Put Your Head Down and Focus

As anyone who has read this blog for more than a minute knows, I’m no athlete.  Field day was my least favorite day in the school calendar year; I was a scholar and a musician.  I got my geek on and enjoyed it, all the way through school.  It’s why I became a teacher, I loved school so much.  When I think of most of my favorite people in my life, outside of my family (not that all of them count amongst my favorites….), most of them I either met while I was in school or were involved with school somehow.  Well, except Rick Springfield, but otherwise the statement stands.  It’s no accident that most of my husband’s family are teachers; I immediately felt a kinship with all of them.

In fact, I was so nonathletic that when I wanted to become involved with the track team in high school, the only option available to me was the manager role.  Coach Tymrak (hey, didn’t I mention him in my last post?) was polite and all, but me and my short legs just weren’t going to be an asset to his team. In fact, I ended up bailing on the position because it made me just so damn uncomfortable to be around all of those people in such amazing shape (again, see my last post regarding my insane ability to compare myself to EVERYONE and not in a good way).  My favorite quote of all about running came from the 1980s flick “Real Genius” and went like this:  Q:  “Do you run?”  A:  “Only when chased.”

But listen…my inner high school athlete wanna be is kind of cheering these days, because guess what?  I’m a runner.

I’ve been attempting to run since last September.  I started off slowly with the Couch to 5K program.  I was religious.  I was diligent.  I told all of my friends so I couldn’t be let off the hook.  When one asked me how far I could run, three weeks into the program, I sheepishly answered…”Um, about three minutes.”  Because honestly, the program builds you up so slowly that that was the furthest I’d gone without stopping at that point.  And I was proud of it, because I’d never been able to run before, in my life.

I kept going.  I finished the program in November and ran my first race.  This was the critical juncture, because I knew that lots of people just fall off the grid at this point.  They finish, they do the race, they’re done.  They don’t know what to do next.  How to proceed.  How to keep progressing.  But I told myself that wouldn’t be me.  I signed up for another race to keep me in the training loop.  And then another.

I’m not going to lie.  The three races all kind of sucked.  It was hard.  It was still really hard, even after I’d done two of them.  Wasn’t it supposed to be easier?  When was I going to hit that easy groove people tell you about, and get that runner’s high?

I decided to start a new program.  Bridge to 10K.  I never had any real desire to run 6.2 miles, and certainly not in front of Other People and all, but what the hell.  The program would keep me going and force me not to stop.   The six week program ends when you can run an hour straight.  A freaking hour.  Sixty whole minutes.  That’s insanity, right?

Today, I did it.  I ran for 60 minutes without stopping.

There’s a moment that happens for me, in these long runs, usually somewhere just before the halfway point, where I want to give up.  It’s hard, too hard, and I want to let go.  I want to walk.  I want my heart to stop racing.  I want to stop sweating.  But somehow, I force myself to slow down, lose myself in the music piping through my earbuds, and carry on.  And always, always, in a few minutes, things seem easier.  And before too long, there’s only ten more minutes, or five, or two, and I know I’m going to make it.  I’m going to have run sixty minutes, over five miles.  And that knowledge is amazing, liberating, enlightening.  Running is just like every hard thing I’ve ever done.  It’s awful, it’s difficult, it’s something you think you can’t handle.  But you put your head down and focus, and you do it.  You get through it.  And you’re better for it.

So, look at that.  I’m a runner.  Take that, Coach Tymrak.

Compare and Contrast

Compare and contrast.  If there was a theme to Mr. Tymrak’s tenth grade Honors History class, it was that.  Compare and contrast.

Every assignment could be boiled down to those two simple words.  Every lesson required us to compare and contrast people, situations, policies.  Find the similarities and the differences.  Lay them out.  Intertwine them, link two dissimilar things together, and then find a way afterwards to tear them apart.

I find that I do that a lot.  Compare and contrast.  Except what I am comparing isn’t the social, political or economic ramifications of the Dred Scott decision or the Anti Trust Act.  No, I’m comparing myself to others.  And true to the insecurity that has always been bubbling up inside of me, I tend to find myself on the short end of the comparison.

