A Mother's Musings and Mumblings

I was just at a professional conference in Utah where there was a series of workshops on mind-body interactions. I won’t credit the orgininator of this quote because I’d like to maintain his privacy, but I don’t think he’d mind me using it as a launch for tonight’s blog entry.

He said that we’re so busy as “Human Doings” that we forget how to be “Human Beings”.

There’s something to that. And yet, here I sit. The conference is over and I’m out on holiday for another week. The thought of going straight back to work after the adrenaline rush of a week at the conference was more than I could bear so I packed up the camping gear, borrowed a cooler and sleeping pads and rented a Prius to head out into the wilderness and drop off the grid. Hours into the desert we drove and finally arrived in Moab, Utah where we planned to spend the night. Pulling into the campground, I was concerned with pitching a tent in 106 degree weather. It turns out that there was a greater threat to my comfort here than the heat.

Wireless Internet.

Yup. In the middle of the Utah desert, sitting outside my tent, logged into the Internet and typing a blog entry.

Now, I didn’t log on in order to blog. I love y’all (especially after the comments on 5 weeks and change) but not enough to interrupt my trek off-grid to check in. Nope, I logged on in order to see if there were options for horseback riding in Telluride for Thing 1 and I. I logged on to find something to “DO”.

I don’t think it’s just me. I think that all of us are programmed by our society to be in a constant state of “doing” to the absolute exclusion of just “being”. The thought of just “being” for some period of time is work for us – sitting still and just being is stressful. We long for it, but given the opportunity to actually do it we find ourselves guilt-ridden and plagued by thoughts of everything in our lives left undone – everything that we need or want to do or that someone else needs or wants us to do. “Being” isn’t enough.

So this is it from the road. I have no intention of checking in again until I’m home and firmly planted back in the rat race. Until then, I’m going to be spending my days and nights remembering how to be a human “being” – and leave the “doing” for another time.

Namaste.

So a month has passed and my body is again reminding me of
what my brain is struggling to come to grips with. I’ve always wanted three
children. Always. When I was married to WF, that was the plan but we didn’t
make it long enough to see it happen. Guido came along and we also planned
for  another child. Well, I planned, he
lied about it – like so many other things in our relationship. He never wanted
another one but told me that he did until after the wedding. As my therapist
says, boys lie. 

Somewhere along the line I thought I’d come to grips with
the fact that I was only ever going to have two children. Two beautiful,
bright, loving, well-adjusted children. Why I would want more is beyond me.
Except that I do. But I’d made my peace, right?

Yeah. Made my peace in the same way that I’d made my peace with
my mother in the days before Thing 1 was born. Made my peace with her decisions
before something happened to open my eyes to the fact that she was little more
than an egg donor who’d turned her back on me the instant I was born and gone
on to make my life as miserable as demoniacally possible. (I can’t say humanly –
she was too ambitious for that and seems to have passed that ambition on to
me). When Thing 1 was born, I knew that the peace I’d made with my “mother”
was just an illusion. And the events of last month have shown me that the peace
I’d made with only ever having two children was just as much an illusion as
understanding my mother‚Äôs decisions and actions. 

So here I am. Stuck. My body is doing a reproductive death
spiral. My window of opportunity to have a third child is closing fast. I’ve
wasted four years with a man who told me we shared that goal and lied. I’m now
in a wonderful relationship with a man who also said that he always wanted
three children. But the relationship is new and he’s said plenty of other
things, too. Things like he already has two beautiful, healthy daughters and
why would he push it? Things like shouldn’t we have a more long-term
relationship before talking about such things?

He’s right, of course. But I know, all too well, that my
body isn’t going to just hang around and wait for that magic day to come when
we‚Äôre ‚Äúready‚Äù to take that step. And then the comparisons start. 

I can’t help it. My mind just goes there. It’s a hang up of
mine and always will be. That girl. Sick of hearing about it? Find another blog
to read. We’ve only been together six months. That’s nothing. Yet it’s two
months longer than I’d been with Guido when we got married. And two months less
than when Iggy married HER.

Yup. Her. She who shall remain nameless. Oh, I went to the
trouble of thinking of a name for her here but I’ve decided not to give her
that. Naming her would be to give her an identity, a space in my reality
greater than she deserves. This creature who Iggy chose to impregnate not once,
but twice, shares a bond with him that I’m realizing I will never, ever have.
Worse yet, he defends her right to be a hypocritical, selfish creature who is not worthy
of my respect. It went so far as me having to promise not to say anything bad
about her. I’m clearly having trouble with that. And if anyone ever asks me to
say something nice about her I’m afraid that they may be in for a surprise. I
learned at the knee of the master how to deliver a backhanded complement.

