The Good Enough Mom

I question my ability to mother every single day. Some days I get it right. Other days I get it very, very wrong.

It’s easy to announce all the wondrous things I do as a mom but the truth is, in my mind, there are very few things to shout across the universe about.

I get up at the ass crack of dawn not because I want a jump on motherhood but because I want an hour of peace and quiet with my coffee and computer before the wild rumpus of life begins since I do actually live where the wild things are.

The boys…oh, the boys!…they will fight in that way that boys do. One has no filter or boundaries while the other is going through some big changes that make his temper volatile. I don’t stand between them like the zebra-striped referee anymore because it makes me tired. I shrug and walk away. Let them work it out. If someone hits the floor, well…they hit the floor.

I no longer make up fun and age appropriate words when I need to release my inner bitch, especially in the car. Alternatives such as ‘fudge’, ‘cheese and rice’, ‘shitake mushrooms’, and ‘son of a biscuit’ -why are they all food-y?? –  just don’t have the same soothing affect on my damaged psyche as the more lively words. I don’t incorporate them into every sentence but they do make it in from time to time and, yes, my kids are around.

Fuck, shit, and son of a bitch release an amount of tension even Xanax can’t touch.

You can quote me.

I don’t always feel like making lunches so my kids are forced to eat the shitty school lunch. They live to tell about it, and tell about it they do, to which I respond heartily and without so much as a grin that it didn’t kill them.

Dinner is pretty much the same. I hate to cook but I wake with the best of intentions every day…going to the grocery story, buying all the organic and good-for-them things but more often than is probably “motherhood correct” they get chicken nuggets, hot dogs, and macaroni and cheese….the processed Velveeta kind.

Oh! And let me not leave out Hamburger Helper.

Long ago, I quit trying to be the mom who gives the greatest and most creative gifts for teacher appreciation week. I do manage to bake Pillsbury pull apart cookies and put them in a pretty recycled Birchbox and my go-to gift is a Starbucks gift card. Not creative but it gets the job done.

I’m not above telling them that I’m going to sit down and write or catch up on reading or nap and that unless they are bleeding, and pretty badly, they should think twice before stepping into my personal space.

I tell my homeschooled daughter to skip the schedule some days and take her shopping. I’m a shitty learning coach on the days my Kohls cash is going to expire.

When I am in the throes of anxiety and can’t catch my breath I go to my twelve year old daughter and hold her hand. Some say that’s a lot of pressure to put on a twelve year old. I say you don’t know her.

I yell, I slam doors, I threaten to throw their crap in the yard or run it over with my car if they don’t pick it up. If they don’t bother to tell me they don’t have clean socks or underwear for school, I tell them to take it out of the hamper and turn it inside out. That’s their bad.

But….

my kids know I love them. I tell them every single day, more than once. More than twice.

I show up. To all the things. Always. I am now and will always be their biggest (and loudest) fan.

They know without a doubt I would turn the world upside down for them and then lay down my own life if it came down to it.

They know me well enough and, better yet, respect me enough to give me the time I need to deal with being human. Most of the time anyway.

My daughter sees me in all my imperfect, insane glory and sometimes she comes to me, just to hold my hand for five minutes because she knows, even when I try to hide it, that my mind is spinning and my heart is pounding; she knows just from the look on my face or the tone of my voice. She realizes I am not a super-human. Just a regular one dealing with life and some of the less pretty stuff that comes with it.

They eat just as much healthy food as they do garbage and are all growing and glowing to show for it. The proof is in the penciled marks on their bedroom door frames. Did I mention they love Hamburger Helper?

The boys haven’t killed each other yet and I’ve only seen a couple of marks. I grew up in the days of far less paranoia and fist fought my brother until he outgrew me by a foot and I knew I could no longer win. I’m still here and I’m fairly sure they will be too.

My daughter is finishing her honors courses with all A’s and a B this school year. Retail therapy is obviously a fantastic tool.

