What 2013 has taught me, personal growth

Flipping through pages of my old agenda and examining week to week where I have been is an unspoken tradition of mine devoted to these last few days of December every year. A lot of what I see is irrelevant day to day stuff; don't forget this item, pay this bill today, the kids have an appointment on this day. A good deal of what is written are days worth celebrating; birthdays, holidays, engagements and weddings. Some of what I see are milestones; we bought a house and Audrey began walking. There are plenty of blank days in there too, days that I worked I suppose, or maybe I hung around the house and watched movies and played games. Maybe they were days that were spent doing the mundane, laundry and cleaning. No matter, what I see if I look at my agenda as a whole was a year that I lived that I won't get back again. So as I look ahead to the new year I want to first reflect on this one that has just passed and all that I have learned living it.

1. Be Thankful.  I have learned how fortunate I am, this year especially. I have three beautiful, healthy and happy children who are an absolute pleasure to be around. I managed to buy a home, a real home of my own. I am now a proud dog owner, my cat would disagree with me here but I remind her daily she just needs to give it time. I have a fun job that I truly enjoy and work with some pretty cool and talented people that I am also lucky enough to call my friends. I have a huge (and growing) extended family whom I can call on for love and support whenever I need. I have a new Derby family of friends that support me as well. I am thankful that I have lived another year and get to embark on another. I know time is short and I don't know when my own will run out so I am thankful each day that I wake up and have just a little bit more. 

2. Who you are is enough. This has been a particularly tough lesson for me. I worry too much about what other people think of me, my home, my family, and have to remind myself that it doesn't matter what other people think, it matters what I think. I have lost so much time, energy and tears this last year worrying that I'm not mom enough, sister enough, daughter enough, friend enough for people and wishing I was someone other than myself. Instead of trying to always do and be more, I have learned to be who I am and let the good, uplifting people in and that it is not only OK, but necessary for me to shut the negative people out.

3. I've learned that sometimes my best just won't be enough, but that doesn't make me a failure. (See item 2)

4. I've learned that people can surprise you in both positive and negative ways. This was a reoccurring theme for me this past year. I know that it surrounded me to teach me a lesson and what I took away was this, sometimes it isn't really about me at all, it's them. I have a terrible habit of blaming myself when things go wrong, sure sometimes I deserve it or at least a portion of it, but this year I have seen many instances when I didn't deserve it at all and yet I took it on. I am risk adverse and also hate confrontation so for me I needed to learn that it is important to stand my ground and that, that doesn't make me a bad person, just one with feelings that need to be handled with the same care that I handle others.

5. I've learned that I have to choose to be happy. Bad things happen to good people. This year I chose to make a conscience effort that when those bad things happened I wouldn't dwell on them or complain ceaselessly about them either. I accepted them, talked them out if needed and then moved on. I'm a whole lot happier for having done so and am going to continue this in the new year and work even harder at it.

I realize I could go on but I think five is a tidy little list. I encourage you to make a list of five things you have learned,  five things you are thankful for, or perhaps five themes from your past year.

I'm inviting you to spend a little time reflecting on all you have learned and all you have lived. Of course I think it is healthy that you and I focus on areas that need improvement, or change, but I hope we never forget that we just lived through another twelve months and that counts for something too. 

OH! And one last thing...

6. Remember to show love.

Nine Years

Recently my husband scoured the internet and read blog after blog of recipes for pizza so that he could make me my very favorite at home- Pizza Hut!  It took hours from making the dough and letting it rise to mixing all the right stuff so that the sauce was just so, and of course the cooking time. The kitchen was a disaster by the time he was through and as we ate the pizza all he kept saying was next time I will do this better, and this crust will be better, and so on and so on.

While I assured him it was just right and how much I loved the pizza, I tried my best to make it a point that I loved him. I loved him for thinking of me so sweetly. I loved him for going out of his way to create my pizza. I loved him for wanting it to be perfect for me. I loved him for the mess he made doing it. I simply loved him for the little things he does, the little surprise pizza at the end of the week just for me. We have been together nine years today and he still goes out of his way to do the little “sumpins” for me.