I’m an equal opportunity comparer.  I will spend ten minutes on Facebook or Google comparing myself with girls I went to high school with.  Did they achieve more than me?  Are they thinner than me?  Do their posts show a happier marriage or more contentment with their lives?  Almost always the answer is yes, because when I’m engaging in self flagellation, I’m going for the gold.  I’m not going to look at the girl who moved down south and just divorced husband number three.  No, I’m going to look after my friend that started her own publishing company or the one that successfully runs her own insurance agency while balancing several kids and a husband and all that entails.

Or, I’ll compare myself with the other bloggers I follow.  I initially went to Roni’s site for information and motivation about how to lose weight, but now I look at her, six whole years younger than myself, and feel like I’ve missed a step or five.  She’s working from home making a living writing, has a supportive husband, two cute kids and has managed to keep most of the weight she became famous for losing off.  Or Katie, who has suffered major tragedy, but through it all has built a successful career and has a wonderful, insanely happy marriage.  Or Sprogblogger, who not only writes but is married to a writer, and is adequately in awe of all of her blessings.  Every time I read their wonderful writing, I compare myself….what did they do that I didn’t?  Which thing did they do that I didn’t that made them so much more where I wish I was?

And of course I compare myself with my girlfriends.  Who has a bigger house, a happier marriage, better behaved children, better time management.  This is the worst of all of my comparisons, because then I find myself withdrawing myself from them, just a bit.  Not entirely, not completely, but sometimes for a day or a week until my funk passes.  Or until one of them picks up a phone or stops by, because they know me.  And they love me, despite my insecurity, my comparing, my melancholy.

It’s a bad habit, this comparing.  I know it is.   I know that there are wonderful things about me, and that the only person I should be comparing myself to is myself.  To improve.  To move forward.  To appreciate all that I have, and am. Because I have grown, over time.  I have accomplished, and achieved, and learned, and survived.  A million times, in ways large and small.  So what’s with all the insecurity I still engage myself in?

What if I didn’t compare and contrast?  What if instead I could try and learn from all of those people who have inspired my envy?

It’s a goal worth striving for.

The Family You Have

My sister emailed me over the weekend; she asked if it would be possible for me to visit Michigan next month for her daughter’s birthday and an event at her son’s school.

Her email initially bugged.  I’m not going to lie.  I’ve lived in the Northeast for seven years, and I can count on two fingers the amount of times she’s been to see me and my family here.  Yes, you read that right.  Two.   If I want to see my family, which I try to do once a year or so, it’s generally up to me to make the trip.

It’s not like I haven’t asked, or invited, or even begged her and her family to make the trip out here.  We’re so close to New York City, I tell them.  We can go in and eat great food and see a Broadway show.  Or visit Ground Zero.  Or Times Square.  Or we could go to Boston.  Boston is so great with all of the historical things you can do.  Or, we can visit my grandparents, who live just three and a half hours to my south.  There’s a lot here.

But no.  It never happens.  My daughter’s First Communion, my son’s college graduation, my son’s First Communion….all went by without her (or her family’s) presence.  And don’t even mention my brother….he’s never even been to the place I’ve called home for seven years.  Not once.  One year I organized a trip for us to all meet in Pittsburgh to celebrate my father’s 70th birthday, all three of us.  This way they could meet in the middle, it wouldn’t be expensive for them, and everyone could be together.  You would have thought I’d asked them for the moon.  Their drive clocked in at five hours, ours was nearly eight.  But whatever.

It’s made me bitter, frankly, and at least on my end, put a wedge in the relationship.  Because it all feels very much like a one way street.  I’m sure they would beg off, saying that we’re better off financially and in more of a position to do the visiting.  And in some ways, they’re right, which is why I have put myself in the car for the last several summers.  Summer trips that have been punctuated by knock down drag out fights between my brother and I.  Trips that make me angrier and angrier with each mile I travel on each side of the trip.

