A Mother’s Love…and Why It Doesn’t Always Come From Mom

Me with the object of my mother love

My dad often tells me I am a lot like my maternal grandfather. That may seem a strange thing, but my dad loved his father-in-law, probably more than my grandfather’s own children loved him. “I missed him for years after he died,” Dad tells me every so often.

So did I. I still do.

I was not quite six years old when he died, but he was like glistening sunshine to me. Lanky and energetic, he smoked a blue streak. To this day, I get lonesome for him when I smell Lucky Strikes. He drank coffee by the gallons, walked fast, dreamed big, worked hard. He wasn’t perfect. I know he had a firecracker temper. But for me, at five, he was the man who scooped me up into his lap and taught me to butter Norwegian flatbread, called me “Grandpa’s cocklebur,” and took me for rides in his big Case tractor, played with me on the floor, put together my doll carriages, held me in his arms while watching football.

His love was big; so was mine.

Because of him, because of my grandmother (his wife), my dad, and later, my dearest friends, I know what love looks like. It is full on, vulnerable, brave, beautiful, self-sacrificing, and wild. It is “no matter what.” And it lives through fear, and anger, and disappointment.

It is not the kind of love I ever knew from my mother, and that is a hard thing in a world where mother love is celebrated as the greatest love there is.

My mother taught me many things when I was a child—to think for myself, not to follow the herd, to stand up for what I believed in, to do my best. But, contrary to popular notions of motherhood, she was not the one who taught me love.

And it’s okay.

Not that it always feels okay. But rationally, it’s okay. I receive my “mother love” from nearly a dozen other sources. From the women friends who text me in my lowest moments and tell me I am “an awesome person, mother, and friend.” From the mother of my childhood best friend who has half adopted me and told me she will always be there for me. Even from my own daughter, only six, who wraps soft arms around my neck, plants wet kisses on my cheek and says, “I will always love you, Mommy, and always take care of you.”

My daughter is, in the end, the true measure of my mother love. In many ways, my mother no more approves of her than she does of me. Heidi is, in her view, too opinionated, too vocal, too willful, too brave. She asks me about Heidi’s academics, wants to know if she is the smartest kid in class, wonders why I don’t push her harder.

And it’s simple. That’s not my way. My love is different, not wrong, but different. I don’t care if Heidi is the smartest, the most talented, the loveliest. I do care, however, if she is kind, loving, generous. When I attended my most recent conference with Heidi’s teacher, my heart swelled when I heard my daughter made everyone laugh, made people happy, made her peers, especially the new kid in school, feel welcome.

Because my life experience has taught me one can indeed get a fair distance in the working world with smarts and drive. But getting somewhere in life…that’s about love. And Heidi overflows with it.

When I tackle her in a hug and send her to the floor in kisses and tickles until she is squealing with delight, my mother will frown at the noise and fuss that no one is helping her make Christmas dinner. My dad, however, will peek around the corner with a grin and say with mock sternness, “What’s going on in here?”

Love.

That’s what’s going on.

Mother love. And you don’t have to be a mother to give it. Or perfect to receive it. One day, I know, my little girl will grow up to be the kind of woman that people miss for years after she is gone…the way I miss my grandfather. Who loved loud, and hard, and big.

One is Not Enough: Why Men Cheat

With all the drama surrounding politicians and celebrities who cheat, one might gain the impression that cheating is pretty pervasive. And it is. Psychologists estimate that more than 40 percent of all married relationships have at least one partner sneaking out on the other. That number jumps to over 50 percent for non-married committed relationships.

Don’t misinterpret this as a judgment call. I honestly couldn’t care less if Bill Clinton came on Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress, if Anthony Weiner sexted sexually explicit photos to young women, and whether or not Tiger Woods needs more than a Swedish blond to keep him satisfied. To each his own.

But I do wonder a little about something…and that is, why seemingly perfectly decent men in seemingly perfectly happy relationships cheat on their wives and girlfriends. Not that women don’t cheat, too. They do. Some estimate that as many women are cheating as men. And it may be true.

This may draw some flak from female readers, but I actually can understand, if not necessarily condone, a man who cheats on a partner because she’s no longer having sex with him or the relationship has staled to the point that neither party takes much genuine interest in the other any longer. The right thing to do would be to get a divorce or break up, but statistics also show that men are pretty complacent. Under a third of divorces are initiated by them. Much easier to cheat. You don’t have to pay alimony or child support or risk not having a warm body to come home to at night.

What baffles me, however, is how so many men married to or in long-term partnerships with beautiful, charming, and generous women who intellectually, emotionally, and sexually thrill them still feel compelled to step out. As a rule, a woman will be utterly devoted to a man who satisfies her on all these levels…so incredibly rare is the find.

A friend of mine whose long-term partner cheated on her repeatedly, says, “Once a man discovers that more than one woman finds him attractive, it becomes like a drug. He just wants more and more.” Even, ladies, if it might cost him the fantastic woman waiting at home in his bed. (Because remember a lot of women, unlike most men, will leave a dead-end or troublesome relationship…or a man who cheats on them. Women aren’t as inclined to “settle” as their male counterparts.)

So what’s up with the male compulsion to constantly scope for greener or just different pastures?

Some anthropologists will argue it’s basic biology, that humans aren’t actually wired to be monogamous. Some psychologists will call it sexual addiction. I’d like to call it something far simpler, however: an easy ego boost.

