Tag: empty nest

That Was Fast

Today is my youngest son’s 18th birthday.  Out of my four children, I only have one baby who isn’t technically an adult.  I have three “adult children.”  I remember for years when older women would comment on my kids’ cuteness, I would politely ask them if they had children and they would say something like, “Yes . . . well I mean, they’re all grown up now.”  When you are in that younger mom stage of life, you never imagine that you’ll be that older mom stammering out an awkward answer to the question, “Do you have kids?”  Yet, now, I am that awkward older woman with four, mostly grown children.

I have even more compassion for that older mother now.  That older mother has seen a lot. She’s been through a lot of joys and sorrows, and hopes and fears.  She’s had experiences that she never imagined having,  raising those kids to adulthood.  She’s filled with pride, joy, amazement, relief, nostalgia and wonder.  She’s filled with hope, awe, curiosity and questions of what to do next. She thought that maybe when the kids were older, she wouldn’t feel so vulnerable, but she now has come to the wisdom that her heart is walking around on multiple sets of legs, and those legs are walking farther away, going on Life’s wild adventures, leaving her heart even more exposed than maybe it has ever been before.  

So now, when a sweet, beautiful, frazzled young mother politely asks me if I have children, I say, “Yes, I have four mostly grown-up children. And they are wonderful.  Enjoy and savor your babies.  They are your most amazing, miraculous co-creation with Life.”

Ginger Kids

My two eldest sons are redheads or what now seems to be more commonly called “gingers”.  My youngest two children are brunettes.  I sometimes break them down to the “reds” and the “browns.”  When you have a big family, you’re always shortening things, categorizing; it’s just easier that way.  My husband and I are both brunettes so we were a little bit surprised, at first when our first little ginger was born.

It turns out that both my husband and I carry the recessive gene for red hair.  It’s the only way a “ginger” can occur.  Only 2 percent of the world’s population are natural redheads. Unfortunately, there are thoughts that someday, due to the fact that the recessive gene could go extinct, red-headed people will be a thing of the past.  How sad that would be!  My sons both have brown eyes, but if you are a natural redhead with blue eyes, you have the rarest combination on the face of the earth.  How lovely and special!!

I’ve always been attracted to redheaded people since I was a little girl.  The fact was so obvious, that when I was a little girl, my mother cut out a magazine article featuring redheaded children and she wrote, “Your future kids . . . ” on top of the article.  She was right!  I think redheaded people just exude warmth!  It’s not just their hair, it’s their whole energy field.  They radiate a fiery passion that just glistens out to the ends of their hair reminding us of just how exciting life can be.

I read once that you can’t be anonymous and be a redhead.  I believe that.  I bet that there are very few redheaded spies.  My eldest son won the yearbook senior superlative, “Most Likely To Always Be Remembered.”  He’s 6’2″ with a headful of curly red hair and a big, deep, loud laugh.  We took our eldest son to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico when he was two and when we were touring the local town, the elderly women would come up to him to touch his hair for luck.   He happily obliged.  He knows that he is lucky.

When we are young we want to “fit in”, melt in with the crowd.  I think redheaded people are blessed in knowing that they just don’t “blend in,” right from the very beginning so they don’t ever get caught up in that nonsense of sameness.  Now that I’m 47, I think I feel more internally redheaded in that sense, than I ever have been.  I like being an individual.  I feel more confident “owning” who I am.  Of course, at my age, my real hair color has become a mystery thanks to the marvels of my stylist, but if I ever get bored, red might be the color to try.

If I Want To . . . .

My husband loves to quote Coach Willie Taggart, “The only difference between a good day and a bad day is your attitude.  So go have a great day if you want to!”  We repeat this quote a lot to each other and to our kids, especially on Mondays.  It’s a big responsibility to have a great day.  There are so many obstacles in the way.  Traffic, cranky people, an off-putting comment, an overflowing in-box, less than good sleep the night before, all seem to be roadblocks to the choice of having a great day.  That’s the key word, though, right?  Choice.  We choose how we look at traffic, cranky people, annoying comments, huge workloads and sleepiness.

