Category: Writing A Book-ish

The Unknown

Every day is basically an unknown. I remember periods in my life when it seemed things would always be the same. But it turned out they weren’t.

I think about the leap of faith it takes to jump out of bed each morning and face the day. We really don’t ever know what is coming.

I am presently grieving over the fate of a beautiful young black single mother not too far from where I presently live. She was killed in cold blood by an irate neighbor. A white lady if that matters. Guess it does around these parts of the American South.

The single mother’s kids had been playing outside and drifted onto the white lady’s lawn. The white lady threw a roller skate at one of the kids. She scooped up another kid’s iPad that was laying on the grass. Naturally, the kid ran to his mother for help.

When the beautiful black mother went to the white lady’s house to retrieve her son’s iPad, the white lady fired four shots through her unopened door. The white lady then claimed “self-defense.” Didn’t seem to matter that the white lady was the one that was aggressive to the black lady’s kids. The white lady told the 9-1-1 dispatcher that she “felt threatened” by her neighbor’s presence at the front door.

I listened to an interview yesterday with Christian Cooper, the black birdwatcher who in NYC in 2020 was falsely accused of harassment by Amy Cooper, (no relation) a white woman who refused to leash her dog in an on-leash section of Central Park. Cooper calmly recorded on his phone the white woman’s hysterical phone call to police complaining “a black man was threatening her and her dog.” The video recording told the tale. The white woman lost her job, was roundly condemned, and faded into infamy.

Christian Cooper wrote a book on birdwatching and just landed a gig as host of a National Geographic birdwatching show. Finally, at least one story of a white person and a black person’s confrontation ended well. For Christian Cooper at least.

I don’t get racism. Not saying I have plenty of best black friends. Not saying I can comfortably put myself in the shoes of a black person’s day-to-day reality in North America.

It’s just that I know and have met too many wonderful people of all races and nationalities. Standards of decency for humans are pretty much the same around the world no matter what color their skin is. Character, class, and manners count more in any individual than their race.

So my heart is heavy and grieving for that beautiful young black woman’s family. I don’t know how her kids will make sense of their mother’s loss as they grow up. No more than their bereaved grandmother can make sense of the loss of a beautiful daughter.

And then there is the unknown of how justice will play out in this case, as if that even matters to those most intimately affected. This is the land of Trayvon Martin, a skinny 15-year-old black kid who was shot dead for just walking around his neighborhood. His murderer got off scot-free based on the infamous “Stand Your Ground” laws that exist in Florida.

And so it may well be for this murderer – already charged with the lesser violation of manslaughter. It is an unknown almost too terrible to contemplate. That she might walk free.

Whichever way it goes for the hate-filled woman who coldly and viciously took this young woman’s life, it won’t matter to her kids. All they’ll know is facing the unknown every morning of waking up for the rest of their lives without their mother.

Rocking Nothing

Today I am thinking about nothing.

Nothing in particular. What doing nothing means. What having nothing means.

Generally, people seem to be very scared of nothing. The requirement to be doing something all the time is especially tyrannical in the middle of our lives. It can take a concentrated effort to slow down and do nothing. Some people simply can’t handle it. Not comfortably at any rate.

We are all aware of how limited our time is on Earth. That can make us anxious about “filling” every minute of every day. That is not to be confused with living “fully” each day. Our anxiety can grow as the years begin to speed up, quickly at first, and soon they start to fly by.

Joni Mitchell’s advice to a young man in her song The Circle Game captures this: “And they tell him, Take your time, It won’t be long now before you drag your feet to slow that circle down.”

Death is perceived as the greatest nothingness of all. Unless we believe in reincarnation, we may believe only darkness and oblivion await us after death. I am not so sure of that anymore. The Universe is far too complex and convoluted to let us off that easy. But, I don’t really know. No one does.

So in light of life’s inevitable endpoint, and if we’re lucky, we start to slow down. After years of frenetic dedication to raising kids and making a living and staying in the mainstream of life, I stopped. One day, I found myself looking out my window at a pleasant scene whilst doing absolutely nothing. I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular. I was just sitting.