Who doesn’t like to be admired by the opposite sex? I won’t lie. I like the fact that perfect strangers will open doors for me, lift my luggage into overhead compartments on airplanes, or give me free drinks just because they think, in that particular moment, I look pretty hot. It reminds me I’ve still got it and, to be quite honest, gives me greater confidence with the man on whom I have exclusively placed my affections if I’m in a relationship.

But I can’t say as I have a compelling desire to jump the bones of the mixologist who gives me a complimentary glass of his latest concoction or the random guy in tango class who offers to give me a private lesson in the figure 8. I smile, soak up the ego boost, and go home.

A fair number of men, however, push the envelope on female attention and go as far as the attending party will allow if they feel they have a good chance of getting away with it. (Though admittedly, the “getting away with it” concern often doesn’t enter their heads till after the deed is done anyway.)

But the sad truth is just about every man with whom I’ve been in a semi-serious to serious relationship, save my ex-husband (so far as I know anyway), has cheated on me in some form or another, whether emotionally or physically. And I’d say more than half of my female friends and acquaintances and their female friends and acquaintances have had similar experiences. And I know some of these women are far from duds in the bedroom, on the dance floor, or at a cocktail party. They shimmer with life, and intelligence, and confident sexuality. Yet…the men in their lives still cheat….

A friend of mine explains it this way: “Men go through this thing where they need to feel validated by other women even if they don’t care about those women.”

She has a point. And I, like a lot of women, have been both the “cared about” woman whose romantic partner is off “validating” himself as well as the one doing the validating for the man.

Neither position is one any woman wants to be in, trust me. Because a man who is feeling a need to sow his wild oats is not a man who has your emotions in his line of sight. It’s not that he wants to hurt you. He just doesn’t consider the implications of his actions on people with feelings—i.e. the women who have made the mistake of caring for him.

Unfortunately, all too many men have competing desires of wishing for the stability and security of a long-term relationship while also wanting the excitement of painting the town red every weekend…with a different woman each night. Too often they try to have both…at the same time.

Of course, I realize nothing here so far is providing you any insight on how to prevent that man in your life from cheating. The reality is, I’m afraid, you can’t prevent it if it’s something he is prone to do or is in a place in his life where he feels compelled to do it. It just isn’t in the average guy’s mental makeup to consider long-term, widespread implications of actions outside the boardroom. They are compartmentalizers. They really do believe they can do A without affecting B.

It’s the old “have your cake and eat it, too” scenario. Of course, we all know how that usually works out. And the guy who is running around validating himself will learn how it works out, too, but usually only after he’s lost everything he didn’t realize he valued.

Racy Brain on Steroids: Life Planning at 2:30 a.m.

It is a horrible habit of mine—this waking up almost every night at 2:30 a.m. to stare at the ceiling fan churning slowly over my bed, feeling the cool whoosh, whoosh drift over my face. My best friend told me to always go to sleep with the ceiling fan running so that I could imagine it whisking my worries away. “It will help you sleep,” she advised me, being something of a middle of the night insomniac herself.

Insomnia has always dogged me to some degree. But it didn’t start to get really bad until the last weeks of my pregnancy. The inability to ever get comfortable kept me awake, Heidi kicking my abdomen but only after dark, willful even in the womb. I went into new motherhood already sleep deprived.

After my daughter’s birth, insomnia chased me so hard I could read an entire novel in one night because I’d never actually fall asleep, ever mindful, waiting for the middle of the night cry that would call me for a 3 a.m. feeding or a diaper explosion in the bassinet at 4:30. Remember those? The colors and smells would often rival a cat box.

But even once Heidi was sleeping through the night, I wasn’t. I could dream up a million reasons to stay awake or to wake up only three hours after falling asleep and stay awake until the sun rose. 

The opportunities for wakefulness are endless….

Is that tech consultant really coming to fix my office network at 8 a.m.? That means before I imbibe Dr. Pepper.  That means she’ll be there in the middle of my phone interview with a couple of Georgia cotton farmers. That means I’ll be distracted. And what am I going to talk to them about anyway?  Have I done all my research? Do I know what I’m going to ask?

I wish I still didn’t have to write that column in the morning. And pay bills. I must not forget to pay bills. Or schedule interviews for that story on gluten intolerance.

I didn’t lay clothes out for Heidi. What if she dresses herself when she wakes up and puts on pink and black striped pants with an orange Halloween T-shirt, and sparkly Hello Kitty shoes?

And what do I wear? I need to exercise. I don’t exercise enough. Should I do yoga when I wake up? Should I bike before I get Heidi off the bus after school? My bike pants aren’t clean. I need to do laundry. Oh no, tomorrow night is choir practice. I can’t bike before choir. Then I’ll have to take a shower, and that’s one more thing….

I forgot to make Heidi practice the piano. How could I forget? And I didn’t wash her tutu for ballet. If I wash it in the morning, will it dry before practice?

Wonder what that certified letter is I got notice about from the post office? Is someone suing me? And how come that new client hasn’t paid me? Is he going to be a deadbeat? I should never work with startups.

I can’t believe it’s October and the grass still needs mowing. When the heck am I going to do THAT???

And so it goes. By the time 5:30 a.m. rolls around, I have planned out my wardrobe for the week, mentally packed my suitcase for my upcoming vacation, written an entire blog post in my head, and put my boyfriend through Gestalt analysis (and no, he was not present when I did this). 

I am exhausted by the mental effort. I fall asleep.

One hour later the alarm goes off, and I feel like Rosie O’Donnell in a wetsuit stuck on the ocean floor at 60 feet. 

