Not So Secret Admirer

   
     I supposed I fancied myself as some little fairy godmother or a bespectacled guardian angel. Even though my attempts to do good were usually bungled, my motives were sincere. In 1969 I had brown hair and crooked pigtails every day and my closet was full of plaid jumpers that were always paired with pastel blouses that had dainty peter pan collars. I wore brown glasses to correct my amblyopia and the left lens was noticeably thicker than the right. I was a piece of work.

     My 5th grade classmates were the same as 4th, 3rd, 2nd and 1st.  I had gone to school with the same group of kids since kindergarten. There wasn't much change at Bunker Hill Elementary School. Our classes celebrated all the holidays with parties and homemade treats. I don't ever remember peanut allergies or gluten intolerance being an issue, but I do remember the horror of Valentine's Day and how I would feel so sorry for the kids who got fewer cards dropped into their brightly decorated paper bags.

     There was one boy in particular who bore the brunt of most teasing. He was a notorious nose picker and had less fashion sense than me. I never picked on him. I'm not sure where my empathetic gene came from but to this day I am bothered by cruel practical jokes and sarcasm.

     On this particular Valentine's Day I thought it would be a good idea to make him feel like someone cared. I signed my name to most of the store bought cards but, on his, I used my mom's electric typewriter and wrote the words "From Your Secret Admirer." It was a masterful plan and I was thrilled that my actions would give the boy a smile. Now, I really wasn't his secret admirer. I had no crush on him. I thought his nose picking was disgusting but, ever the wanna be psychologist, I attributed his nasty habit to poor parenting. (I was the child who pored over my sister's college psych books so I could find out what my parents were doing wrong. I like to think I did most of my raising myself.)

     The great flaw in my plan occurred when I neglected to get up from the old IBM Selectric typewriter and I lazily went ahead and typed my name, rather than writing it, onto the remaining couple of Valentine cards. It doesn't take a middle schooler to figure out what happened next. The classroom was on a sugar high. Envelopes were ripped open and thrown to the linoleum floor and each 5th grade recipient eagerly read their cards and turned them over to see who had signed them. In no time at all, the most picked on boy in school was waving his little card from his secret admirer. All the boys and girls buzzed and chattered and tried to figure out who she was.

     I sat proud and smug...until the smartest boy in class opened up his card from me...and I had typed my name.  He was now sitting proud and smug after putting two and two together. As I said, my intentions may have been bungled but they were very, very good. Those good intentions don't mean much during a 5th grade scandal. In no time at all I was known as the girl who had the big crush on the most picked on boy in school. The teasing only lasted a week or so but that wasn't the worst of it. The worst part was a boy finding out that he didn't really have a secret admirer after all.

     Life lessons are hard albeit some can be quite funny in retrospect. I still carry my biggest life lesson from the 5th grade debacle deep within my heart. If I have raised my own children to follow this mantra than I will consider my parenting a success: Never be afraid to publicly declare your support, your love and your compassion for those less fortunate and less understood. When all is said and done you will know that doing the right thing for all to see is always the right action. If only my little 5th grade self had known that.

