Wait, What?

Every now and then I come across something, someone, or some comment that totally throws me for a loop.  Not often, mind you.  I am the kind of person who you tell your life story to in the grocery line.  I guess I just look sympathetic; and, I do that mirror listening thing without thinking about what I want to tell you about myself or trying to insert my own stories into yours.  (Yes, being introverted helps here, but I’ve got it down pat.)  Also, I’ve been teaching for twenty years, so to really, truly shock me is a formidable task.  Gay?  Cool.  Don’t know what you want to do when you grow up?  Join the club.  Want to move to Montana and live as a hermit with only books and a case of beer?  Have fun!  Confused?  Me, too.  Lost and just need a hug?  C’mon in.  In love with your cousin’s best friend’s ex-girlfriend’s dog?  Okay.  Dislike your parents and hate your friends?  I’m your sounding board.  Really – you cannot shock me.

But, just when I know I have heard it all and seen most of it, I’m blindsided.  This past week I was talking with a group of women.  To be precise, I was listening to a group of women talk. I did not know all of them; several of us had just met for the first time. The age range was 40-70. Topics ranged from marriage to children to in-laws to pets to jobs and back again.  At one point, one of the older ladies suggested, “I guess it’s about having a dream.  I mean, you have to have something you want to do.  A goal.  A dream. I’m retired and I still don’t have enough time to do everything I want to do.”  In less than half a breath a younger woman piped up, “Maybe that’s my problem.”  We looked at her expectantly.  “I mean,” she continued, “I don’t really have any dreams except to just be with my husband.”  Wait. What?  She went on to iterate a couple of dreams he has, but she concluded that comment with, “All I really want to do is spend time with him.”

Now, you’ll all be glad to know that I beat down the feminist in me that wanted to lecture her on losing her identity in a man.  I also shushed the counselor in me who wanted to tell her that she needed to do some kind of guided imagery in order to visualize who she wants to be.  You’ll also be relieved to know that I did not allow the reader in me to quote all sorts of literary ideas about becoming your own person.  And, yep, she did it.  This forty-something woman shocked me.  It really seems to me that hanging your one dream on another human being is a recipe for tragedy.

I don’t know lots of things “for sure,” as Oprah puts it, but I do know for sure that if you have one dream that you assign your happiness to and it  revolves around another person, you will be disappointed.  That kind of pressure will doom a relationship and poison a friendship.  My dream depends upon you?  No.  Who – male or female – thinks that wrapping up the sum total of all of your dreams into one person is a good idea?  Her dream is just to spend time with her husband.  Ancillary to cultivating herself as a human being and cultivating her own interests and dreams, it’s not a bad thing to want to spend time with one’s husband.  In fact, many would argue it’s quite excellent to want to spend time with loved ones.  Let me reiterate:  that’s her only dream.  Her one dream for the rest of her life hangs upon another person. Her one dream for the remaining 45 years on the planet is to spend time with her husband.  That’s it.  Wait. What? 

So, the husband-time-spending thing aside, this woman has only ONE dream for her remaining time in life.  That’s it.  One.  That One is a progression of a role in a family. Only that.  I know women here in Augusta, and I assume they exist all over this country if not the world, whose mission in life has been and continues to be:  graduate high school, go to college, find a husband, marry, have children, join the country club, take family vacations, help the children graduate high school, help the children go to college, help the children get married, help the children have children, enjoy the grandchildren and eventually die.  And, yes, before you ask, I have taught and counseling high school girls whose life plan is some iteration of the above sequence.  In 2013.  Yes, there are girls and women whose whole existence seems to bizarrely rotate around others.  Where, oh where, is the desire for personal development?  For cultivating your own talents?  Women, if you are reading this, you have hundreds, if not thousands, of opportunities to make a life for yourself.  And, most certainly, you may want it to include marriage or family life and many of your desires and dreams and talents may dovetail into family life, but please, oh please, I beg you not to roll up all of your dreams into what your husband wants to do or into some future children. God forbid he becomes ill or dies or leaves you – please have some thoughts about what it is that YOU want.  You and only you. What are your dreams for yourself? If you were totally on your own, what would you do to develop your interests and achieve your dreams?  Wait, what?

Yes, I know that what I’m suggesting might be a lecture for human beings, but it really seems especially applicable to women who roll up their own identity in a husband and family or who minimize themselves for any other person.  Who knows what will happen?  Please develop yourself – individually.  Surely you have interests and talents and desires for your own development.  Children grow up.  Children move out.  Spouses are not extensions of who you are – they are (hopefully) wonderful  additions to who you are, but you must always be you first and foremost. 