I hit the snooze button.  Three times…

I know it is going to be one of those mornings when I pull jeans on over my boxer shorts and put a sweatshirt on over my T-shirt so no one at the bus stop will be able to tell I’m not wearing a bra.

I pull together some semblance of an outfit for Heidi, whip her hair into shape even though I know it will look like a rat’s nest in five minutes, guaranteeing some kind of mental note on the part of Social Services: Heidi Grimes repeatedly shows up to school with unbrushed hair. Make home visit ASAP.

I have tried chamomile tea. Hot chocolate. Reading books about the hunt for Eichmann or ex-patriot love stories by Henry James. Wine. Benadryl. Meditation. Sliced cucumbers on eyelids.

No luck.

Sometimes I embrace the wakefulness. I get up, go to the office at 3 a.m., churn out stories by the handfuls, so that by 10 a.m., I feel like I’ve put in a full day.  By noon, I will be foggy and nonfunctional.

I can doze at my desk. I can go to sleep while driving. I can drift while folding laundry, boiling eggs, or even mowing grass. But not in bed. Why not in bed?

But then there is this: were it not for lying awake in the middle of the night, I would never have time to think. It is in insomnia that I have my wildest daydreams and stir up the ingredients for making them real. Not that I recommend life planning at 2:30 a.m. anymore than I recommend baking a pie. It’s easy to get the recipe all mixed up when one is hopelessly tired, throwing in three cups of flour instead of three tablespoons.

And that would, in fact, explain a lot about my life…it smells too much at times of having been baked by someone only half awake.

Therein perhaps lies the beauty though—a fully awake and rational person would never do some of the things I’ve done. And how much of the experience of living might I have missed if clearheaded and cautious thinking always ruled my actions? 

So I try to appreciate the butter coconut pie with three cups (instead of three tablespoons) of flour, even if it is a bit dense. Better that life be too full than too empty….

The Truth About Lying

A friend prompted me to write this post. A few days ago when he was asking for my insight on why his girlfriend was acting the way she was and wondering if all his distress was really just stemming from his own baggage, he said, “By the way, can you write a blog post about lying?”

“Well, heck yeah,” I responded.

I can’t imagine there are too many people who know as much about lying as I do. Not because I’m into lying myself. I’ve never been very good at it. I think perhaps that’s why my women friends don’t take me shopping very much because when they’re standing in front of a three-way mirror, asking, “Does this dress make my rear-end look like a stagecoach?”….well, I’m gonna tell the truth.

I know a lot about lying because I’ve been lied to a lot…mostly by men. So it was a strange thing to have a male friend ask me to talk about lying in relationships. I kind of thought lying was the territory of men. I have an encyclopedia full of stories about men who lie, men I’ve loved and trusted and men my women friends have loved and trusted, too. Like the guy who told his wife he was going to be home late because he’d be out cutting hay till dark. What he failed to mention was that after he’d cut the hay he’d be rolling in it, too…with a woman not his wife.

But lying isn’t just the purview of men. Everybody’s doing it. So much so that when my aforementioned friend and I were competing on an emotional baggage weigh-in, lies told by exes was the dead weight taking both our scales to the ground.

So what’s up with all the lying, and why do people do it, particularly in romantic relationships?

I’m probably not the best person to answer that question given that I’m actually notorious for brutal honesty. (If this blog isn’t a testament to that, I don’t know what is.) I have frequently and injudiciously told the truth far too many times, and I’ll often take the measure of a date based on whether or not he can handle it. It might shock you to know that many a man will freak when you honestly tell him he’s handsome. Maybe this sets up expectations for routine shaving of the five o’clock shadow or regular changing of the underwear. I don’t know….

But what I do know about lying is this: it’s usually committed by people who are reluctant to live in reality. No surprise there, huh?

So when my friend told me he felt “emotionally compromised” by all the baggage he carried from women lying to him, I had to make a correction. The people who are emotionally compromised are the ones telling the tall tales. They are incapable of dealing with reality, so they lie in an effort to avoid it and create “realities” they can cope with.

Allow me to give an example….

Once upon a time, I knew a man so polished in the art of deception that he had almost convinced himself the person he was pretending to be was, in fact, real. He was that good. He could lie to himself and believe the lie. Hence, when he lied to his family and friends, he was highly convincing. No liar is better than the liar who can convince himself. The man was so unhappy in his reality that he created an alternate universe where he was a kind and attentive romantic partner, a brave and committed man, a considerate and passionate lover. And that is the universe he escaped to when reality was too much for him.

The result?

His disconnection from himself and his true reality was so great that one day when his wife was sitting across the table from his ex-lover in a restaurant, holding her hand while the two cried together, he texted his spouse, completely disconnected from what was really happening, “Honey, when you’re on your way home, can you pick up cat litter?”

Little did he know reality was about to hit him hard and square in the face…along with the cat litter delivery.

Hence my sometimes frightening dedication to truth. Truth can hurt. Truth can piss you off, as Scott Peck says. But truth is freeing. It allows you to live in a world where people love you for who you really are, not for some absurd façade you create.

And if you find yourself in the company of someone who can’t cope with truth, beware. These are the types who “need a break,” when caught in a lie, want “baggage-free” relationships, and who ignore your communications for three days after you’ve made some reality-inducing gesture.

Watch out for these Mr. or Mrs. Containment types. They’re the ones struggling with both hands to plug up all the holes where they feel like shit is coming out…or might come out. If they can’t deal with your baggage, chances are damn good they can’t deal with their own either. And trust me, the last thing you want in your life, no matter how gorgeous she is or how charmingly he behaves, is someone who lacks coping skills. Because they’re usually the first ones to lie…in a desperate effort to save themselves, not you, when they think the ship is sinking.

