Thursday, July 28, 2011

Turning the page

My oldest son is getting married, and I'm not dealing with it particularly well.  The impending nuptials have sent me into an emotional tailspin.  It isn't that I don't want to be happy and excited.  I do.  But there's this dull aching that I just can't seem to get over.


At the request of his future mother-in-law (yet another woman I am going to have to share him with), I went on an expedition to gather photographs of his growing up years.  As I poured over pictures of the past twenty years...pictures documenting virtually every noteworthy moment of his life from sporting conquests to his first dance...from carefree moments of childhood play to crossing the stage at his high school graduation...from annual shots of he and his brothers in front the family Christmas tree to my personal favorite of all the men in my life piled in our bed acting goofy and just enjoying being together...I was painfully aware of just how quickly the time had slipped away.


In the day to day, while there was a tight schedule to keep and chores to be done and an  overwhelming sense of never getting through it all, well, it felt like it would go on forever.  I remember thinking they would always be little.  It would always be hectic.  There would always be chaos and clamor and busyness.  I remember thinking there would never be enough hours in the days to do everything we wanted or enough hours in the night to recover from it all.  I remember thinking this was my life...my whole life... being a mom.  


So what becomes of a woman who is at the root of herself a mom, when her children no longer need mothered?  What becomes of me when who I have been is no longer who I can be?  When my house is quiet and my calendar is clear...when the hampers aren't full and the sink is empty...when no one needs me to take them anywhere or help them with anything...what then do I do about getting on with having a life of my own?


I hadn't really given this moment a bit of thought before now.  It wasn't that I didn't know it was coming.  I just didn't expect it to happen so quickly.  Twenty years went by like a tick of the clock.  The next few will go by even faster, I can only suspect.  And then what?  Who will I become when I'm no longer mommy...when there's no longer a child in this house to fill up my life?  Will there just be emptiness...vacuous, echoing space that haunts me?  When this phase of my life is over, will the next find me brooding and anguished over the one I've had to let go?  


I don't know if I'm supposed to grieve over this.  I've never been here before.  Perhaps tomorrow I can find a way to be happy about it all, but today, I just feel like I want to cry...so I am.  In this moment, I feel like I'm losing a piece of myself I will never be able to get back.  But who knows, maybe as the page turns, I can find a new me in the ashes of the old one.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

Going Topless

I am a woman with curves...and rolls...and bulges...and some very gelatinous underarm flaps.  But I am aware of these imperfections in my figure and do my best to enhance...or at least cover...the parts of my body that are best not exposed to the general viewing public.  I have discovered, however, that middle aged men do not seem to share the kind of self awareness about their bodies that inspires more clothes rather than less.   


While visiting a local ice cream shop with my teenage son, we were greeted, not so pleasantly, but a rotund little man who had to be mid-sixties if he was a day.  He stood squarely in front of the entrance all the while wrestling with an inside out t-shirt that he managed to get right side out but then proceeded to struggle getting over his big 'ol head and down around his basketball-esque belly.  As I stood there like some kind of dessert deprived hostage, I couldn't help but wonder why he was going topless in the first place.  


It sadly wasn't the first or the last time this thought crossed my mind.  There was the similarly shaped and identically dressed man perched proudly on his riding mower on my way home.  There was the man riding his bike as I came into town who's hair had all left his head only to relocate with a vengeance on his back.  There was another guy with his shirt flung over his shoulder as he, proud as a peacock, strutted past the house.  


I just wanted to yell out...cover it up already!!  There's a time and a place where I'm willing to tolerate a little more exposed flesh than others...no matter how flabby or excessive that flesh might be.  The beach, the pool, the privacy of my own home.  But in general, I do not personally find the bare chest of a middle aged man to be a thing of beauty.  I understand for them, that's not likely the motivation for baring it all from the waist up, but seriously fellas...consider the fact that you do have an audience.  


Unless you're cut...buff...ripped...most women (regardless of age) prefer a well dressed man to a nearly naked one.  Just ask ZZ Topp...or any man in uniform.  So whether your sporting boobies big enough for a B cup and a rock hard beer gut...or your just shapeless and sagging...PUT A SHIRT ON WILL YA!!  



Friday, July 8, 2011

On the edge

Sometimes I feel like I'm standing on the edge of a cliff, teetering on the cusp of sanity.  Today was one of those days.  It was something relatively insignificant in the scope of life as a whole...but truthfully, all the things that push me closer to the brink generally are.  Today it was frustration at work, but sometimes it's my kids not listening to me, my husband doing something he knows gets on my nerves, the dog being under foot, traffic lights, unpaid bills, waiting in a line with a slow cashier, plans being made for me or my plans getting ruined.  Sometimes it's an unexpected late night or worse, an all too early morning.  It's unexpected guests and a perpetually full laundry hamper.  It's the price of gas  and the cost of living.  It's my neighbors who never leash their dogs and people who throw cigarettes out their car windows when I'm behind them.  It's itchy tags in my shirts and holes in the toes of my socks.  It's having a longer to do list than I have hours in the day or money in the bank to finance.


When I was younger, I would simply steamroll...with word or deed...over anyone or anything that tried to upset my proverbial apple cart.  I am by nature, after all, a person who often lacks patience and who is, callous as it sounds, intolerant of stupidity.  I do not appreciate having to take detours...literally or figuratively.  I want things the way I want them, and I'm rarely quick to accept the fact that I simply can't always have it all my way.  Every little irritation threatens to stir up hostility within me.  I'm like that little tea..short and stout...when I get all steamed up you'll hear me shout. 


But now that I'm a little older and a little wiser, I realize that this take no prisoners, no holds barred approach to life only serves to breed frustration rather than alleviate it.  Perhaps I have been a slow learner, but I'm finally figuring out that it is selfishness that lines the threshold of my inner peace.  And crossing that line never makes my journey easier. 


Oh it may feel better for a while, the satisfaction that comes from getting my own way, but it's a very fleeting feeling for sure.  Having others kowtow to me for fear of unleashing my primal rage isn't really how I want to achieve my goals.


So as I move forward into the second half of my life, I have decided to make it my objective to be less self serving...to realize not everything everyone else does that stirs my pot was intended to do so...to accept that not every hurdle I come up against needs to be taken as a personal affront.  I am going to do my best to see others before I look at myself.  I'm going to work on thickening my skin and softening my heart.  I'm going to focus less on how close to the edge I am and more on the path that leads me away from it.  So I take a deep breath and remind myself to get over myself.  I am, after all, not the center of the universe.