I am trying very hard to accept that this is my family.  They’ve always been this way, and they’re not going to change any time soon.  My being able to visit shouldn’t be about anything but whether or not I can swing all of the arrangements that need to be made to allow me away from my life for three days.  It shouldn’t be about the mental scorecard I’m guilty of keeping, or any bitterness I feel.  It should just be about the fact that these people are my blood, the only people in the world who have known me since I was born.  It certainly isn’t my niece or nephew’s fault that their parents haven’t made visiting us a priority in their world.  If I want to see them, it’s clear that this mountain has to go to Muhammed.

There are days, though, that I wonder truly how it is I ended up related to these people.  Truly.

I Don’t Have a Problem….Do I?

So, the drinking.

I never was a huge drinker.  Only socially.  I wasn’t one of those girls who went to parties in high school and got wasted; so much so, I thought the parties depicted in movies like “Sixteen Candles” were just Hollywood figments of someone’s imagination.  It wasn’t until I got on Facebook and reconnected with some people from high school that I found out that those parties did happen, I just never seemed to snag an invitation to one.

I drank a few times to excess in high school, and college, probably less than you could count on two hands (but probably more than you could count on one).  I was a mother, I was a serious student, and then later I was taking care of my mom.  It just wasn’t something I had the time to do.  But eventually, as I lived on my own, I gained an appreciation for the warm, fuzzy feeling that a few glasses of white zinfandel could give me.  It became my drink of choice, which was a fine step up from the Zimas and wine coolers I had been drinking.

My husband introduced me to drinking wine with meals at home.  I’d heard of people who did that, but it certainly wasn’t an experience I’d had growing up in my solidly American lower middle class household.  Hell, sitting down all together at the dinner table wasn’t exactly a common experience for us, much less pairing alcohol with it.  But he grew up in a European family, and they all drink, all of the time, every night with dinner.  It became a ritual I enjoyed several times a week, this having wine with dinner.  Sometimes even a before dinner drink, on the weekends.

But it wasn’t until recently that my drinking took an uptick.

First it was my one girlfriend who offered wine at her pool in the summer. It seemed completely awesome to enjoy a crisp chardonnay on a summer day by the pool.  And the more she extended the invitation, the more it seemed completely normal to have some.  And frankly, with my son on the spectrum and my husband traveling a great deal, it was a welcome respite from the stress that was laced intricately throughout my days.

Then it was my husband’s cousins.  They moved nearby, the only family we have within hundreds of miles.  So we would often exchange dinners; once at their house, once at ours.  Back and forth.  Their kids and our kids would play out of the way while the adults talked in the kitchen. And drank.  And drank.  And drank some more.  Before long it was common place for us to go through three or even four bottles of wine in an evening between the four of us.

The drinking became more and more common place in my life.  And so one night, when R was out of town, I opened a bottle of wine at home.  I used to joke about how pathetic it was for someone to drink alone, but here I was doing it.  I poured a glass of Cabernet while watching television in the evening.  And then after the kids went to bed, another.

Before long, I was looking forward to the drinking alone.  I liked the way the glass felt in my hand, the pretty color of the wine, the taste of it.  And too, the warmth and comfort of it.  These days, I drink a glass or two most every night.

I can’t decide, though, if I have a problem with that level of drinking.  My grandfather died of alcholism, and I know it lurks there, in my DNA.  I don’t feel like I can’t live without it or I have to hide my drinking.  But I also know that I probably drink more than most of the people I consider my peers.  It’s something I think about, sometimes.  It’s hard to know what is normal, what is acceptable, what is typical.   I suppose it varies.

For now, I’m just trying to be aware of it.

Meanwhile, it’s five o’clock….and we all know what that means.

Kidding!  Well….

Life With My Girl

I can still remember the moment when I learned I was going to have a daughter.  I was flat on my back in the ultrasound room of my doctor’s office in Stillwater, Oklahoma.  R was with me waiting with baited breath as the technician measured the femur, checked the heart chambers, and did the full anatomy scan that the 20 week check up entailed.  Me being me, I was listening hyperintently for any signs of hesitation or distress on the part of the tech, a sure sign that there was something wrong with my baby.  But there was none of that.  On that warm, October day, the news was only wonderful and happy.  The tech told us we were having a little girl.