You can’t imagine how foreign and far-fetched that scenario was for a Type A personality like me. I was steeped in the virtues of the Protestant work ethic. If you were too, you may get how odd and slightly terrifying doing nothing is.

This is the paradox of the human condition. We set goals early in our lives for the things we want to have and accomplish in our lives. Many of us metaphorically break our necks to get what we want.

But we rarely sit down and take a hard look at what we really want and need. Then we make our lives more difficult and less peaceful by comparing ourselves to our peers. If we don’t have what they have, we can get scared and sad. When we ignore the wisdom of stopping to smell the flowers, the memories of our life might be but a blur.

Stopping to smell the flowers can be the very place where we find joy and feed our sense of wonder. Only by stopping can we marinate our souls and senses in the wonder of what is all around us. We often fail to recognize that the little things are really the big things in life. I blinked and my children were adults. They will never be little again and it makes my heart hurt. I missed out on many small and tender and precious moments with them in my drive to survive and succeed.

These days I can be perfectly happy doing nothing. That is progress for me. I grab the chance to do absolutely nothing whenever I can get it. It is not that I dislike being busy or having something valuable to occupy my time. I actually quite like being busy. But these days, it is more of a choice. When life gets too crazy, it is up to me to slow it down.

It has become necessary to consider what avocations make me happy. Beyond the necessary mundanities of day-to-day life, I mean. There are only a few. They could be considered silly and frivolous pursuits but they are mine. I no longer need to justify them or justify my existence.

I have a friend who is a genius at this. He walks in the world at his own pace and is directed by his own interests. He goes on long daily walks just to exercise. He has been known to sit for a couple of hours on a park bench and just watch what is going on in the world and the people around him. I have always admired and envied him for that capability.

So I’m thinking I’ll sit awhile today and just watch the world go by. With no lives on the line, or mandatory issues that require my attention, I’m free to do that. It likely isn’t what the expression carpe diem was supposed to mean. But instead of “seizing the day,” I’m just gonna sidle up to it with a cup of hot tea and watch it amble by.

Self-Regulation

If anyone detects a throughline in my posts lately, you are right. I am a little obsessed about the ups and downs of my emotions. No, I am not manic-depressive. I am, however, something of a stress case.

I am stressed by the complexities of the household move we are making. And, in good old hunker down and get ‘er done fashion, I’m trying to act as if it is not bothering me one bit. But it is bothering me. Quite a bit.

Yesterday a lady from whom I had purchased two armchairs on Facebook Marketplace leaned on me rather imperiously to come and collect them. I have 73 things on my plate at the minute. Picking up her chairs was somewhere around 65 on my priority list. Why couldn’t she ease off and understand the stress I am under?

Turns out she was under some stress, too. Imagine? They were packing up to leave the following day on an extended trip. She had just had two disks inserted into her spine. As I watched her walking upright around her living room, I was impressed and amazed but also embarrassed by my childish reaction to her insistence that I pick up what I bought.

I thumbed through my mental Rolodex (remember those?) and the common denominator in this type of uncomfortable situation was me. Something to do with growing up without boundaries sometimes makes it very difficult to impose them on myself.

I had grown up accustomed to having inappropriate responsibility heaped upon me without oversight or intervention by my parents. There were very few rules in our household when I was growing up. Beyond those where we worked to keep up appearances of normality and hide the addictions and violence between the parents going on behind closed doors.

In a worldly and sophisticated city like Paris or London, our family might have been perceived as Bohemian. Being a Bohemian had a certain artistic cachet in a big city. In a small conservative town, it was simply seen as neglect.

I ached when most of my friends were called home to supper or nervously checked their Timexes as it inched closer to the time they had been told to be home. Me and my two sisters rarely had to be home at a specific time for anything, let alone sit-down meals.

