Working Out

With a broken collarbone, I'm discovering lots of new challenges and puzzles to solve. I suppose you could be bummed about simple things becoming difficult, but I find it stimulating to have all kinds of obstacles to overcome. What are some of those things?

Typing with one hand for starters. I'm starting to get some speed up!

Getting dressed. But let's not get out of order... the first challenge in this department was getting undressed. The pullover shirt was dicey. I could get my good arm out, but pulling the top over my head (even with help) was not to be done without some heavy breathing and urges to scream. I can do a bra now with one hand plus one finger and thumb strategically placed and immobile. The biggest problem at the moment is that most everything I wear pulls over my head. I have one long-sleeved button-down shirt (very old) and a few fancy blouses. Fortunately I have one buttoned PJ top.

Taking a shower. Without a sling. I haven't even attempted to wash my hair yet. That will need some attention soon. It's not the shower itself that is so hard, but getting dried off afterwards. There are just places that can't be reached. Thank God, I don't live alone.

Coughing is unfair. It takes you by surprise, is very painful, and leaves you in need to blow your nose because the tears got going. One-handed nose-blowing must be accompanied with a mirror to make sure nothing is under-wiped.

Here's a basic: sleeping. Positions are limited, changing those few positions difficult, and you don't want to get into a position you can't get out of without help. Pain meds make it possible to sleep sitting up, however. But they upset your stomach, so you don't feel like eating. And since you're not doing much in the way of burning calories, you don't need to eat much, especially if you don't want to gain 50 pounds before this ordeal is over. So you see, it all works out!

Beauty and the Best

Although I only viewed a few hours of the closing ceremony of the Olympics, I was deeply disturbed by the performances and overall atmosphere that was presented. Pagan is the best word I can come up with--it was a worship ceremony of humanness. The vocal performers were the most unsettling--strutting onto the stage with their defiant gestures and brazen costumes. Designed to inspire awe and arouse emotions, the event seemed to only stir up bestial drives and shallow values. The immodesty and crudity was stunning. It saddened me that the best and most beautiful of athletic performance was sullied by this shameless side show.

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

One of the verses of "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" is:

They say that breaking up is hard to do
Now I know, I know that it's true
Don't say that this is the end
Instead of breaking up I wish that we were making up again.

I have to admit that I've never broken up, having had only one boyfriend who I married. We don't intend to break up. Perhaps breaking up is hard, but staying together, making up over and over again, is really hard and really worth while.

Jack and I like books. We have read books about marriage, books about communication, books about parenting, books about keeping romance alive, books about how to get through difficult conversations. We didn't do everything perfectly, but we learned from our mistakes.

The Olympics are on right now. If you want to see people doing things that are hard to do, that's where to tune in. Imagine a Marriage Olympics. A select few married couples have a talent for marriage that make it look easy. The rest of us are like those petite gals on the balance beam, teetering this way and that, occasionally falling off and climbing back on. If we could see the years of practice, the falls, the awkward jerks behind that one flawless gold-medal winning performance, we would be encouraged.

There are times when a relationship must end. It is clear it is not working. Figuring this out early on is better than later on. I don't know what that is like and try not to judge what I don't know. I do know that not breaking up, choosing to stay and work it out because that's what you both want, that IS hard to do.

Pass the Kleenex

Well, the wedding happened. Everything went off without a hitch. The bride was radiant, the groom was handsome, and tears were shed. They are off honeymooning and I can hardly wait to see them again.

I look back on that momentous day and realize a certain terribleness in it all. I'd better explain fast. It was terribly happy, terribly bittersweet, terribly sweeping in its finality of how things were and now are. While we rejoice with achingly full hearts for the wonder of a new loving family, a parent at a wedding has a heart breaking for the little boy who has grown into a man, or the sweet tot who is now eager to be a wife and mother. I cannot watch Fiddler on the Roof without bawling my eyes out when the father sings "Sunrise, Sunset".

Time is merciless, and love is ruthless on our hearts. We can't stop life from moving on, but we so much want to say "Stop, stop. I need to hug and kiss that little boy one more time before he is grown and gone." I can't complain. We did do a lot of hugging and kissing, and spoke words of love. We rejoiced at the maturing and thrilled at the miracle of a new love story. Mom plays an important role in a boy's heart, but sees the inevitability of another woman taking that place, and the need to bow out gracefully. I could not be happier about the number one women in my boys' lives. They all made excellent choices for a life partner, and our family is richer and fuller with each new addition.