As I think about the last nine years first I can hardly believe how fast they went, and second, how at my current age nine years is about a third of my life and how they have been the most meaningful yet.

In nine years time I took a break from school, had a son, returned to school and had another son. I graduated and began a career. I got married and had a daughter. In this past year I managed to buy a house and have begun making it a home. On paper this all looks very normal, ordinary, or at least well done? What the paper doesn’t reveal is the day to day, the moment by moment. I won’t string together a bunch of clichés here about how challenging it is raising children and starting out on your own. I’m not extraordinary for creating a family, but I think the point I am trying to make is that neither Steve, my husband, nor I took the easy road. I realize it is unfair to suggest that there is even an easy road in life (and yes that saying so is a cliché) so I will backtrack a moment and say neither of us gave up when it may have very well been easier to do so. Rather than calling it quits many years ago we fought against the overwhelming odds, the tragic statistics and we fought against each other to give our family its very best shot- and we made it.

What I think about most often every year when October 24^th rolls around is change. Another year, another year, another year- I think about how much I have changed from my late teen years, to those early and mid-twenties, and now as I am cresting my thirties, and so on and so on I imagine. When I think about marriages that fail, or relationships that fail, ones that started out when the couple was young, or started out passionate and fast and then end quickly, snuffed out to the point that not a single ember still burns, I realize that two people grew and that they grew apart. So each year on this day I am thankful to my husband who gave me room to grow and has never lost interest in the person I continue to become.

Like children, you can’t just begin a relationship and expect it to thrive without nourishment. If you simply feed, clothe and shelter a child you’ll never see them grow to their fullest potential, sure they’re alive, but only a mere shell of what they could be. Relationships need nourishment. I promised no clichés but I guess I lied because while this next statement is cliché, it is also very true. Communication is the key. It is the key ingredient in all healthy relationships and provides so much nourishment.  I think with that ingredient we also all need a healthy dose of humility. It is so easy to be selfish; to be self-righteous and to feel wronged when you enter those dreaded disagreements. When you care more about someone other than yourself it’s no longer about who’s is right and who’s wrong, but how do we fix this and find our way back to each other.

At nineteen I was lucky to find someone that wouldn’t ask me to compromise the things in life that are most important to me. I always wanted a family, kids to fill a home with, kids who would be more important than our house, or our situation, kids who would be the most important. I wanted a partner who wanted to be a dad as much as I wanted to be a mom. I needed someone to love me, a person who wanted to marry me, someone who accepted me exactly as I was and who believed my future would be even brighter.  Some people are never lucky enough to find someone who values match so closely their own. Worse yet, some people do compromise their own values so much, too much, to find stability and fake compatibility. I’m thankful I’ve never felt the need to do so.

After nine years together we still laugh about most things. Steve and I appreciate each other. We like to spend time together and make a solid team. Thank you Steve for being that person that I could have spent many years searching for. I love you very much.

Ol' Bluehair takes a break

We made it through the small pockets of congestion with ease. Route 93 South had a fifth of what normally traverses during the day, such a meager amount it wouldn't be fair to even call it traffic. We never came to a full stop and always sped back up as soon as we passed the blue lights and the construction vehicles. The normal onslaught of hurried commuters rushing to the city in the early morning light and fleeing in the late afternoon were long home.

We found relief in knowing that we weren't dealing with fellow day commuters, the aggression, the muscling for rank (or to be one car closer to "being there"), but were reminded that night commuters are a different sort of animal. While on the one hand we were dodging Swirvin' Ervin, whom we were pretty sure was drunk, on the other, I had to squint and slouch as low as I possibly could as another Highbeam Harry used me as a honing beacon. There was comfort to be had in the fact that at least Ervin and Harry were moving it along. Ervin and Harry didn't stop to see what the hold up was. Leaving the airport at 11 p.m. turned out to be the quickest way to return home from Boston.