Watching for the Proverbial Red Flags and What I’ve Learned from Dating Crazy Men

“The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.” –Maya Angelou

It would be a mild statement to say I’ve been burned in relationships. The fact that one of my girlfriends suggested the other evening that she ought to head up a committee for screening my dates is testament to this fact. Over the course of my two decades of adulthood, I’ve dated, lived with, or been married to men suffering from chronic depression, borderline personality disorder, compulsive lying tendencies, and codependency.

Someone once asked me, “Do you attract crazy men, or do they become crazy after being with you?” Actually, it was one of the men I dated who asked me. (He later turned out to be codependent and a liar.)

I was not offended. It is a question I have often asked myself.

You would think a writer trained in English literature, historical research, and psychological maneuvering would be better at choosing partners. I know how to tell if a subject I’m interviewing is lying. I know how to discern from body language and eye contact if someone is nervous, afraid, or stressed. So why is it I have missed critical red flags in my relationships with men?

Well, I haven’t exactly missed them. Let’s just say I’ve offered one too many second chances. Like who gives a guy who gets up and leaves after he’s “satisfied,” even when you’re not, a chance at another meeting? Who gets in a relationship with the same man twice expecting things to be different on round two? And who lets a man who has proved himself a coward back into her life on a promise of brave commitment?

Um, yeah, me. Guilty as charged. Crazy shit doesn’t just happen in the movies. My life is proof.

And yes, I’ve read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Maybe I need to read it again.

I believe it was Oprah Winfrey who said you will have to keep repeating the same life lesson over and over again until you learn it. I hope I’m ready to learn it this time—learn that the day a man (or anyone for that matter) shows me who he is to believe him and run like hell while I still can if I’m not immediately impressed by the showing.

I can still hear myself saying to the man I believed to be the love of my life, “You are a selfish coward” well into a doomed relationship I had resolved to end. A few months after the ending, I had taken him back on a promise of courage even though I had apparently already decided courage was not in his skill set.

Can someone please bring the cast iron skillet into the room and hit me over the head with it?

Yes, I’m into self-abuse these days. But the reality is I’m real, for better or worse, and forgiveness is part of who I am. I don’t like to expend a lot of energy holding grudges, particularly not against people I love. If you want me to really, really loathe you, it’s going to take some work…. And yes, there have been a couple of people who have accomplished it, but I wouldn’t recommend joining their club. (I do exercise the power of the pen, you know, combined with ample access to the public forum. I’m just sayin’.)

In the meantime, I’m trying not to scare off potential romantic interests by seeing red flags where there are none. A guy said to me recently, “I noticed you’re a little sensitive” after I asked him for the seventh time or so if he was okay when I perceived a distant attitude as a sign of disinterest instead of what it really was—seasickness and a concentrated attempt not to vomit in a rocking boat.

There is definitely a delicate balance to walk between listening to your gut and following your heart. Hearts are prone to flutters of fancy even when your large intestine is telling you that butterfly looks more like a moth ready to dive into a flame.

Sometimes the answer to whether or not this or that guy is “the one” is as simple as listening to what he says on those first few dates and not glossing over obvious signs of trouble just because you think he’s the handsomest thing you’ve seen since Antonio Banderos in an Iberostar commercial.

Realize if he lies about his age on date one, he’s probably going to lie about far worse things later. Don’t forgive him. Bail before you’re sucked in.

But if he’s sheepishly honest about how anxious he is dating a woman who writes a blog about relationships yet he’s still sitting there across the table smiling with faith that he’s decent enough not to end up the subject of some brutal poking fun later, he might just be courageous enough to warrant date number two and then some.

9 Rules of Dating for Clueless Men

It occurred to me after returning to the dating circuit about eight months following my separation from my ex-husband that dating in one’s 30’s is a good deal different from dating in one’s 20’s. However, some things never change. Men remain, to a large degree, clueless about how to genuinely impress a female…or, at the very least, get her to want to ever go out with them again after date number one.

So I decided it was time to give the guys a “fly on the wall” view of the unspoken rules women carry around in their heads on those first few dates. Please note, however, these rules apply only to high quality females (i.e. not the type who smokes three packs a day and sports a tattoo across her chest that reads “Only God Can Judge Me”).

1) Pay for dinner. It befuddles me that I even have to note this rule, but you’d be surprised how many guys don’t get it. I don’t care if you’re dating an executive powerhouse of a female, pay for dinner on the first date. Now, in the interest of politeness, she might offer to half the bill, but trust me, 99 percent of women expect you to decline the offer and pay for that first date meal. If you don’t, you will look like a clueless schmuck, and, I assure you, she will never return your phone calls or texts. (If you want to make the argument, as I’ve heard some guys do, that you can’t afford to pay for the meals of the 20 women you’re taking out a week, then be more selective, or be a jerk, and don’t pay for the meals of the women you never want to see again—but before you do that, make sure you don’t want to date any of her friends or acquaintances ever. She will tell everyone she knows how clueless you are.)

2) Open doors. Another “I can’t believe I have to tell you this” rule, but there are men who fail on this one, too. Opening the door for women and elderly folks is just plain courteous, and it shows you have at least some breeding.