Perhaps this lady was simplifying what Jean Webster suggested, “I'm going to enjoy every second, and I'm going to know I'm enjoying it while I'm enjoying it. Most people don't live; they just race. They are trying to reach some goal far away on the horizon, and in the heat of the going they get so breathless and panting that they lose sight of the beautiful, tranquil country they are passing through; and then the first thing they know, they are old and worn out, and it doesn't make any difference whether they've reached the goal or not.”  Perhaps my new friend wants to just enjoy time with her husband, and I do wish her all the happiness doing so, but I still say she needs a goal.   “It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn’t a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. Something for ourselves that we are working towards.” (B.E. Mays) 

And that, my new friend, is a tragedy that can be avoided.

Pride and Prejudice

"So, I'm going to drop all my classes except one and work full time."

Huh?

Over the many years I have been a teacher and counselor, I have heard and seen it all.  Well, let me tell you "it all" has a new tenor and shape and color when you hear it from your own child.  Granted, he's not a child, but when I heard that opening sentence - or some approximation of it - from my eldest son I stayed composed.  I listened.  He talked.  I asked a few questions.  Then, I engaged in a wrestling match.

Pride.  Mine - not his - reared its ugly head. And, after a few minutes, the wrestling began.   My son -  who went to college 15 hours away from home; having applied only to that college; having earned four scholarships to help pay for that college; having joined ROTC to continue paying for the out-of-state tuition; for whom I had taken (and am still paying) a parent loan to be at that college - was changing his plan to include much more working than studying.  This kid, for whom I worked in private school for ten years so I could afford tuition so he could get a good education (not always easy to do in Georgia) so he could go to college so he could for all intents and purposes drop out of college?  No.  In my mind you go to college, you get a degree, you get a job, you then...um...work?, then you maybe one day retire in order to enjoy life?  Wow, that fizzled out fast.

In my opening remarks to high school freshmen and their parents, I actually say some version of the fact that high school is not a means to an end.  It is to be enjoyed for its own merits, as is college because if one thing leads to another leads to another and then another, where are we?  We are dead.  Life should be enjoyed.  I enjoyed all seven years of undergraduate and graduate school.  He is not. 

But, my pride suggested that my children should follow the path that I foresaw for them.  A path that I myself trod years ago.  Furthermore, pride suggested that I would look bad if my son didn't stay in college, graduate in four years, and become a productive member of adult society.  I counsel parents whose children want to take a gap year or transfer colleges or take a semester off that, "Everyone has his own path."  I am right.  I am right even and especially when that someone who is creating his own path is my son.  I am right even though I am a college counselor whose job it is to help students find a group of good colleges, apply to them, be accepted to them, and matriculate to them.  Everyone has his own path.

Not "everyone has his own path that his mother needs to approve."  Not "everyone has his own path that should match everyone else's path."  Not "everyone has his own path that is constantly clear and understandable to others."  Everyone has his own path. Period.

If I believe that for the students and families I work with, I have to believe it for my own children as well. I am right.  Life is meant to lived and enjoyed, not suffered through. There is a problem here though: as much as I want him to live and enjoy life, I also want him to be productive.  I want him to have a career or job that he can parlay into a way of living that he wants.  Part of the American parent's dream is that our children have even better jobs and better lives than we have.  We tend to forget that if we really want this, our children may not follow our paths.  They may need to forge into woods with a machete, a muddled transcript, and their own ideas.  They may need to create their own paths without regard for parental pridefulness or prejudice.

My mother used to say, "We don't care what you grow up to be.  If you're going to be a garbage man, just be the best garbage man you can be."  Excel in whatever you do.  My son has embraced the ideas of living, going to college (or not), working, creating his life on his own terms.  I know him.  He will also excel.  On his own terms. 

We all want our children to be happy and successful, but many of us have assigned our own definition of happiness and success to our children. Things are not the same today as they were in 1987 when I was twenty years old.  My son is not me.  Might my pride want him to stay in school full-time and tough things out?  Yes.  But, is that what's best?  Not necessarily.  He is working.  He is taking one class (I think).  He is paying his own bills.  He has an idea of how to move forward on his own terms.  He seems more relaxed and pleased to be making conscious decisions about his own path. If I can't be proud of that, then perhaps it is I who should rethink a few things.

"We're so busy watching out for what's just ahead of us

 that we don't take time to enjoy where we are."

 (credit: Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson)

On Being Normal

Where can you go to see people you normally don’t really want to see at all in various states of undress and dampness and relaxation and sandiness? 