The nature of love, however, is to cut your heart open, bare and vulnerable. At the time it happens you hardly realize how you have exposed yourself, since you've been anesthetized with feelings so thrilling you are not sure your heart can contain them. And that is the irony--it can't. It must be cut open to expand. And somewhere down the line the pain of love catches you up, and you find yourself crying that your baby has been replaced by a toddler, then by an adolescent, and finally by an adult walking out the door, happy to be leaving your home. And that same person will never come back the same. Don't misunderstand me. I am not sorry and clinging to the past. But I am now paying the price for loving with my whole heart. Pass the Kleenex.

Change

When growing up,  it was inconceivable that someday I would look at the people I lived with and think of them as not being in my "family"--but it's true, if I define "family" as a nuclear group of mother, father, and children. Yet so it is. I am now a mother and not a child in the family I hold most dear. My parents and siblings are not in my "family", but they are important and special nonetheless.

When raising children, you get inklings of what will happen when they grow up and marry, and suddenly you are on the outside looking in at their "family". You have become "extended" family--someone that they stretch to include. With one child married and two more committing themselves to their brides this year, my "family" is shrinking and my extended family is growing. I feel a wistful happiness for them. So much excitement and living is ahead of them still.

I do not, do not, do not understand the joy people feel in being empty nesters. All I can think is that they endured parenting, always looking to the day when it would at last be over. It probably isn't that black and white. Maybe the teenage years were rough? I loved having teenagers, and I think my teenagers knew that. We filled our house with teenagers, our own and all their friends. I could never bake enough cookies.

When people ask me why I had five children, I have to quick decide if they can take the real answer: because I couldn't have ten. There were days when I longed to run screaming from the house, but most days I loved my life and my brood and wished they would not grow up so fast.

Having a granddaughter has been a great comfort to me. Although she always prefers mommy and daddy to me, and I love her for that, it pulls at my heart when she reaches for me.

Change is hard, but stagnation is death. I will learn to appreciate the quietness, and being able to have a rational conversation that isn't interrupted a dozen times. I will be able to keep up with my housekeeping and perhaps have time for some postponed projects. I'm just hoping that life doesn't get too quiet, orderly, and predictable. I don't want to be bored till death!

Stepping up in the Queue

I have vague memories of my great grandmother, hardly anything really. There is a photo of her sitting in an armchair by the window of her room in a nursing home. And I recall one time waiting in the car while my parents went in for a short visit. It was a long time ago and I was very young. There is some confusion about what I remember--was it what I remember happening or what I was told about?

I can say a lot more about my grandparents--the three that I knew. My material grandfather died about the same time that my great grandmother did, and I feel the same confusion with him about my "memories". The other three grandparents lived to be ninety or more. Grandmother Zugg lasted the longest and best, living to be ninety-six and mentally sharp to the last day.

Both of my parents are still alive,  healthy and active--and approaching the ninety year landmark. At least, they are past their mid-eighties and showing few signs of the permanent wind-down.

My sixtieth birthday is a year and a half away. My husband just retired at sixty-five, and in a few months I can say that most of  our children are married. One child already has his own child.

Five generations. One has passed through the veil into eternity. The next is moving closer. Barring any tragic missteps, soon my generation will be first in line. Life is like stepping on an escalator in an eternal queue.

Slipping Down the Ladder

I have one married child. A second one is taking that plunge in little more than a month. It's a happy occasion, but bittersweet. Every parent has to recognize that they are now just a little further from the center of their child's affections. This does not mean that the child cares less for you, but that others, spouses for starters and children later, have stepped in front of you. This is as it should be.

Oftentimes this is also the beginning of a deeper revelation for the child of just what you gave to them, sacrificed for them, and how you blessed their lives. They find themselves now following your example, and feeling the cost. Then there will come this moment when the light blazes on. It might be triggered by something that touches them, but more likely by an act of their child in which they recognized themselves. Perhaps it was an act of deep ingratitude, or careless acceptance of a great sacrifice. And they understand how thoughtless a child can be and how much the child will take your best for granted.

I am fortunate. All of my children have eyes to see. And I have eyes to see, too. I see signs that they will outshine me as parents. I weep for my faults. I rejoice in their gains.

I am fortunate in what I was given. My parents did the best they knew how.

So although we continue throughout our lives to slip down our children's ladders of prominent place, if we are lucky, they will treasure where they came from.