3) Please wear a clean shirt. You will be judged by how you look, and I don’t mean you have to be drop-dead gorgeous to get a gal’s attention. But make it look as if you put some effort into getting ready for this gig. The three-piece suit isn’t required, but crisp, clean clothes and well-groomed hair and nails are. Show up with that lunch spaghetti stain on your shirt, and you’ll be lucky if you make it out the front door with her…if you do, she is incredibly generous and polite. Nothing says “I’m a sloth and I don’t care about you” more than rumpled, stained, or uber casual attire.

4) Talk about something or someone besides yourself. There is no bigger turn-off than a guy who can’t shut up about how awesome he is or who dominates the conversation. No. 1—it communicates you’re insecure. Confident people don’t feel the need to talk incessantly about themselves and their accomplishments. No. 2—you will bore her to tears. You may find your job enormously interesting, but chances are, she doesn’t. Plus, who the hell wants to talk about work on a date? Not me. I get enough of that in my own office….

5) Don’t ask if you can do your laundry at her house. This is not college, guys. Fix your washing machine, or buy a new one. And if this is some lame excuse to stay over, trust me, you can come up with something better.

6) If you’re interested, let her know. Suck up some courage, and ask if you can call her or go out again. I know your ego is fragile, but if she turns you down, what exactly do you have to lose? That’s right. Nothing. So take a risk, and let her know you’d like to see her again. There are a few women who will pursue you, but most figure any guy worth having is one brave enough to walk a little ways out on a limb for them.

7) Please learn how to kiss. It is beyond shocking how many men do not know how even after a decade and a half of marriage and five years of dating. Trust me, bad kissing is a deal breaker. Call us ladies shallow, but it’s true. No one feels like being deep throated by your megaloglossia on a first date. Chill on the probing tongue action, and learn to kiss like Romeo. You can salvage a lackluster date with an incredible kiss for reasons I probably don’t need to go into….

8) Do not make a move for sex on the first date, the second date, or the third…. Unless you are going out with the aforementioned lady with the tattoo across her breastbone. No. 1—it makes you look like a prick who is only interested in one thing. And while that may be the case, be aware that it’s not likely to win you any bonus points with your date who much prefers the idea that you are charmed by her sparkling personality. No. 2—first time coitus is almost always mediocre at best. Let’s face it—she’s a new partner, and you have no idea what drives her wild. Do you really want her first impression to be that you are, at best, a mediocre lover? She will forgive mediocrity later if she’s in love with your character. And she might even teach you a thing or two….
9) Before you ask that attractive, smart, and successful woman out, make sure you like arm candy with a brain. Sadly, far too many men, even incredibly intelligent and powerful ones, have trouble with women who can hold their own in talking stocks at a cocktail party even while being the hottest number in the room. If you can’t get over yourself and realize you must be pretty awesome to attract such a female, don’t even bother wasting her time. On the other hand, you might keep in mind that every guy in the room is not only going to be jealous but perhaps even wondering how you landed such a prize. Of course, I don’t have to tell you what conclusion they’ll draw about you….and your…ahem, abilities.

Operating in Full Survival Mode: How To Find Your Way When the Shit Hits the Fan

There is this funny thing about life you have probably noticed: just when everything seems to be running along smoothly and happily, the shit hits the fan really hard just to remind you that shit is out there…in case you have forgotten in your oblivious bliss that bad things happen to good people all the damn time.

Does this mean you should always be on your guard? It is a question I have been asking myself a lot in the last 48 hours because, for me, the proverbial excrement hit the spinning blades a couple of days ago.

As I was discussing this latest episode of flying gunk with a girlfriend at dinner last night, and she was reminding me that an emergency room visit is cheaper than a funeral (nevermind that the dead person is never the one paying for the funeral), her nephew called. As custodian of this handsome 16-year-old frame of hormones and funk, my friend had recently found herself up till all hours of the night trying to track down his whereabouts.

When she hung up the phone after an extended conversation about where the kid was going and when and for how long, I remarked how impressed I was that she was semi-successfully juggling the raising of a toddler and a teenager. She laughed and replied, “All I care about is survival. Are they dead or alive? That’s about the best I can manage right now. If everybody is alive, things are good.”

And I began to wonder…is this really what life has come to? Survival? Just basic survival?

The other friend who joined us for dinner seemed to think so, remarking to me as I relayed how torn up I was with grief, “Look, you’re just gonna have to get through the next five minutes, and if you can make it through that, then work on getting through the next five.”

Somewhere back in my 20s, I thought life was about hope, love, and happiness. But that was back when I was single, childless, and the most responsibility I had outside my career was remembering to feed my dog.

Here’s the thing: you think once you attain all your dreams, life is gonna be really good. But dreams have their cost. Children are work. Successful romantic relationships are work. Successful careers are work. Building a house is work. Taking care of it all is work. Taking care of aging parents is work. Rebuilding your life after divorce and disappointment is work. And maintaining the level of income and sanity required to keep life running with some semblance of smoothness is work.

And when you’re juggling all this with only two hands and one brain, sometimes things fall through the cracks. Okay, a lot of things fall through the cracks. And pretty soon the cracks are gaping wounds. And pretty soon there isn’t enough joint compound in the universe to plug them all up. Shit is oozing from everywhere.

And you begin to ask yourself, “Is this what I signed on for?”

A friend of mine who is a divorced father of three told me recently when I was asking if life was going to be one pile of shit hitting the fan after another, “There’s always going to be serious shit. And someone somewhere will both cause it and help you out of it.”

Only a man juggling a career, the raising of two teenage boys and a daughter, and his own efforts to go back to school could possibly say something so profound. And I listened….

