Clearly, I do not know everything

No matter what my x-husband(s) may tell you, I do not think I know everything. In fact, I am darn sure I don’t! The older I get and the more knowledge I acquire, the more I realize how little I actually do know! Every week of my middle-aged life is an adventure of some sort! Actually, every day of my life has been an adventure but sometimes it takes reaching a more “advanced” age to recognize those gifts!

Every day is a chance to learn new things about myself or someone else. Some days I embrace that and some days my attitude coincides more with my favorite bumper sticker on the back of my car that says “Oh no, not another learning experience!”

Things I've learned, or relearned recently, big and small, good and bad:

• Obviously, they are making print smaller and smaller on things, but if I give in and use the little old lady reading glasses I can actually see stuff without holding it two feet in front of me or trying to find “better light.”
• Sometimes new friends come in very unexpected ways, even when you weren’t looking for one!
• I’m still, some days, hanging on to the idea that I’m in control despite an entire lifetime worth of evidence that has proven otherwise.
• Old dogs can learn new tricks, it just takes us a little longer.
• The best way to solve a miscommunication is to communicate.
• When apologizing, just say “I’m sorry” and not “I’m sorry but you did this, this or that.” I’m sorry, period, always gets better results.
• Some people are just assholes and no amount of reasoning with them is ever going to change that so I need to stop expecting anything else from them.
• Never pass up a chance to tell someone what they mean to you, or meant to you, or an opportunity to give a kind word to someone in pain, because sometimes it will be your last chance to do it, ever . . .
•  My youngest daughter is completely capable of handling stressful situations, like someone running into her car and calling the police and filling out an accident report, without any help from me!
• You cannot help someone who does not want help, or is not ready for your help. Just let them know you are there. Then stop beating yourself up over it and wait for them to come to you!
• Eventually, you have to give in to who you are, and stop hanging on to who you used to be. Recently, this meant just giving in and buying pants in the next size up in order to actually be comfortable!
• Learn to see the beauty in things that didn’t go according to plan. I planted a flower box, with perfectly spaced pansies. The color scheme was specific. There were bright yellow pansies and wine colored pansies with yellow centers. Yesterday a big purple pansy bloomed in the middle of them. It doesn’t match, it messed up my plan. It’s actually the prettiest one in the box!
• Life doesn’t make sense. There is no logical explanation for that. Stop looking for one.
• All work and no play makes Karen a complete bitch and a few hours of fun with friends can make up for a long, tiresome work week!
• Karaoke is actually, ridiculously fun!
• I AM capable of far more things than I usually give myself credit for!
• Remember that thing our parents told us about not judging a book by its cover, that was an important one! Usually, the most amazing people come in the most unexpected packages!

This piece originally appeared on the Bangor Daily News website, Postcards from a Work in Progress, June 24, 2012.  

So many worries, so little time

I am a worrier. I am not just any old amateur worrier either. If worrying were an Olympic event, I would be a gold medalist.  My mother likes to say I come from a long line of worriers. She is a worrier and her mother was a worrier before her. When I was young, I never wanted to believe I'd grow up to be like my mother. Turns out, like so many other things I had planned for in my adult life, I was wrong.

I don't know for sure what makes a worrier. Is it genes or learned behavior or life experience? My grandmother lived through the historic hurricane of 1938. She used to tell me stories about going to the fire station in town to help identify the rows and rows of bodies lined up along the floor. When my grandfather first moved his family to their home on the beach she would sit up all night. While her husband and children slept she sat, smoking one cigarette after another, watching the ocean so she would be ready if it started to come towards the house. Eventually she did get over that, but I remember she still spent a lot of time staring at the ocean.

I’m sure this was one of the things that caused her to become a worrier. It sounds like a pretty good reason in my book. Often an unexpected life event, some type of loss or trauma, leaves us seeing the word as an unsafe place. Or it could be a betrayal or a broken heart that shatters our faith in our fellow humans and leaves us wounded and feeling vulnerable. Sometimes, excessive worrying comes from living in a home where one or more family members struggles with alcohol or substance abuse. When home life is chaotic, when emotions are unpredictable and volatile, or when we’ve experienced a traumatic event we have not yet healed from, we become hyper-vigilant. We never truly relax. We learn to read the emotions of others so that we know how to behave and when to make ourselves scarce. We look over our shoulders and peer around every corner waiting for that next thing.

