Holidays are too much work!

“Oh my gosh!   Janine run and get a small dish and fill it with hot water and laundry detergent!  Hurry!” my Grandmother anxiously said to my Mother.   My Grandmother was holding up a portion of the tablecloth and dabbing it with her napkin that she had just dipped into her glass of ice water.   Everyone was suddenly silent, staring at my Grandmother and the guilty party, me.  You see I had dropped some gravy on the tablecloth.  But this wasn’t just any tablecloth.  This is one my Grandmother had patiently and lovingly cross stitched for over a year.   My Mother arrived back with the small bowl filled with some magic stain remover.  My Grandmother placed it under the spot on the tablecloth and still showing some anxiety she sat down.  We all breathed a sigh of relief and I hoped that this secret formula could remove the stain from the beautiful tablecloth.  I kept looking anxiously in the direction of the stain throughout the meal to see if it was actually disappearing.

My Grandmother would spend weeks preparing for the holidays.  I can remember hearing her and my Mother discussing what food they would serve, where they would buy it and how they would prepare it.   My grandmother would clean the house and spend hours setting the table for the holiday meal.  The table was set with all her best china and crystal.  There were candles on the table that we would light during the meal.   All the silver was polished and gleaming.  All the large platters and serving dishes would be taken down from the top shelves where they had spent the last year.   It was a feast!

All this preparation and anticipation created great excitement on the part of the family.  We understood these were special occasions.  We would all don our Sunday best clothes, behavior and manners.  We had great respect for my Grandmother and all the work and love she put into planning and preparing for the holidays.    At Christmas time she would spend hours cutting little candies up into pieces which she would use to create holly and other Christmas symbols to place on top of the small tea cookies she had baked.  I can see her now in her kitchen bent over the counter concentrating on those cookies.  I couldn’t understand how she could spend so much time on something that someone was just going to eat in a few days but that didn’t matter to her.  It really was a labor of love and it was part of what she believed defined her as a good wife and mother. Who am I to judge that?

It seems each holiday I reminisce about the past holidays and revisit memories of my Grandmother and her house that smelled of gingerbread and evergreens.   Oh it wasn’t all good times but I find the happy memories come to mind much more often than the unhappy ones. 

 My Grandmother has been gone for quite some time now.  As I reminisce about her I wonder what my children will reminisce about in the years to come. I have not had the time or energy or maybe even desire to do what my Grandmother did to make the holidays special.  For a while I let that keep me from doing anything.  I was overwhelmed by the thought that I would have to do all that stuff and I knew I couldn’t.  Still I instinctively knew that I needed to do something to celebrate the holidays and make them special.  When my children were very young, as a single parent, I was totally exhausted with just doing the regular daily stuff of living.  Somehow I forced myself to engage in certain holiday activities that we repeated each year.  Sometimes it was as simple as attending an annual Christmas tree lighting.  It was a way of saying the holiday was special but more importantly it was a way to take time out of a hectic schedule to “tell” my children they were  special and important.  I came to realize, later, that these annual traditions created shared memories and activities that forged a bond between us – helped to shape us into a family. 

Even now I find I want to give up on some of our traditions as they are too much work or take too much time.  Life continues to be ever busy and filled with activities that take up so much time.  I keep thinking we will go out to eat for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner or I won’t decorate the house or tree this year or I’ll just give money as Christmas gifts.   But then I muster the energy and desire and I remember, as we are all standing around the kitchen as I cook and sitting around the beautifully decorated table that these activities bring us together physically and emotionally.  As we eat we reminisce about past holidays and meals and the good times we had back then.   We also tend to remember and focus on the good rather than the bad – maybe holiday traditions help us do that.

 My children are now young adults and they understand the work and effort all of this takes.  But if I hadn’t taken the time or made the effort when they were too young or too rebellious  to appreciate it or understand the work and sacrifice it takes to “have” a holiday I wouldn’t be reaping the benefits now.   As it was with my Grandmother, this is a labor of love – sometimes appreciated and sometimes not – but always a gift of love to my family.  Perhaps that is the best tradition of all that I can pass onto my children – that they are special and loved and we are a family. The holiday traditions we create are a wonderful way to say that.