She moved across country to take Iggy’s children away from
him and continues to do everything she can to marginalize his existence in
their lives. All this while I have not only hamstrung my own career but sworn
to live within walking distance of WF so that he’ll have as much access to them
as he’d like. I would never treat Iggy the way she has and yet she was worthy
of bearing his children and I am not. And never will be. And he defends her. Look,
salt AND battery acid in the wound. It‚Äôs a twofer! 

Six months ago this didn’t bother me….well….it didn’t bother
me much. But in light of recent events I’m back to being disturbed. Not the
usual, eccentric pagan kind of disturbed but the bothered, crying and angry
kind of disturbed.  I‚Äôm reminded how much
I wanted something that I can’t have. Something no one else cares if I have or
not. What’s worse is that I don’t even feel like I can tell people what’s
happened for fear of judgment – judgment of my role in the events and, worse,
judgment of my feelings about the events.

The worst part of all of this is the impact it is having on
my relationship with Iggy. He doesn’t know what to do or say to me when this
subject comes up. And why should he? I’m the one who is more involved in the
situation. But it puts a wedge between us. A wedge that grows when I see his
beautiful face and know that he’s passed those features along to two children
already. And is happy to stop at that. A wedge that grows every time SHE does
something to marginalize his role in the lives of those children in a way that
I could and would never do. A wedge that I feel as painfully as the pressure in my brain
after the flight today and am just as powerless to mend

I will not get my hopes up. I will not get my hopes up. I will not get my hopes up……..

You Are 72% Burned Out

You are very burned out. You need a huge break from your responsibilities, starting as soon as possible. And you need this time to reevaluate what you really want out of your life. Because you’re working hard and going no where… and that would burn anyone out!

I’m having one of those days where I feel suspiciously like Agrajag muttering: “Oh, no. Not again.” Yes, I may be wrong. Heck, knowing me I must be wrong but I’m clinging to the theory that even a broken clock is right twice a day (perhaps it would be more accurate but less optimistic to say “Even the paranoid have enemies”) so I’m going to ramble.

Besides, it’s my blog and you can click on by anytime you’d like.

Let’s go back to Guido for a bit. He wasn’t my first experience with land mines but he was the more recent one and certainly about the most traumatic. Guido had two kids. Let’s refer to them as Emma and Spawn, shall we? Spawn ruled the house when he was here – in large part because anything Spawn wanted, Spawn knew how to get. If Guido wouldn’t give it to him, Spawn would call Mommy and Mommy would call Guido and Guido would cave. Why? Because “Mommy” knew what was best for her children and Guido had to keep her happy for the benefit of her children.

It wasn’t just Spawn, either. This behavior extended to Trixie, too (sorry, I can’t keep calling her “Mommy” and y’all wouldn’t like the other name I have for her). Anything she wanted, Guido would provide for her because, as mother of his children, it was his job to keep her happy. Money, a shoulder to cry on, inspiration to get though the rough times, last minute schedule shifts, someone to yell at, whatever she needed, whenever she needed it. There’s a phrase for that behavior……let me see if I can remember it…….

For me, it was like living in a mine field. If I expressed displeasure at Trixie, Guido may or may not come to her defense over mine. If I tried to set limits, it was seen as a direct attack on Spawn (Guido never really considered Emma). Trixie, on the other hand, could say or do anything she wanted about anyone she wanted (read: me) and the pat answer was always “I can’t control what she does, she’s my ex.”  Does that sound a bit selective to anyone else?

Of course my first experience with this was JD and Annie. JD would drop anything, anytime if Annie needed something and it never set well with me. But in the end, Annie was more afraid of me than hateful and she always encouraged their children to like me. Up to and including being ok (outwardly at least) with me seeing their oldest off to prom and helping with some last minute sewing repairs on THE dress. Add all of that to the fact that my kids were never around their kids and the situation wasn’t too painful.

Still, when Guido and I imploded I said that I would never date another man with kids. And along came Iggy. Now, putting a new name in here deserves a moment of introduction. Why? Because I don’t want the first thing written about Iggy to be negative. Iggy is a really great guy. My girls love him and he is genuinely fond of them. He treats me well and things appear to be going really well for us.