Life's Quilt

     "When I was a child I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away childish things." I love that passage from Corinthians. Every time I read it I think of the evolution from child to adult and how, even when we become adults, our hearts, our souls and our minds can continue to flourish. Of course, the childish things of our past are not cast out the moment we step into adulthood. Damn, wouldn't that make it easy. Instead, the remnants of our raising are woven so deeply into the quilt of our being that we must learn to stitch those tattered pieces together with new experiences.
     From the sweetness of childhood springs the angst of the teen. Isn't everything bigger than life? And so dramatic? A breakup means you just might die from the sadness. Grounded really does feel like grounded for life. A date to the prom is the best thing ever. If you don't get that car for your sweet sixteen your life will officially be over. And while the rest of your life feels like it passes by in the blink of an eye, the teen years seem to go on forever. The tumult from those years serves a greater purpose as we learn to navigate relationships and process and solve problems. Our life's quilt is getting bigger.
     The twenties. We're adults but our brains are only halfway there. We're expected to earn a living, pay our bills, and live like we're all grown up. The weekends are for partying and our bills haven't piled so high that we feel the strain of debt. For many of us, our parents are alive and kicking and our role as caretaker won't start for years and years. I've probably just managed to depress every twenty-something reader, but my true intent is this: love your life, love your friends, and live your dreams every day. Surround yourself with positivity. If there's a person in your life that makes it hell it's time to reassess. Keep the good, banish the bad.  Make your quilt stronger and more colorful.
     The thirties. We're putting it all together now. Maybe we're feeling a little cocky, too. The career is on track. We're starting a family. I'm still a bit mortified by some of my pit bull actions when I was thirty-something. In the workplace, I didn't take into account how my deeds affected others. Although I've never been to AA I admire their philosophy of going back and setting things right with people from your past. Maybe I should start my list. I should have used my quilt to warm and sustain others but I was pretty stingy with the life I was building.
     The forties can slap you in the face. What a wake up call. Growing kids are expensive and very, very complicated. Houses are money pits. My body ceased to defy gravity. Marriage required more work. Problems that I never saw coming threw us off track and it was harder and harder to steer back to the course. If you get through your forties with the marriage intact and your sanity in place you are blessed with the fifties. That quilt is life size now and the seams are strong from the reinforcing stitches.
     At the mid century mark I've adopted the se la vie attitude. Pick your battles never had more meaning. At this point in time, I've seen the blessings and tragedies of life and I say bring on the blessings because wallowing in the tragedies becomes tiresome and pointless. I love the fifties. My quilt is big enough for my family and friends and I choose to embrace the people that make my life richer.
    
   

ADDled Mom

My son has ADD. For the parents out there who do not have a child with ADD I'm sure what I'm about to write will sound like I spent my early parenting years riding the train to crazy town. I'll happily give away the ending and tell you that he is now 21, creative and perfect. We both survived and he gave me approval to write about him. I have a pivotal point in time that I will never, ever forget. It is the moment I realized I had completely lost control of my own reactions to the nightly homework battles and the never ending calls from teachers.

The doorbell rings at 7 pm. That's the witching hour for parents of kids with ADD. Dinner is over, bedtime is soon and the space between the two seems way too short to complete the piles of homework, get the going to bed rituals finished and make sure everything is organized for tomorrow's school day. Some of the hallmarks of ADD are a lack of focus, fidgeting, under performing and no sense of time. It would drive a normal parent mad but for a Type A, anal, over programmed and detail oriented nut case like me it was pure torture.The ADD child wants to make the right decisions but their hard wiring is routed wrong. And the Type A mom always thinks she's making the right decisions.

On this particular night I am drained. The crazy train is speeding to insanity and I'm too tired to get the damn thing to stop. I answer the door and find a friend standing on the threshold with papers for the next night's PTA meeting.She looks cute, and perky, and very, very relaxed. She has no idea that she has entered Hell.

Unaware, she steps into the madness...I mean the foyer.  It only takes a moment for her to realize that she would rather be anywhere but here. I am hoarse from yelling, my cheeks are red, the tears are flowing and she thinks someone has died. I picture my hair standing on end but I'm pretty sure that's only in my imagination. I am so caught up in the drama that I think it's perfectly normal to scream these next words..."HE HASN'T EVEN STARTED ON THE MATH HOMEWORK!" What? Math homework? I know she's thinking "who in their right mind gets this upset about math homework?" She could have turned tail and run but like a true friend she calmed me down and then sat for awhile and listened.

Parenting a child with ADD can make you crazy. It makes you crazy that even though it is such a common diagnosis, there are few teachers and counselors who really know how to deal with it. You get crazy when your child tells you the night before that he has a paper due the next day...and that it needs to be 15 pages with footnotes and a bibliography. It makes you crazy when he says it's really no problem, he'll just sit down and start writing. Is delusional part of ADD? Oh right, that's the no concept of time symptom! It makes you crazy that even though you try and stay on top of all assignments some slip through the cracks and you know you'll be up until 1:00 am scrambling to finish his paper. Yes. I know that is enabling. You get crazy when you get the one teacher who does understand all the idiosyncrasies of ADD and then you realize that she will only be the teacher for one year and the next year you have to start all over with a teacher who doesn't get it. It makes you crazy when the clueless teachers tell you to punish him by taking him out of all sports and forcing him to concentrate on school. Offense intended when I tell them you do not want that boy in your class; ice hockey and baseball were the outlets that made him manageable.