Ol' Bluehair ran fairly well. She and I left at 10 p.m. were at the airport at quarter of 11 and circled around the arrival strip for South West several times so as not to have to pay to park. By 11:10 we were on our way back to Old Cape Cod. I chatted away with my dad and step mom about their trip, the places they had been and the people they had seen. Ol' Bluehair just listened. But it was somewhere on Route 6 East that she began to complain.

Dad asked me if I had checked her oil recently. Yes I had and she was primed and ready to go. We made our way off the exit down the busy route and all the way to our two mile stretch home when she quit on me. I had pushed the clutch in to make our turn when the Subaru turned off. The wheel locked, every gadget and gizmo light for the engine turned on as we coasted in to Jiffy Lube.

Shoot. That was all I could I muster at the moment followed shortly by a heavy dose of grumbling that this is just my luck.

But isn't it?

This could have happened on the way to Boston when I was alone, or at the airport, or in a construction zone, or heaven help me, on the Sagamore Bridge which is down to only one lane. So if she was going to give, and she was, she did pick a good time to I suppose.

Bluehair smelled terribly as we climbed out and looked under her hood. She was overheating, a hose, the radiator, something gave and anti-freeze dripped down as if her nose was running with green slimy mucus. Yuck.

It was 12 something this morning. By one a.m. the car had been towed, the luggage had been dropped off in the house and a little before two, I was home. Ol' Bluehair had a sleepover at Dad's where she is still sitting cooling her hooves.

Balloon's out the window

Noah's birthday party was over a week and a half ago now and somehow one of his balloon's managed to live in my car up until yesterday. I had the balloon secured under my false trunk (I drive a hatch so it has one of those slide and lock in place covers) and after grocery shopping last week, never re-latched it. The balloon stayed under the lip apparently so I forget all about it. Until it flew up, a phantom in my rear view mirror as I was heading over the Sagamore Bridge.

A good driver is taught to look into their mirrors every so often to be aware of the world around them. Often times, it's not you that needs worrying about, it is everyone else around you. So I glanced in my mirror heading up the bridge, one moment there was nothing there, then poof- the phantom balloon.

It soared up to the ceiling and bounced a few times. It swirled in circles chasing its own tail. As I became aware of what was happening my finger had already left my steering wheel and moved to the window up button. The phantom balloon sensed it and rushed forward. It bounced around on the ceiling, swooshed back and forth and made its balloon stretchy-noises. Then as there was only maybe six inches of window (or less) left to go up, it squished itself into the window jam and flew out the window. Whoosh...

Of course my eyes dart to the rear view mirror to see what became of phantom balloon and in true spook manor, it had 'visited' the car behind me making a quick bounce on the windshield and then whooshed off again.

Noah turns one

Today is Noah's first birthday! Last year at this time I was laying in a hospital bed wondering if he was ever going to come out. Now, he's sitting behind me tugging on my hair and laughing. It amazes me that when you stop to look back long enough, time, in my opinion, moves faster than the speed of light.

Developmentally speaking he has made leaps and bounds in this last year. His "bop-bop-bop" sounds are slowly being replaced with "ma-ma" and "da- da- da- dada." He is now taking tentative steps, pushing his own boundaries climbing up on stuff then tumbling down. And then there is Lucas.

He's coloring now. Big deal right? Well, he's looking at a truck picture he's coloring and said that the truck had pizza wheels. What? I looked at the picture and noticed that the wheels' rims looked remarkably, like pizzas. "That's silly huh Mommy," Lucas asked me. "Yes, yes it is," I told him.

Moments like these remind me just how fast it all goes and that there is no rewinding. So, although Noah is still willing to cuddle mommy and bang on everything for entertainment, I know that these days wont be long. I'm going to treasure everyone of them. Happy birthday Noah Bear.

Living pictures

I almost broke Thornton Waldo Burgess yesterday, in his home no-less. He presides on the wall of the staircase in the Deacon Eldred house in Sandwich where I work. I had just finished putting together some things and had boxs to get rid of and decided to at least get them upstairs out of the way. The narrow staircase does not leave much room for navigation and so I bumped poor Mr. Burgess with the box. He swayed to and fro and finally came to an uneven balance on his hanging wire. I threw the box to the ground and stablized him just before he fell down the stairs. He is such an old painting in an old frame I was trembling with the thought of what might happen if he did take the tumble.