Which, I think, is why the few land mines come as such a shock.

Iggy has two children. Hello? McFly? Did you not say that you weren’t doing this again? Yeah, well. Here we go.

The two children are great. Really great kids who will never earn the title “Spawn”. But, implicit with the presence of two children comes…….(wait for it)……..the ex wife.

<!–pause for me to beat my head against desk>

The ex who still finds it acceptable to call Iggy when she needs emotional support. The ex who can write, with a straight face, that she knows Iggy better than anyone. The ex who can say anything about anyone in front of the kids. The ex who was given permission by Iggy to do what she’d like regarding his custody of his children – because it was best for her.

Now if there is one thing I learned from Guido it was that all this “Baby-momma drama” isn’t the fault of the “Baby-momma” but the fault of the “Man in the Middle”. With Guido I learned to place the responsibility squarely on HIS shoulders – Trixie didn’t owe me squat, Guido did.

But what about Iggy? I’m not his wife. What does one “owe” a girlfriend? My value structure would say you don’t owe a girlfriend squat. But that makes me feel relegated to the role of mistress – with Baby-momma squarely in the role of wife. And that, my friends, has a high Ick factor. Doubly high given that she’s getting married soon.

Iggy tells me that I should trust him. And I do trust him with nearly everything in life. But when it comes to men and their ex-wives I’m afraid experience has taught me that “trust” needs to be earned and not given blindly. Blindfolds just make it harder to find your way back out of the mine field with all your appendages intact.

When Thing 2 was little, WF used to fret that we hadn’t done enough to teach her how to read. Thing 1 started Kindergarten reading at a first grade level and I intentionally didn’t work with Thing 2 on reading just so that she would start Kindergarten not knowing how to read.

I know, I know. What kind of Mother am I? My reasoning was that Thing 2 was going to be bored in school (as was Thing 1). But where Thing 1 has the ability to entertain herself quietly and in socially acceptable ways, Thing 2 entertains herself by causing chaos. The kind of chaos that would have me in the principal’s office on a regular basis. So I figured if she needed to learn how to read that would keep her busy for at least a month. Besides, I told WF, she’ll be caught up by the end of first grade if not sooner.

So here we are at the end of first grade and Thing 2 is plowing through the Nancy Drew books as fast as you please. Wonderful. Great. I’m thrilled.

EXCEPT

When did my darling 7 year old decide that it was acceptable to answer a request for action given to her by the legitimate authority of her parent with “Yeah Mom. Just wait until I finish this Chapter”???

I’ve always said that I will never discourage or take issue with reading but somehow we need to establish some ground rules here about the whole “listening” thang…….

Anyone ever miss anything that they didn’t know they wanted or had? You know. Like, say, you love your job (OK, so I can’t wrap my brain around that and typing it is difficult) and everything is rolling along just like you like it. Then, one day, out of the blue you learn that you’re going to get a promotion.

You didn’t ask for it. You didn’t know it was coming. Heck, you’re not entirely sure you want it. I mean, you love your job and a promotion means doing some new things and giving up some old ones.

But you’re excited. Over time you allow yourself to get used to the idea of this change and what it will mean. You come to terms with what you’ll give up and really get enthusiastic about the new bits.

Then.

Poof.

You find out that the whole thing just isn’t going to happen. Sorry. Maybe someday it will but not now. Carry on.

Before any of this happened, you were happy. You liked where you were and what you had. You never even got anything new – Hel, you weren’t even sure you wanted anything new! But the thought of it, the promise was enough. Something shifted and now all that made you happy before feels like settling for less that you could have.

It’s like finding something you didn’t know you were missing and then having it taken away.

It’s a tough time to be a dog. At least in my neck of the woods. For starters we just celebrated July 4th. That means fireworks. No, not just the community display in some common area or park held for the enjoyment of all. That would be what I remember from my youth. But these days, in these parts, an Independence Day celebration means fireworks every night for a week or more. Fireworks set off by neighborhood teens mere yards from my house. Adult supervision optional.

But that’s another vent.

When you add to the mix the typical weather pattern for this time of year – hot with afternoon thunderstorms – you have one very unhappy dog at my house.¬† The Old Man has always been a wuss when it comes to loud noises and I’ve never known why since he didn’t come into my life until he was almost a year old. Age has not settled his fears one little bit and so, last night, between midnight at 5 am, not a creature was sleeping not even a mouse.