Because it made a lot of sense. Pretty much every person who has ever wounded me, intentionally or unintentionally, has also brought me to some powerful crossroads, more often than not because the pain forced me to change my way of thinking or doing, made me drag myself out of a rut and onto a new and, ultimately, more productive path.

The trouble is, when you are in the midst of grief and pain, the new path is often hard to see through all the tears and hyperventilating. Sometimes you just have to sit back and let the mist lift first. That’s called “survival mode,” waiting for the minutes to pass, day by day, staying alive until the fog dissipates.

And don’t mistake hope for your rescuer. As my single dad friend added that day I talked to him about despair, hope really isn’t what’s going to pull you out of the mire. “Hope is a fragile gossamer thread,” he remarked. Rather it’s getting to the point “where your eyes are not crowded with the bullshit of the world,” and you can see clearly the path that is yours, the one that has been waiting for you to discover it.

“There Will Always Be Richard”…And How You Know It’s Time to Bestow Honorary Girlfriend Status on a Guy

I love my women friends. They are like my family except for the fact that they don’t make me want to climb the walls and hang from a chandelier when I’m around them. They are also my most trusted advisors, my personal cabinet. Whenever an important issue comes up, I go to them for perspective and guidance, whether the problem is my latest mommy meltdown or the most recent ‘what on earth possessed me to tell my S.O. THAT???’ crisis.

But what’s especially wonderful about these women, three of whom I place at the core of my advisory, is that I know them so well that sometimes I can consult the girlfriend trifecta without actually consulting the girlfriend trifecta.

The other day was a case in point. I was debating whether or not to accept the casual dinner invitation of a guy I had dated a handful of times, wondering if it might send my current romantic partner over the edge to imagine me eating creamy truffle risotto and a chocolate ganache tart in company with a man other than himself. It was not, mind you, that I had any latent romantic interest in this potential dinner partner. It’s just that a writer like myself occasionally likes to interact with someone who can carry on an intelligent conversation about Charles Dickens and William Faulkner, something I knew from experience this potential dinner partner could do.

As I am wont to do with any decision that could potentially screw up the rest of my life, I started to dial my deeply devoted friend of 38 years who has come to my rescue on more than one occasion, holding my hand when I gave birth to my daughter, hosting me for a Christmas Eve meltdown, and handing me her cell phone one day at O’Hare and telling me to just “please shut up and call the love of your life.” So tuned in is she sometimes to my psyche, she often knows what I want or need more accurately than I do.

But before I could finish dialing, I already knew what Sarah would say. She would advise me not to play with fire.  Because she is my mother hen and protector, the woman I can count on to make me feel safe in the most dire of circumstances.  When life becomes too much to bear, it is Sarah who invites me to her wonderfully chaotic house, where I am comforted by the frenetic activity of her chef husband, her energetic two-year-old son, and her teenage nephew who likes to advise me on all the benefits of owning a Droid over an iPhone.

Of course, I also knew Sarah would speak her trademark tagline after providing her advice: “I love you, and I support you no matter what.”

Hmm, no need to call. 

On to the next girlfriend. Shiloh.  Outspoken, adventurous, and irreverent, she is not too difficult to predict either.  I knew without even thinking about it too much that Shiloh would say, “Go for it!”  Ever open to the next adventure, experiment, or big thing, Shiloh has no qualms about risk-taking, even when there is no clear potential benefit. Her life has hardened her against getting wound up about consequences. Though she will admit herself at times, “There are days I consider shots and a round of tennis a viable option for problem solving.” 

Sooo….no need to call her either. I had both ends of the spectrum.

That only left Susannah—the practical psychology major whose husband has repeatedly accused her of having more divorced friends than anyone else he knows.  She is the one worth calling no matter what, at least so says Sarah, who admits, “You know what Shiloh is going to say.  You know what I’m going to say. Call Susannah. She is the only one left with a practical, rational outlook on things. And besides,” she adds, “then you have three different opinions, so likely whatever choice you make will be the ‘right’ one in someone’s view.”

I never called any of my three most trusted advisors that day. I ultimately came to my own decision not to mess with any men’s heads or to potentially play with fire all on my own.  Okay, well, not all on my own. I had the voices and perspectives of those three girlfriends heatedly debating in my head. 

This is the reason why a wise man not only works to win the heart of his lover but also the hearts of her girlfriends. They may be the ones who determine whether he gets ditched or forgiven one day down the road when he responds to a life crisis one too many times with “I love you. I’m eating Go Lean Crunch now. What are you doing?” Um, having a crisis in case you hadn’t noticed.

I know I can count on the women in my life to still be my friends no matter what crazy trouble I get into.  They have this otherworldly power to surround me with a net of kindness and support even when they aren’t actually there. There are occasions when I will call one of their number at 3 a.m. when I wake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, but more often than not, my awareness that I can call if I need to is really all I require.  I know they’re there, and I will eventually go back to sleep, assured that no matter what happens, these women will be there when things get so bad I have to call.

Men do not always understand this sisterhood among women. Raised to be lone wolves who interact with their BFFs on a whole different level than we do (i.e. intimate friendship means you’re not afraid to get totally toasted in front of the guy and then go play a round of golf and score badly), they may find the close emotional ties the women in their lives share with other women confounding if not downright threatening.

Once when Shiloh and I were jointly in the throes of nasty break-up blues, we seriously discussed the feasibility of buying a farm, inviting other disillusioned women friends, and raising vegetables in company with our daughters and ditching men at least from our day-to-day lives forever. When Shiloh mentioned this idea to a date one night after an especially long “wine flight,” he was appalled and wanted to know if this really was her “five-year plan.” “Don’t you need a man around?” he asked.

