I’ve heard more negative flack about Mother’s Day than I care to think about. This Sunday in May is so built up that nothing short of the honor afforded to the Queen Mother could even begin to meet the expectations of an over-tired, overwhelmed, and over-stressed Mother.
Why is it that the mere mention of Mother’s Day is often met with groans and eye-rolling from many otherwise reasonable women? I think it has to do with the breadth of space between expectations and the sobering reality of the day.
And this crevasse between expectation and reality is littered with disgruntled moms remembering years of making brunch for their mothers-in-law while they had very young children themselves, golf outings scheduled for their husbands while they stayed home with the kids, boxes of their favorite chocolates thoughtlessly given just when they had lost their first five pounds, and otherwise ignored, neglected and overworked Sunday afternoons in May.
I remember my first Mother’s Day. I was in a group of young mothers who all had children born within a few months of each other. This support group was invaluable as we commiserated over all aspects of this new experience of Motherhood. Usually, this was a tremendously helpful group where we were all comforted with the awareness of a common experience.
The problem was that one of these women got a Lexus SUV for Mother’s Day.
Excuse me?!?
Though no one bothered asking, we could assume there was a bouquet of roses arranged elegantly on the hood with the big bow. ..And dinner reservations with a babysitter arranged.
You can imagine how the conversations went at home that evening, between every couple but one.
So why has this pleasant Sunday in May become such a storm of emotions?
I sent out the word to a bunch of moms—asking them about their best and worst Mother’s Days, and how they found joy on that day. The resounding message from every mom that had a positive view was that, like most events for a woman, you’ve got to make it joyful yourself.
I was most impressed with Danielle, whose husband gave her the day off on Mother’s Day. Of course, she reciprocated on Father’s Day. This is what Danielle, mother to two sets of twins, had to say:
“Not sure how we started it, but I’m pretty sure it was when we realized that with four young kids, there is no such thing as a true day off, ever. So, we let each person spend two days a year — their day (Mothers/Fathers) and their birthday in any way they chose: your time is your own, and no one can make demands on it. We generally keep this to an 8 to5pm type of thing, so that we still build in a little family celebration angle to it, especially for birthdays. But for the rest of the day, the parent can do whatever he or she wants — including enlisting the family in a family hike (which has gone south on occasion) and/or disappearing to go to a movie, go for a long run, go to yoga classes, etc. Whatever.”
Ask Danielle if she likes Mother’s Day and you’ll hear a resounding “yes.”
Another very content mother of four expressed a healthy approach on Mother’s Day by remembering that she is a mother by the mere presence of her kids. It’s kind of Mother-Child Day to her. Christine said, “All I want is a day of treasured memories.” To her, “It becomes a Day of the Children, and I realize if I think of them more, on that specific day, me being a mother is better for it! A Great Mother’s Day is when the Mom realizes it’s not truly her day!” Christine makes sure she carves out other special moments to pamper herself during the year, but doesn’t make Mother’s Day about herself. As a result, she never gets the Mother’s Day Blues.
Perhaps these two great moms know the little secret that it took me years to figure out. Some of the best mothering advice I’ve ever received from a friend of mine was to claim the time you need. As I was complaining about how my husband spends an hour or two in front of the television many nights, she asked me why I don’t do the same. She continued to say that the reason I don’t have down time is that I don’t take down time.
This got me thinking. Maybe my relaxation wouldn’t take the form of a prime time show, but perhaps an afternoon latte with a friend, a walk at lunch, a rest on the sofa with a magazine on a Sunday afternoon, or a decadent piece of chocolate would do the trick. The mothers with healthy, happy Mother’s Day memories agree.
Unfortunately, mothers as a species tend to play the masochist. Few mothers, especially those with very young children who need a break the most, can really give to themselves without feeling guilty. But this mother-as-martyr serves no one, and only works to build resentment. Mothers need to adopt a new paradigm, which insists that women stop begrudging that the family hasn’t given the proper deference on the one day artificially pumped up by Hallmark and brunch venues. Instead, she needs to give herself gifts of kindness on a regular basis.
A woman carving out time for herself just might get the thumb’s up from Dad, too. Though this was news to me, in a recent relationship sermon series entitled “Smokin’ Hot” (trygrace.org), the pastor actually asserted that men feel good when their wives get their hair done, spend an afternoon at the spa, get a mani-pedi, or are otherwise pampered. Though the jaded, Mother’s-Day-hating woman in me wants to think that this pride a husband feels is merely ‘cause he thinks he’s going to be off the hook on his “Honey-do” list for the afternoon or get lucky that night, maybe there’s more to it. When I asked my husband, Jorge, he said he thinks that although this phenomenon of husband-feeling-successful-when-his-wife-gets-pampered is akin to the absurdity of the President taking credit for a good economy, there is something to it. He confessed that at some level, when I look good and am happy, he takes of bit of the credit and feels like he’s been successful and done something right. Warped as this angle may seem, there’s got to be something to it because no one wants to be in a relationship with a griping, over-sized t-shirt donning, polish chipping, dark-root showing woman.
But there’s another angle that needs to be addressed concerning Mother’s Day. And it has to do with the most vulnerable of moms. It’s the moms that have the least opportunity to take the advice of carving out their own time. The new mom.
New dads, this day is all up to you. This is the one special Mother’s Day that must not be missed, and the responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of the new father. This first Mother’s Day is blatantly messed up by so many men. Though a new dad may not realize it, this Mother’s Day is more important than the proposal, wedding day, the first anniversary, or any other event in a married woman’s life. This is the Mother’s Day where she has embarked on a journey that will shape the rest of her life. She’s exhausted and overwhelmed, questioning her abilities, her sanity, and maybe even her choice to become a mother in the first place. If the baby is still very young, she may not even have received that first blessed smile from her little one and is essentially obsessively caring for a crying, pooping blob. She needs to be affirmed, to be told that she is still beautiful to you, that you are astounded at the miracle of her strength and want to honor her.
The deal is that if you exceed expectations on that first Mother’s Day, you’ll be set for the next 18 years. The day must be couched with a gentle caveat like, “I know that the rest of your Mother’s Days will be full of scrawled hand printed cards and Dixie cup marigolds, but this first Mother’s Day is my year to honor you.”
That’s not to say that a man who does a good job that first Mother’s Day is off the hook forever, but merely that you won’t feel like you’re playing catch up for the rest of your life. How’s that for a good deal, Dad?
So what if you can’t buy a Lexus SUV? It doesn’t need to be that big, but a handwritten card that makes her cry is a good start. And in a pinch, even a Hallmark card with lots of mushy stuff could work if she’s into that.
But you can’t stop at just a card. See if you can’t swing a good piece of jewelry that’s classic and substantial enough that your newborn infant daughter may consider wearing it for her wedding someday. And for super-bonus points, don’t forget to mention this line of sentimental ‘daughter’s-wedding-day’ thinking as you’re sliding it on her finger or holding her hair back from her ears as she puts on the diamond studs. (Necklaces are not a good choice as the baby pulls on them.)
Don’t have such deep pockets or are lucky enough to be married to a non-bauble-loving woman? How about planting a pretty flowering tree that will ‘grow with our new baby.’ Or make her a photo book from Snapfish or other similar online service. A spa gift certificate for a massage can work, too, but it may be viewed as a bit of a commonplace cop-out. And generally, a woman battling the lingering baby bulges may feel a little self-conscious with some stranger massaging her new lumps. Brunch is another popular choice. But if you’re going to take her to brunch, get a babysitter for crying out loud (no pun intended). No new mother wants to sit in an over-crowded Sunday brunch venue crawling with other people’s screeching children and her own inconsolable baby. On second thought, skip the Mother’s Day brunch all together. Get carry-out or cook (and clean up) yourself that day or make a special date on a different day.
The key is to make it sentimental, put real thought into it, plan ahead and spend real money on it. Trust me. It will pay off in future years. Don’t be afraid that you’re setting a precedent. Instead you’re paying it forward. By overdoing it this year and putting the idea into her head that this is your year to do Mother’s Day, you’ll avoid that snowballing of resentment that causes women to say that they hate Mother’s Day.
And then there will be one less unhappy woman on Mother’s Day, thanks to your wise handling of that first day. You’ve only got one chance. Don’t blow it.