The teachers may not say, but sometimes do, that the cookies and Starbucks cards? They are the best gifts ever.

As for the words. They are just words, expressive and colorful. If they are going to say them one day it will  be with or without my help. Mostly, they just ignore me.

I’m not a perfect mom. I don’t need to be.

My kids love me just the way I am…flaws, bad cooking, anxiety, curse words and all….I am their rose with many thorns.

I am a good enough mom.

They wouldn’t trade me for all the chicken nuggets and mac-and- cheese in the world.

 

 

 

 

Photo credit: Pixabay

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How To Save A Life

I’ll be your keeper for life as your guardian
I’ll be your warrior of care your first warden
I’ll be your angel on call, I’ll be on demand
The greatest honor of all, as your guardian

~ Guardian, Alanis Morissette

I opened the door and there they stood. My drug addicted daughter, who had the good sense to leave her piece of shit husband in the car, and my 3 year old grandson. My first thought is always that he looked so pale and dirty. And unhappy.

They walked in with his tiny suitcase, which I will open later and find it holds only a few items of clothing, most of which don’t fit. There were no toys. No stuffed animals. No books. Nothing offering the comforts of ‘home’.

That is likely because he didn’t have any of those things. Including a home.

She walked in to the kitchen where my husband and a notary are waiting, papers lined up on the kitchen table.

Two days prior, my daughter called me and asked me if we would take her son. They had no home. She and her husband fought all the time. He was a thief and a drug addict. Come to think of it, so was she. They needed someone to take this boy…because he’d become inconvenient.

My husband and I scrambled to find a family lawyer that could get this done quickly before she had a chance to change her mind and take off because neither of us believed this little boy would survive what was coming.

I don’t believe she doesn’t love him. I know that she does and I know the pain she was in at that moment as she approached the table and eyed the words on paper that, instead of legal jargon, said in her eyes, “I’m a failure as a mother. I am giving up the right to call my son…my son. I will have no rights to him. He will no longer be mine. I am giving up this little person who loves me more than anything, despite my faults.”

She signed the papers and with a quick goodbye, she walked out the door. She walked out the door without her son. For all intents and purposes, he was now mine.

In the midst of lawyers and judges all in a span of two days, I had made him a room in this, his new home. There was a big bed with clean sheets. There were toys offered up by my then seven-year old son. There were stuffed animals lovingly placed on the bed from the stash of my then eight-year old daughter. Clothes that my son had outgrown that I had been saving for him were now clean and folded, stored in the drawers of his very own dresser.

The delight in his eyes was heartwarming yet sad because there is something he didn’t know.

He doesn’t know she isn’t coming back. The task of telling him has been left up to me. What is worse? He doesn’t know who I am. He thinks I am a random stranger because in their whirlwind life of addiction and chaos we didn’t see him much for two years. The only time he’s ever stayed at our house overnight was the night my daughter was being arrested for shoplifting at Macy’s and I had to go pick him up so they wouldn’t call social services.

He came to live with us on September 15th, 2011. My daughter asked us to keep him for six months.

He is still here.

I love him and I’m happy to have him. I think my daughter did the right thing and I never in a million years would have said no. Never.

Since the day she left, she stayed high. She’s called me suicidal and I’ve spoken to her on a cell phone, trying to find out where she is while having my mom on the land line calling 911 to send help to her. I’ve put her in rehab facilities, hospitals, and pulled strings to get her into a domestic violence shelter while her husband was sitting in jail, only to have her leave and go back to him as soon as he was freed.

For two years I raised a troubled kid, because all that he had witnessed and been subjected to had fucked him up. He was holed up in dark places with only God knows what going on, moved from place to place. The first time I put him in a bathtub to clean his dirty body and hair, he screamed like a wild animal the whole time. Why? He was three and couldn’t tell me so I had to let my imagination take flight which wasn’t a good thing. He wasn’t potty trained and wouldn’t be until well into his sixth year. He was prone to violent outbursts. He didn’t have any idea how to interact with other children. To this day he has a hard time making friends. He had no filter and no boundaries and they are minimal today, at best. As recently as this past December at a family dinner he asked me how I knew his mother. WHAT? He still has no idea how he fits in with all of us even though it’s been explained several times.