He was on my bed every time there was thunder. Not just on my bed quietly at the foot of my bed but on ME on my bed. And if I could get him to the foot of the bed he shook until I felt like I was sleeping in a vibrating bed at some cheap motel. My mistake was not allowing this behavior. You see, this is the Old Man:

And this is the bookcase in the corner of my bedroom:

You know where this is going, don’t you?

He really does fit under that bottom shelf when he’s frightened. Well, he thinks he fits. And he’d be right if only he didn’t shake. But when he shakes the whole equation changes. He shakes, the bookcase shakes, the bedside table shakes and before you can say “Holy Sandman!” furniture is falling and taking books, papers, CDs and my alarm clock with it. The lamp went, too, making it hard to sort out what had happened until the fog in my brain cleared a bit.

So tonight I think the Old Man needs to sleep in his crate in the garage. No problem, right? This Pagan Queen is a farm girl at heart, I have no problem with four footed family members sleeping outside. There’s just one little hitch – really more of an issue for the other dogs than the Old Man, but I’m going to play on the dog theme for a bit.

Our County government, in it’s finite wisdom, has decided to pass a barking ordinance. Now, on the face of this it sounds great – shut your dog up or pay a fine/lose the dog. But in light of recent, and some not so recent, events I have to question this. Teens in my neighborhood are allowed to set off fireworks from dark until after midnight but if my dog were to bark that long I’d face a $500 fine, right? And cats are allowed to roam free but my dog is supposed to not bark at them when they decide to wander into our yard or my dog is the one to get confiscated by the government, not the cat.¬† I’ve eaten Swiss cheese with fewer holes in it than the logic in this ordinance! But, as a resident of this county I suppose I’ll figure something out. Something other than the Have-a-Heart traps that I’ll be putting out to collect the neighbors’ free range cats, that is. And don’t ask what the plan is for unsupervised teens……..I am a witch, remember?

Nostalgia has hit and I find myself thinking back to times gone by and wondering what, if anything, I might have learned. This is a theme that has shown up in my journal before but I thought, perhaps, I’d put it up on my blog. I say perhaps because this is going to be one of those posts that gets written over several days and sat on for a week or more before finally getting “published”.

In the words of the Indigo Girls:

There I am in younger days, star gazing,
Painting picture perfect maps of how my life and love would be
Not counting the unmarked paths of misdirection
My compass, faith in love’s perfection
I missed ten million miles of road I should have seen

So where have I been, who have I loved and what did I learn? There are some spots where a long relationship hasn’t taught me a thing and others where a very brief one taught me volumes. In light of that, I’m just going to ramble and see what makes sense.

Chuckles deserves mention although the irony here is going to be painful. He was depressed nearly all of the time we were together – as in, not functioning depressed, not the sort of depressed that the rest of us take Prozac for before we head off to our unfulfilling jobs everyday. I knew I shouldn’t have married him but we’d already lived together for a year and I felt like not going through with it would be a mark of failure. Likewise, when I “knew” it was over I couldn’t leave because I felt like that, too, would be failure.  Thus, the greatest lesson was that one person cannot make or break a marriage.

There was a second lesson there, too. He was so far gone – constantly threatening suicide or homicide or both – that I felt like I couldn’t leave. I worried that if I did, anything that he did would be my fault. I had to really reach the end of my rope before I could make a break and say “his actions are his responsibility alone”. I learned that I could not save someone who did not want to be saved.

And on the heels of that lesson, I met Shane. I crawled out of my marriage with very little left of myself in tact and that’s where he found me. It didn’t take him long to see that I needed more than he could give and so he bravely put a band-aid on my amputated dignity and sent me on my way. He showed me, vicariously, how to save yourself from being pulled into the kind of situation I’d had with Chuckles without being cruel. And, more importantly, he taught me how harmful it would be not to do that.

Along came WF. My own personal case study in opposites. Anyone remember the saying “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”? Well, WF taught me that the “Opposite of my nightmare is NOT my dream”. WF was everything that Chuckles wasn’t. I could list off the character traits one by one and show how they were just exact opposites. It seemed like perfection – a relief from all that had oppressed me. Until I realized that there were at least as many problems on that side of the pendulum as there had been on the other side.

Funny thing is that I saw this before we got married. And I married him anyway. Why? Well I can think of at least two reasons – I was already living with him and would have felt like a failure for not going through with it (for a Pagan I have some pretty conservative values, can you tell?) and because there was a big part of me that believed that he’d mellow over time. So the secondary lesson was “What you see is what you get.” Put another way: “The only time you can ever change another person is when they’re in diapers.”