I realize that aside from the first Mother’s Day, redesigning Mother’s Day seems to rest squarely on the mother’s shoulders, once again adding another thing to a busy woman’s to-do list. But any self-help book or therapist worth her salt will tell you right off that your contentment is up to you. Anytime a woman depends on others to meet her needs, she will end up short. A woman needs to figure out what’s important all year long and make it happen—whether it’s a regular haircut, a few visits to the gym each week, a spa afternoon once every few months, a family picnic on Mother’s Day, or a quiet morning at home (with the kids and husband at McDonald’s playland). Carpe Diem, Moms!
1) Pyschological wisdom says the “in love” feeling only lasts 8-12 months, and then it’s gone. After that, love takes work. I’m rather convinced that most things in life worth having take work. Unfortunately, humans, being the stubborn and born for misery creatures that they are, like to ruin a good thing over dirty dishes in the sink. I figure if you’re not having sex with your spouse because he failed to scour the baked on lasagna off the oven pan after dinner, you probably deserve what you get. And if you’re the spouse who was supposed to do dishes, start scrubbing. Give and take goes a long way in any relationship, but particularly one with two people living under the same roof day after day.
2) It hurts…a lot. Sure, you could skip a lot of life’s worst troubles by skipping romance, but who wants the pinnacle of their existence to be a rising crust pizza in front of the TV on a Saturday night? No pain, no gain is actually true. If you want something bad enough, you might have to walk through fire to get it. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did it; so can you.
3) Finding true love is a pain in the ass. Between the dates with mindless idiots who do nothing all night but talk about themselves to the letdown of thinking you’ve found “the one” only to discover you were drunk the night you made that revelation, finding true love is usually an ordeal. Lots and lots of failure, boredom, and drama. But then so is parenting, and lots of people are doing that. Not that the actions of the majority necessarily mean anything is right. But heck, you’re here, you’re alive, you might as well give it a go. At the very least, you’ll get a fine education in human nature.
4) Being emotionally naked in front of another person is scary as shit. And also incredibly freeing. Ever wonder why little kids go to their moms when they are hurting? Because Mom accepts them for who they are (at least we hope so). When someone else does the same, it will rock your world. Unfortunately, you’re probably gonna have to get naked in front of a lot of people before you find “the one.”
5) There’s no such thing as a soul mate, at least not if your idea of a soul mate is someone who can read your mind. Even Prince Charming needs a guidebook sometimes. If you’d prefer to sit and sulk over all the things your S.O. isn’t doing that you need him to be doing rather than giving him a few heavily dropped hints (or maybe even being downright direct—imagine that!) about just how much it would mean to you if he’d plan a romantic getaway for your anniversary or actually do something besides stare blankly at you when you tell him your latest problem, then I can guarantee finding a soul mate is not in your future. Soul mates are the people who get you after you tell them who you are, not the ones who intuit your every need and whim. The latter is actually your mother, your obsessive compulsive mother who makes you want to jump off a cliff every time you pick up the phone and you hear her voice….
6) Screwing up not only hurts; it can get expensive. And it might also require you to give up that in-ground pool in the backyard of which you’ve become so fond. (Yeah, I’ve actually had friends who were baffled when women left their wealthy husbands who provided every material comfort known to man for the wild and crazy notion that maybe being miserable was not worth the Lexus and the annual trip to Europe.) Messing up in love can cost you an ugly divorce settlement, or it can cost the sacrifice of a materially perfect life, maybe both. If you have to think too hard about whether or not you love your closet full of shoes more than the chance at a fulfilling relationship, then I’d say put on a pair of Manolo Blahniks and get as drunk as you can. For the rest of you, bury the keys to the Lexus in the yard (just for kicks), and start living like you mean it.
7) Men are basically jerks anyway. Yes, it’s true, but a few of them actually don’t mean to be—they just need a little tough love. For better or worse, most of them have been spoiled rotten by their mothers…and by us. They are so used to the sweet and natural attentiveness of women that they take it for granted. They know that if they go on that fishing trip with the guys on Mother’s Day, you’ll forgive them. You always do. While I’m not an advocate of game playing for the most part, sometimes you need to kick back hard. Don’t be so darn available. You’ll find the jerkdom dissipates pretty quickly (if he’s a basically good guy deep down) after he discovers you actually don’t think he’s God’s gift to the universe of women. At least you don’t think so when he’s being a jerk…. And did I mention there are plenty of female jerks out there, too, who take advantage? If you never get a “thank you” for all the times you open doors for her, bring her drinks, or rub her feet after a long day at work, you might want to consider whether she likes you or just your foot rubs.
8) All men want is sex. It’s close to the truth, but shift your perspective, ladies. Sex doesn’t carry all the emotional sustenance for you that it does for him. (Yeah, I’m serious.) Call it socialization; call it biology. The reality is it’s between the sheets that guys feel most vulnerable. Reject him there, and you might as well tell him he sucks at life. You can have a less than stellar night in the bedroom, get up the next morning, have your girlfriends tell you you are “fabulous,” have your children kiss you at the bus stop, and have your boss tell you how sharp you are, and all is well. For him, failure in the bedroom is kind of like what happens to you on a bad hair day. It cuts to his self-worth. Give him a break. If he bends over backwards to please you in bed, he’ll bend over backwards to please you in life.
9) Communicating need opens you to potential ridicule. But you’re not going to reach the heights of ecstasy if you sit there being resentful because your S.O. prefers a slam dunk to a long ramble down the court. Speak your mind. If the other party is offended, sure, you’re gonna feel like an idiot, but did you really want to waste a year hoping that person in bed with you would magically hit the right spot? Move out, and move on.
10) Risk is the scariest thing on the planet. And that’s because whenever you’re talking about risk, you’re talking about uncertainty. There’s no bigger uncertainty in the average life than wondering where your heart will take you…if you let it do the driving. And plenty of people don’t after a few close brushes with disaster. They toss their hearts in the trunk and hide the key before something else brutally ugly happens. There are plenty of good arguments for playing it safe, no doubt about that. But you only get to drive this circuit once (as far as I know anyway). And what have you got to lose? Absolutely nothing. Because the last time I checked, the idea that you can control anything, from your kids and your boss to your spouse and the stock market, is complete bunk. You’ve got nothing but time…and maybe not even that. Hop to it.
Scanning Glacier Bay for humpback whales and sea lions
Travel writing is no way to earn a living. (That’s why I also write about everything else under the sun.) But it’s a darn good way to see the world in a way you might not otherwise see it. Why? Well, mainly because serious travel journalists don’t typically sign up for “Norway in a Nutshell” tours or consider seeing Glacier Bay by sailing past icebergs on a gigantic cruise ship.
Travel writing takes a certain amount of courage. Not the writing part. But the being part. If you want to write something people want to read, you’ve got to be willing to put yourself out there and do wild and crazy things, strike up conversations with complete strangers, and remain perfectly placid when a random Frenchman sticks his finger in your stinky cheese.
Of course, you don’t have to be a travel writer to do any of this. If you want to see the world with new eyes, just act like a travel writer. Skip the “See Europe in 12 Days” tours and forget the drive-by sightings of grizzly bears in Yellowstone. Instead, immerse yourself. Rent an Italian villa for a week and drink wine with every meal, and instead of peeking at that grizzly through a telescope, take a hike up Mount Washburn. The key is to get dirty. Here’s how to get started….
The picturesque Rue St. Antoine in the old quarter of Cannes
1) Explore the back streets. Yes, so it seems obvious. Get off the main tourist strips. But if it’s so obvious, how come no one is doing it? If you really want to get to know a place, leave the madding crowd and hit the back streets. A case in point: when I was in Cannes, France, last fall the Boulevard de la Croisette—the hip (and expensive) shopping street lined with boutiques and department stores—was jam packed with tourists. It’s not like I could afford to buy anything in a place like Alexandra where all the movie stars and “ladies who lunch” shop anyway. So I just started wandering down the side streets. Not only did I find myself taking in views of the entire city and long stretches of the French Riviera from the Musée de la Castre on a high hill overlooking the Mediterranean, but I also found some delightful (and less expensive) shops and restaurants patronized by locals along curving back alleys. When my friend, Dorothy, and I sat down for lunch at a tiny outdoor cafe in Le Suqet behind the more heavily traveled Rue Georges Clemenceau, we not only spent our meal enjoying the sounds of French-speaking natives all around us but had the delight of drawing the attention of locals walking to work, one of whom stopped to show us how to eat our artisanal cheese plate, poking our cheese with one rotund finger and advising us to start with the mild chevre before moving onto a French version of Stilton. And did I mention our French waiter, who got a kick out of Dorothy’s accidental thank you’s in Spanish, also gave us complimentary shots of what he gleefully termed “fruit juice” at the end of our meal? And that was on top of the house wine at only $2 a glass.