I went to the beach today.  Despite the marketing ploy of the town in which I live – “three hours to the beach and three to the mountains!” -  I probably haven’t been to the beach in about three years. And, yeah, that marketing tool is basically spinning the fact that we are in the middle of nowhere.  But, I needed to see the ocean today.  We happen to be in Florida, and I happened to have a few hours to myself, so I went.

Let me just say that it wasn’t crowded.  It was hot and windy.  After I removed myself from the smallish crowd, I settled on a dune to watch the surf and contemplate.  As with many meditations, my undisciplined mind began to wander.  I took in the seagulls, two ships on the horizon, the white surf, the sway of the water.  And, then it happened.  People were walking by – running by – wading into the surf.  Having worked in high schools for the past twenty years, I am adept at tuning out the noise and movements of those around me.  However, it happened.  It was kind of like when you glance across a nighttime room, and you are really sure you just saw a moving shadow, but you know you’re home alone, so you try to convince yourself that nothing was there.  The beach version of this is when a larger lady is sporting an ill-fitting one piece, and she strolls by as you are staring out at the horizon.  And, just as she steps into your line of view, the edge of her bikini line pops out and greets you.  Not unlike a little ground hog popping its head out of the ground, glancing around, and then burrowing back down.   Larger ladies who may not fit well into conventional swimsuits need to check the body fit of their swim attire on a regular basis.  When we have some extra mass, our clothes can stretch in places we don’t always check.  I don’t care if you have rolls of fat, and I think you should wear whatever swimwear you are happy in, but I want it to cover your labia.  Sitting on the small dune and the sight line I had out to the ocean evidently created such an angle that my view was punctuated not once or twice but four times by four different ladies with this particular wardrobe malfunction.

These instances were not in quick succession, and after each, um, greeting, I had to readjust my sight, search around for a shell or two, breathe in the ocean air, and generally cleanse myself.  I found my thoughts reaching to what was “normal.”  The beach, as well as amusement parks, state fairs, and children’s birthday parties challenge what any of the participants might view as normal.  I did not grow up around beaches, and so I do not have a standard for a “normal” day at the beach.  Perhaps my experience today is just that.  I did not grow up near the mountains, so I have no idea what a “normal” day hiking would entail.  Sure, I did these things, but on vacation.  And, vacation is – most often – not normal.  I know what a “normal” school day is; I can define a “normal” work day for you; I might even endeavor to tell you what a “normal” birthday celebration entails.  But wait.

No, no I can’t.  There is no such thing as normal.  (Normal, Illinois notwithstanding.)  I have my experiences.  That is all.  I know what traditions I grew up with.  I know what traditions I tried to instill in my family life when the boys were young.  I remember the one time I desperately tried to squeeze a husband into my preconceived notions of what a family New Year’s Eve should be.  (That failed, and the following year I bought him a New Year’s hunting trip so I wouldn’t be reminded of my failure.)  I used to have a sign in my classroom that read “Tradition should be a guide not a jailer.”  Indeed.  Over the past four years, I have gradually and intentionally thrown out such traditions and expectations and normals in order to more fully embrace opportunities as they present themselves.  My middle son’s 18^th birthday brought us to Florida this weekend.  Back in June a friend offered to sell me tickets to a two-day multi-band concert; he had bought them, but his plans had since changed.  So, my son and a friend are at an all-day concert, and I have time.  Not a normal celebration, but a wonderful one.  He and his friend are having fun; I’m not at home moping about the crumbling bathroom or broken truck.  Neither am I doing the normal Saturday mowing and cleaning.  I’m in Florida, visiting the beach, having a glass of wine, writing.  Normal might just be over-rated. 

I recently had a conversation with a male friend which eventually turned to dating.  I stated that I do not date any more.  He was aghast.  “That’s not normal.  That’s not healthy,” he asserted.  I assured him that, in fact, it is quite normal and very healthy.  He went on to tell me that I needed to find someone to grow old with otherwise I’d be alone and – you guessed it – “that’s not normal.”  He has a point.  I believe that not wanting to be alone in old age is part of the impetus for marrying; at least it was for me.  But, I embraced that “normal” without actually examining all the parts of it, and the results were less than satisfying.  That “normal” doesn’t fit me any better than the women’s swimsuits fit them today. 