Who’s next? JD, I suppose. Without waxing poetic about him I think I can say that he and I were compatible in a lot of ways. The one way that we weren’t proved to be our undoing. We didn’t share a goal. Without that, there was nothing to build for or toward. We had a good foundation but couldn’t agree on what to do with it. And no matter how good the foundation is, it’s not enough. For me anyway. So that taught me the absolute importance of a shared goal.

There are two names missing from this list: RG and Guido. I don’t know that I can speak intelligently to either of them at the moment but for opposite reasons. Guido is still a bit too fresh – it’s been over a year since I asked for a separation and I’m still processing everything. He was a liar and I fell for it and I’m still not sure why. Worse, I’m not sure I’ll be able to figure out why until I let go of some of the guilt I have about taking the Witchlets along with me on that nightmare ride. Besides, I think there’s a requisite amount of time you have to have before you can even see such things.

RG, on the other hand, would suffer from too much time and distance. That was so long ago that I dare say I’m not even the same person I was then. What did he teach me that changed me or that would have had a chance to last this long? I’m sure there’s more than one thing but there’s one that stands out the clearest in my mind – something he said early on to me that really stuck. I clung to this for years and I’ll be damned if he wasn’t right.

Way back then, I really felt out of place. I was a dweeb/geek/nerd/insert hurled insult of choice here. I looked the part. Funny how I know I was a cute kid but I sure as Hel grew out of it. And one day, RG told me I was beautiful. When I got done choking on my Pepsi and laughing my head off I told him that he needed to get his glasses adjusted. He replied that the other girls were “cute” but that I was beautiful. He said I might not see it, but in 10 years and once I was out of River City, I’d realize he was right. I clung to that for a decade, the thought that I was just a late bloomer and that somehow, someday, I’d be pretty enough that someone else would notice. RG was halfway around the world before I finally saw it, but I felt it long before that.

The lesson he taught me was the hope of change. That no matter what the mirror shows you today, there’s the hope that it will look better soon. Maybe not tomorrow, but if you keep the faith it will come. I forget that lesson from time to time but it’s still there, lingering.

Now, on to the next lesson. The teacher has been selected, I wonder what I’ll learn?

Yeah, look at the time stamp and tell me that I really wrote this at that hour of the morning. I made it some ridiculous hour just so that y’all would know this post was thrown in late.

Why?

Because I’ve been doing some writing and then thinking twice about posting it. So the posts are here but weren’t published because I just wasn’t sure about putting them out there. Something about today has made me reconsider so here you go. More insanity, all at once.

<!–I am becoming very aware of the fact that I only post when something is bothering me. Please don’t take this as a sign that my life is hopeless, rather, that those in my life who make me happy have also expressed a desire not to be mentioned here. Those who make me unhappy are on their own. –>

Good things happening all around me and here I am holding down the balance. There must be balance, right? The Tao Te Ching tells us in Chapter 2:

When people see things as beautiful, ugliness is created.

When people see things as good, evil is created.

Being and non-being produce each other.

Difficult and easy complement each other.

Long and short define each other.

High and low oppose each other.

Fore and aft follow each other.

For those around me to have such happiness implies that misery must exist somewhere. Thus, I am doing a public service by holding fast to my designated course in life at this moment. That course is to maintain the anchor at the bottom of the food chain. Yup. With the possible exception of the witchlets I am off the radar for most people. And really, that’s how it should be.

You heard me. This isn’t a pity party, put the cake away! Well, maybe just one piece. Oh! Chocolate! A little bigger piece…

Oops, got distracted.

I’m supposed to be at the bottom of the heap because someone has to be. My friends and family and everyone is happy or at least working hard to make themselves happy and someone is required to hold the balance. I’m just out of sync with everyone around me. There’s no sense in complaining about it – my time will come – and hopefully I’ll still be alive to see it. But for now I think it’s time to quit fighting. It doesn’t matter if WF makes my life difficult or if the Rat Terrier threatens me or if my BFF moves away or my sister is busy or if my life is doomed to be one big episode of “That Girl”. I need to accept all of that and just wait. Brush the dog, snarl at the cat, trim the vine that is eating my house and whistle in the dark while I wait. Because the Tao also says:

And right now, I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on “broken” and “empty”. “Twisted”? Well, I’ve had that one down for years but I’m still not sure “straight” is in my future…….

<!–We now return you to your regular program–>