He didn’t hug. He had never been read a bedtime story. It took him two years to say I love you in response to the same. If I told him I loved him he’d say, ‘Okay’.

She filed for divorce from the asshat but didn’t leave the addict life. She did what she had to in order to feed her demon and I never saw her or heard from her. I think she was just quietly waiting to die while I quietly waited to find out she had.

Her addict lifestyle eventually caught up with her and she went to jail. Then she went to prison. The downward spiral was quick and, I’m sure, very painful.

Whether or not there is a happy ending to this story for them as mother and son remains to be seen. She was released in December 2014. She is living with her grandparents and, thanks to having a family owned business, is gainfully employed. She is working on one thing at a time, keeping her expectations low so as not to overwhelm herself with all that needs to be done to once more become a responsible member of society. She sees her son every week at our home. He deals with it the best he can, usually by becoming obnoxious, because he has no idea how to play the hand he’s been dealt.

Because it sucks.

Except for the fact that he has a very good life. It has had its challenges and not just for him. My other children have had to make adjustments over the past three and a half years and not all of them have been easy.

I had never, ever been called to the principal’s office at school. I have now. Twice.

I’d never been physically pushed into a bathtub by a four-year old. I have now.

I’d never carried a crazed screaming child across a parking lot in 100 degree weather with strangers staring at me like I was a kidnapper. I have now.

I have never felt like I’d saved someone’s life.

I do now.

He has lived with us now for what will be four years this September and there is no doubt he will be with us longer. His mom has a long way to go and being a recovering addict myself I know it’s a tough road she has ahead. I know life would be less stressful if he could just be our grandson, visiting on weekends so we could spoil him and send him home to his mother.

Sometimes that’s just not how things work.

I don’t write this so that others will stand me on a pedestal and tell me how wonderful I am. I’m no saint. I realize that my own active addiction had an impact on my daughter. I am not a victim of circumstance. I am not a victim by any stretch of the imagination.

These are consequences of a chain of addiction, silence, shame, and fear in our family history. I know I am not alone.

That is why I write this.

 
photo credit: Teddy via photopin (license)

Compassion Is Not Only a Noun – #1000 Speak

The dictionary defines compassion as a noun, sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others. While I agree that compassion is fellow feeling, concern, kindness, humanity, tenderness, mercy, and love, I don’t take to the word pity.

While the general emotions are, in fact, nouns I tend to believe that the word compassion is also a verb.

To pity is to feel sorry for.

Compassion is doing something about it.

Compassion is an act. It is going out of your way, or maybe not so far out at all, to help another human being who is suffering emotionally, spiritually, or physically.

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. ~ Dalai Lama

Identifying with another person is an essential process for human beings.  If you translate compassion literally, it means “to suffer together.” It is a process. When you can feel empathy for a person in a difficult time are you not more motivated to do something in an effort to make things better? You feel this person’s pain. Perhaps the situation is different, but you know from experience the emotional turmoil and suffering beneath and you want to DO SOMETHING.

In this doing of something to right the wrong you not only make the much needed human connection but you enlighten and improve not only the life of someone else, but your own as well.

Acts of compassion do not need to move mountains. It can be as simple as a look to a mother with a difficult child that doesn’t show aggravation or pity. You offer her understanding and tell her it’s okay. In that moment you have offered her strength and motivation. You have offered yourself the opportunity to make the world a better place in that small time and space.

Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them. ~ Dalai Lama

Imagine if everyone committed to one small act of unsolicited and unconditional compassion:

• running an errand for a sick friend
• holding the hand of an elderly person who is ill
• listening to a co-worker who recently lost a loved on
• offering the use of your cell phone to a stranded stranger
• helping the person in the grocery line without quite enough money

These are actions within the realm of possibility every single day for someone, somewhere. Add all of these together and these tiny moments become momentous. Huge. Life changing.