There was no set bedtime on any night – even school nights – throughout my childhood. We stayed up with and partied and socialized as long as the adults did. The line between freedom and neglect was very thin in the household I grew up in.

As I grew older, my lack of internalized boundaries often showed up in a wide and rapid range of my felt emotions. An old boyfriend often used to say: “Margot, you’re “too.” What I thought was charming and coquettish behavior, others likely perceived as bad-mannered and precocious. I longed to be calm and cool like many of my other girlfriends. I had no idea how to do that.

With time, it got better and easier to settle myself down in stressful situations and hold my tongue and not say something I would invariably come to regret. I eventually taught myself strong and consistent boundaries. Most of the time, the dyke holds.

But I was already tired and overwhelmed and rundown by the time this lady started demanding something of me that mostly just felt like “one more thing.” I was still smarting over the paint-ruined carpet of the day before and had just had an inane conversation with the security system installation representative. I was beat. I am beat.

What is different now from days gone by is recognizing me in all of my “bitchy, over-the-top, I’ve had enough and need to lie down” glory. What followed my little phone outburst of sarcasm and displeasure with the lady I had been rude to were copious declarations of mea culpa. That’s progress, I guess.

Tomorrow – aside from the things I must do – will be about attacking that absurd and overburdened “to-do” list and cutting it down to a manageable size. It is okay to take time and let weeks, even months pass before we settle into our new digs. As is often said in healing circles, I’m “setting boundaries.”

I’ll be setting boundaries both with myself and with the unrealistic expectations I created for myself. Easing up on myself and letting go of some of the irritants somebody else can take care of.

Now there you go. I feel better already.

Stuff

Days of reckoning. We are moving into a new house and the dreaded stuff sort has begun. What to take – and why. What to leave behind – and why. What to let go of – forever. What does that even mean?

The stuff will either be useful or not. Beautiful or not. Sentimental enough to be worth keeping – or not. I am both excited and daunted by the prospect.

Stuff has been something of a creative and escapist pastime of mine. I have lived a life filled at various times with either lack or abundance. I have learned important lessons from both states. Abundance has been nice and it is extremely comforting not to have to worry about where the next infusion of money is coming from or what bills have to be paid this month.

Lack taught me much, too. I learned how little I really needed to survive materially. Once the basics of food, shelter, and clothing are covered, almost anything else is gravy. There were days when I accepted charity from the church. I learned humility and grace from those experiences.

I also learned about money in a more fervent way than I might have had I not been driven by want.

I am fascinated by humans’ ingenuity in the realm of invention, innovation, creation of beauty, and practicality.

Perhaps oddly, soft furnishings come to mind, for example. There are so many different textures and colors and patterns to choose from. Knitted or woven shawls were a standard part of a woman’s daily costume for centuries. Women gained both social and practical satisfaction by joining together in quilting bees.

The appearance of dish towels, for example, would have emerged from the practical necessity of housewives and servants in days gone by to get the washing up done in a timely manner after meals. A fascination with the practical uses of fabric emerged in concert with the general use of “soft furnishings” as decorative additions to living spaces. Quilts, afghans, comforters, cozies, foot warmers, and for a time, the ubiquitous doily that adorned every piece of wooden furniture. The product of some woman’s effort and talent in crochet or tatting.

There has long been self-expression in stuff, whether it is homemade goods, fashion, home decoration or jewellery. It is interesting to contemplate how “taste” or “personal fashion preferences” emerge. As a child, I used to pore through the Sears’ catalog and dream about all the stuff I would acquire when I was a grownup.

I remember a particular fixation with a pretty red dress with white dots and a red underslip. It had a modified type of small Dutch red ruffle at the neckline and ties that pulled the dress in tight in the back. It had pretty little transparent red short sleeves. I thought it was the prettiest dress I had ever seen in my life.

I wonder what I would think if I saw that dress now. I might be embarrassed at how quaint and dated it looked.