His incredulity could only be matched by our own, I must say.  What man asks a woman he’s been dating less than two months what her five-year plan is?  And who discusses a five-day plan, much less a five-year plan, with a woman he is driving home because she has admitted she has imbibed too much wine to drive herself safely?  A man without much experience with women…that’s who.

And so the poor schmuck got what any more experienced gentleman would have known better than to bargain for.  Shiloh responded (and forgive my more formal language here; I’ve been banned from subscribers’ servers because of my occasional use of four-letter words), “There will always be more (ahem!) Richard; good girlfriends, however, are a lot harder to find.”  Richards, you see, come in all sizes and with various levels of proficiency attached to them. But a female friend who will stand by you through everything—if you find her, hang on tight.

I should know.  It’s taken me more than 30 years to assemble my core group of rock solid women friends.

This is not to dismiss the men with whom I am (as this blog attests) so endlessly fascinated. I love men. In fact, I think that is a good part of my trouble.  I grew up the only girl at the babysitter, and once in high school, I found the company of boys far more satisfying than that of silly, boy crazy girls.  Plus, it was my father, grandfather, and great uncles who made much of me when I was a child.  The women were always too busy for me.  All in all, I feel incredibly comfortable with men, far more than I do with women unless those women are confident, smart, and sassy gals whom I can admire and respect and who aren’t threatened by a loud and outspoken woman like myself.

But at the same time, I don’t always understand men (hence the fascination perhaps) anymore than they understand me. I love Mr. Go Lean Crunch with all my heart, and, in the end, it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t always know the right thing to say. That’s what my girlfriends are for.  What matters is that even in complete bewilderment (and sometimes terror), he has stood by me, rock solid as…well…a woman.  I am thinking perhaps we should bestow “honorary girlfriend” status on men like this.

They are more than Richards. In fact, if we want to get truly derogatory, and why the hell not?  They are not Richards at all.  They stand much taller and do not feel the need to flee when things get tough.  They know how to brace for the punch.  Where they learned to do this, I can only guess…probably from a woman.

There will indeed always be Richards. 

Foolish is the woman who risks the trust or gives up the friendship of a solid and committed friend, be that friend male or female, for a mere Richard.  As Elbert Hubbard says, “A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” Banish such a friend from your life, and you may indeed be a Richard yourself.

Passion and Commitment: Why You Need Both

There are wonderful times when life catches me completely off guard. Like a week ago when I attended my five-year-old’s first piano recital.  It was, initially, reminiscent of the recitals I’d played in as a child, where the first children to play were the youngest and least skilled, and the last were those who could show some mastery over their lessons. Needless to say, I never played last at a recital in any of my seven to eight years of piano lessons.  I liked playing the piano, still do, but I was never passionate about it.

However, last Sunday, I saw passion.  As I sat there in church watching one student succeed another, a few of them showing fine technical skill, I expected no great epiphanies at the keyboard. But then the last student to play, an 11-year-old boy who had been taking lessons only four years, sat down to regale the audience with five minutes or so of “Pirates of the Caribbean,” and I sat there dumbfounded. Not only did this boy demonstrate technical skill way beyond his years, but he played with the passion of a man who has found and lost love, watched a beloved die, walked through fire….

Where does feeling like that come from in an 11-year-old boy?

I have no idea.

But I do know that it was not passion alone that made that young man stroke the keys as if he was born to play. The piano teacher’s sister informed me after the recital that the boy’s parents could hardly keep him from the piano, that he played all the time.

That’s not just passion. That’s commitment.

And if you ever want to succeed at something, and I mean really succeed, you have to have both.

How often have I seen a person with passion for an art, skill, or subject fail to reach potential, not for lack of talent but for lack of commitment. And commitment, mind you, is more than hard work.  It comes with cost and sacrifice.

A friend of mine had to give a meditation recently at a wedding, and she was anxious about how to do it because she had been asked not to be too religious. “How can I talk about passion,” she asked, “and not draw an anomaly to the passion of Christ?”

I don’t know what she ultimately came up with, but even though I’m not religious, I know there is much to learn from what we refer to as “Christ’s passion.”  Jesus, whether mortal or God, was willing to take the cost, make the ultimate sacrifice, for what he believed. The result? His life and teachings form one of the world’s most influential religions. And that’s really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the influence of Jesus’ passion and commitment.

I suspect, knowing my friend, that she perhaps touched on the necessity of passion and commitment to a successful marriage. It is one thing to love another person, even deeply love him.  It is quite another to commit yourself to maintaining that love for life. That not only takes work, like the work of resolving minor disputes before they become big resentments, but the work of sacrifice–willingly and lovingly giving up to get more. And I don’t mean more in a greedy sense. I mean more fulfillment, more meaning, and, ultimately, more passion.

Because that’s the thing about commitment that is passion-inspired. It builds more passion.

I will not pretend to know about passion and commitment within the framework of a marriage.  I know I tried commitment without passion for a very long time, and it didn’t seem to do much other than take up valuable space in the short span of what we know as life.

But I do know about passion in other things. I have had a passion for writing since I was a small child, yet for a brief period while in college and grad school, I let a couple of mentors convince me to pursue a career as professor instead of as a writer. To my good fortune, poverty eventually drove me out of academe, and I began to see, after working as an ex parte brief writer, speech writer, and copywriter, that one could indeed earn a living writing.