Unexpected drama climbing the Kotor Fortress
2) Don’t make any plans. That was how Dorothy and I took on the lovely medieval city of Kotor, Montenegro, on the Adriatic Sea. The result? A fantastic and unplanned hike up the side of a fjord to explore the city’s centuries-old fortress, restored with money from American citizens. We stumbled upon the trail when walking down back streets in the old city, looked up the steep steps curling up the mountainside, shrugged, and said, “what the heck?” An hour or so later, we were enjoying the most magnificent view of our entire trek through southern Europe. Not as good as Norway, of course, but still pretty damn good. 3) Or make a ridiculous plan, and see if it works. Sometimes, however, more fun than winging it is trying to navigate your way through another country (or two or three) via the Internet. That’s what I did when my former husband and I decided to visit Northern Europe two years ago. Trying to figure out how to get us from Sandefjord, Norway, to Kiel, Germany, in a way that would be far more interesting than a flight to Hamburg, I planned the most absurd 24-hour journey from Point A to Point B ever. My husband was convinced it could never work. It began with a short train trip from the Sandefjord airport to city center, a long walk to the wrong ferry terminal, followed by a wild taxi ride to the correct one 30 kilometers away in Larvik, and a four-hour journey by ferry across the Black Sea. (Did I mention Color Line offers a fantastic Norwegian buffet of cold fish, cheese, salads, flatbread, and Scandinavian pastries?)
Sandefjord, Norway: Jumping off point for a 24-hour plane, train, and boat ride to Kiel, Germany
Once in Hirtshals, Denmark with the sun setting, we hopped on a train, making countless middle of the night connections, including a startling encounter with college students participating in Carnival (one of whom sat in my husband’s lap and another of whom sat on the table in front of my seat with her scantily covered thighs just inches from my nose) and a four-hour stopover in an outdoor station at Fredericia, where I spent hours dancing on cement to keep warm (And no, no one was there at 3 a.m. to watch.) The next morning we arrived in Kiel, exhausted and amazed that we had made it. “I gotta hand it to you,” my husband said, “I never thought this plan of yours would work.” Truth be told, I never thought it would work either.
Wandering the back streets of Barcelona
4) Talk to the wait staff. They live here, you know, so don’t treat them like background music. Strike up a conversation. You might be surprised at what you’ll experience and what you’ll learn. In Barcelona, I chatted with a bartender who knew no English and a smattering of French. I, on the other hand, knew almost no Spanish and spoke only passable French. Somehow we managed to communicate in a fascinating mixture of three languages. And then there was the cruise ship waiter from Honduras who happily answered all questions on the inner workings of the dining room and staff life on a giant ship. Plus, he offered nightly demonstrations on how to balance forks on wine bottles using toothpicks (and who couldn’t use a new parlor trick every now and then?). Meanwhile the Serbian sommelier offered the inside scoop on what and what not to drink in Montenegro as well as insight on the economics of being in the culinary industry in Eastern Europe in the wake of civil war. A darkly handsome man with a thick and decadent Serbian accent pouring me wine while giving an up close and personal history lesson…I’m sold!
No map, no problem: happily lost in Pompeii
5) Be open and approachable. Wear a smile, and almost everyone will want to be your friend and help you, even if you don’t ask for it. Like the conductor on a train Dorothy and I took from Naples to Pompeii. He could speak no English but knew we had taken the wrong train (even though we ourselves did not know) and began to offer us aid with hand signals and requests for help from other English-speaking passengers…of which there were none. But we smiled and made our best efforts to communicate in our pathetic and miniscule Italian vocabulary (and, by the way, never visit Italy if you don’t speak the language because if anyone there speaks English, they’re not letting on). He eventually enabled us to shift to another train to get us to the ancient ruins of Pompeii instead of Sorrento, saving us what could have been an hour or more of wasted time backtracking in a region of Italy that is none too safe anyway. (Did I mention we were nearly mugged at the train stationin Naples and escaped the situation with some very fast walking?) Thank you, Neopolitan conductor, for saving two semi-clueless Americans from further trouble….
This post is dedicated to my sister, Crysta. We’ve dealt with enough brain damage in our lives, haven’t we, Shug? But we’re still standing.
There was a video I used to watch as a child. My big sister, Crysta, brought it home with her while visiting one weekend. We sat in front of the TV laughing to the point of tears. The movie was Bill Cosby, Himself, a taping of one of the comedian’s shows. In that movie, Bill Cosby had a joke that all children suffer from “brain damage,” the inability to follow directions no matter how many times (or how clearly) parents give instructions. He also describes a child’s inability to follow directions even when the child KNOWS what he is supposed to do. And when a parent asks a child “Why did you do that?” when a child should know what he has done is wrong, there’s the inevitable response: “I don’t knooooooow……” (Wives, ask your husbands what they’ve done wrong the next time they don’t follow directions correctly. I’ll bet you can predict the answer!)
This problem is not limited only to a parent’s relationship with a child. In fact, many children will agree that sometimes it’s the parents who have the brain damage. Or wives might claim their husbands have this problem and vice versa.
My first post on this blog outlined the rocky relationship between my father and me. I often think there is no shortage of “brain damage” going on with him. And you know what? I haven’t exactly figured out if he understands that some things he does are wrong or whether the brain damage has affected his memory and he can’t recollect conversations. For instance (with my finger pointed high in the air), during a squabble on the phone (couldn’t tell you now what the squabble was about), my dad finished the conversation/confrontation by screaming “Go to hell, Dorothy!” and slamming the phone down. I immediately tried to call him back several times to tell him exactly what cliff he should jump off and got no answer. I vowed right then to never talk to the heartless crap weasel again.
The next day, my cell phone rang. “Dad’s Cell” the caller ID read. I picked up the phone and answered with the most hateful “Hello?” I could muster. From the other end I hear a leisurely: “What’s the weather doing out there today?” as if nothing had happened the day before. (Epic face palm…) Exhibit A: brain damage!!!!
What’s worse? This brain damage is contagious! When the damaged people come in contact with the undamaged people, the damage grows! It filters over to the non-damaged people and makes them crazy, too. (Just like Bill Cosby’s wife!) And it can filter down through families for generations. Though I’ve never had any real run-in’s with my grandfather, I’ve heard stories about his brain damage. Yup, you guessed it. That’s my father’s father. (Oh Lord… am I next?)
And even the best of people suffer from brain damage. My husband (bless his sweet soul) has been a victim of the damaged brain from time to time. I once purchased a piece of property, and I told my sweet husband NOT to tell his father, with whom I don’t get along. But the brain damage took hold of my poor, unsuspecting husband and forced him to tell his father. A couple days later, my father-in-law was nosing around our new piece of real estate. I tried to handle the situation as best I could. (Truly, I did.) I tried to confront Robby with a very understanding mind and an open heart because, after all, I knew the brain damage had a powerful influence over its victim. “Bub, why did you tell your father about the land when I told you not to tell him?”
You’re never going to believe what he said… “I don’t knooooooow!!” After a face palm, I proceeded to lose any cool I was desperately trying to hang on to.
And even level-headed people who try to mediate two brain-damaged people can acquire the condition. It’s like trying to solve the “She’s touching me!” complaint between two children. “She’s touching me!” “I’m not touching you!” “Tell him to quit touching me.” “I’m not touching her!” You can feel your heart beat faster and the brain damage starting to kick in when you just imagine that scenario. And when you try to solve the situation, you get pulled in and before you know it you’re damaged, too!
So what in the world is wrong with these brain damaged people? Where is the disconnect between knowing what is wrong and not understanding why you shouldn’t do it? First lesson in life: If it’s wrong, don’t do it! It’s as simple as that. Whether it’s children stealing your drink after you’ve repeatedly told them not to, husbands leaving bread crumbs on the counter after you’ve told them 100 times to clean up after themselves, or parents who still manage to act like they’ve learned nothing about talking to their offspring just days after their children exploded on them for communication failure, brain damage runs rampant.
Do people really not get it? Or is it just total brain damage? And if it is brain damage, where the heck is the vaccination??
In my experience, I find that it’s helpful to surround yourself with people who seem to think clearly, people who are realistic and level-headed, people who have been affected only minimally by brain damage (because let’s face it, we’ve all been exposed to it). Fortunately, I have some undamaged people in my life who seem to be able to bring me back to reality when my face begins to look like what Bill Cosby describes during his stand-up routine. And there may be activities that can help offset the anger from brain damage. Clogging helps me. Especially when I pretend the faces of the annoying people in my life are sticking up through the dance floor that I happen to be stomping on at the time.