I had always wanted a girl.  I remembered when I was pregnant with my eldest, thinking a girl would be easier for me to raise as a single mother.  My mother as well had hoped for that, wanting a pretty little thing to dress up in frilly frocks and dainty headbands.  Of course we loved my boy as fiercely as anyone could when he arrived.  Things happen for a reason.  I was given a boy.  And my boy was amazing.  But in the back of my head, of course, I had always hoped I’d have another chance.  A chance for a girl.

Laying there that October day, the news hit me like the hot summer wind of the state we were living in.  It washed over me, stinging a little, heating me up.  “We’ll name her after my mother,” I said quietly to my husband.  And in that moment, I had visions of the perfect, sweet little girl who would be the perfect tribute to my wonderful mother who was taken from life too soon.

Be careful what you wish for.

My mother was many wonderful things:  strong, determined, independent.  She was also insecure, addictive and hypersensitive.  And so it should be no surprise to me that my daughter, her namesake is all of those things.  Her spirit is unshakeable; it is what I love and hate about her. Can you say that about your own child?  You’re not supposed to, right?

As my precious girl gets closer and closer to her teen years, I ache more and more often to talk to my mother about how to handle her.  I have heard over and over that preteen and teen girls are like oil and water with their mothers.  I have a vague memory of my own mother telling me that they were tough years for her and her own mother; wounds inflicted by each of them didn’t heal until my mother had her own children.  I have friends who tell me that they barely spoke to their girls from age 12 to 17. Really?  Can that be possible?

But I can see it, really.  Because while I love my daughter, there are days that I don’t like her.  Even that doesn’t sound strong enough.  There are days when I truly dislike her, or worse.  She screams at me.  She grunts at me.  She takes me for granted.  She doesn’t see anything outside of her own wants and needs.  She is horrible to her brother sometimes more often than not.  She fails to see at all how lucky and blessed she is to live in a relatively wealthy suburb with two parents and two cars and a stable life. I get angry and upset and wonder how on earth I have raised such an ungrateful, selfish person.

But then something happens.  Last week, for example, I went to her sixth grade parent teacher conference.  And I heard two teachers describe the wonderful, smart, helpful, generous girl that I send off to school every day.  I listened to them enthuse about how curious she is and thoughtful of the other students when they need help or advice. And I kick myself internally, because my first thought is:  “they can’t possibly be talking about the same girl that screamed at me this morning because we were out of cream cheese.”

But they were.

I guess it’s time I learned how to ride the roller coaster of Life With A Nearly Teenage Girl.  Because I’m finding myself dizzy all of the time with the twists and turns.

Knocking On the Door

It took me several days.  Days of mulling over the what ifs and the if onlys and the why the hell nots.  I looked through the window online a few more times, trying to envision my friend Dennis and what his life would be like now.  He’s older, of course.  Would he have grandchildren?  I was sure he’d retired from teaching already, and clearly was making music in a band.  But what else?  What else?

I went back and reread all of what I’d written about him here, trying to form in my head his possible responses if he heard my voice on the other end of the phone.  In every case I couldn’t imagine him not wanting to catch up or talk to me; we’d left things on very good terms.  In fact, truth be told, it has been me all these years that has stopped keeping in contact;  I guess I had never been quite sure how to merge a part of my former life into the new one I was trying to build for myself.  My marriage, my pregnancies, my children….did I really want to muddle that all up with someone whom I’d loved once upon a time?

But then I realized, the love part of it, the romantic love part of it, was only a small piece of the puzzle.  If the puzzle was the entirety of what Dennis had meant to me and his place in the story of my life, the part where we were involved with each other was just the top right corner.  The rest of it was a wonderful care and concern of a man who saw a young girl in harm’s way and did a million little and not so little things to make sure that harm didn’t take her into its dark being.  He held my hand as I cried over my absent father, my abusive brother, my crushing insecurities and my suicide attempt.  Later he offered a shoulder as I navigated becoming a single mother at age 19 and my mother’s cancer at age 21.  I wondered, sometimes out loud to him, what on earth he received on his end of the relationship; it felt often like I was taking, taking, taking.  But somehow, he never made me feel anything less than a valued friend, a person important to him in the most equal sense.