In today’s world, sometimes it doesn’t feel cool to be Pollyanna.  You are almost expected to be cynical and sarcastic, if you want to be considered smart and “in the know.”  In the end though, what matters more?  How you perceive others to consider you to be or how you feel at the end of another precious day in your life?  Traffic can be turned into the blessing of having a car, and having forced alone time to think and contemplate and rest, in your car.  Cranky people can be a lesson in empathy and sending a silent prayer or blessing that connects you and the upset person to a force that holds both of you in the Highest of esteem.  Annoying comments can be a lesson in self awareness as to why the comment pricked us and could there be merit or a lesson in the thought, despite its unfavorable form of transport?  Huge workloads force us to prioritize and take tasks, methodically, one at a time.  I read once that we are all going to die with our in-boxes full.  Again, it is looking at things in a different perspective.  Sleepiness is just our bodies telling us to remember to prioritize our rest.  A quote I often think of is that your body is your soul’s address.  Be a good landlord.

I don’t think having a great day is always an easy task in our modern world.  But it is a task that I think is definitely worth pursuing.  So, thanks Coach, I will have a great day.  If I want to . . . .

I’ll Just Wear My Feet

For most of my adult life I’ve worn high heeled shoes.  In fact, I would get so many comments on that fact that I used to joke that I had Barbie doll feet, so they weren’t capable of going flat.  When I do wear flats, I feel like I’m walking funny.  My friend mimicked my flat shoe walk one time and it wasn’t cute.  Can you say “quack, quack”?

As I’m getting older though, the heels that I wear are definitely more of the wedge variety.  I’m in awe of the women who can walk around in the spiked heels without grimaces on their faces.  When the Taylor Swift concert was over the other night, we saw many women carrying their spiked heels as they hobbled out to their cars.  Our Uber driver commented on the fact that he’s never seen women make it through any wedding without losing their heels for the comfort of their feet. He’s right.  I’ve come home from more than one wedding or Christmas party and dumped my shoes into the garbage can before I even walked through the door to my house, vowing never to wear those shiny, pointy, expensive little torture devices strapped to nails, ever again.

When I was a teenager, I babysat for a little girl who when I would tell her to put her shoes on, she would politely say, “No thank you.  I’ll just wear my feet.”  She was on to something.  I love walking around in my bare feet.  I’m pretty sure that is mostly what nature intended.  I’m pretty sure that our feet weren’t designed to sustain the pressure of a 4 ton elephant standing on them.  Our feet don’t look anything like elephant feet.

I’m pretty sure down the line, high heeled shoes are going to be in the history books of shameful practices imposed on women, like the Chinese foot binding.  I don’t think high heels are necessarily imposed on us, though.  We like how we look when walk in them.  We like the extra height and the extra wiggle it gives to our rears.  Today’s feminism seems to be very much a Helen Gurley Brown’s Cosmopolitan oriented feminism. It says I’ll look as sexy as I want to look, but while I’m wearing these 4″ heels and long, fake eyelashes, I will also run this organization like nobody’s business, I will tell this news story and interview this sports star with “no hold back” brazenness,  and I’ll stand up for my personal space and dignity with a big black #.  You can look, but don’t touch boys, unless I say you can.

As an older, more conservative woman, I have to admit that I have mixed feelings on my perceptions of today’s feminism.  Having a loving husband and three kind sons, makes me more sensitive to the male point of view than I have ever been in my life and I don’t want my daughter to think that her value comes from her looks.  That being said, when I’m not just “wearing my feet”, I love strapping on a new pair of gorgeous, girly, glittery, elevated shoes in anticipation of good times ahead.  I’m not even sure that there is any kind of statement or meaning or manipulation tied to wearing them, at least consciously.   I think it is just a matter of feeling fine and knowing that I can take them off whenever I want.

FTF

FTF – Favorite Things Friday!  Were you thinking it meant something dirty??  There are so many acronyms these days.  Thank goodness for being able to google the Urban Dictionary or I may not be able to communicate with my kids in text form.   On a different note,  I saw this quote on one of those funny napkins yesterday:

“This salad tastes like I’d rather be fat.”