But, unfortunately, the brain damage is endless…. Once you calm yourself down, pull your face back into a recognizable shadow of what it used to be, and get your eye (or whole body) to stop twitching, you will inevitably walk into your kitchen to find a child planted in front of an open refrigerator with the Country Crock tub in front of them and a finger full of butter. “What are you doing??!!!” you scream. And the child responds (all together now…) “I don’t knoooooooooow!!”
A friend recently forwarded me an essay in which the columnist referred to men as “fixer- uppers” and noted that an acquaintance of hers actually claimed to have “fixed up” her “fixer-upper” husband.
Being a builder’s daughter, this got me thinking. I grew up under the tutelage of a man who made me believe that anything could be fixed, no matter how complicated. Granted, the fixing might involve a lot of time, trouble, and cursing…and maybe even the use of a sledgehammer. But nothing was unfixable.
That seemed to be the take of the woman who claimed to have “fixed up” her spouse.
But this begs the question: do you really want to marry a fixer-upper? Because it’s going to require the same kind of investment as a fixer-upper house…unless you’re okay with all the leaks, rot, and cosmetic deficiencies. And most of us just aren’t. Plus, if the fixer-upper is so bad that you need to use a sledgehammer and start gutting the whole thing, well, that’s the sort of work you want to leave to a professional.
Unfortunately, for me, it took me awhile to learn this. Builder’s daughter: anything can be fixed. Sure, if you want to spend a lifetime doing it. Meanwhile, you could have just bought a well-built house (or man) to start with.
I’ve fixed up a couple of houses. Scraped paint off of rotting window sills, replaced shingles, ripped out shag carpet, even jacked up a foundation once to replace the rotting sills underneath. And while the experience of all this home remodeling eventually led me to the conclusion I wanted to build a new house from scratch instead of trying to make old and icky ones work for me, I did not take that wisdom into the realm of dating and marriage. Somehow I thought if I could be the general contractor on a home renovation project, I could also be one on a man renovation project.
Unfortunately, being the kind of “let me test the limits of my abilities” kind of person that I am, I selected whole house gutting projects. (I hope my former spouse is being honest when he says he doesn’t read this blog, but if he is reading this, perhaps he’s been fixed up enough that he’ll think it’s funny….) My experiences have run the gambit from trying to make a compulsive liar stop lying to trying to make a guy with zero self-esteem pick himself up and do something. These were projects for people with PhD’s in psychology, not for an English major with home improvement background. I was way out of my league.
If you have to jack up a guy’s foundation because it has rotted away, you’re in serious trouble. It’s like a friend said to me not too long ago when talking about whitewater kayaking: “If you get into big water and don’t know what you’re doing, you could get really hurt.”
The same applies to home renovation and relationship building.
But there is something to be said for “trial and failure.” You learn a lot. I never got the compulsive liar to stop lying. (I finally gave up on him after helping him write stellar job application letters for several months only to find the unmailed applications stuffed into the glovebox of his car.) And I never got the guy with trampled self-esteem to believe he was worthy of love and success either. (Though I gave it the good old college try—something along the lines of taking seven or eight years to get through college because you keep failing the same course over and over.) I’d like to think I can now recognize a major fixer-upper a mile away.
Not that I’m looking for perfection, mind you. I’m okay with a few squeaky floorboards, some air leaks around the windows, and maybe even some scratched up cabinetry. I can live with imperfections on that scale as long as the big picture looks good. But if I see any faulty foundations or caving in roofs, I’m heading for the hills.
Of course, I realize some of my gentlemen acquaintances are going to be quite happy to turn the tables on me here and talk about “fixer upper” women. And I realize on the male scale of renovation projects, I might look like a property deserving of demolition given my propensity to do things that men find extremely annoying…like write blog posts such as this one, for example.
But that’s okay. We could all use a little self-improvement. The thing to remember, however, is that people aren’t like houses. You can’t just go in and start tearing things out and putting in new plumbing. If the guy (or gal) you’re with doesn’t want to improve himself (or herself), no amount of fixing on your part is going to do any good. (Which is why I am suspicious of the woman who claims to have “fixed up” her husband.) You’re wasting your time, your life. Move on, get over it, and find something (or someone) that doesn’t need repairing.
I will admit that a few years ago, I didn’t even know what a VPL was. That’s when I heard two of my friends discussing the issue with the kind of seriousness reserved for topics like the national debt. After that brief yet impressionable experience, it was all over for me. Ignorance gone. Naiveté shattered. I was faced with the stark awareness that I had long overlooked the power of this small V-shaped indent.
I’ve been confused about it ever since. Women really think about these things? I soon had to admit there is a time and a place for everything. And visible panty lines are no exception. After all, there’s nothing like a well-coiffed woman dressed in a curve accentuating frock, with puckering lines on her tailend interrupting her sexy lines.
And there are times, particularly when I’ve got a little extra on my hips, that I’ll succumb to wearing pantyhose or other cellulite firming contraptions under a pair of dress pants. It gets ‘em zippered and avoids the panty lines that seem to be sinking a little deeper into my padding that week. I guess I’m avoiding SVPL—super visible panty lines perhaps?
My concern is the over-obsession with panty lines. I was recently shopping with a friend, and she was buying ‘anal floss,’ as she calls it—to wear to the gym. She literally has specific gym panties. I thought about how uncomfortable and sweaty I am to begin with at the gym, hemmed in with a tight sports bra and trying to keep my new stylish half-bangs from dripping sweat into my eyes. Then I cringed at the thought of having a permanent thong weggie.
Who cares if I have a panty line at the gym? I don’t have much make-up on, and I probably vaguely stink of the underside of the gym mat. Is it actually possible that someone is looking at my backside? In the off chance that some guy would check me out under these less than ideal circumstances, might I venture to say that a panty line would hardly make a difference?
This begs the question, however, as to why we have to wear panties at all. I can understand that with a pair of ‘dry clean only’ dress slacks, another layer between my nether regions and my lined wool pants is totally legitimate. And definitely in a pair of jeans. Imagine the chaffing. But in a pair of Yoga pants? I’m wearing them for three hours and then tossing them in the laundry anyway. I’m trying to shed my stress and elevate myself to a higher level of being. Maybe panties are what’s been hindering my success in reaching enlightenment? I guess I’d also like to simply offer up the notion that VPL or not, perhaps it’s a bit redundant to have another sweaty layer between me and a breath of fresh air.
Of course, hot and sweaty or not, I still tend to fall on the side of the fence that fully endorses VPL at the gym, as it means that P’s are being worn. This reminds me of the unfortunate view I had of the woman in front of me at the gym as we were doing quad stretches, derriere extended. She had chosen to go commando, maybe concerned with VPL? Unfortunately, her pants had gone through a few too many washings and were wearing thin. Sorry for that mental image, but in the interest of full disclosure, such a fashion faux pas must be acknowledged. Heck, even with a pair of thong panties, this could be an issue. Lesson here, gals? Always check the fabric durability of your workout gear. Just like changing the oil, be sure to check those pants every 3,000 miles.
I’ve done a little research on the source of VL, and after sorting through the unmentionable riff-raff that came up on my Google search, which would have made Mr. Klein blush, I found an interesting article which cited a book by John Esten called Unmentionables: A Brief History of Underwear. In it, he claims that panties were developed, in part, “as a Victorian attempt to control and hide genitalia and physique.” Hmm….
The difference between these Victorian ladies and us is, of course, that they didn’t have an issue with VPL, as most of their lines were well padded, pouffed, hemmed-in, and laced up. But I’m not so hidden from view. Even modest clothing today leaves very little to the imagination.
The economics of this issue is a whole other side. In an article printed in The Los Angeles Times several years ago– “The Road to Profit, Paved with Panties”– Leslie Ernest states that the intimate apparel niche is a $9.1 billion industry in America. We’re spending a lot of money on something that few people see. It reminds me of the LensCrafter commercial where the old couple is glasses shopping. After she slips on a pair of glasses, the old woman’s husband is instantly transformed into a svelte, sexy young man. The voiceover says, “Unless your glasses are this good, you’re paying too much.” Can I be so bold as to offer the same premise up for panties? I think we’re paying too much, buying into yet another beauty myth. Unless it’s taking ten pounds off, we’re being duped. I would never go so far as to say that there’s not a legitimate time and place for smokin’ knickers. It just seems like, as a culture, we’ve bought into yet another advertising lie that a few flimsy pieces of nylon, cotton, or lace really do provide an edge. Sexy skivvies can give change in attitude? Perhaps. And yes, sexy is how you feel, not necessarily just how you look. If panties give you that edge, go for it. But I’d have to return to my initial gripe—sexy is not the vibe I’m interested in giving off in my mid-morning Body Pump class with a bunch of stay-at-home moms, gay men, and aging mavens.