So as I am facing the stuff I’ve collected over a lifetime that needs to be faced in order to transition from this life to a new life, I feel the familiar pull of sentimentality for some objects. Faux practicality for others (I may be able to use that someday). Or the penny-pinchers decluttering dilemma (I paid a lot of money for that!!)

As I am about to face the hoard, I am forced to admit that stuff was at one time more important to me than people. Easier to acquire and oddly harder to let go of than some acquaintances. Stuff doesn’t push back. Not deliberately at any rate.

So wish me luck, dear readers, and a following sea. I am aware now that the people going through this process are actually more important than any of the stuff we bring into our new situation.

Today already I smashed two out of a matching set of four coffee cups. Our painter – with copious, if ineffectual, apologies – spilled about a cup of dark blue paint on our light brown carpet, destroying it.

There was a time when I would have lost it over the carelessness of the painter and my own clumsiness for breaking the cups. I admit I am much better at taking them in stride. I think I am also growing much more practical. We had too many cups and I can now switch out the flooring to the waterproof laminate I wanted to install anyway.

Aim For Fulfillment

My life has been focused on healing and transformation. I have worked to turn a dealt hand of lemons into lemonade. When I stumble across advice that sums up what I believe, I want to share it. This was written and published by a psychiatrist in The Washington Post. I love the distinction he makes between happiness and fulfillment.

Happiness is fleeting. Aim for fulfillment. It can be achieved when you accept who you are, make the most of what you have, and are optimistic about the future – Advice by Gregory Scott Brown, a psychiatrist, mental health writer, and author of “The Self-Healing Mind: An Essential Five-Step Practice for Overcoming Anxiety and Depression, and Revitalizing Your Life.”

I recently met with a patient, a man in his late 40s with a soft smile. Minutes into our first session, I learned that his biggest fear was that decades later, he would look back and realize that he had spent his entire life — as he put it — “being sad.”

“What are you hoping to get from our time together?” I asked. “I just want to be happy,” he responded.

As a psychiatrist, I think about happiness and how to achieve it. And thousands of conversations with patients who are chasing happiness have taught me that it can be a distraction from what’s really necessary for a better life — fulfillment.

Happiness is fleeting

Patients often come to see me when they are unhappy with their work or personal life. Many see a period of time in their life, such as the day they got married or when they graduated from college, as their template for happiness.

“If I could just feel that way again, I would be happy,” they tell me.

The problem with this approach is that happiness is an emotion, not a state of being. Emotions such as happiness and sadness aren’t supposed to last. They come and go.

Seeking happiness as the ultimate goal is like running after a moving target. And we may feel even more depressed or anxious because we are setting unrealistic expectations about what is achievable.

Fulfillment is a state of being

Unlike happiness, fulfillment is a state of being. It is achieved when you accept who you are, make the most of what you have, and are optimistic about the future.

I learned this lesson as a psychiatry resident almost 10 years ago. As I witnessed patients die, I noticed that despite age or diagnosis, some seemed to be more at peace than others. I wanted to understand how some people in their final weeks could still be okay.

Fulfillment seemed to be the answer. Patients who were fulfilled could reflect fondly on their life and relationships, have gratitude (sometimes that just meant being grateful for having a few hours without physical pain) and remain optimistic (in some cases, in the promise of an afterlife).

Now, I often ask my patients to “imagine life better” and describe what their fulfilled life might look like. Usually, they realize that it’s a life that is attainable.

One of my patients, a woman in her late 50s, came to see me after going through a difficult divorce. Eventually, she found fulfillment — even amid a difficult transition — by focusing on what she was grateful for, such as her three adult children. She took up new hobbies and rekindled old friendships, which gave her hope for the future.

You, too, can begin to cultivate your life in a way that draws you closer to fulfillment, with a few changes.

Don’t overreact to highs or lows

People who are fulfilled don’t overreact to emotional highs or lows. They are able to appreciate that just as the seasons come and go, so do our emotions.

I recommend the HALT model to my patients as a way to avoid allowing their feelings to get the best of them.

Ask yourself: Am I hungry, angry, lonely or tired?