I don’t think that salads were created for Fridays.  Friday is all about letting loose, letting your hair down, and “sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy”!  My favorite days are days when everyone is really happy and Friday has the best chance for being that day! 🙂  On to favorite things:

The Daily Skimm – A good friend from college recommended this daily email service and for me, it is the perfect amount of daily news.  I avoid watching the news like the plague. (especially these days – it’s just all too depressing)  This gives the highlights of the major headlines of the day without going into too much detail. The summaries are light and funny and include links if you want to go into a particular news story at a deeper level. So, I am able to remain informed without getting too obsessed and too downhearted.  My husband and I have a daily morning routine, in which I read The Daily Skimm aloud to both of us while he is getting ready for work.  It’s a daily moment that I treasure.   Here is a link to join, if you are interested:  http://www.theskimm.com/?r=fdfcd0ab

Spirituality and Health Magazine – I discovered this wonderful publication when I had a job merchandising magazines.  (btw, that was the best part time job ever- it was like getting paid to exercise and read!  LOL) I love the articles, ideas and book suggestions in this magazine.  Mostly though, like most of the magazines I subscribe to, I have one feature that I turn to first and is probably the primary reason why I subscribe to the magazine.  That feature in this magazine is a monthly column by Rabbi Rami Shapiro called Roadside Assistance for the Spiritual Traveler that I think is just great.  The author is a very wise, insightful man and his answers to questions always make me think and reflect.  Rami Shapiro is also the author of several books.

SpiritCups by Capital Cups – Over the many years of school/sports fundraising for my four kids, I have cringed at some of the items we were supposed to pimp to our family, friends and neighbors.  Usually my husband and I decided to just take “the hit” ourselves because we couldn’t look ourselves in the mirror asking our loved ones to buy filthy expensive wrapping paper that tore the minute you touched it.  However, being mostly past the fundraising years, this is an item that I would actively look for a cute, sporty looking kid in the neighborhood with a clipboard and uniform, to sell to me.  The cups we have purchased from this company are all decked out in our favorite teams’ logos and they last FOREVER!  These are our go-to daily cups for everything we drink.  They are dishwasher safe and unbreakable.  My eldest son quit playing football when he was about 12 and we still have the cups that we purchased from his Pop Warner days and they are still in good shape.  He’s 22 now.  I’m not sure if you can purchase them just as a consumer, but if you are in charge of some fundraising, look into selling these cups.  They are great!!

I’ll end on a Friday quote I saw recently:

There’s just one legitimate synonym for Friday: boom shakalaka!

Thanks, as always for reading and sharing my day!

Faking Smiles

I mentioned recently that one of my favorite things is my daily meditation book, Meditations for People Who Worry by Anne Wilson Schaef.  Yesterday’s meditation talked about bad moods.  The timing was uncanny because Tuesday I was in a rotten mood for no particularly good reason.  Sometimes bad moods just happen.  A friend of mine recently shared the quote, “Was it a bad day?  Or was it a bad 5 minutes that you milked all day?”  Tuesday I was a milkmaid.

In the meditation, Schaef talks about how “catchy” bad moods can be for the people around us.  It is so true.  How many times have you walked into a store, or a restaurant, or a salon and just felt the negative energy in the air?  You feel yourself being repulsed and you don’t even know why.  In an ideal world, we all have the healthy boundaries to say that the other person’s lousy mood is all about them.  It doesn’t have anything to do with us and we remain our happy little Pollyanna selves.  That is correct in theory, but most of us have a little sponginess in us that soaks some of that negativity right up.  Schaef says that when we are in a bad mood (it happens), it is our responsibility to own it and to warn others of our mental state.  She says to kindly assure others around us that our mood state is “ours” and it has nothing to do with them.  Let them know that we need a little space, which most people are happy to give to people in crummy moods.  Even if we know someone’s bad mood isn’t related to our doings, angry, grumpy people aren’t the most fun people to be around.   She says that this “warning device” is the best for all parties involved.  Of course, when you are in a really bad mood you can always take the more selfish advice of Bill Watterson (creator of the cartoon Calvin and Hobbes): “Nothing helps a bad mood like spreading it around.”  That could be more fun.

 

Charmed, I’m Sure

Years ago I worked for a small “mom and pop” company.  Every morning when I would walk through the door, the owner would warmly and happily exclaim, “There she is!”  That greeting always made me feel so welcome and special. After decades, I got reunited with a childhood friend.  One of the first things she reminisced about was the nickname my father had given to her.  She said it had always touched her and she’d never forget it. One time I was staying with a friend at her home.  Back then I thought Diet Coke was the “Breakfast of Champions.”  I’ve matured a little since then, but I’ll never forget opening my guest room door in the morning and seeing a cold, frosty Diet Coke waiting for me right outside the door.  There was a skylight there and the sunlight was beaming on the Diet Coke, like it had been sent from Heaven.  In a way, it had been. When my beloved grandmother died, a fellow soccer dad sent me a kind sympathy card with a lovely poem enclosed.  The poem touched me so much that I have included it in every sympathy card I have ever sent since (unfortunately too many to count).  I have heard that the poem has been read in many funerals.

