

I live for those moments. Or maybe it’s that I live in them. I’m not sure, but they rock. 

My hair combed flat with a wet comb, stretched tight into a section and then “snap!” Over an over, Mom dipping the comb in the water glass, rolling my hair in those pink foam Goody curlers. Then she’d tuck my little head into the 60s bonnet hair dryer. You know, the kind that was like a big shower cap that inflated with warm air. It was so loud, but the air always felt as wonderful and warm as my mommy’s smile. 

Do you ever wonder if your kids see that moment? Recognize that perfection? Does it imprint on their brains the way it does ours? 

Lately I wonder more & more - are my children holding on to the same moments? 

Sitting in the open back end of the car, with the garage door open, watching the rain splatter in the suburban streets. Hoping for lightning so we could count until the thunder clap hit us. Sometimes we’d have to snuggle in jackets, or blankets, or huddle together. Usually there was no real conversation. We were just listening. Together. 

As the calendar turns to May I have no choice but to think almost constantly of my mom. As a child the month of May was Mommy’s month. Not only is there mother’s day, but my mom’s birthday is the 19th. Often we would end up celebrating her on back to back weekends. But after she died, well, I’m sorry, May, you officially became My Least Favorite Month.

I have decided that a decade of holding a grudge against 1/12 of the calendar is probably long enough. So this year I’m working hard at shifting my focus off of what is missing, to what I was lucky enough to have. 

Which, by the way, is monumentally hard. 

With all hard things the advice is to start small, right? So I’m making a point to recall all the small moments. 

Lifesavers. Along with the usual tissues, lipsticks, combs, and whatnots, as a child it seemed Mom's purse was almost certain to have Lifesavers. She liked all kinds of hard candy, but those little fruity rings were second only to dried out gummy bears. The oddity of gummy bears that had been purposefully left out to harden didn’t start until I was much older, though. 

As a kid, I could dig through the tissues and probably find a few linty orange Lifesavers to swipe. Actually, Mom was pretty liberal with handing out the orange ones. (Naturally, I thought it was a treat, until I realized that she just didn’t like orange candy.) The absolute best was when she had a whole role of cherry or butter rum. 

I spotted a roll the other day in a checkout line, and in a flash I was 6 years old, digging in my mommy’s purse. I could practically smell the Revlon lipstick blotted Kleenex. Then that moment of delight when she would say, “Sure baby. Here you go.” 

So much sweeter than the candy. 

Do you have a favorite moment with your mother, grandmother, aunt, etc? What moments with you are you hoping the children in your life will remember when they are grown? 

I would love you to share them with me! 

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Just in time for Mother’s Day! 
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How I Found MY Prince in a Pile of Frogs

Every now and again I’ll be chatting with people who have older kids and they will ask “How old were you when you started dating?”  

This question always stumps me, because I was never really one to “date” at any point. Sure, long before I was “allowed” to go out with anyone, I had boyfriends. Or I didn’t, which was fine too. But even after I was out of my parents’ house, I wasn’t really a “go out on a date” kind of person. As a singleton in my 20s, living in NYC, I tried dating websites, but all I found was a plague of frogs waiting to be unleashed.  

Now that I'm thinking about this, my mom actually encouraged me to go on more dates. Sometimes this was rejected by me in favor of fun with friends. But more often, time and again really, I ended up diving right into long term relationships.  I imagine the restless nights mom had, worried I was going to run off to get my MRS degree before I finished college. 

She need not have worried. Maturity, they say, is what comes with age. Wisdom is said to come from experience. I considered the lack of these qualities in most of my boyfriends as a strong reason for not getting married young. 

Naturally, I watched many friends walk down the aisle in their twenties. Some of those unions were successful, others were very much not. To my observation, however, age plays no role in the divorce rate. 

Growing up I just had an understanding (reinforced by my mother) that when it came to getting married, it was better to wait. Both my parents were married/divorced prior to marrying each other. As it happens, my husband’s father was also divorced prior to his marrying my mother-in-law. 

It’s therefore interesting, I think, that Hubs was married for close to a decade & in the process of divorcing before we ever met. While I wasn’t married before, I too had been in a long term live-in relationship. If you want to get technical, it was a domestic partnership. 

I suppose it is worth noting that at the time in NYC a domestic partnership was actually intended for same-sex couples to have a "separate but equal" alternative to marriage. It was also a way hetero couples could legally co-mingle without actually taking the plunged. In my head, I saw it as a step toward marriage. Looking back, I’m pretty sure my partner saw it as a sidestep.

This was the relationship I was in when mom died. I’ve said before that after her death I ran from responsibility and kept running until I found someone who made me want to be a grown up again. So it should come as no real shock that after her death my “Legally Not Married” status suited me just fine. True, I’d have protested this at the time, but I was very clouded in those days. Frankly I made poor decisions with fierce abandon. 

Spoiler Alert: The “someone” I was referring to? The guy I now refer to as Hubs. 

"The problems of your past are your business. 

The problems of your future are my privilege. 

That's all I have to say, that's all I need to know."

~John Watson, to his wife Mary, in Sherlock ~

Obviously when our paths joined, my husband and I each had a past. There is always the tricky bit when you first meet, right? How to paint yourself in the best light? 

I was 34, and after nine years in The Big Apple I was finally living life the way I imagined it would be.  I no longer felt a need to try and hide part of myself to please a significant other. Honestly, that shite is exhausting. Suddenly I found myself chatting up someone who seemed even less interested in all that silly preening than I was. 

Better still, in the same way I knew we could have a fight without blowing the whole damn relationship up, we both came in with a "take me as I am" outlook. Maybe that doesn't sound romantic, but my eyes saw the perfect prince to my princess in a tarnished tiara.

