Security

 

I don't know if I believe in blessings, at least not in the way many people seem to look upon them, but I do believe in situations and I do believe that sometimes we have the ability to change these situations while other times we do not. Finding ones self in a good situation might be considered a blessing by other people.

I was fortunate as a child to always feel safe in my home with my parents and siblings.  No matter what else was going on in my life, how many dogs I had to fend off on the way to school, or piano lessons, how many new schools I had to get used to, or how much I might have wished to have the brand name shoes and particular clothing that were the fad of the moment, I knew that I could go home and be, not just comfortable and content, but safe.

My mother had a few strange ideas about how to bring up a child, but even though I had some terrifying dreams about her, in real life I knew she was my best defense in a world full of some scary things. I wanted to be around her, especially if I was sick. 

I thought my father knew everything! I had heard him called one of the most brilliant of men by people who knew and I had no doubts. If he had told me winter was warm I would have believed him, because he never lied to me, never exaggerated, and was always kind. In the middle of the night when I had screaming nightmares, he always came in and calmed me down before he went back to bed. If I had a question he couldn't answer he would research it until he found the answers.

My insecurities with my parents mostly came from my desire to please them, but I never had any doubts that they were both there for me and would allow me to be the person I expressed a desire to be. Sometimes this seemed so hands off that I felt a little lost, but it wasn't until recently that I realized how much worse it might have been had I lived with step parents, or other people without these characteristics.

Alternatives

Minus one or two big exceptions, I have always focused my life on the things I enjoy. It wasn't exactly a conscious decision. In fact, it is more or less a character flaw. I just cannot maintain miserable states for too long.

My marriage was one exception. It was not happy past the first five years, but I didn't really understand why. I tried changing myself, then I tried changing the situation. Like a lot of people I thought adding children would bring us closer. I was wrong. They were the beginning of a very long end. Thanks to the children my life was very rich and fulfilled in spite of the relationship I tried to forge with my ex.

Outside of this I loved working with preschoolers, loved volunteering in the school library, loved the dream work I did with friends, and all the things that came with being a mother.

I've never been good at staying with jobs I didn't enjoy. The idea that I could spend forty years getting up and going to work in a place that was soul wrenchingly dreary is too bleak to contemplate for more than a year or two. You couldn't pay me enough money to do this. At the very least I would have to switch to another unfulfilling job occasionally.

So when I talk to people who complain about their jobs, or what they have to do with their friends, I find myself feeling impatient and annoyed. I don't understand why they continue to do these things. What is the pay off for doing what you don't like and how can that be better than the alternative?

Working vs Nonworking

    

I often find myself at odds with some people. I know it is because we do not have the same values and I also know that my standards are pretty high, but there is more to it than that. 

Today I think I figured it out. The person said, "I worked." Implying that I did not work and I answered, "I worked, I just did not get paid." All of these things are true.

The problem is not that this person had to work. They did, but the implication that I just sat around home doing nothing really rankles. I did get paid to work part time teaching, but my main job was my children.

I took child rearing very seriously. They were not just dolls to dress up and show off. I felt responsible for their outlook in life. I wanted them to be well rounded in not just literature, science and math, but also music, sports, and all around interpersonal relations. We had schedules designed to give them regulated sleep, healthy meals, exercise, and education, incorporating fun, and free time and it paid off. All of my children have pretty happy, healthy, productive lives. I was not just their playmate, I was also the coordinator in our family. I made things work and I worked hard at it.

I believe every human being has unique needs and a good parent tries to help them develop in the best way possible. Enabling them only handicaps them. If no one tells you, or shows you, alternative and better ways of doing things then you are more likely to grow up disadvantaged. Children do not necessarily know what is best for them. They do need parents, people who have more experience and are willing to share it.

Our world is complicated. That is why we give people twenty or so years to grow up. After that it is time to step back and let them experience success and failure on their own terms. Learning by doing is valuable too, once you have the basics down. A little help here or there is fine, but it should be judiciously given to encourage them to grow and be independent.