If you are any or many of those things, here are steps you can take.

  • Eat a nourishing meal.
  • Step away from the situation that’s causing stress, if you can.
  • Practice 4-7-8 breathing: Inhale for four seconds, hold for seven seconds, and exhale for eight seconds.
  • Go for a 10-minute walk.
  • Write down three things that you’re grateful for.
  • Talk to a friend.
  • Do things that make you feel relaxed.
Learn to adapt

Life rarely turns out exactly as we plan, and learning to adapt is a superpower for your mental health.

Adapting doesn’t mean giving up your hopes, dreams or intentions. Instead, it involves making the most of what you have right now, so you can stay focused on creating the life you want.

Some researchers have developed a test for AQ (adaptability quotient) similar to IQ that gauges how adaptable you are.

If you aren’t as adaptable as you’d like, you can start by asking yourself: How willing am I to change, to learn or to make mistakes?

Adapting may require unlearning old habits so you can develop new, more helpful habits. I challenge you to approach your life with curiosity before judgment. You may learn valuable lessons about yourself and the people around you.

How to build relationships

Friends are essential to a healthy life — and they are just as important for our well-being as healthy eating habits or a good night’s sleep. Friends, though, don’t just appear out of thin air, an expert said. Here’s her advice for making new connections and maintaining the old ones.

You may have lost touch with friends during the pandemic and may be eager to reconnect. If you want to maintain the level of effortlessness you had before, here is advice from friendship experts on how to optimize these relationships.

Children who develop supportive, trusting friendships with others their age are more likely to become healthy, happy, and professionally successful adults, studies show. Adults can help foster teen friendships.

Develop meaningful relationships

The Harvard Study of Adult Development showed that quality relationships are important for well-being. This comes at a time when loneliness feels like it’s more common than ever.

Consider your relationships not only an investment in your mental health but also an opportunity to bring you closer to fulfillment. Common interest meetups, group therapy, and religious organizations are great ways to form meaningful connections.

When you meet someone new, ask them how they’re doing and actively listen by affirming your understanding of what they told you. It’s an easy first step in planting the seeds for a long-lasting friendship.

Try not to regret

We all have aspects of our past we would change if we could, but living with regret isn’t helpful for mental health. One study shows that people who are fulfilled choose not to live with deep regret.

This means accepting that although you can’t change your past, you can change the way you think about it.

Ask yourself what lessons you have learned from past experiences. These lessons can teach you how to avoid the same mistakes. In some cases, living without regret can allow you to find gratitude for those lessons.

Many of us could use more happiness in our lives, but as psychiatrist and author Victor Frankl wrote, “Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.”

Instead of searching for happiness, shift your attention toward finding fulfillment. It may bring you closer to living a better life and experiencing more happiness along the way.

Another Street

It has taken me my whole life to learn the simple lessons in this powerful poem. I refer back to it frequently. It is something of a guidepost that I use to check in on when there is chaos and drama in my life. It helps me sort out my part from the part being played by others or external forces. Hope you find it as helpful as I have.

An Autobiography in Five Chapters
by Portia Nelson

Chapter 1
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in. I am lost….I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter 2
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I fall in….it’s a habit…but my eyes are open.
I know where I am. It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter 4
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter 5
I walk down a different street.

I’ll Be Brief

I aim to write a 2-3 minute blog post every day. And for most of the past 65 days, I have. Sometimes four minutes long which I consider excessive. I ain’t all that. I love that what I write sometimes surprises me. Like chasing a rabbit down a hole and finding yourself having a delicious and carefully prepared tea with some interesting characters.

As I consider how to approach this piece you are reading, I am reminded of a quote attributed to various literary luminaries. Often believed to be from Mark Twain but it was really Blaise Pascal: “I’m sorry that this was such a long lett­er, but I didn’t have time to write you a short one.” 

We faceless bureaucrats often changed the text of that original quote to throw in politicians’ speeches for the laugh: “I am sorry I am giving such a long speech. I didn’t have time to write a short one.”

