Tag: empty nest

The King’s Crown

“My crown is called content, a crown that seldom kings enjoy.” – William Shakespeare

This is such an unusual time in life – a time when the “usual” is soon to be going by the wayside. My husband and I talked to our eldest son last night and he is considering offers within his company, in all different cities. His world is expanding significantly. I signed our youngest child up for Driver’s Education. Once a child gets their license to drive, drifting away from the nest becomes inevitable. I know, I’ve experienced this three times before. Our next to youngest child just committed to his college of choice for the fall. Our second son plans to stay at his university this summer, to continue earning credits and grades that will help him to enter into medical school. In short, my job of “corralling the kiddos” is soon to be going completely by the wayside. My husband and I have made our primary focus to be on the joint efforts of raising our family for almost 23 years now. The funny thing is that now, what seems to be all of the sudden, space is opening up for us, to take all of our lives, in all different directions.

My husband and I opted to do some updates and renovations on our current home, but we do it with some hesitation and reservation. Is this where we plan to live for a while? Our housing choices have always been made within the narrow confines of the areas that connected good public schools with a reasonable commute to my husband’s work. When your confines are removed, the choices almost become overwhelming.

To be honest, I’m having a really hard time figuring out what I want to do next, in so many aspects. I have been meditating on the next stage, my second half of adulting for a while now, and no real clear-cut answers are appearing. I’ve heard that when you don’t know what you want, doing nothing is a choice and often, doing nothing is a good option for the time being. I suspect being uncomfortable with the choice of doing nothing and making no real changes, feels uncomfortable for a lot of us. From little on, we are taught to strive, to achieve, to work towards our goals and to accomplish them. But, what if you are unsure of your goals? What if you don’t know what to strive for?

I got to thinking that not knowing what your goals are, may mean that you are content. “Content” often feels like a bad word, especially to us Americans. Society seems to tell us that you should always be aspiring to accomplish new heights, yet all of the best selling self-help books and podcasts on the market, seems to be aimed at helping people to find inner peace and calm, acceptance and contentedness with “what is.” Even Shakespeare knew that contentedness (an inside job) was so hard to achieve that even the wealthiest, most fortunate and powerful people of the times, the kings, often could not achieve contentedness.

When I was contemplating my new found “freedom” opening up to me in the very near future, a thought popped into my head. It was so strong that I had to write it down. This is what I wrote:

“Maybe I don’t know what I want because what I want, is what I have . . .”

Perhaps what I wrote is the definition of contentedness. According to Shakespeare, contentedness is the elusive treasure of kings. Perhaps the answer is to bask in that feeling of contentedness for a while. When the next big move is meant to happen for me, I’ll know what to do. In the meantime, I’ll just be content to be content.

“Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.” – coolnsmart.com

Blue-Eyed Baby

“The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you. ” – B.B. King

Our youngest son found out that he got into his college of choice, yesterday. He’ll be attending the same large university that his brothers before him have attended. His brothers have enjoyed their experiences there and grown up and out, in so many remarkable ways. I excitedly anticipate the same for him.

It’s a story for another time, but I really thought that my youngest son was going to be our last baby. That was before we were blessed with our beautiful daughter. I savored my third son’s babyhood because of that reason. I remember rocking him and gazing at him, even more than my other children, mostly because in my mind, he was going to be the last that I experienced all of the baby milestones. I can still picture his little head and hands, as I rocked him to sleep.

My youngest son is my only blue-eyed child. I have brown eyes and my husband has green eyes. Our other three children have brown eyes. Being the third son and always looking up to, and feeling like he had to keep up with his older brothers, I looked for ways to make him feel extra-special and unique. I always made a big fuss of his blue eyes, calling him my “Blue-eyed Baby.” I guess that I took it too far because when he was about four or five years old, he said to me, “I think you are right, Mom. Blue-eyed people are better.” I had to backtrack on that, so I focused on this little birth mark that he has on the back of his dark hair. It is a spot on his hair that is white, looking like it has been intentionally bleached. I’ve always called it his “Angel Kiss.” I told him that the mark on his hair is where the angels kissed him before they gave him to me. I hope that the kissing guardian angels remain all around him when he leaves home to go to college. I want to know that my blue-eyed baby will always be protected no matter how far he roams from home.

“College is a refuge from hasty judgment.” – Robert Frost

I’m Motivated to Be Inspired

After watching history’s most boring Super Bowl last night and waking up to a gray Monday, I had difficulty deciding what to write about and even more difficulty getting the gumption up to write. It seems fitting that lately I have been pondering the difference between motivation and inspiration. Today seems like the right day to ponder it on-line.

Motivation typically comes from outside forces. You feel compelled to do something because something inside of you says that you “should” do it, or you may face consequences that you don’t want. Motivation comes from a reason or a “motive” for doing something, so that you get the result that you do want. Our sources of motivation are typically external. You are motivated to get a new car, so you go to work and save your money. You are motivated to fit into your new bikini, so you go to the gym. I am motivated to write this blog post, because I have made the promise to myself and to my readers that I will write a blog post every day.

Inspiration is internally generated. The word literally means, “in spirit.” When you are inspired, some internal passion is bubbling up inside of you just screaming to come out. Inspiration typically isn’t as concerned with “the end result”, as it is something that just wants to be created, for creation’s sake. After driving away from our eldest son’s first apartment, driving away from his completed childhood, and coming to the realization that the stage of my life, that was mainly focused on raising and molding four young children, will soon be coming to a close, I was inspired to start writing my blog. I was inspired to internally and publicly explore what this stage of life means to me and to my family.

My husband asked me an interesting question the other day. He said, “Would you rather be a beacon or an icon?” I answered “Beacon,” without pause, but that is mostly because I like living under the radar. I wouldn’t want to have to wear make-up to walk out to my mailbox, for fear of paparazzi jumping out of my bushes. I like a level of anonymity. Further, I liken beacons to be like lighthouses, and I like to think that my experiences, perceptions and lessons learned, could be helpful not just to me, but to others, as well. I think that today’s day and age has way too many icons and not nearly enough beacons.

Anyway, sometimes my blog posts are just coming from motivation to stay on track, keep my promises to myself and to others, and sometimes my blog posts are so inspired, that I have jumped out of bed to jot down my ideas and have panicked when my computer doesn’t boot up fast enough, as the words seem to be spilling from my heart at record speed. I imagine my readers are perceptive enough to see the difference. It would be ideal to live life in a state of constant inspiration, but for times when that passion lies dormant, motivation is enough force to keep the train moving on the tracks, until the next spurt of inspiration comes along.

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.