When I brought this topic up to my trusty bus stop council of moms, there was no consensus. Some women were legitimately concerned with VPL, and also VBL. Yes, yet another line to worry about. Interestingly, in our age group (well over 30), the greater concern was the back-fat induced bra lines (VBL).
I realized it was time to poll the guys. Did they notice VBL, VPL? Did they care? One woman went as far as to contend that our concern about VPL is just another example of “Girl on Girl Violence.” That got me thinking. Is our obsession with panty lines really just another way that we are undermining each other as women, fearing catty comments and less-than-approving glances at girls’ night?
My next panel included a group of professional men over, well, 40. Maybe not exactly men on the prowl, but all my girlfriends are married to men no longer in their twenties. (My other issue with twenty-something’s is that it’s a tough topic to casually drop into conversation with young men—I thought of asking the ruggedly handsome young barista at Starbucks this morning, and it crossed my mind as I was walking the kids to the bus stop and a lawyer-type twenty-something smelling of aftershave wafted past me on his way to the metro. I’m sure my husband is relieved to know that I held my tongue in both cases.) So in the interest of what little modesty I can say I have, I hired my friends to bring the topic up with their husbands.
To our surprise, we found men do, in fact, notice panty lines. And to them, it’s generally not a value-add for the whole image. The consensus was that it was all about context. In the work place and at the gym, it was generally not an issue. These nice men asserted convincingly that they were not really thinking along those lines in either place. But these happily married men did say that a VPL on a woman in a more sexually charged environment, like a bar, club, or party, was definitely a negative distraction. They went so far as to say that a VPL on well-dressed woman could over-ride the whole picture. When we dug a little deeper with these guys, they asserted that VPLs are often correlated with other problems, such as an outfit that fits poorly, inferior fashion judgment, and even hint at a less than classy or even a ‘trashy’ stereotype. They suggested that a woman who shows her lines is often missing the boat in other areas, too. They read all this in a VPL? And they think we over-analyze….
Alas, we’re back to my original assertion that there is a time and a place to worry about the VPL. But I’ll have to retreat on the suggestion that it’s another example of women setting an unrealistically high standard for other women. If the guys I talked to admit to noticing, then it’s clearly not gender self-imposed. Although we then have to ask if a married woman needs to worry about looking attractive to a man who is not her husband. I’ll save that for another blog. Perhaps on Burkas.
So today, in the interest of research, I’m game for the challenge. I’m heading out to the gym, panty-free. I’ve checked the durability and opaqueness of my pants, and I’m ready to buck the system. I’m saying “no” to the lingering Victorian underpinnings still latent in our society and the rampant commercialism that’s feeding the fire. And I’m saying ‘yes’ to anyone who happens to be checking me out from behind. So if you are among the mid-morning crowd at the Ballston Gold’s, please don’t hesitate to notice. You’ll see I’m ‘line-free.’
I’ll admit it. I’ve done a few crazy things for men. Like pretending to enjoy watching a boyfriend participate in some bizarre World War I re-enactment that actually involved mud and trenches but really looked like a bunch of grown men playing dress-up in the great outdoors.
Then there was the boyfriend who tried to teach me fly fishing. (Why I agreed I’ll never know, as I consider standing in a stream or at lake’s edge with a fishing pole about as exciting as watching paint dry.) But I tried it nevertheless. I wasn’t at it five minutes before I had my line tangled in a crabapple tree.
And I must not fail to include hanging out in the pit at a race track, the dirt from the track flying so thick that it later took two showers to get all the grit out of my ears and several flossings to get it out of my teeth. Not to mention the two beer guzzling guys who walked past me, saying, “Dude, I bet we’ll find some hot women here tonight.” (I should probably mention my S.O. at the time was a race car driver, not a spectator, which basically means he did not own a T-shirt with a Confederate flag on it with the sleeve rolled up on one side to show off the tattoo of his mother’s first name.)
True, I’m not very P.C. I can’t help it. I call it like I see it.
Which is why I feel compelled to point out that I quickly learned we should all have our limits. Mine was one re-enactment and two dirt track races. (I liked the second guy better.) And I’m inclined to think, now that I’m older and wiser, that my limits might be even more stringent these days. A guy would have to be Mr. Wonderful for sure to get me to bungee jump off a bridge in New Zealand. Basically, he’d half to be flawless. And I’m still not sure I’d do it.
So I kind of wonder why women do so many crazy things for men. Are we really that desperate? So desperate to hold their interest and affection that we take up their crazy hobbies or at least stand on the sidelines watching them with enough regularity that we start to look a little bit…well…desperate.
Learning archery in the Ozarks
It hit home with me the second (and last) race I attended. Somehow I had convinced myself I was being supportive by spending a lovely spring weekend driving God knows how many hours through central North Carolina (the armpit of the state, in my opinion, with all its look-alike cities, interstates, and giant junk outlets) to the dirt track in Gastonia in a really big pick-up towing a sprint car (which if you don’t know what that is, ladies, it’s the one with the really big rear wheels and the Orville Wright-esque roof that makes it looks like a cross between an airplane and a go-cart). I spent most of the day in the pit sitting on a tailgate reading a biography of William Faulkner for an article I was writing while the wives and girlfriends of the other race car drivers dished out elaborate buffets of fried chicken and biscuits, tested all their video recording equipment, and began climbing up on the roofs of their S.O.’s six-figure price tag towing vehicles to see if they could videotape the races from there. When race time rolled around, each one of those ladies lined up alongside her husband’s car, his helmet in hand like a squire waiting to tend to a knight. That was the point at which I started to feel weird and decided the so-called fine line between being supportive and being pathetic was actually not so fine after all.
After that episode, I showed my support by not raising hell on the weekends my boyfriend decided to spend at the track and stayed home where there were much more interesting things to do than fawn over a weekend warrior race car driver.
But I’m not alone in having made some ridiculous efforts to impress a man with my supportiveness. A friend of a friend who was planning a romantic getaway to Hawaii with her fiancé recently relented when he suggested they go camping in Utah instead…in a Winnebago…a very old Winnebago. Driving cross-country for three days, camping for five, then driving back. And in the interim, their meals would be tuna out of a can and the romance would be lovemaking in the back of a van. Sure, it’s a little reminiscent of the teenage years in a way, but who wants to make out in a stinky van at age 40? I’m personally all for the luxury hotel mattress.
I’m sure the lady in question is, too, so why won’t she admit it, hold firm, and buy those plane tickets to Hawaii?
Yeah, you guessed it. For some reason, she feels that in order to hang onto the guy she has to sacrifice her sanity…and her precious vacation time. You might be desperate if you do this, ladies.
The view from my kayak along Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore
Another friend of mine has an even more interesting track record. In the course of her relationship career, she has purchased a bass boat, a motorcycle, and a kayak. She still has the kayak, and I think she actually uses it, but the bass boat and the motorcycle have long since hit the pavement. I’m not even sure she actually ever got on the motorcycle. The purchase, I think, was a gesture of intent.
And apparently good intentions work, as she did marry the guy. He goes duck hunting and motorcycling without her these days, much to her relief, no doubt.
Women may claim that men, once married, suddenly forget how to cook, dance, and kiss, but women are guilty, too. Our “tactics of desperation,” as I like to call them, suddenly cease once we feel we have the guy cornered. We magically lose interest in skeet shooting, football, and black lingerie. (Well, some of us do anyway. Personally, I would never want to be caught in Grandma panties by an EMT following a traumatic car accident, and I do know a woman who makes cupcakes with her husband’s picked team’s logo emblazoned in the frosting for the Super Bowl each year.)
A friend of mine actually asked me to write this post after deciding a couple of her women friends were acting a little too “desperate.” At the time, I agreed with her that there are just some things you don’t do for a man, any man.