Kathleen Winsor said that “Charm is the ability to make someone else think that both of you are pretty wonderful.”  When I started looking up information about charm one of the first articles to pop up had a title that was something to the effect of “20 Signs that You are a Charming Person Without Being Aware.”  I think that is the essence of charm right there.  It is genuine, sincere kindness with no ulterior motives attached.  A truly, naturally charming person is unaware of how much they have elevated the person they have touched.  Like H. Jackson Brown said, “People may not exactly remember what you did, or what you said, but they will always remember how you made them feel.”

Dale Carnegie has a famous, often repeated saying, “To be interesting, be interested.”  When someone describes a charming person, they often say that the person made them feel like they were the only person in the room, even if the room was a stadium full of people.  I remember a friend telling me about going to an event to see the Dalai Lama.  It was a stadium event, and it was sold out.  She said that the Dalai’s presence was so calm, peaceful, loving and tranquil that she had to look around herself more than once, to make sure that she wasn’t the only person present.

In today’s world with so many different information outlets and media content, it seems like everyone is scrambling for their “15 Minutes of Fame.”  My son often repeats the saying that never before have lives so unlived, been so well-documented.  I sometimes feel a bit precious writing this blog.   I think that is why charm is such a warm, special quality.  The enthusiasm, sincerity and attention is all directed at others, which is such a rarity in a selfie obsessed time period.  Like all traits, charm can be used for good or for bad, depending on the intentions of the charmer.  Nonetheless, when it is used for good, it is a quality that is a difference maker in people’s lives and experiences, sometimes in ways that create lifetime memories and feelings that will never be forgotten.

Musings on Parenting

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

The above poem by Kahlil Gibran has always resonated with me when it comes to parenting.  Receiving compliments on my children has always rung false to me and it’s not because I don’t think they are amazing people.  I, like most mothers, think that my four children are the most incredible people on the face of this earth.  When I do receive compliments, I have a pat answer.  “Thank you.  God figured we couldn’t handle much.”  My children have been easy to raise, kind and understanding, and full of life.  If my husband and I gave them a stable and peaceful environment in which to bloom, which I hope we have, then maybe we deserve a compliment for that, but overall they are blooming into the interesting, talented and lively people that they are because that is the seeds that were implanted into them by forces much greater than I.   They are part of this unfolding Universe, part of God’s plan and my only job is to get out of the way and let Divinity take its course.  This is especially true now that they are embarking into their own adulthoods.

Years ago I read an article about Paloma Picasso.  I cut out the part she wrote about being a parent.  She said, “I don’t think the parent and child should be so intimate that it becomes a jail for the child.  I’ve tried to help my children become themselves.”  So the other day, when talking on the phone to my son who has moved out into his independent adult life, he kindly asked me what I had been up to since he’d been gone.  I proudly mentioned that I had started blogging.  I wanted him to feel comfort that I was branching out, listening to my own deep longings and taking brave new steps into new avenues of my own life.  I wanted him to feel as secure about me being okay and energized and positive, as I feel about him and his experiencing of his new journey.

One of my favorite books of all time, The Parent’s Tao Te Ching talks about the Empty Nest this way:

The “empty nest syndrome”

should never bother

parents of the Tao.

Of course we’ll miss our children

But all of their lives we have helped them

embrace life and welcome change.

We have learned to do the same.

New moments await us.

Our nest

and theirs,

is never empty.

I couldn’t say it better.

Finders Keepers

Recently, right before my son moved out to his new adult life, I lost two “good” pieces of jewelry on two separate occasions.  Now these weren’t “insurable” items or family heirlooms, but they weren’t Forever 21 clearance items either. (Now on an aside, I love all of my jewelry and much like one of my favorite fashion icons, Iris Apfel, a 97 year old fashion maven, I might even like some of my faux pieces better than my real pieces.)  Anyway, I was driven to distraction trying to find these items.  Unfortunately, in the process of looking for the jewelry, I did not find the pieces I was looking for, but what I did find was a whole herd of dust bunnies and several items that should have been donated to Goodwill eons ago.