Q:  What are your holiday traditions? What message do they convey to your loved ones?

Marriage and sometimes even a love story (Part Five)

Brian had pursued me vigorously.  I had been pursued before.   That is not to say that I am so great.  It is only that I am part of the generation where men pursued us and the women protested or played hard to get.    In this case I wasn’t playing hard to get.  I really didn’t want another relationship at least not with Brian.  After my experiences with David I was not the least bit interested in having another relationship.   Brian and I ended up getting married.  But this time I spent a number of years getting to know Brian before we decided to get married.

            “It is your husband on the phone,” the receptionist at my office said over the intercom.  I picked up the phone.   “My Dad is back in the hospital.  It doesn’t look good.  Can you come to the hospital right now?”  Brian asked.    I went to the hospital.  I called the sitter from there, “Can you stay late today?  I will be at the hospital until visiting hours about 8 pm.”  “OK,” she said.  “Let me talk to the children, “I said.  I talked about how their day went.  I reviewed whether homework was done and preparations made for the next day.  I kissed them all good night over the phone of course.   I went back to the vigil by the bedside.  

The bedside vigil went on for at least two weeks.   It was grueling.  Brian and I had been back and forth to the hospital almost every day.  During the course of those two weeks, I had received multiple urgent messages at the office advising me to come as soon as possible as the end was imminent.  This all took place just a month before our wedding.  In that same month I sold my house and moved out.  The children and I had moved into Brian’s house.  Brian and I were making the final preparations for the wedding.   I moved out of Brian’s house when we had a huge blowout and we called the wedding off    I was in court everyday as  lead counsel in a huge trial that was expected to last at least 6 weeks.  Brian and I were both physically and emotionally exhausted. 

“Get your stuff together right now.  We are leaving!”  I shouted as I opened each of the doors to my children’s respective bedrooms.  They didn’t question me.  While they gathered up their stuff I gathered up some of my clothing.  We threw our stuff into the minivan and we drove to a hotel where we would spend the first of several nights.  I drove the children to school the next morning and then I went to court. In a few days we would move into a rental house.  As I pulled away from Brian’s house that night I looked in the rear view mirror.  I saw Brian standing at the front door.  He was still very angry but also incredulous. 

I remember it so clearly.   Brian and I were sitting on the couch in the TV room of the first house we lived in together.  The children were in their bedrooms getting ready for bed.  I have no recollection of what was said.  Brian and I exchanged angry words. I decided I couldn’t marry him. I decided to leave.    I had no idea, at that time, what drove me to do that.  I am sure I convinced myself it was something Brian said or did.   As I look back on it I think I was driven by fear.  I wanted the security and comfort of marriage but I was afraid of what that would mean to my independence and identity.  Brian had very traditional ideas about marriage.  What price would I have to pay to be married?   A huge conflict was raging in me.   It drove me to leave Brian’s house that night.  I was so selfish I didn’t even think about the price my children would pay for my erratic behavior.

QUERY:  Sometimes our emotions are so strong, especially fear, that we forget to consider the consequences to ourselves and others.  Have you ever had such an experience?  Have you figured out a way to deal with those powerful feelings before you cause alot of emotional damage?  

Switching Gears

I was driving down the freeway with my windows open.  I was on my way home from the office. I was in one of those old station wagons which thankfully they don’t make anymore – at least I don’t think they do.  We were stopped in some gridlock for a time.  That was all pretty normal.   I noticed the drivers of the cars stopped on either side of me were scowling at me.  You see I had my radio blasting – pre IPod days- and I was singing – off key as I have no musical talents – at the top of my lungs and I was moving to the music – again without any rhythm.   (My beloved sister is always quick to point out my lack of rhythm and often asks me not to dance).  She wasn’t with me at the time so I was free to “express myself”.   I felt a bit chagrined when I noticed the drivers staring at me with a look of disgust but I refused to yield to their disgust.   This was my transition time and my only “free” time in a typical day.  It had taken me quite a while to figure out that this worked but it did so I continued on.