But then I got to thinking about it and, pathetic Super Bowl cupcakes aside, all this stretching of ourselves beyond normal limits isn’t necessarily a bad thing, not always. Sometimes acts of desperation turn out all right. I would never have discovered a love of sea kayaking had my former husband not goaded me into trying it out off a sandy beach in St. Croix. Nor would I have learned how to shoot had a boyfriend not introduced me to the sport more than a decade ago and enticed me to at least learn how to blast a rabid skunk…or a rabid neighbor…if I needed to. And frankly, I think if I’d been permitted a spin around the racetrack (instead of standing on the sidelines), I might have found that a little bit more interesting, too.
This is not to say I’m encouraging acts of female desperation, which seem to be most common in the unknowing years of the early 20s and the “oh, my god, I am never gonna get married unless I take up skydiving with this guy” years post 40. It’s okay to get your feet wet in something new, just so long as you’re not sacrificing your own sense of self to do so or stretching limits that you’ve put in place for very good reasons. Moving in with an S.O. who owns 12 indoor dogs when you are a stickler for cleanliness is not likely to do anything for expanding your horizons or enhancing your relationship. This is a guy it’s even questionable whether or not you should be dating him much less marrying him (I mean does he ever show up without dog hair on his pants?). Nor should you drink tuna water in the back of a Winnebago if every part of your being is screaming for a relaxing, luxurious getaway on a Pacific beach. Resentment isn’t something you want to cultivate in a relationship either.
But you do want to cultivate growth.
Rest assured, however, the line between growing and being desperate is very thick and very black. You can’t miss it.
Growth feels like a rush. Desperation feels like anxiety. (Given how few men are willing to learn ballroom dancing and yoga, however, I’m guessing they feel a lot more anxiety about trying new things than we do.)
I’ve found as I grow older, I don’t really need the goading of a romantic partner to incline me to try something new…unless it’s squid. Not really inclined to try that on my own, though I did recently eat some wild boar. I’ll gladly make a vain attempt at doing yoga on a paddleboard in the Tennessee River or see how much I can embarrass myself on an archery range in the Ozarks just because I can (and because an editor is paying me to do it). It seems appropriate, once mid-life starts its heavy approach, to be up for anything.
With a couple of exceptions….
I still don’t plan to bungee jump off the New River Bridge anytime soon. Nor will I go ZORBing. Something about intentionally cramming one’s self into a rubber ball and then having someone push it down a hill at breakneck speed just seems…well…stupid. And I really don’t feel either activity is going to promote any personal or spiritual growth…unless we’re talking a very quick trip to heaven.
But there are definitely experiences that you shouldn’t pass up. Years ago when a friend of mine went horseback riding in the snow in Iceland with her boyfriend, I thought she had lost her mind. Today she’s married to the guy and has, with his encouragement, hit five continents in the last decade and a half. Talk about “desperation” paying off. Maybe fly fishing isn’t your thing. But I bet, even if it’s not, that standing in the middle of the Madison River in northwestern Wyoming with a moose grazing nearby and the Rockies rising in the distance has the potential to float your boat…even if next time you come armed with a camera instead of a fishing rod.
Sarah and I have been best friends on and off again for three decades. So closely did we grow up together, our mothers trading back and forth sleepovers and marching band pick-ups, that we are perhaps as close as sisters, closer perhaps. When life separated us for several years and we fell out of touch, it was that sisterly, almost clairvoyant love that drew us back together again.
I had suffered a devastating break-up. Sarah e-mailed me the day after the split. Only, we had not been in touch for around five years. To this day, we both believe she had somehow, across time and space, sensed my need of her. And our lives have been thus for years, one of us walking in just as the other is about to break.
This is no ordinary connection. That is not to say, however, that it is uncommon. Women, at least those among us brave enough to love fully, have an uncanny ability, so it would seem, for knowing just when to circle the wagons.
I have not always benefited from this love. Raised to be independent and distrusting of others, I was always reluctant as a girl and as a young woman to lead myself into vulnerability, particularly the vulnerability that comes of the deeply connected relationships that women often share.
It is no small surprise to me that men resist this kind of all-encompassing love. Some think it is smothering. And it can be. Women learn, over time, not to call on too many friends at once in times of crisis, or they will be overwhelmed with attention. How many nights have I found myself fielding phone calls and texts from half a dozen concerned females all at once after announcing to them some recent family tragedy? Even worse though is when, in recognition of this, I share a crisis with only one or two to be chastised later by the others for not letting them in to offer succor.
Susannah and I: friends and troublemakers
Circling the wagons is something of a professional calling for us, and it transcends the intimate relationships of tried and true friends, those who have followed us through high school and college, through marriage and divorce, childbirth and death of parents.
I belong to a community dance troupe made up of girls and women ranging in age from six to 60. Every week we engage in what we refer to as “group therapy”—a couple of hours of pulse-pounding dance accompanied by excessive tom-foolery. This is where we (the adult women anyway) let go, beyond the eyes of spouses who may know nothing of this side of us—the practical jokes, the tongue-in-cheek commentary on marriage, sex, and child raising, the posturing in front of dance studio mirrors, the banter over who has the curviest figure, the thickest thighs, the most perfect hair. We are so wild at times that new members to the group often aren’t quite sure what to make of us at first, but we convert them eventually to this gathering of “footloose” women. Here we are girls again, more than girls…because most of us were never confident enough, brave enough to be so ridiculous and fun when we were younger.
But this is also a space of deep camaraderie. When one among us lost a foster child back to her biological mother, we circled her with embraces, then turned her tears to laughter. When we prep for performances, mothers and daughters gather to braid each other’s hair, mend dance shoes with duct tape, and coax one another out of nervousness. Here we find the space to be members of a family where expectations are much lower, where we all recognize the staggering responsibilities of work, marriage, and motherhood, and give one another leave to be silly, irresponsible, and mindless…if only for an hour or two.
My dancing friends on "weird sock day"
I do not know what I would do without these women…any of them…from my most intimate friends to the women with whom I dance each week. They fill my life with laughter, and they prop me up when I am too worn down to stand.
They have been there for me when my family has not been. And they have done all this unconditionally.
Sometimes I lie awake at night wondering why, what it is I have done to deserve the love and kindness of all these women, feeling the powerful blessing of knowing there is this invisible circle of support around me always.
When I feel I have erred foolishly in this life, I turn to my old college friend, Susannah, from whom I know I will always get a refreshingly honest and straightforward assessment of the situation…in addition to ice cream or cheesecake. Yet when I fail to take her sound advice and find myself in a fix, I never fear abandonment. “Friends are not the people who are there only when you do things right,” she tells me on a regular basis.
Retail therapy in Venice with Dorothy
Yet I often wonder how many of us know this, how many of us are brave enough to test the true depth of our friendships, to be who we are without fear among the people we love. It is no easy thing. We are all guilty of holding back, playing games, pretending all is well…even among those closest to us, fearful of the depth and vulnerability we might discover should we let go…and fearful, too, of finding nothing, no depth, no connection, no unconditional love.
Humans are social creatures, and abandonment is one of our greatest primal fears.
It is one reason we are so lucky to be women. It is easy for us to look at men and their easy friendships with other men, their perception of “depth” as an intense conversation about politics, and their ability to compartmentalize pain and fear and envy them. And it is so easy for us to be angry with them, too, for failing to connect with us as our women friends do.
A friend of mine said to me recently, “I cannot help being angry with my husband because he does not know me as well as my best friend does.”
This is not so much a failing in the guy. It’s a failing in expectation. He does not know how, most likely, to know that woman as her best friend does. It is outside his comfort zone to go so deep, as it is with most men. They don’t live in a world of women the way we do. They cannot count on their male friends to protect their weaknesses, honor their strengths, and be there for them no matter the errors they make. It is not the way men are socialized, and it is why they need us so much more than we need them. For most men, it is their wives who serve as their only emotional centers, the only place where they can freely be themselves.
Imagine having only one person who offers you safety. Imagine having none.
New partners in crime in Savannah
I made a new friend recently, as I often do on travels, and as we walked back to our lodgings one evening, discovering, after only a couple of days’ acquaintance that we had much in common, including a similar painful life experience, she said to me with a laugh, “Can I marry you?”
I understood the message behind the joke. Because it took me a long time to stop looking to romantic partners to provide the kind of emotional depth and support that female friends do. I will not over-generalize and say that men cannot provide it. But it is rare to find such a man. As a rule, they retreat into their caves when hurting, confused, or troubled; whereas, women sound the alarm, ask for aid, and let the wagons circle. And when those wagons lock around us in times of trouble, there is no getting through until the danger has passed, chased away by the arrows of shared and recognized grief and the awareness that, with friends, just about anything is survivable.