Now, I’m always looking for the meaning of “why things happen”.  I was incredibly intent of finding the jewelry and I had such a laser focus on that intent that it certainly kept me from thinking about the idea that my son was leaving our nest, never to return to it again, as a child.  It was certainly easier to vent all of my frustration on the helplessness of not knowing where the jewelry had gone to, then to face my intense feelings of loss of the only structure that our nucleus family had ever known.  I was also admonishing myself for my carelessness for not appreciating my items like I should have and perhaps even taking them for granted.  Did I wear them as many times as I could have or did I assume they would always be available to me whenever I wanted them to be?  You see where these analogies are going.

My Catholic friends have always suggested to turn to St. Anthony to ask for his help to intercede with God when you lose items.  Now, I’m not Catholic so I had to Google the appropriate way to officially ask for St. Anthony’s help.  I looked up the prayer and it essentially said something to the affect of please help me to find my items, but if it is not God’s will to find the items, please give me total peace with that fact.  Now, in my desperation, I was wondering if it was okay to cross out the last part of the prayer, because in my mind, the only way I was going to have peace was if I found my jewelry.  Nonetheless, I prayed the whole prayer and I did not find my jewelry.  And I did not find peace right away, but surprisingly, I came to peace about the losses much more quickly than I thought I would.  Sometimes I Thank God for Unanswered Prayers has always been one of my favorite country songs and I think it applies here.

I often lecture my family about the dangers of getting too attached to “things.”  “We are not even going to leave this world with our bodies!” is a statement I’ve been known to say more than a few times.  For the record, that goes over like a lead balloon.  Thanks, Debbie Downer, any other uplifting anecdotes you’d like to pass on while we eat our dessert???  The truth is, I haven’t found a better way to say it, but the “things” in life are temporary and fleeting.  Change is always happening and the suffering occurs when we can’t make peace with this fact.  A lot of spiritual teachers (and marketing experts, for that matter) like to say that when we want something or someone, it’s not really the item that we want, it is the feeling that we believe we will get if we possess that thing.  I believed that I would feel extreme “relief” if I found my jewelry and obviously, I was looking for “relief” from a lot of the tumult that was swirling around in my heart.  And a lot of that tumult had nothing to do with my jewelry.

Native Americans were very thankful to the buffalo that they consumed.  They used every part of the buffalo and thanked it profusely for it’s blessing and it’s sacrifice.  Marie Kondo, the Japanese organization guru says that when you know that it is time to give up an item, you thank it for what it has brought to you and ask it to bless someone else.  I am thankful for my jewelry, for the times I felt lovely wearing the pieces, but I think I may even be more thankful for the loss of the items, because the lessons I gleaned from the losses will stay with me forever.  I hope that wherever they are now, they are blessing someone else in all of the best ways possible.

Thank You for Your Patience

It is a very strange feeling questioning yourself when you write a text to your adult child.  There has been this shift in the relationship where “bossy mommy” probably isn’t going to fly anymore.  There is a certain unsaid understanding that when a parent is paying the bills, the scales are tipped to the parents having a certain level of control.  My son is paying his own bills now.  He no longer relies on me for anything.  I’m not supposed to spout my advice unless he asks me for it.  I understand that on a logical level and I want to have a great adult relationship with him and my other children, so a lot of times I have to just sit on my hands and wisely choose not to write a text. When I do write a text to him, I find myself editing it, contemplating it, getting feedback on it, almost as if we were two people in a new relationship.

A college friend once told me that I apologize too much.  She said that instead of saying, “I’m sorry.”  I should say, “Thank you for your patience with my . . . .”  So, yesterday, I just couldn’t help myself.  Bossy Mommy took over the reigns and she felt it was necessary to text her adult son that he should probably get his dry cleaning done for a big business trip that he has coming up.  Ugh.  Now I think there was actually a struggle going on between Bossy Mommy and Mature Detached Mother, so the text came out garbled and ridiculous.  Autocorrect was having a field day.  I almost felt the need to tell him to please not send the text to that segment on Jimmy Kimmel Live where Jimmy reads outrageous texts from parents to their young adult kids. And everyone laughs hysterically.  All that I can say is that the final text to my son from me was, “Thank you for your patience with my need to still parent you.”

And he answered, “I love you, Mom.”