Being a litigation attorney can be a very tough way to make a living.  Oh I am not complaining.  I chose it – or at least as I did as much as I “chose” things when I was young.  I also don’t mean to denigrate other professions or lines of work as not being as competitive or tough.  I, however, can only speak about what I know and what I know is working in the legal field as a litigation attorney.

Let’s face it.  I think no matter what you do for a living there is an element of competitiveness and combativeness to it.  That may be especially true in these difficult economic times.  We sometimes feel like we are fighting for economic survival and that can bring out parts of our personality we really don’t like or at least want to encourage.  At least it does for me.  That is especially true for me when I started working as a litigation attorney.   That was Ok because I needed them, on some level, to survive and thrive in that field. (As I matured I learned to temper and control them better but that is not the subject of this short essay).

The biggest problem arose in dealing with my dual roles as mother and litigator.  (We will leave the impact of my role as wife to a later date).   The role of mother, in my humble opinion, requires an element of vulnerability, compassion, loving, nurturing, understanding, humility, patience and much, much more. It certainly does not require one to be combative or competitive.  So I had these two persons living inside of me and they tended to overlap at good bit especially at home. That darn competitor and combatant would not disappear the minute I walked through the front door of my house.  Often it was because I was still stewing about something that happened during the work day. I didn’t want to be that person at home.  

I discovered, quite by accident, that I could transform myself  from a combative, competitive lawyer to a mother. I did this by listening to the radio and singing along at the top of my lungs as I drove home from the office.  The more I did this the easier and better the transition from lawyer to mother became.  I had struck gold! So scowl away other drivers!

QUERY:   Are you working in a combative and/or competitive environment?  Do you often arrive home in a hostile or angry mood?  What do you do to transition from “business person” to “family or relationship person”? Does making a conscious effort to transform yourself help bring more harmony to your home life?  If you aren’t doing something now do you want to and if so, what can you do?

Raising Children the Best We Can (Part Three)

 “How could you have lost your glasses?”  I screamed at 5 year old Samuel.   “I can’t afford to buy you another pair right now!”  I shrieked.  I carried on like this for a while longer. I was definitely ranting and raving.  Every extra expenditure was a crisis in those days and I often took that and my other stresses and frustrations out on my children.    In fact everything was a crisis in those days.  I was exhausted all the time.    I was overwhelmed by the demands of daily living. Work was stressful.   The divorce was dragging through the courts.   I was receiving threats and being harassed by the children’s father.  The children were acting out and not doing well at school.  The house was a mess all the time.   The laundry was always piled high. We lived paycheck to paycheck.   I would rush home from the office, cook dinner, and help a little with homework, get the younger two bathed and in bed, wash the dinner dishes and fall into bed exhausted hopefully by 9:30 pm.  Then I would start everything over again the next day at 6:30 a.m.   On the weekends we went to the grocery where some weeks we had only $25.00 for groceries.   I was able to take the children on one fun outing each week.   We usually went to a park or other free venue to try to have some fun.   This is the environment in which my children spent their early, formative years.

During the demise of my first marriage, I couldn’t wait to get out of the office at lunchtime so I could go for a drive.  I would race to my car and drive into a quiet residential neighborhood not far from the office.   I would park my car, put my head down on the steering wheel of the car and sob for my entire one hour lunch break.  I would clean my face up or so I hoped and go back to the office.   Thankfully the people at the office were gracious enough not to ask me what had happened.  I think they instinctively knew I couldn’t handle their questions.

QUERY:  Have you made similar mistakes?  Do you berate yourself for them?  Do you carry around alot of guilt like I did and sometimes still do? Is it better to forgive ourselves and to devote our energy to finding better ways to handle things?  Have you ever apologized to your children for your bad behavior?   Did that improve your relationship with your child and/or relieve some of the guilt? What works for you as a parent to deal with your parenting mistakes?

Successful Women?

I picked it up and looked at it.  I wanted to put it back down but I didn’t.  I dread reading them but I seem drawn to them like a moth to a flame.   Whether it is that type of article in Austin Woman or the sections of the New York Times or Austin American Statesman where they have interviews or identify persons who have been “promoted” in the business world, the articles evoke unpleasant emotions for me.  I am referring to articles about successful women.  