Last Saturday I promised my four-year-old daughter movie and pizza night if she behaved herself all day while I caught up on work in the office. I don’t know as I would go so far as to call my daughter “girly.” She hates baby dolls, loves cars, trucks, trains and LEGOs and is especially fond of getting as dirty as possible when outdoors, but she also has a fondness for all things Barbie and princess. I’m okay with Barbie, and I’m actually okay with princesses, too, as long as we’re just talking about dressing up in a fabulous gown and looking beautiful for the day.
But there is a point at which my tolerance runs a little thin. Heidi persistently asks for Disney princess or Barbie princess movies–you know the ones where the girl finds her “one true love” and lives “happily ever after.” And much though I’d like to pretend my efforts to make her strong, independent, and choosy are overriding all this falderal, I know they’re not.
I still try though and resisted Heidi’s begging for yet another Barbie princess movie last weekend and chose instead the movie Enchanted. You may have seen it. It’s a little bit of an anti-fairytale with the otherworldly princess rejecting Prince Charming in favor of an imperfect marriage to a New York divorce lawyer. It still has the flavor of happily ever after, but it’s a slightly better twisting of reality.
Heidi loved it, and she even got it when the princess fought the dragon instead of the divorce lawyer. But still, it wasn’t perfect. Because the princess fails, and both she and her lover are saved by a chipmunk. Women are still not allowed to save themselves in fairytales.
A friend of mind calls Disney princess “mind-fuck for girls.” I think that’s an apt description.
Rare is the woman, no matter how intelligent, who does not suffer to some degree from a childhood of fairytale mind-fucking. I always thought it had bypassed me. Instead of browsing through catalogs at pictures of stunning wedding gowns as a pre-adolescent girl, I was cutting out pictures of my dream house…which I did eventually build, by the way. It seemed to me, even when I was quite young, that I had a much better chance of building the perfect house than of finding the perfect man.
You can control the construction of a house. Love is something else entirely. It runs where it wants to without asking anyone’s permission in advance. And most men are not prepared to be Prince Charming. They didn’t grow up watching princess movies. So there’s an emotional disconnect between boys and girls right from the get-go. My preschooler recognizes it already. She told me in the car one day, “Boys are stupid, Mommy.” I nodded, for there was much truth in this statement. And then she continued, “Daddy is a boy, so Daddy must be stupid.”
I laughed aloud, as I often do when profundity on a grand scale comes out of Heidi’s mouth. One of my girlfriends told me Heidi is far more advanced than we ever were as girls if she already gets the idea that guys don’t get us.
Even though my parents raised me not too put too much credence in fairytales and to make my own way in the world without relying on anyone else to make it for me, they apparently did not protect me enough. Because I still grew up believing that maybe, just maybe, I would fall in love with my best friend and live happily ever after.
A Better View than the Jewelry: the Riverscape from the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy
It didn’t happen. Not for lack of trying. I think, like so many women (especially young ones), I did my best to cram romantic partners into my personal visions of Prince Charming. And the poor men could not help but fail. My former husband had no idea I actually wanted to be proposed to at the lovely overlook where we first watched the sunset on Skyline Drive. I honestly don’t remember exactly anymore how he asked, it was so unmemorable. Others were worse. Like the boyfriend who foolishly told me he’d bought me a diamond just out of the blue with no indication beforehand that marriage was even on the table. I told him he better pay off his college loans and credit card debt before he dared show me the thing. Thank heaven for that caveat. We broke up long before he had his finances in order, and I was saved from what probably would have been a disastrous marriage.
So I don’t have a romantic proposal story about being carried off on a white horse into the sunset to pass onto my daughter. But then my mother didn’t have one to pass onto me either. She got her engagement ring in the mail. (My dad was in the Air Force in Texas at the time.)
And maybe these anti-fairytales are better anyway. For what pain women suffer in believing that a man will sweep them off their feet one day and love and cherish them forever after. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, mind you. But it’s rare. In my 36 years, I’ve encountered only one such couple. They were in their 50s when I met them, working at a museum where I had a part-time job during grad school. They’d been married 30 years. Every day at the end of work, that man would come into the gift shop where his wife worked, scoop her up off her feet, and kiss her. And she would giggle like a young bride. It was amazing to watch. Everyone in that museum shop would turn to look, no matter how many times we had seen it. And we all longed to be so lucky.
Because a lot of it is luck in the end, isn’t it? Chances are Mr. Right is out there for you. But chances are he lives on the other side of the country or maybe halfway across the world. He may not even speak the same language as you. How do you find him? That man whose personality is so magnetic that you’ll forgive him a thousand times for failing to put his socks in the hamper or for failing to pick the kids up on time? (Because you know the reason you’re really mad at your husband about his sloppiness and forgetfulness is because you’re mad at him for not being Prince Charming, right?) He’s not your match, and both of you know it, so you spar over the kids’ grades, whose turn it is to do the grocery shopping, why his mother is coming over again, and what to do on the weekend that everyone will enjoy.
Most of us settle for Mr. Half-Right. Or maybe even Mr. One-Quarter-Right because we know that our chances of finding the true Mr. Right are very slim. And someone told us somewhere, likely in a fairytale, that we have to get married, have kids, and pretend to live happily ever after with our “one true love.”
I’d like to think I’m over it. Sometimes I think I am. I’m a realist at least 85 percent of the time. I know men and women often don’t speak the same language, that they have wholly different expectations, that neither gender can be expected to read the other’s mind. I know that 90 percent of the time when a man hurts me, frustrates me, makes me crazy, he really has no idea he’s doing it.
But then something will inspire me to start believing in fairytales again…or at least make me want to believe. It happened most recently last November when Dorothy and I were in Florence, Italy, walking the famous Ponte Vecchio. In case you don’t know, it’s a famous bridge spanning the Fiume Arno that is lined with shops selling gold and silver jewelry. I’ve never been much into jewelry. Once when my former spouse suggested he should update my engagement ring, get me something with a bigger diamond, I told him if he had that much money, I would be far happier with a fantastic vacation or a piece of land. (I never got the diamond, by the way, or a vacation, or a new piece of real estate.) But something about this romantic 1345 bridge in Florence, overlooking the river, with its shops of jewelry and the couples hand-in-hand walking across it gave me a little regretful thrill.
“Wouldn’t it be grand to get proposed to on this bridge?” I suddenly said to Dorothy. “And then go into one of these shops and pick out your ring?”
Dorothy, like me, is something of a cynic about love, but even she had to agree. Yes, that would indeed be fantastic. And so we stood there a moment in between all the glistening shops, looking out over the water and the city, daydreaming about something that was long gone for both of us. And I think we felt a little foolish that we even had such a girlish daydream—two business-owning women who had paid for their own trips to Italy and gone unaccompanied by husbands or lovers.
The “mind-fuck for girls,” as my friend called it, apparently outlasts education, prosperity, experience, even divorce. Which really leads me to wonder what it’s all about, why we can’t let go. Is it something like the “Hope” of Pandora’s Box? Does the idea that the “one true love” is out there somewhere keep us trudging onward in the most hopeless of circumstances, enduring the string of dates with men who are not “the one,” sifting through them all, wondering, and wondering if Prince Charming is ever going to show up? Do we really go through all of this thinking we’re going to be the rare and lucky woman who truly lands Mr. Right??
Maybe.
I know there have been times in my life when I have wanted to shout like Charlotte in Sex and the City, “I’m 35! Where is he?!”
I remember watching a friend of mine walk down the aisle a few years ago. And if anyone had been through the relationship ringer, she was it. I remembered her lamenting during her days as a single, dating woman, “I’m exhausted by it. I am exhausted by dating men, none of whom are right. I just want to give up.” But one day, years later, she walked down the aisle arm-in-arm with the man she believed to be “the one,” and the beaming smile on her face gave me hope for a moment.
Maybe this will be it, I thought. Maybe she really found him, and they’re going to be in love forever. She’ll prove it’s possible. I even told her so. “Make me believe,” I urged her.
But that’s not how it happened. Her husband is not picking her up into his arms at the end of every workday and planting an “oh, my god, I am so in love with you” kiss on her lips. The question is though: does he need to be?
And I’m afraid the answer might actually be “yes.”
But do I say that because I’ve been mind-fucked, too?
Probably.
But I do know two women who found love in their 60s…finally. And at least one of them is quite madly in love. I think of her sometimes when I start feeling hopeless. I remind myself there is always that five percent or less chance that something magical might indeed cross my path one day.