For five years, I spent every waking hour I wasn’t at my salaried job working to build my own business as a writer. And once I cut the cord to the world of the regular paycheck and began freelancing full-time, I worked 80-hour weeks for a couple of years to build a client base. There was never a time that any of it felt exhausting. Why?  Because I was passionately committed to living my dream.

The same held true when I finally bought the farm I’d always dreamed of owning and built the house I’d always dreamed of building, working until the wee hours of the morning at times painting cathedral ceilings while lying on my back on a scaffold, hanging wallpaper, and sanding and varnishing cabinets, stair treads, and trim. Passion launched me. Commitment held me.

I have no doubt I will hear one day of that 11-year-old boy at my daughter’s piano recital rocking the world stage as a concert pianist. Because the boy is not just passionate; he is committed. He practices his passion daily.

That’s the key—daily commitment to passion.

As one of my favorite poets, Pablo Neruda, remarks, you should live “as if you were on fire from within.” Doing anything less is not really living; it is not really committing. If you believe in your passion, whether it is the passion you hold for your work or the passion you hold for your lover, then commit to it, live as if “the moon lives in the lining of your skin.”

The Art of Letting Go

I’ve always had a bit of trouble with letting go. Raised by my father to be a “fix-it” type person, I have suffered from a belief that everything can be made right with a little adjustment and ingenuity…including relationships.

But this isn’t always so.

Sometimes you just have to abandon ship and let the old girl sink.

How do you know when it’s time to bail on a marriage, a friendship, perhaps even a parent?  Probably when the relationship keeps you awake at least four nights out of the week and your contact with the person gives you a case of the jitters equivalent to five cups of coffee drunk in quick succession or gives you a sudden desire to send your car off a cliff…with yourself in it.

Evolved creatures though we are, we tend to resist change, even if continuing in the same rut feels about as good as ripping a band-aid off a hairy leg 100 times in a row.  I should know.  I have resisted giving up on people with immense relish over the years.

I think it started with my mother. A highly respected educator, even by me (though I admit I window gazed in her AP English class just to annoy her), she was never particularly skilled at letting me be me.  The result has been a decades-long battle of the wills between us that I finally had to just throw into the ditch.  Meaning I accepted the fact that my mother would never approve of me no matter what I did.  I let go….

The unfortunate thing is it took more than half my life to do it.  Wisdom cannot be rushed.

Over the years, I’ve sped up this “process of elimination,” but it’s still been pretty slow. It took me at least five years to finally throw in the towel on an unfulfilling marriage.

The trouble with me (and with a lot of people, I suspect) is that I’m not very good at giving up on people. While in grad school, I taught college English and Humanities and reveled in the adrenaline rush of getting a student who started the semester with solid D’s to writing polished B+ essays.  However, when I had to flunk an entire English Comp class of unprepared 18-year-old boys, it frustrated me beyond measure. Why didn’t they give a shit?

The reality is, not everyone gives a shit. And sometimes you just have to accept that and move on.

I’ve played mentor to a few aspiring writers over the years. Sometimes the relationships have been mutually rewarding. Sometimes they have not.  It’s the “have not” ones that have kept me up at night.  When I have invested months, and sometimes years, of my life in teaching a young person not only how to write in a way that will sell but how to find markets for her work, only to have her turn tail and give up, especially when she has potential and talent, it messes with my head.

It’s like being a parent in some ways. You have to tell yourself, “I’m investing in this person because I believe in her. If she chooses to give up and walk away, it’s her choice.” Too often I have gotten caught up in “fix-it” mode, believing I could make someone believe in herself through my own confidence and will. But it doesn’t always work that way.

Some months ago, I began the process of letting go of an aspiring writer and friend who had given up, convinced after years of being put down by others that she was always being judged even when she wasn’t.  It was among the more frustrating experiences of my life, watching someone with loads of potential back herself into a corner and decide, perhaps unconsciously, she was not worthy of great things. Even worse, she blamed me for her retreat.

Being the hardheaded fixer that I am, I persisted in trying to reach out, only to be greeted with hostility.

Eventually, however, I had to do what I did with my disapproving, negative mother, and my toxic spouse…I let go.  I said to myself, “Enough is enough.  You cannot force someone to live to her full potential. Allow free will, and walk away.”

When I watch friends struggle with this all too common problem with their children, I empathize. I know what it is to want the best for someone you love and to watch that person dig himself or herself into a deep hole. And frequently, as the digger digs, he looks up at you, the self-proclaimed “fixer,” and wishes you’d fall in so he could bury you.

If you haven’t jumped ship by this point, it truly is time to bail and expend your energy where it is wanted or at least accepted.

There is an old Zen proverb, which you’ve probably heard: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”  On a couple of occasions, I have thought the student was ready and that I was the teacher.

Sometimes we miscalculate. Sometimes the student is never ready.

When that happens, it really is okay to cut your losses and move on.

I know my mother will never be ready to accept me as I am.  I know my ex-husband will never believe in himself as I tried to believe in him.  I also know I have had students who don’t want to learn.

In the grand scheme of things, it seems a little whacked to waste energy on negative people. But perhaps it is the stubborn human will to convert the faithless, no matter how hopeless the cases, that drives us.

As for me, I am making a new commitment to watch carefully for the people who would happily suck me into their black holes of anger and resentment and to focus instead on aligning myself with those who are willing to learn…and willing to teach in return.  I choose not to waste energy beating half dead horses or worrying too much about their final gasps of air.  As Elizabeth Gilbert , author of the popular treatise on finding joy, Eat, Pray, Love, has noted, “As smoking is to the lungs, so is resentment to the soul; even one puff is bad for you.”