Today’s blog length is a deliberate choice. A short blog so I can focus on other writing. So I can organize some things I have been letting slip to the back burner.

One of those back-burner issues is taxes. I have about a month’s leeway on submitting everything with no taxes to pay. But I need the accursed annual nuisance off my plate.

The laundry needs folding. The fridge needs offloading. Mail must be posted. Unsuitable items must be returned to merchants. So today, and for most of tomorrow, I am going to focus on those.

I will see what new things the world has to show me and what insight or amusement I can gain from them. My car is stocked with a bottle of birdseed in case I see some compatriot Canada Geese looking for grub. It is always a pleasant activity to watch them gobbling up corn and sunflower seeds.

And yes, I almost forgot. We bought a new house. Closes in about three weeks. Now there is a major distraction if ever there was one.

There will no doubt be more to say about that acquisition. I am in the giddy-overwhelmed stage where we have to check all the boxes before closing and then actually move. If I survive, I shall let you know how it goes.

Meanwhile, if this blog post is more than a minute, I will hang a picture of myself on the WordPress Wall of Shame. Surely there must be such a thing.

Fuggedaboutit

I hate being fooled. Or conned. Or realizing someone has tried “to put one over on me.” Whatever that means. I realize everyone has to make a living. But how they make that living is important.

A solar salesman called me today. He is the Texas-based boss of the local solar salesman that we put off last week. No reason to put him off except we are overburdened by other projects and not eager to take on a new one at the minute.

Did that deter them from reaching out to us again after we had already firmly and politely put them off once?

Of course not. Before he could ask me another leading question about how they might make the terms more agreeable and entice us to move forward, I calmly and firmly told him no appeal would work or be tolerated. we had already said no. If/when we decided to proceed and not a minute before, we would be in touch. If he did contact us again, his company would be relegated to our waste bin should we ever decide to proceed with solar. Thank you and goodbye.

I was a consumer reporter on television. The complaints that came into my email were often consumers telling me a salesman caught them at a weak moment. They had signed on to some service or subscription that they really didn’t want and seriously could not afford. This angered me. I have no time for the questionable ethics of “salespeople” who make their living on the backs of others’ weaknesses or vulnerabilities.

I have a particular soft spot for women in this regard. Women are financially disadvantaged compared to men. Not individually, but collectively. I have a particular disdain for pressure on women to be constantly “cooperative” or “nice.” It costs them.

Women regularly denigrate their own needs to keep peace and make others happy. I used to do this a lot. I don’t do it so much anymore. The scales of plenty tipped largely in other people’s favor. Not only was I not rewarded for my acquiesence, I was not given any credit for the opportunity my acquiesence created for them.

Learning boundaries should be a pretty normal part of any child’s upbringing. But it isn’t. Some children grow up with weak or non-existent boundaries and it makes life harder. Some have a very difficult time saying “no” to anyone or anything. Some go in the other direction and become difficult and unpleasant as a matter of course just to protect themselves from being taken advantage of. Neither way works out very well.

Finding out what I deeply care about and what matters most to me makes it easier for me to choose “what hill to die on.” What matters to me has changed over the course of my lifetime. It can change on the spot if I am forced to make choices among limited options. Hmm … Coke Zero or Diet root beer?? I’ll just take ice water, thanks.

Back in the day, I would go right to the wall for causes or issues I deeply believed in. I was a very junior social activist mostly devoted to social vanities or similarly lightweight issues. I overturned the “white shirts only” policy at our uniform-wearing high school. I got my first public taste of humility.

In a couple of years, the whole school dress code broke down and girls in their plain black tunics were wearing the most outrageous colors and styles resplendent with frills and lace and pouffy sleeves. Not sure that effort was worth it. But it did give me my first taste of “be careful what you wish for.”

The whole stress session dealing with the solar salesman today and then dealing with a couple of other external irritants like being overcharged without consultation got to me. For a little while. But the outrage I used to carry over seeming injustice has tempered now. I no longer go to any walls or leap any tall buildings when someone – deliberately or collaterally – annoys me.