Some day the parents will be gone and the children will be parents themselves. It is important that they have the skills to pass on to their children otherwise it is possible that generations of struggling failures will follow.

And that's the truth

 

I am always hearing that Walmart and Amazon caused the great stores and malls to shut down so we don't have them to shop at anymore.

I'm not sure I agree. People caused those stores and malls to shut down.

People who could not afford to shop there.

People who charged more than was necessary for goods.

People who did not pay their employees a living wage so they could shop where they wanted and not just where their budgets allowed.

Greed makes stores close. Owners who wanted that extra buck so badly they had to milk their customers and under pay their workers.

Catching up

 

My sister is always saying she will retire when she is "all caught up." Then she goes out and spends more money. I remember times when I thought I could catch up, get out of all debt. Have everything I needed and wanted.

It never actually happened, or, on the rare occasions that it did, it never lasted.

There are plateaus in life. They are bigger for some people than others, but for me, as long as I am breathing and moving there is going to be change. I am almost always on the hunt for something. Trying to lower my blood sugar, to lose weight, to find just the right apartment, to build my dream house, become an author, a teacher, a mother. 

Unfortunately once I achieve any of these goals it is anti-climatic, sometimes disappointing, and seldom lasting.

The thing that makes life worth living are the attempts to make it better. It isn't about being unsatisfied. It is about dreaming and creating and trying new things. I like variety and when all else fails, I rearrange the furniture! During the quarantine I had everything I needed. A safe comfortable home, computer access, books to read, groceries dropped at my door, all the entertainment a television could provide and for a while I was more than content. Then I began to gain weight and feel depressed. 

I felt like an animal living in a zoo. All my needs were being met except that I had no goals, nothing to look forward to.

Now, even though I love stability, I really don't want to "catch up." When I die there will be ravelings hanging loose all over the place, but that is okay with me.  A fringed shawl has so many more possibilities than a tight knit sweater.

Attitude

 

I can't tell you how many times people tell me I have such a great outlook on life, or that I am, "so sweet." The truth is I am probably a lot less sweet than you can imagine, but I have been blessed with a relatively good outlook.

It's not that I don't see the bad stuff. I do! And if I am not careful that stuff can ruin my life. There are people, places, things and opinions that I really do not care for at all. Given a bad night I can lie there awake and obsess over them for hours.

But I discovered something a long time ago and that is that there are some things I cannot change. Not consciously and not by dwelling on them. If there is nothing really within my power that will alter these things, I have two choices.

1. Be miserable.

2. Find a way around them.

There are all kinds of ways to deal with a lot of the crap life throws at me besides fixing, or dwelling ot it. Sometimes it is possible to simply ignore it, pretend it isn't there, which if it isn't a fire or a flood, is often possible for a long time. The other is to find a replacement for it in my life. 

A replacement doesn't have to be a concrete item. It can be a feeling, or way of dealing with undesirable occurrences. It is along the idea that if you want life to be great, you have to make it great. Once upon a time I thought this was simply avoidance, but honestly that's okay a lot of times. If it looks okay and feels okay, whose to say that maybe it isn't okay?

I can choose to find the (love, way, sunshine, happiness, whatever it is I am looking for.) Of course I could also choose to find the faults, ugliness and tension in the world, but on the whole I've never found that particularly productive. I don't encourage that.

Surrounded by women

     

My daughter is home visiting from Arizona this week and we have been enjoying a lot of family time. Growing up I spent a great deal of time with my mother, grandmother, great aunts, aunts, cousins and sister. My dad was always working away from home while the women congregated around the family business.

Although I spent much of my time with these women I never really felt a great affinity for women. I wanted to be like my dad. I'm not sure I achieved that in any great form, but it was my desire most of my life. Many of my best friends have been boys or men. They just seem to resonate with the things I like to read, watch, or do.

My daughter is just the opposite. She adores her daughters and never misses a moment she can be with them. She spends a lot of time with me when she is here in town and she spends a lot of time with her boy friend's mother too. They even vacation together in Hawaii or wherever the place is that year. She has great  female coworkers and other good friends, all women.