Crazier things have happened.
It never crossed my mind, for example, when I was the child of hard-working parents just barely getting by at times that I would one day enjoy the luxury of standing on the Ponte Vecchio looking at diamonds and coral pendants and perhaps, more importantly, looking across the centuries-old architecture of the city where Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci once lived.
I bought a ring for myself that day. It was not a diamond. It was not even expensive. I bought it from the jeweler on the bridge with only a few dozen pieces in his window. He told me he was able to sell the same pieces as his neighbors so much cheaper because of his low overhead. I slipped it on my finger, pulled my leather gloves back over my hands, and proceeded on my way to the Galleria degli Ufizzi to look at the original paintings of Botticelli, Raphael, and El Greco, something I also would never have imagined being able to do on a typical writer’s salary.
It did not occur to me until later that I had done my best to live out my fairytale thus far. And perhaps that simple gold filigree band was something of a self-engagement ring for me, not on the scale of the famous right-hand diamond. My fairytale is not quite that big, not yet. And I suspect if it ever gets that big, I’ll be buying more land with mountain vistas or maybe checking out Antarctica, not frittering money away on diamonds. Who knows? That is the beauty of it, too. The not knowing what’s around the next bend.
In the tale of Pandora’s box, humanity is saved by hope. But hope is not sitting on a windowsill wishing for Prince Charming to come dashing around the corner. Hope is active. It is work. It is believing…and doing…and being…even when the evidence suggests that the game will not end as you would like. It’s still worth a bold attempt. Don’t leave it to princes and chipmunks to save you. That’s great if one comes along and gives you a lift. But try lifting yourself first.
I’m embarrassed to say that I’m finally getting the last of the random pieces of Christmas put away. A month or so ago, the Christmas decorations were unceremoniously stashed into a heap in the basement. ‘Out of sight; out of mind’ allowed me to procrastinate even further. Finally, however, everything is organized and stacked in passably neat boxes in the corner of the basement. The only thing left is a pile of Christmas cards, which are actually still on the mantel.
I guess the cards linger because the real tradition I cling to is the Christmas card. Those memories go as far back as I can remember. There are people who have received a card from my mother every year since I was born. And it’s always been a photo card. Thankfully, she’s finally released my sister and me from being the stars of the card. We owe her relinquishment to our children, who now occupy center space on the family photo cards.
I must admit to having ambivalent memories of taking the Christmas card picture as a kid, especially in our teen years. If I could get my older sister to chime in on this one, we’d probably go on way too long.
Although we often took the picture on Thanksgiving, if there was an early Pennsylvania snow, we knew it would mean bundling up and getting our smiles and knitted grandmother sweaters on before the heavy, wet snow fell off the pine trees. We’d pose for frame after frame depicting tender and joyful sisterly love.
Portrait of the perfect family.
Jessica and me--the portrait of sisterly love
Isn’t that what the holiday card is all about? I don’t think it’s necessary to hash up the past, and I know my mother may be saddened to see this in writing, but there was nothing that would crush the holiday spirit more quickly than the hassle of trying to take that Christmas card picture. After shooting a full roll, we’d rush over to the store to get it developed and hope for the best. There were no digital pictures back then, so we would have to wait days before learning if the shot was Christmas card worthy. A fake smile, double chin, closed eye, or the accidental arrangement of a telephone pole would mean starting back at square one. Of course, technology moved us forward, though sometimes not in a good way. I remember a particularly weak card one year where we actually photoshopped in my sister. Unfortunately, the technology just wasn’t quite where it needed to be.
Today, however, as I now have children of my own and have continued my mother’s tradition of sending photo cards that chronicle Dylan’s and Abigail’s lives, I see a different side of it all. Christmas cards are a perfect platform to keep connected with friends that you may not have seen in years. It’s an active way of saying, “I still think of you.” It stands in high contrast to the way in which we have all become voyeurs to the lives of practical strangers on networks like Facebook where our ‘friends’ number in the high three and even four digits.
Kids and Cats
The Christmas card is a perhaps more antiquated version of our modern social networking outlets. It’s like a once-a-year Facebook post on the family. We announce new babies, new marriages, new homes, and new jobs. We chronicle our family trips, promotions, All-Star teams, ballet classes, home upgrades, prestigious college admissions, passions for everything princess, honor rolls, potty training success, new pets, dead pets, new careers, mom’s first girls’ weekend, broken legs, and birthday bashes. . . . The Christmas card is the perfect place to put forth each family’s “ideal self.”
And I guess that it’s a good thing that no one really tells it like it is. Imagine getting this on a card: “Kelly has started to struggle with self-induced vomiting and has dabbled in drug use. Joey finally got diagnosed with ADHD and aggression issues after stabbing three other children with a pencil. And Gary and I have broken into the kids’ college fund to pay for rehab and marital counseling after he found himself with over $12,000 worth of charges from online porn sites.”
Tom-foolery: our way of rebelling against the dreaded "Christmas card photo"
Yeah, it’s mostly just the good news. Although there is sad news that can’t be sugar-coated or avoided. Christmas cards force me to face the heartbreak. One card we received shared the tragic news of a life-changing injury sustained by a dear friend’s husband while serving in Iraq a few years ago, explaining why we had not heard from the couple in a several years. They’re just now starting to send cards again. Another card we sent, addressed to a couple, was answered with a phone call sharing the sudden loss of a husband this past summer. And the sadness can’t be more poignant each year when we see a little halo over the name of a friend’s baby who died of SIDS five years ago.
And there’s the unavoidable news of name and address changes brought on by divorces. My husband claims I have more divorced friends than anyone he knows. I’m not sure about that, but I do know that each year, there are one or two new splits to add to the list. Of course, there are other couples where we are more surprised to see that they are still together year after year. It does make me wonder sometimes what bets are placed on my husband and me. . . .
Mom Finds New Subjects: The Grandkids!
So for me, it’s not a bragging letter, the picture, or the foil-lined envelopes. Instead it’s the poignant moments that come when I’m going through the list in January, editing and updating. I sort through the envelopes, updating and correcting my list. I remember my mother doing the same, though with the advancement of technology, I do it a little differently. She had a flowered address book, with addresses written in pencil so new addresses and changed names could be easily edited. Albeit impersonal, I now I use an Excel spreadsheet.
As streamlined as my system is, it begs the question of what to do when someone dies. For my mother, when someone died, she’d just put ‘dec.’ and the date. She never erased a name. But since I use the spreadsheet, instead of a little note by the name like my mom did, I delete the deceased spouse, making it ‘address ready.’ This year, I was overcome with the harshness of it all.
So for 2012, I added a few babies, changed a handful of addresses, inserted a few rows to accommodate where one household had become two, and added a Mr. & Mrs. to a few lines. But the hardest change was when I deleted my Aunt Amy’s name last week, who succumbed to cancer a few months back. Though I’ll continue to send a card to her partner, her own name was now gone from my list. No pencil mark “dec. 10/26/11” like I remember seeing in my mother’s tattered Christmas address book. Although I know the feelings of loss and change are still the same, at that moment, the process felt overcome by mechanization.
Maybe that’s why my cards are still on the mantel in the little snowman card holder my kids made for me. And I guess I’ll keep them there as long as it takes to shed those tears that still seem to come out of nowhere when I think of Aunt Amy, and that will eventually be tempered by remembering all the fun times with her and her consistently artistic and ‘laugh out loud’ funny photo Christmas cards.
And I’ve decided to make some changes on my Excel spreadsheet Christmas card list, too. Instead of deleting grandparents and favorite aunts’ names, I’m going to insert a column, right after the address. I’ll simply cut and paste each lost loved one’s name to this new column, and label it “dec.” at the top, as a nod to my own mother’s wise ways.
A new generation of family models
I’ll also try to find more balance —the more technology that’s available, the more my life is convenient and streamlined. But with these advancements comes the need to guard against being overcome with the soullessness of it all. No technology can ever fill the void left when that last Christmas card from a loved one is opened. In fact, with all the scientific advancements, we still can’t predict just when it will be that last card. Maybe that’s why the cards linger on the mantel. I have a need to hold onto something more tangible than an Excel spreadsheet on a blinking screen. Instead I have the smiling photo cards, the sweet handwritten signatures of small children, and the understanding at last of the necessity, on some level, to preserve a “perfect” past. It helps us cope, you see, with a sometimes imperfect present where heartbreak is real.