I move on. I fuggedaboutit. Seems healthier all around for them and most especially for me.

Heaven or Hell? Your Choice

I lived a large part of my life as a flibbertigibbet. I know people who have lived in the same house in the same city since they were children and became adults. Some moved into their parents’ homes when their parents had either moved or passed on. Actual people married their high school sweethearts and stayed married. I regard them with a mix of wonder and disbelief.

I moved around when I was younger. A lot. I was always sure the next place would be the “best ever.” “It will be perfect!” Never mind that with my background, I did not have the slightest clue how to pull a house together let alone decorate it. Nor did I have sufficient coin for the necessary furnishings and so-called “home elements.”.

I did try interior decorating. Massive failure. I once put a sort of French boudoir black and white rococo style wallpaper in my small bedsit. Once I’d hung the last length of wallpaper, that small bedsit instantaneously became teeny tiny. It felt claustrophobic. Oh well, I thought. That didn’t work. I’ll paint it a solid color. That’ll fix it.

I painted it orange. Not that tasteful mango pastel you might be imagining. Oh no. Think of the vests worn by people doing roadwork. Safety vest orange. I had one quart of flat latex. It did not quite cover the black and white rococo.

Thinking back, when money was tight – as it invariably was – it was my wont to bargain hunt. Clothes. Shoes. Wallpaper. Paint. Buying what I really wanted was always trumped the actual cost. “Oops” paint and I became closely acquainted. So the safety vest orange shade that required four coats to cover hideous black and white wallpaper was probably quite cheap. Almost certainly.

It took time to learn that any place you land can become heaven or hell. Even odder, if you lower your expectations sufficiently to adapt to the environment, even hell can be a pleasant or leastways, interesting, road stop.

I loved the privations of camping and “roughing it” generally. On a memorable cross-Andes horse trek back in the aughts, it was certainly filled with enough excitement and dread to keep the adrenaline flowing. But I am fairly sure that type of vacation would not be everyone’s cup of tea.

Even my longtime, deeply adventurous friend Ursula met her match when a winter snowstorm came up in the middle of the mountains. close to nightfall (Quite a shock as in January it was “mid-summer” in Argentina. Mountains have their own rules.)

In the chaos of getting the horses down quickly to flatter, sheltered land to pitch our tents for the night, Ursula almost backed her horse off a cliff to what would have been certain death. Ursula remembers that snowstorm, nearly falling off a cliff, and dying experience with a certain testiness.

Back down here on terra firma, I am still hell-bent and determined to find a heavenly “forever” home. In my mind’s eye, my home would have everything I ever dreamt of. It would exude and reek of elegance, style, and taste.

I can see the wide, wooden double front doors and the dark grey slate floors of the foyer entrance. In the library just off the front hall to the left, I see through the doors to the low-plush wall-to-wall carpet and mahogany or cherrywood (I am not fussy) floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on both sides of the room. There is a deep-seated leather office chair in front of a mahogany (or cherrywood) desk. Books everywhere.

There are two easy chairs in the middle of the room with brass reading lamps on the end tables. Maybe an ottoman or two. And a dog. Maybe two. There is a large bay window at the back of the room that frames the desk with a wide, cushioned window seat. That upholstered seat looks out on a garden, or maybe an orchard. Trees of some sort at any rate. A birdcage-covered swimming pool is just barely in sight to the left of the property.

The living room across the wide hall from the library would be furnished with two deep, soft sofas facing each other in front of the wood-burning fireplace. The sofas would be set off by a matching easy chair or two with leather inlaid end tables and a large wooden coffee table between them.

The couches would frame a brick or maybe fieldstone, wood-burning fireplace. I adore the smell of burning wood. My dream home would be safe and cozy and, most of all, it would always be there.