After the night of the meltdown, I had a serious talk with myself. I was over the edge and plummeting fast and if I didn't pull the rip cord now I would wallow in pain and regret. Overly dramatic? Probably. Is it what I was feeling at the time? Without a doubt.

I decided that I had to keep things in perspective. Would not finishing the math homework in 6th grade make him a terrible adult? No. Would getting a C on a paper keep him from growing up healthy and sane? No, but my constant over reaction certainly would. Through years of cajoling and prodding I believed that if he just tried harder and if I just pushed harder then this would all go away. I was wrong. I finally accepted that my creative and smart son had an abundance of wonderful traits that were being overlooked. I decided that the A Honor Roll was not the goal; the goal was to raise a son to become a wonderful adult.

And he is a wonderful adult. He has amazing powers of concentration when the task is something that interests him. The first day he picked up a guitar he was determined to be the best. Today, he is a musician who spends hours playing. He loves history. He seeks knowledge on his own. He is incredibly well read on current events and world history. He understands business and excels in those college courses. Most of all, he's a nice guy with a great group friends and he has his own plans for the future. Those plans may not have been the ones we had for him but they are so much sweeter because they are his own.

Yes, it's a good future. We're living it now.

Down the Rabbit Hole

     

     Kids are funny. I was funnier than most. And by funny… I really mean odd. My parents were older and my brother was off to college by the time I was six. My sister left when I was 10. Before they moved out they were busy with the things that teens are busy with and that left me to ride in the car with my mother as she went about her “Welcome Wagon” duties. Yes, she was a Welcome Wagon lady. I learned to read street numbers and maps before I learned to read a book.  I knew evens were on the left and odds were on the right and just because a street looked like it ended it may just jog a bit to the right or the left once you passed the cross street at the end of the block. I knew how to put together the big packets of coupons that we would drop off at the newcomers’ homes.  The local heating and air conditioning company always printed their coupon on an 8 x 10 sheet and that was the one we used to wrap around the others. They were all bound together with one of those big, fat, brown rubber bands. I loved putting those packets together. Other little girls wanted to grow up and be teachers or dancers or nurses. I wanted to be a business woman.

     When I was 7 or 8 I would load up a wagon with goods from our garage. Rocks, dusty directories with yellowed pages and worn covers, soft drinks from the cases my dad always stacked against the sheet rock wall, little plastic prescription bottles that had been converted into screw and nail containers were all good enough for my resale ambition. I’d pull the wagon and ring as many doorbells as I could before the neighbors would call my house and let my parents know that I was at it again. At least one or two would buy what I was selling.

     For most of my childhood there was a vacant lot at the end of the street. It was a woodsy heaven for all the neighborhood kids. One night I was late coming home. I must have been in kindergarten. This was back when children of all ages were gone from morning until dusk and no one thought anything of it. I walked into the house, covered with mud. The real truth was that I had broken the rule about not leaving our street and I had traveled one block over and slipped into the big deep ditch that lined one side of the road. It was like quick sand and one of my brother’s friends heard my screams and plucked me from the muck. I ran home and immediately proclaimed that I had fallen into…a rabbit hole. I built on that lie and told them that the rabbit hole was in the vacant lot. No way could they know I had left the block. My mother, my aunt, my father, my uncle, and at least two neighbors all set out, like an army search party, to find this rabbit hole that was sucking in small children. And, when the rabbit hole was nowhere to be found, I was forced to come clean and tell the truth.