And when I added all of those things up, I couldn’t think of any reason not to open the door.  So yesterday afternoon, with my heart racing, I picked up the phone and dialed.  He answered the phone, and it felt as if the 13 years we hadn’t spoken to each other hardly existed.  The conversation was easy and genuine, the casual back and forth banter that I had always loved between us.  My curiosity slowly ebbed as he talked about his life since we’d last been in touch.  He admitted to thinking of me and consulting Dr. Google as well when his questions had reached a critical level a few years back.  His chuckle at hearing about my Rick Springfield adventures sounded exactly the same as it was twenty five years ago when he read the essays I wrote about that far away rock star.  “I wasn’t at all surprised to find that you’d found a way to him,” he laughed.

An hour and twenty minutes later, I looked at the clock and realized it was likely time for me to hang up and let him get on with his day.  After all, my children would be home soon and there was plenty I needed to do as well.  We exchanged email addresses and promised to connect in person the next time I go out to visit my family.  Just like that, the conversation ended, and I went about my daily tasks of children and cooking and chauffeuring as if nothing had changed at all in the world.

But something is different, of course.  Something is very different.  A piece of my former life, the person I used to be, a piece that had long since gone missing and left a tiny hole in me, was put back in place.

It feels good.

I’m glad I knocked on the door.

 

Looking Through The Window

I don’t know what made me think of him last night.

R is out of town, as he often is, and I was having myself a little Grey’s Anatomy marathon on my computer.  Me, myself and a bottle of wine hunkered down after the children went to bed, and I fantasized about happy endings with my own personal McDreamy.  I know you’re reminding me I’m married and all that, and you’re right.  I have my own real life version of a happy ending with a good man.  That being said, I know that it’s TV and it’s not real, but sometimes it just is easier to imagine that had life taken this turn or that turn that I living a completely different life with an insanely handsome man who knows how to use hair product in addition to being sensitive to my dark and twisty needs.

When I opened up my computer screen this morning, my internet browser screen was still open.  And I realized that I had drunk Googled a few people in my wine induced haze late last night (I also woke up wearing my jeans and the turtleneck I’d worn all day yesterday; don’t judge me).  Thank goodness I hadn’t drunk Facebooked or worse, drunk emailed, or the grandaddy of them all, drunk dialed.  Although I’ve already done that with this person before.

I’d searched for Dennis.

I don’t know what made me think of looking for him last night.  Maybe it was because the episode I was watching (Season Finale of Season 4 in case you’re a fan) had to do with kids in high school.  Dennis defined my high school experience, my kind English teacher who gave me the attention I craved while nursing the wounds (both literal and figurative) that forced my family into lockdown during my teen years.  I harbored a not so secret crush as I lobbied to be his favorite student during my high school years and his over achieving mentee during my college ones.  As we transitioned from teacher student to colleagues, our relationship changed as well, eventually turning into an affair.  I swayed dangerously back and forth between guilt and full on life fulfilling love until I forced myself to stop seeing him.  We remained friends and kept in touch sporadically until I moved away from my hometown in 1999; I haven’t contacted him since.

I think about him though, sometimes.  And in these days of 21 century technology, that means I consult Dr. Google to see if I can find him.  A phone call after all of this time seems so intrusive, but I always think that a casual email would be a fine way to reconnect.  Or a Facebook message, as so many have done with me over the last few years. And each time I have consulted The Big G, I find bupkus.  Nada.  Nothing.  Not even a random comment on a message board.  Which seems odd to me, always, and then I go back to my life and don’t think about it again for weeks or months or longer.

But for some reason he popped into my head last night.  And when I opened up my computer this morning, I saw something different.  I saw his name listed on a cover band website.  The name, an unusual one, was right.  The location was right.  And sure enough, there were photos.