While I logically understand he's been dead for 44 years, sometimes I fancy myself at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry where photographs actually house life.

Silly.

But have you ever been to an old house or museum and read plaques, gazed at historical photos or seen a persons personal effects that caused you to stop and think what it might have actually been like in that very same room many, many years ago? It's much like that.

The museum is dedicated to remembering him. Photographs of the native Sandwich son adorn the walls, houses he lived in, relatives, there is even a pair of his glasses in a case. Of course the children come in for the books about Peter Rabbit and all the other animals Thornton dreamed up. But what I like most about the house is the way it feels to be in it, as I eluded to previously.

The walls are plaster, (a royal pain when you are trying to mount something) the floors are old wood boards and creak even in the slightest breeze, the ceilings are low and if you are claustrophobic you might not last in there long. But somehow the place just feels warm. It's almost as if the small rooms and the low ceilings, were designed to bring everything in together. Smush it 'till it fits. But what I think what I like most about the house is that time hasn't changed it too much.

Driving around now and seeing what once were little Cape's or Saltbox's that are now McMansions destroying the natural beauty all around it breaks my heart. Eye soars, sure, but really, do we need all that? Being in this home that is nothing spectacular on the outside and certainly not modern on the inside creates a feeling for me of a time when things were simpler. Standing in the house looking out I almost expect to see a horse and buggy go by.

So now when I make my way up and down his staircase I try to stop and pay homage to the man who treasured the simple things in life and fought to preserve natural beauty. (Well, at the very least, I give him a little head nod, just in case.)

Big Top houses magic

Tuesday night Rose, Lucas, Noah and I, went to Circus Smirkus. This was Luke's second or third time going and the first time for Noah and me. In fact, this was my first time at a circus. I've always wanted to go so when Rose asked about Tuesday I was thrilled.

Parking the car in the grass the big top took shape. True, the tent wasn't as big as I imagine traveling circuses are, but was still a site to behold. Children of all ages were running about with bags of bubblegum pink cotton candy, buttered popcorn, balloons. Parents and grandparents were being tugged this way and that while their children were proclaiming, "look at this," or, "I want to show you something," or, "can I have this, please?" Whichever way I turned I saw faces that were lit, faces that could have been peering over the birthday candles right before blowing. Eyes sparkled as they darted around taking in the wonder of it all. Everyone was eager for the show. I stood there in the crowd and let the sounds and sites envelop me. (I wonder how many other people find themselves wrapped up in the excitement of an event just by standing in the crowd- probably just about everyone I would guess.)

Sitting down on bleachers took me back to high school football games. Then I was tiny and had no children to speak of, now it's difficult to hold a squirming baby and ignore the pain throbbing away in my lower back. Thankfully they were padded. Despite that and the heat, there wasn't a bad seat in the tent.

The circus started. Children ranging in age from very young (5?, 6?) to young adult (20?) bounced into the tent with animated faces and exaggerated gestures- oh, and the costumes.
I knew that the circus performers had costumes, but not like this. It was themed,"Ever After." A collaboration of many different fairy tale figures danced before our eyes. A wolf, little red, pigs, bears, Cinderella, Hansel, Gretel and the witch to name a few. It boggled my mind how no-one was passing out of heat exhaustion and how they could move so gracefully in those garments.

The growling of the wolf frightened Noah, but the sparkling of little red's cape soothed him. (He didn't take his eyes of her.) A scene with Rapunzel and her prince brought us all to laughter. All the areal acrobatic work, the juggling, the dancing, everything was spectacular.

The kids fought of sleep and turned their dials to cranky by the end, but were wonderful despite. I am so glad that I can share experiences like this with them and that I can share in the magic even for a few hours.

Walking out of the big top we stepped over piles of popcorn strewn about the grass. I found myself looking for Templeton and thinking what a find this would be.