You may have already concluded that I have been deeply swayed by (pick one) Alistair Cooke on Masterpiece Theatre or Upstairs, Downstairs (only the Upstairs, thank you), or Downtown Abbey. These are my influencers.

It is still a vague notion at present. Where. When. How. I’ve had bits and bobs of that decorative schemata in former houses but not all elements altogether in the same place. I am not 100% sure what that “forever” home will look like but I will know the place when I see it. I need to acquire the bones before I can start dressing them.

What I am sure of is that it will not have any trace of faux French boudoir black and white rococo wallpaper covered with a seethrough layer of safety vest orange paint. My aesthetic has grown somewhat beyond those days, thankfully.

Not My Children

Mother’s Day is coming up on Sunday. Have you noticed? If not, are you living in a cave in Tibet? We collectively shake our heads over the commercialization of this single day in the annual calendar. We may trivialize it but heaven forfends that we ignore the chance to publicly honor Mom. Because if we do, she will undoubtedly “remind” us.

There is more grounded discussion these days about the real cost and sacrifice in choosing motherhood. Where “this blessed event” was once wreathed in ephemeral images of ribbons and lace and sweet babies raising a dainty hand to their mother’s radiant face, the new narrative has become more realistic. The real underlying narrative of that earlier time was driven by economics and even harder necessity. Children were needed as much as they were wanted.

Parenting is tough. Motherhood is tougher. It comes with a host of unspoken expectations and “rules” that no mother ever fully gets until she gets there. Motherhood can be a bitch. (I like using BITCH as an acronym: Babe In Total Control of Herself). Nothing adequately prepares you for the literal gut punch that babies bring into your world.

Their demands are urgent and incessant. Thank god Nature takes you over and every fiber of a mother’s being strains to ensure her newborn’s survival and comfort. Thank god there is a multi-billion-dollar-a-year business devoted to the business of ensuring that that perfect little baby person you are holding remains that way and develops accordingly.

And when they don’t? Brace yourself for “Mother Guilt.” Or more accurately the mother of all guilt. After my son was born, I remember how sensitive I was to his every gurgle or whimper. If he started crying, there was a mental checklist to go through: “Is he hungry? Is he wet? Does his diaper need changing? Does he have gas? At a given time, it may have been any one or two or all of those. It is often said that babies do not come with instruction manuals which, if I may put my oar in, was very short-sighted on god’s part.

In my early days of motherhood, a wise and kind woman friend advised: “Never wake a sleeping baby.” The biggest psychological shift comes at the minute they hand that squirmy and wrinkled little bundle to you in the delivery room and you officially “become” a parent. For the rest of your life, your mindset will be: “Oh my God, if I don’t take care of this child, nobody else will. It’s totally on me.” My brother-in-law put this perfectly: “Parenting is unrelenting.”

The constant fussing and protection rather get in the way of a lot of parent-child relationships when they come of age. Especially if you are still treating them as if you need to cut up their food and wipe their mouths. I know. I’ve done it. Odd how sarcastic your grown-up baby boy becomes in public after he’s put on a few years.

I also learned – the hard way and in other ways – that neither of my babies was entirely “mine.” They have their own thoughts. Imagine? They have their own ideas. What? They may gently tease and cajole (constantly) to remind you that they are the new guard and you are the old. “Well, fetch me some tea then. Please?”

As they often have in my life, words helped me cope and understand. No one has done this more eloquently than my favorite poet Kahlil Gibran. Over the years, I have bought around twenty copies of his magnum opus, The Prophet. His books make beautiful and meaningful gifts. His poems cover the waterfront of life from birth to death and in between.

Take comfort from his wise words, fellow parenting people. If your babies are still with you, cherish every minute with them. Soon enough, you will be one of those parents who wistfully realizes their babies left the nest altogether too quickly.

Kahlil Gibran – 1883-1931

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.

     And he said:
     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.

     You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
     For they have their own thoughts.
     You may house their bodies but not their souls,
     For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

     You may strive to be like them but seek not to make them like you.
     For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
     You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
     The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

     Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
     For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.