She is a woman's woman and it has served her well. 

I don't quite understand it, but I love it. I know that wherever she is, she will always be among people who love her and will care for her.

Shortisghted

 

I am reading about doctors reluctant to work in anti-abortion states and my first thought is good for them!

I hope more doctors will refuse this idea of working in states where Big Brother lords it over the rest of us.

But then I realize that the people making these laws really do not care. They have the money and where with all to do whatever they want by flying wherever they can get the medical care they want. 

It is the rest of us who are locked into places where the government tries to play god and lord it over the peons under them. 

Of course this governmental god could care less about living growing babies and parents who lack the food, care and environment to grow healthy and happy people. The just wanna look good to those supposedly godly people who are so shortsighted they don't believe their god will see what they are really doing.

Pass it on,

 

I remember my mother playing with me. Not a lot, I was the oldest of four children in five years. Much of what we did together was imitating adult work, but it was fun for me. I had a real iron so I ironed Daddy's handkerchiefs. I embroidered hankies in cross stitch. I "helped" with my younger siblings, but we still played sometimes and it was often make believe. 

My fourth birthday party was attended by all my dolls and stuffed animals. Mommy and I cleaned each one up getting them ready and then she had each one knock on the door which I answered as they came to the party. Some of them played drop the clothespin in the milk bottle with us. It was a wonderful party!

I passed that on, playing with my children. Only I had more time than my mother did. My daughter was five years older than the boys who were 18 months apart. During their childhoods we built castles in the basement made out of old furniture, boxes and butcher paper on a roll. The turret was a high chair, the swings I hung from the rafters, rocket ships. We went on adventures and did amazing things.

Now my son just sent me a video of him playing with his favorite little person. They were on an adventure in space and the backyard was a universe full of obstacles. I watched the enthusiasm and joy in that little boy's face as he revved up batteries, leaped over monsters and got ready to take off in the swing and I saw how clearly we pass on the love in our lives.

Genuinely happy

I am constantly amazed by my children. I think most mothers are, but mine seem to get involved in things I only thought about when I was young.

I played in school orchestras and bands and my kids did too. Then they branched out to guitars and popular bands. Singing and playing the way I only dreamed of as a young person.

My older son majored in music (and psychology, and German, and ultimately Law) so it is not all that surprising that he writes, performs and plays now that he is an adult.

My younger son did not. In fact when he played trombone in junior high I often thought, "That boy has a tin ear!" This is no longer true. Now that he has matured, his voice is as clear and true as any troubadour. I could sit and listen to him singing and playing away on his guitars and ukes forever more.

All the children, actually our entire family, had fun with community theater when they were growing up, but my youngest son rubs shoulders with some pretty awe inspiring performers now and, unlike me, he is not fazed by coworkers who sing and dance as naturally as cardinals in the trees.

I doubt that any of my children will ever be world famous performers, but they have a love of music and performing that enriches their lives and those around them. 

That makes me indescribably happy.

It could happen to you

 

I love my apartment. It is nice, clean, safe, and in the right part of town for the things I do, but I am becoming one of the lucky few.

Housing prices and rent have soared in the past year. My granddaughter's apartment now costs over a hundred dollars a month more than it did last year and that is with no improvements. I just read about communities in the west where there are not enough affordable homes for firemen, teachers, small business owners and service people.

The upper classes have long had advantages the rest of us do not. They can afford to manipulate their taxes so they pay almost nothing. They live in exorbitant homes and hire people to do everything they don't want to do. If they paid these people a living wage things might be okay, but they also want to charge them usurious rates for renting homes, buying food, or clothing, or any other necessary needs.

I'd like to believe that eventually the poor will simply move away from these areas, leaving the wealthy with a shortage of service workers, but that probably won't happen. Instead the people having to live in third rate motels, garages, campers and cardboard boxes will slowly grow to include people who never believed it could happen to them.