It was him.

He looks about what I’d expect him to look like 13 years after not having seen him; he was 22 years my senior, which puts him now in his sixties.  He plays guitar.  There are photos of him singing, playing, in a recording studio.  There he is, alive and well, and living life…just like me.  One of the photos is of him and his wife, sitting together after a gig.  Smiles, his arm around her.  Happy looking.

I’m glad he’s happy.  And frankly, I’m glad he’s still married.  I’m glad he is still that good but flawed human being.  At least I think he is.  I don’t know, of course.  And that’s the rub.  Because now I’ve seen him.  And now I want to know things.  Like if I was the only one or were there others after me.  Or if he ever told his wife about us.  Or if he now thinks what we had was a mistake.  Or if he randomly Googles me from time to time.

Which is all insane.  Because all of that, it’s all about me.  He’s gone on to live a good life; so have I.  I don’t need his validation and approval and attention anymore.  These days I know who I am and I am (mostly) secure in my self worth and place in the world.  Why do I need to hear that he remembers me?  And thinks well of me when he does?

I can see him now, through the window.  A one way glass, he doesn’t know I can see him.  But I can.  I can see where the last thirteen years have brought him to in his life.   So why I am I struggling with this?

I can’t decide if it’s enough to just look through the window.

Part of me wants to knock on the door and see what happens when he answers.

Why isn’t it enough just to look through the window?

Fighting the Rain

Outside it is pouring rain.  My son pointed out, as we waited in the warmth of my SUV at the end of our longish driveway for his bus this morning, that pouring rain is his least favorite weather.  For him, it is because his sensitive sensory system makes the wetness that results on his skin and on his clothes feel like sandpaper, or fire, or some other horrible sensation.  He can’t focus anymore, he can’t breathe, because all he can feel is that awful, awful feeling.

I dislike the rain too, but for different reasons.  The dark clouds that gather, the heaviness from the damp….it muddles my mind and brings out the darkness that lives inside me.  Always, always, rainy days bring back sad thoughts and hard memories.  I look through the window with the rain streaming down, imagining I’m on camera somewhere, and a soundtrack soars in the background giving life to my internal grief.

I haven’t been writing here lately.  I think the catharsis of putting my thoughts into words is something I’m missing.  But it’s hard because I’m not sure which words I should be choosing for this space now.  I’ve completed my mission, my task for why I set up this blog.  To go through my former life, my stories, my path that led me to where I sit now.  So what now?

The question is one I’m asking myself not just about this blog, but about my life.  With my son finally doing well in school, I’m less and less needed during the day while he’s at school.  Most stay at home mothers arrive here at some point while their children are in elementary school.  It’s an enviable place to be:  we don’t really need an extra income right now.  Sure, my being at home makes everything easy for everyone:  the laundry is always done, the food is always bought and cooked, the beds are made and the dog is walked.  But there are hours and hours left over.

These are the hours I’ve previously filled with writing, or volunteering at school,  or working on freelance websites or at the art studio.  But with the art studio closing and my two current clients in “wait and see” mode, and the kids getting older…I find myself thinking….now what?  There has to be a way to transition into something new, something different.  I mean, I can’t possibly spend the next eight years folding laundry and watching endless loops of my Grey’s Anatomy DVDs in the downtime, can I?

The rain outside the window today makes me think I can.  I need to fight the rain.

 

Unemployed

I lost my job yesterday.

It’s not a huge job, mind you.  I’ve been working on and off at our local children’s art studio for five years.  Jill and I started working together after she allowed me to host a Kyle Vincent concert at her studio in late 2006.  I didn’t know her then; a friend I’d met at my son’s preschool did, though, and when I wondered if all of my girlfriends would fit into my small roomed house for such a “living room show”, she suggested Jill’s studio close by.  By the end of the event Jill was talking to Kyle about business, and he mentioned that I did his website and graphic design.  A few weeks later, she approved my mock up for her site, and we’ve been working together ever since.