In high school and afterwards, I wanted nothing more than to “fit in” and “be normal” all the while being different.  I created a paradox for myself.  I took Russian to be different.  I wanted to be a spy to be different.  I got married to be normal.  I taught Russian to be different while fitting in.  Such paradoxes we can create for ourselves!  My eldest son wants to have a life not unlike the one his grandfather lives – materially comfortable, respectable, and generous.  At the same time he wants to travel, speak different languages, and date just about anyone who walks through the door. What’s a person to do?  My youngest son craves peer acceptance because, well, what’s middle school for if it’s not for gaining popularity and being regarded as cool?  At the same time, he still sleeps with his teddy bear and watches Dr. Who.  Perhaps we are all some version of this middle school dilemma:  “I want people to like me, but I want to do my own thing.”  It can be a horrific tug-of-war that can last far too long.

Now, I’m contemplating earning another graduate degree, selling my house, cancelling TV service; getting ready to send my middle son to college; watching my eldest son on his last two laps of undergrad before going into the army.  The truth is that I spent time and tears trying to fit into a normal that never fit quite right.  My children are doing this all much better than I ever did.  It is my hope that they already know that life does not have to be a paint-by-numbers kit.  The best lives are freehand, out of whack, and a little messy.  

Independence and Strong Winds

Yesterday my eldest son called me from college to lament the fact that with half the summer now gone, he finally found a summer job.  The deal we had was that he could go to summer semester if he paid his own living expenses, hence the need for a job.  After a month of sweating it, this looks like it will pan out.  However, he noted that he was going to have to go to class most of the day, then work all evening, and then he’d have to get up earlier to study for class.  His whole day would be taken up with – gasp – work!  Either class work or work-work or working out (which he has to do to stay in shape for his ROTC scholarship).  He went on to tell me that real life wasn't like this: you didn't have to work your job and then work after your job, too.  (I chuckled.  Out loud.) He was lamenting not because he is incapable.  Not because he’s a spoiled baby.  He was lamenting simply because he has been hit on the head with the brick of adult life.  

Last week at a conference in Iowa, the coordinator gave strict instructions to the attendees:  if there’s a tornado warning do not follow the people from Iowa.  Why?  Because the people from Iowa would not take shelter, they would go out to see the storm.  When I was little, the sirens could send me, my sisters, and mom to the basement in the late afternoon or even in the middle of the night.  I remember more than one basement sleep out due to the Ozian conditions outside.  Well, I actually don’t know what the conditions were because I was relegated to the basement.  However, I do remember realizing that Dad was rarely in the basement with us.  He was on the porch, watching the storm do its thing.  I suppose he wanted to see the beast that was to sweep us all away or maybe he was simply giving instructions to the wind, “Okay, that’s good.  Now, move on so I can go to bed; I have work in the morning.”  I do clearly remember the first time I was allowed not to be in the basement – I was about in 5^th grade, and the sirens were blaring outside and the weathermen were predicting wind-induced apocalypse.  Mom trundled my sisters downstairs, and I slipped through the living room to join Dad on the porch.  The wind, the rain, the dark clouds were all thrilling.  “This isn't going to amount to much, Laura,” and Dad walked around the garage to make sure the garbage cans hadn't overturned.  From that time on, I didn't have to go to the basement.

Maybe such feelings of being grown up are not really true.  The fact of the matter is:  my dad was right there.  I felt independent, and of course I lorded it over my sisters the next day that I didn't have to cower downstairs.  But, in retrospect, it wasn't the standing on the porch that made Dad a grown up  - it was that he righted the garbage cans before he went back inside.  That’s the stuff grown-up, independent life is made of, as my eldest is finding out this summer.  

Compared to many of my peers, I have been a late bloomer in the traditions of growing up.  I bought my first car at age 42.  I bought my first house at age 43.  Sure, I've been employed ever since I had a shopper newspaper route that I complained vociferously about every week.  And, I've been a mom for 20 years. But still, although I've been watching the tornadoes pass since 5^th grade, I have only recently taken on these major adult signs of independence.  It’s overrated.  I’m ready to get rid of some of them, just as my eldest son is taking stock and adjusting his sails to adult winds. 

Independence is what we celebrate today, and the thing that I am reminded of on this day is that with independence comes responsibility.  Without going down some patriotic path, it behooves me to remember that the bricks of adult life – whatever they may be for each individual – are what we build our lives with.  And, dad isn't always going to be on the porch with us.  We have to tend to our own garbage cans.  The summer jobs, the classes, the relationships, the places to live, the hobbies, the games, the friends, the things we fill our time with – these are the independences that our lives are made of.  And, yes, indeed, if any wind is going to try and sweep things away, I do want to meet it.  In the meantime, though, I will try to help my son choose his bricks wisely while reconsidering my own.