We spoke of things in our early months together that I'd never felt safe to talk about with any significant other. You know, the sort of things you in trust to your best friends and swear them to never tell anyone ever? That stuff. Without ever saying it in so many words it was clear: he was asking about my past to know and understand me, not to judge me and someday use my mistakes as leverage in our relationship. 

Not that there aren't still things to learn, of course. One of the best parts of marriage is you can spend a lifetime getting to know someone, especially someone who had 3 or 4 decades of life lived before you got them. I can't speak for Hubs, but every day I gain a little more knowledge. Sometimes it makes me love him more. Sometimes I shake my head & decide I still love him anyway. 

Occasionally on my Facebook page I will post examples of obscure ways I realize my husband is my perfect match. I call these moments #ReasonsWhyWeWork. Romantic, right? Whatever, we may balance the high level of sarcasm with our tender moments, but this is way more accurate than something all lovey-dovey. 

Mostly we are just wryly embracing the beautiful mess we have made of our lives - Together.  

This piece was inspired by, and written as part of the #MarchMarriageChallenge, co-hosted by 

The Eyes of a Boy & Huppie Mama. 

You can find all of the amazing marriage focused posts here. 

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How I Became A Grown Up

Flying across the Atlantic the other night I found the movie Wish I Was Here, written by Adam & Zachary Braff. Zach Braff also plays the lead. About 35 minutes into the film I paused it, and the following flowed out. 

Do you want to know when you really become a grown up? It's when you have to take care of your parent/guardian/whathaveyou. 

The day you realize you're the caregiver. That the balance has shifted on your scales. 

For a litany of reasons that I'm not delving into, I was the official decision maker as my mom lay dying in a hospital. 

My dad was on the other side of town, in a different hospital, & working his way back to mom. 

My brother, let's call him Daniel, was the one who lived closer. He had a wife & a gaggle of kids. I lived 6 hours away, in NYC, and I wasn't even 30. But it was my job, my responsibility, to talk to the doctors & relay info to my dad. 

Legally & practically, I made the decisions that ended her life. 

That sentence is bullshit. Not because it is untrue, it's not. I was the one. 

It's bullshit because that's a messed up thing for anyone. In the history of ever. Of course it happens every other minute all day long, but that's not any less screwy. 

So there was a moment in my life where I got to tell the doctors we were done with any heroics. I got to witness a parade of people giving my mom the weight of their sadness. I slept on a cot in her room, one of my girlfriends by my side, so I'd be there if something happened. 

I think my moment of clarity came when Daniel's best friend, by no small coincidence my ex-boyfriend, brought his rather pregnant wife to meet my dying mother. I'd just been explaining all the legal shite to Danny & I walk out to see everything I wanted to share with my mother walking down the hall. 

My life, unlived, passed through me like a ghost. 

And then I got to wait for my dad to arrive, because mom wasn't budging without talking to him. That's 100% true, btw. The goodbyes & pleas to mom to "let go" went on for days; my dad instead talked over the phone, telling her she better wait for him to get there. He'd spent a lifetime waiting for her to get ready, and by God, this time she would wait for him. 

Naturally, she did. Mom was wild eyed & desperate for dad. She couldn't talk by then. He arrived & so very soon after she left us. 

I turned 30 a few days later. But honestly, I had aged a decade in just a few weeks. 

Afterwards, I ran away. I ran from that knowledge for years after. I ran from being grown. From as many responsibilities as I could. 

To tell the truth, I kept running until I found someone who made me want to be a grown up again. 

But that's a different tale, for a different night of wine, altitude & brilliant Indie film.

Looking on the Bright Side - I am Queen

I have given myself many titles, but one of my favorites is Queen of Silver Linings. 

I don't know if I was always this way, looking for the bright side. I can remember watching Haley Mills in Pollyanna with my mother & kind of making fun of her for being all glassy eyed as Mom watched the little girl find her sunny outlook again. 

Somewhere along the way I learned if your world falls apart you need to believe there is a way out, otherwise there never will be. It's a self-fulfilling prophesy, right? Because if you don't believe there is a path back out of the darkness you won't look to find it. 

I'm not totally naive, nor am I trying to blow sunshine up your booty. Bad shite happens. A lot of it. I don't just mean on a personal level, of course. Listen I live in NYC; I was here on September 11, 2001. Life routinely turns on a dime & punches us in the throat.  

Long before that tragic day, Mister Rogers reminded us to look for the helpers. To shift your focus onto those who are working to make it better. Here in NYC, I've witnessed an extraordinary outpouring of kindness & generosity by ordinary individuals. First in the aftermath of the attacks. Two years later there was a massive blackout on the East Coast & I saw that same spirit of togetherness resurface immediately. Then again in the wake of Sandy, the storm that tore apart much of our region. 

I've been lucky, I guess. Those large-scale tragedies have never directly impacted my family. Just the run of the mill bad shite darkens the clouds in my sky. And yet I've witnessed the same empathy & kindness directed toward me, momentarily cutting the dark.

Still, I imagine most folks who meet me would never know I live with chronic pain. They'd never imagine all the surgeries I've had to repair my knees, my foot. They'd never know by looking about the losses, the poor choices, the humiliations. All the pieces of my life that I often feel are barely stitched up & held in place by a single fine thread. 

I used to feel like I wore a mask. A mask made of my choice to live without regret, my choice to look for the up-side, my choice not to focus on the pain but instead focus on what good things have resulted from that pain. So I worried I was being disingenuous. 

But I'm beginning to realize I don't have a false facade, after all. Rather, how I choose to view the world somehow shines from me, like the silver lining around a dark cloud. 

So I can say with hesitation or fear of misinterpretation - Serendipity is the Queen of Silver Linings.