You know you’ve read them. They go something like this:  “Nancy Smith was recently promoted to Head of Marketing in this multinational corporation. These articles are followed with a glowing biography or glorified resume chocked full of amazing credentials.  There is a photo and then an interview or announcement or both.  Nancy says something like, ““I started out as a file clerk and now I am President of this large corporation.” 

I would like to say I celebrate the success of these women but if I am honest I don’t.  Mostly I just feel inadequate.  I compare where I am in my career with where they are in theirs and I definitely have failed.  Why do I let others’ success make me feel inferior?  Some of it is cultural I think.  We are bombarded with stories of “success” and we glorify the materially successful.  They get the accolades and respect in the news and community.

Sometimes I convince myself that they have made sacrifices I wouldn’t make.  I wouldn’t want to work all those hours I say.  But putting aside the standard excuses why I didn’t achieve that level of success, how do I come to terms with where I am now?  I don’t really think I am less smart or less energetic.  I maybe –no I am definitely- less ambitious.  I’d love the money and prestige but I wouldn’t want to do the work it takes to get there or to maintain that standing.  It takes a lot of intense energy and sacrifice to accomplish and maintain all of that, I think.

 I know that, without consciously doing it, I set professional goals for myself when I was young.  Being more conscious of my choices would have helped me to be more satisfied with where I am now. (If I were a younger woman in a career I would make that a priority.) I saw my career as a way to support my family – nothing more. And as I look back I can say that I accomplished exactly what I set out to do – nothing more, nothing less. So perhaps I should have been more careful in setting my goals or revisited my goals as time went on.  I didn’t. I stuck to my original goal and now I am unhappy that I achieved what I set out to do.  Along the way I missed out on more professional opportunities.   I didn’t make them a priority.  Part of it may be my generation.  It was OK for us women to work outside the home to support a family but nothing more.

 I am never going to achieve those heights in the business world or maybe anywhere and I will work on coming to terms with that fact.  I’ll let you know how that goes. In the meantime I am going to celebrate the success of others. That is a good place to start, I think.  I am going to set some new goals in this field or maybe another.  I am also going to celebrate my own “successes” even though they look very different from the successes of the women in the magazines and newspapers. Sounds trite but I really believe it comes down to your individual definition of “success.”  To be sure, there  will be more to follow on this subject. 

QUERY:  Do you compare yourself to every successful women you read about?  Do you denigrate the successful woman's accomplishments in order to make yourself feel better about where you are in your career?  Does doing that really make you feel better about where you are?  What are some positive ways you could foster acceptance and enjoyment regarding where you are right now?  How do you define "success"?

Post Halloween Dilemma - Kids and candy UGH!

“Can I have some of my Halloween candy for dessert?” Samuel asked after we had finished dinner. I froze.  Before I could respond he and his younger sister, Ellen, had both gone to their bedrooms to fetch their candy.

“YOU STOLE MY CANDY!” my son screamed as he came racing out of his room.  I heard the angry voice and footsteps before I saw him.  He was about 7 years old at the time.  “Yeah YOU STOLE MINE TOO”, Ellen added.

"Oh Lord”, I said under my breath.   By this time both my son and daughter were standing right in front of me with a look of disgust and rage on their faces.   My daughter had her hand on her hip like she does when she is angry.  My son was holding the pillowcase, which was his bag of candy, in front of my face.  “This pillowcase was ¾ full last night and now it is only about ¼ full”, Samuel shouted.

“Oh my gosh Mom”, my daughter Ellen said.  “I remember that so well!”  We both started laughing hysterically.  My daughter, Ellen, and I were reminiscing about past Halloweens.   We both remember it well because it was repeated for a few years even though more than 20 years had passed since then.  It is funny now but it wasn’t back then.

Funny how your children can accuse you of doing things in ways that no one else can or maybe I should say they can strike a nerve like no one else can.  Perhaps it is the hypocrite factor that makes the difference.