For all of us.

Do not turn away. Do not close your eyes to an opportunity to reach out and make the world a better place, in even the smallest way, for another person. In taking that measure, you not only improve the life of another, but your own as well.

Which brings me to what may be the hardest compassionate steps to take. Compassion toward our selves.

Have you spent your life being told you are not good enough? Not smart enough? Not thin enough? Not pretty enough?

I call bullshit.

We are all good enough.

We are all smart enough.

We are all beautiful.

Speak to yourself the way you would speak to someone else feeling the same hurt. This can break the pattern of pain and change everything.

I read a quote a while back that said “Without suffering there would be no compassion.”

In a perfect world.

But we need to be realistic. This is, and likely always will be, an imperfect world. There will be suffering.

So let there be compassion.

Listen with intention. Support and understand the best you can. In those moments, see a life change. Feel your heart change. This is compassion.
This is love.

~Sandy Ramsey

This post is just a small part of a movement to bring compassion to light. This is the way we prefer to break the internet. To read more beautiful, powerful words from some incredible writers please click the picture above, share some of these posts, and become part of #1000Speak.

 

 

 

photo credit: 365::47 – poetry in my life via photopin (license)

Him

 

Whenever you need someone
To lay your heart and head upon
Remember, after the fire, after all the rain
I will be the flame  ~ Cheap Trick

The first time I saw him I heard my soul quietly whisper,

“Him.”

Apart from that there was not much. There was no lightening strike or moving earth beneath my feet. No angels singing or alignment of the stars.

He was still married but in the process of divorce and I was still new at being sober. Between the two of us we had fairly negative opinions on matters of the heart. When I look back, I would swear we were a disaster waiting to happen.

It was an early Saturday phone call from a mutual friend inviting me to go jet-skiing with him and his roommate that brought us together.  I really didn’t want to go but we Floridians do love our water sports and the mid-August day was perfect for it after a long work week.

Knowing said mutual friend was interested in more than just friendship and since I was not even remotely interested in matches of any kind being made I didn’t do much to improve my appearance. I rolled out of bed, threw on some cut-offs over my bikini , pulled my hair into a ponytail, and waited for my ride.

Walking down the dirt path to the lake I was starting to feel a little more excited about being on the popular chain of lakes for the day. Our friend and I rounded the corner at the boat ramp and I looked several yards over at the roommate sitting on a jet ski in the middle of the lake.

“Him.”

That was August 18, 1997.

Obviously, he divorced and I managed to scrounge together a few more years of sobriety. We stayed together despite the odds, enjoying adventures I never thought I’d have and for the first time in my life I knew what love, all mixed up with respect, joy, laughter, comfort, and trust, felt like. No expectations. No violence. No conditions.

After three years, the man who told me he would never get married again stood with me, the girl who didn’t really care in the beginning…..until I did, under a willow tree at sunset and said, ‘I do.’ We have taken those vows very seriously, holding true to our word when we’ve had our share of better and worse, richer and poorer, sickness and health.

We lived within a few miles of each other our entire lives. We attended rival high schools with only a year between our graduations. We shared some of the same friends, went to the same drunken parties after football games. We drove the same streets, ate at the same restaurants. We circled each other, in the same orbit around the same sun, for years upon years.

We both had some tumultuous years before we met. There was alcoholism and addiction along with the chaos those things bring. There were bad marriages followed by bad divorces. There were lives up-ended and righted once more.

Only after the smoke cleared did we find the strength to heal and the power to transform our own lives. And only then did we meet in the middle.

The middle of a chain of lakes where today we take our kids tubing in the summer and, with a shared sideways smile, show them the exact spot where we first met. Maybe there were some odd goings-on with the angels and stars after all.

And after eighteen years, I still hear it.

“Him.”

 

 

 

 

photo credit: Hearts via photopin (license)