     I was a nervy little kid and that’s why, when the for sale sign appeared in that vacant lot, I didn’t hesitate to call the number and ask the price. I thought it would be a great place to build my little resale business. Keep in mind that I was no older than 9 years old. I’m not sure why the Realtor took my call and I really can’t imagine why she spent the time to tell me that I would need to call the city and have the lot rezoned from residential to business use. She even gave me the number to call. Another adult spent 15 minutes with me explaining the process. It never occurred to me that I didn’t have the money to actually buy the lot. And I really can’t believe that it never occurred to the adults that they were speaking to a little girl. I thought I’d make the money in sales. What were they thinking?

     I did grow up to be a business woman for part of my life.  A Realtor, as a matter of fact, and although I never fielded calls from little girls aspiring to be business women, I would have gladly taken their calls. I do still have penchant for office supplies and I’d rather spend an hour in Staples than trying on shoes.  

     I was riding in the car with my daughter last week. She was driving and looking for an address. She asked me how I knew all the things I knew about maps and roads and business and…well, all the little things I take for granted that I’ve known most of my life. It made me remember some funny and good parts of my childhood that I usually overlook. It’s pretty easy to get caught up in all the negative childhood stuff that’s usually at the forefront of most middle aged baby boomer memories. Sometimes you’ve just got to set aside the bad and remember the good stuff. And be thankful for the little lessons learned.

    

    

Random Ramblings, Musings and What Not

Reminders for myself...

The older I get the less tolerance I have for toxic people. My brain is an emotional sponge. Look it up. I believe this is a real, technical term. (It must be. I read it in O Magazine. I hope Oprah's not just making things up. We need our media queen to be honest with her people.) I tend to absorb the negativity and anger that others spew and then I have to purge those icky feelings from my brain. It's a time consuming process and has a negative effect on not just me, but my loved ones. Have you ever been cornered in a conversation and your heart starts beating too fast, your brain spins and your underarms sweat? Accurate, but not a pretty picture. It used to happen to me all the time. Not so much since I've learned to banish most toxic people and their poisonous conversations. I keep my good friends close because they are positive even when challenged and they can muster up a good joke when tragedy looms.

Middle age seems to be divided into two camps-those that are totally screwed up and can't come to terms with life's ups and downs and those that have learned to roll with the dips and curves. I prefer to surround myself with the latter but am guilty of trying to force the former to see my way of positive thinking. More times than not it's a futile effort. I'm a slow learner but I eventually get it. I do find it funny that the negative types seem to think the positive types are a bit crazy. I prefer to think that a touch of crazy is what gets me through the day. That, and a Bloody Mary at five o'clock.

Tomorrow always shows up no matter how much I worry about my life being over because ____________. Fill in the blank with any number of problems that can be blown up to appear larger than they are. Eight times out of ten tomorrow really is a better day. Those are pretty good odds.

Hidden agendas and veiled comments will not be tolerated. Please see my first musing at the top of the page. Just say what you mean. Spit it out. It's an easier way to live your life and aren't we all looking for ways to make life easier?


I was right. My son didn't need to take Algebra in the 8th grade. Judging by the extreme reactions of some of my fellow PTA members you would have thought I'd bungled my parenting responsibilities in such a way that there would be no chance for recovery. I was right about quite a few things that caused raised eyebrows. No one knows my kids like I do. I refused to make parenting decisions based on the status quo. (By the way, I have permanently crossed my fingers while hoping I don't have to eat these words. So far, so good. The kids are sane, productive and nice people.)

If your child is creative and wants to pursue their passion, you better make sure they're prepared to earn a living.  I have an actress and a musician. I love that they get to follow their dreams. I also love that they are learning how to earn a living outside of their passions. Good business sense can be taught. Continued success in the entertainment business is not guaranteed; the public is fickle and trends change. And what was Nicolas Cage thinking by buying all that crap?

"Youth is wasted on the young." Damn right, Mr. George Bernard Shaw. If only I could have put my current brain in my twenty something body. I keep trying to share my life lessons with those much younger than me. I really need to remember that they have their own journey and must learn their own lessons. I can't do that for them. The only thing I can do is give them the tools to deal with problems in the healthiest way possible in order to avoid being one of those screwed up middle age people. And maybe then, they won't need my recipe for the 5 o'clock Bloody Mary.