“I don’t know what you are talking about and please do not speak to me like that”, I shouted back to Samuel and Ellen.  “Let me see the pillowcases”, I said.  (They had taken to using pillowcases to carry candy as it held more and was easier to carry around.)  I looked inside each of the two pillowcases.  “The candy just settled like cereal and other things do in boxes after they are in there for a while”, I said trying to be calm and dignified.   But I knew the guilt was written all over my face.  I was busted by my two kids.

“Mom you’re lying”, Samuel said with disgust.  He threw the pillowcase on the ground and stormed back to his room.  Ellen followed him.  Samuel never ate any more of his Halloween candy.

 As Ellen and I laughed I realized what a coward I was at that time. Even though it is a very funny story in retrospect, it aptly illustrates my lack of parenting skills at that time in my life.  You see my children, especially Samuel, would eat candy until he got sick.  I took the candy away so he wouldn’t eat so much of it and yes I ate a few pieces myself – maybe more than a few.   That part is OK but I lied to him about it rather than face a confrontation with Samuel.  Samuel was the king of temper tantrums.  They could last days.  I should have just been honest.  Trying to avoid the conflict only made matters worse.  It took me many years before I had the courage to be and learned to be honest with my children. 

Honesty, appropriate for the age, really is the best policy as I learned.   I would have to put up with a temper tantrum but then it would be over.  I didn’t have to be a hypocrite in the eyes of my children by preaching honesty and then acting dishonestly.  That course of action had far more lasting effects as they learned not to trust or respect me.  I have apologized for this and many, many other parenting deficiencies.  We can laugh about most of them now as Ellen and I did with our post Halloween trauma.  But, before we could do that, I had to “fess up” to my own mistakes and lies. That wasn’t an easy thing to do at least in the beginning. It was one of the most important things I did.  By admitting my own mistakes, it freed my children to admit their own faults and mistakes to me.   The honesty has helped us to form good and strong relationships.

QUERY:  Have you made mistakes or are there times when you have not acted in conformity with how you tell your children to act?   Is now the right time to “confess” that to your children?

Marriage and sometimes even a love story (Part Four)

 “I like you a lot,” one of the regular customers at the health food store where I worked in high school said to me one day.  I didn’t know quite what to say. Richard had graduated from an Ivy League school and was working in my hometown.  He seemed much too old at the time – 5 years older than I.   I really can’t recall how it was that we starting dating.  Over the next four years we spent a lot of time together.    We broke up after he moved away.    He came by my parents’ house several years later to hear from my Sister that I was married and having a baby.  I only appreciate now, almost 30 years later, what a great guy he was.  You see I wanted to fall in love like Jennifer Jones and William Holden did in “Love is a Many Splendored Thing.”     I wanted some adventure or something different from my middle class upbringing. As to the latter, I got my wish!

I wasn’t “in love” with Richard as I understood that phrase with all of my 19 year old wisdom.  I didn’t have that burning feeling in the pit of my stomach that told me he was the right person for me.   When he wasn’t around I didn’t feel agitated and anxious like something was missing.   I had that feeling for David so I had to be “in love”.

Why am I lately so filled with regrets over lost loves?   Have I really missed opportunities for love or am I just experiencing some middle age pangs of regret for my youthful choices?    It is one of the principal ironies of life that we make the most important decisions of our life when we have absolutely no idea what we are doing – like choosing a spouse and a career.  I found myself continually daydreaming along the lines of”What if?”  What if I had married Richard was a question that was haunting me.  

Do I really believe that certain relationships are meant to be or conversely not be?    Do I believe in fate?   Did I make the right decision or a grievous mistake?  It was so long ago who really cares and why does it matter?   As I passed the halfway point in my life I seem haunted by a need to find answers to those questions or somehow to put the inquiries to rest- permanently.   That question was pressing in on me as I had just ended another marriage – my third.  How did I end up here I wondered.   I have experienced so much adversity and my life has been such a struggle.   How do I make sense of it all?  Sifting through my past relationships seemed like as good a starting point as any. 

QUERY:  Can you recall an early love?  Is there a lesson or any wisdom to be gleaned from looking back over that first love?  Have we glorified it in our mind to an unhealthy level?  Is it interfering with our satisfaction in our present relationship?