Jill put me to work doing anything my skill set allowed.  First the website, then her accounting and some clerical work, and finally, some teaching of the classes she offered to the children of our town.  It was extremely part time, but perfect for my busy life that didn’t allow me to work outside of my childrens’ school hours and sometimes required me to be available even then to meet all of their needs.  It was my first foray outside of my home since I’d moved to Connecticut, and it was just enough to make me feel like I wasn’t allowing my skills to evaporate while tending to my children’s lives so fully.

Working for Jill introduced me to other business owners in town too, and before long I had a small roster of website design clients.  With Jill’s studio being popular and well known in town, all I had to do was drop her name and jobs came my way with very little effort.  It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was enough to feel like I was doing something meaningful in my off hours.

Unfortunately, since I did Jill’s books for her, I could see that the economic crash of 2008 took a huge toll on Jill’s business.  Children’s art classes were a pricey luxury that most parents were easily able to slash out of their budgets.  Jill responded as any shrewd business person would by cutting her own costs.  One by one I saw most of the seasoned teachers leave.  Jill taught everything she could herself, and when she couldn’t, she hired cheaper college and high school students to fill in.

And for a while, that was enough to stay afloat.  I marveled at how her summer camps and her birthday party businesses kept her in the black.  She bought a kiln and added paint your own pottery aspect to her studio, which brought income in during the long stretches between semesters when the bank account often grew thin.  But she also quietly put the property up for sale, waiting to see if anyone would be interested in buying the business.

No one was.  After two years on the market and over $100,000 in reductions of the price, she made the hard decision to close the studio.  I was unprepared, when I went in for my usual Thursday perusal of receipts and tasks that this would be the last time I would be asked to come in.  I knew it was coming, of course, but didn’t realize it was happening now instead of later.  This was it.  Five years and what seems like a lifetime of growth and change later, Jill and I are parting ways.

I’ve always called my job a “little job”.  But today, in its absence, it feels much bigger than it ever was.  And I will miss it.  Very much.

New Year, New…??

I have notebooks from when I was younger…my journals.  At times when I was chronicling My Former Life (lives?) they were at times helpful in remembering those long forgotten details of those dusty memories from so long ago.  And most of them include a few New Year’s Day entries, most of them either trying to sum up the previous year or attempt to commit to something new for the next year.  I remember well writing the one on New Years Day 1993, writing that I knew that this was the year my mother would die.  Such a horrible, terrible, liberating knowledge.

I have no such “epiphanous” (a word I think I invented and used often during those rants) insights this year.  This New Year’s was spent like the last five or so before it; a New Year’s Eve party at one girlfriend’s house, a New Year’s Day party at another.  During these parties I am always asked about our Christmas in Florida, a tradition that we also carry on every year, despite our changes in address and situation (this year, we picked up Z from his new home in Virginia, for example).  This year is much like last year, and the year before it, and for that I should be, and am, grateful.  My life is calm, stable, and fortunate.

But in some ways, this year was different.  I did do something out of my norm on New Year’s this year…I ran a 5K.  This one was my third.  I’ve never done anything like that before, and it made this New Year’s feel very different.  Last year I wore a heavy sweater hoping to hide my burgeoning body and felt very unhappy with my appearance.  This year my pants are a size smaller and I wore a form fitting sweater hoping people would notice the 13 pounds less of me there is this time.  I was smarter in what I ate and drank, and while the scale is up today after several days of out of the norm eating, I still am starting this year with a different feeling about my health and fitness and body.  I’ve been down this road before, of course, but I am determined that my hard work will not be undone this year, but instead will become routine and habit.

I don’t know what this New Year will bring.  Will I finally decide to begin whatever the new chapter in my professional life will be?  Will my husband’s job move us to another new place after having been here for seven years?  Will my elder son propose to his serious girlfriend, or will they not make it?  Every New Year’s Day has these questions about what the next twelve months will be and the exciting possibility that life will change, become better.  But after having lived through 41 of these days, I think I can safely say that the best years are those in which much of what surrounds me stays exactly the same.

Happy New Year’s, everyone.