Some of these worrying skills turn out to be pretty useful. Being aware of the needs and emotions of others is a handy Mom Skill. Balancing unpredictable emotional outbursts with daily life certainly comes in handy for anyone raising a toddler. In my case, when I had four kids age eight and under, balancing the physical and emotional needs of multiple small children turned out to be something I was really good at. Worriers are often caretakers as well. We sometimes take care of others at the expense of being able to take care of ourselves. We don't vocalize our own needs. Often, we are so involved with others that we don't even know what our own needs are.

There has to be a happy medium between taking care of the things we can control and wasting time worrying about the things that are out of our hands. Feeding the kids a healthy meal for dinner, making sure they get all of their shots and get their teeth cleaned every six months, all of that is in our control. Holding back the ocean is not.

What I've come to realize is that bad things are going to happen sometimes, that’s just life, but there are going to be lots of good things too!  The funny thing is that most of the bad things I worried about never actually happened and some things I didn't think to worry about did. Go figure!

I know there’s a cure out there somewhere. I’ve tried everything people say will help. I've tried prayer, yoga, long walks, meditation and red wine to name a few! Maybe I’m just not trying them in the right combinations? In the meantime, I found a poem that was written for us worriers in the latest edition of the New England Review. The last stanza is my favorite.

“Don’t worry that you’ve left
your doors unlocked, the oven or coffeepot on.
Don’t worry that running out of concrete fears—
a flat tire, bad test results, suspicious charge
to your account—will leave you open to the vague
and nameless dread you’d do anything to avoid.
Don’t try to explain, even to those you love,
the dilemmas you’ve faced by 9 a.m., the deathbeds
you’ve visited, disasters you’ve seen or averted.
Don’t worry that worry might be all you have.”

Click here to view the entire “Anti-Anxiety Poem” by Carrie Shipers. Thanks Carrie!

This piece originally appeared on the Bangor Daily News, Postcards from a Work in Progress, May 25, 2012. 

What’s missing in my empty nest life?

Awkwardly this afternoon, my neighbor’s eyes met mine on her way out of the elevator, and then darted down as she softly said “hello.” Her little girl, unaware of the uncomfortable history the two of us grown-ups share, came to a full stop directly in front of me and presented her biggest, brightest smile, one little tooth slightly askew, clearly either on its way in or on its way out. Brightened by the genuine enthusiastic smile of the little girl, I made eye contact again with her mother and sincerely asked “how are you?” and she strengthened by my attempt at being friendly, responded in kind. Her face transformed for moment into a smile as well. It was clear that at one point, before life had made her more guarded, that she had the same full of life smile as the little girl she led out the front door of our shared apartment building.

Isn’t it odd how sometimes the briefest encounter with someone will stay with you the rest of the day? It was strange, to suddenly realize how rare it is for me these days to see the sweet sincere smile of a little girl. It made me happy and sad all at the same time. For so many years, my world was chock full of small children. Years stretched on endlessly into the future as I went from diapers to kindergarten to summer camp to senior prom over and over with each child in turn. When you are in those years they are so all-consuming it is hard to picture a time when your life will be any different.

As happy as I am most days with my new-found freedom, I never realized that it would be the little things about being a mom that I would miss the most. A picture my nephew posts online of his son in full-blown baby belly laughter brings up old memories of my own son, laughing heartily at the same age, memories that pull unexpectedly at my heart! A little blond girl, all dressed up right down to her shiny black shoes, holds her Daddy’s hand on their way out of a Sunday morning service and my mind flashes back to my own little girls and their days of fancy dresses, hair ribbons and holding hands to cross the street. These are treasured memories. Today, however, for me the word “children” conjures up images of twenty-somethings, grown up children with lives of their own. These lives often contain challenges and heart aches I can no longer fix like I used to with a good tickle or a bowl of ice cream with chocolate sprinkles!

One of my favorite quotes is “No matter what happens, always keep your childhood innocence. It's the most important thing.” (Federico Fellini). It is not, unfortunately, that childhood is without heartache. Yet children, not yet crushed by life’s disappointments and still unburdened by adult expectations, are able to hang onto the hope and enthusiasm that we so often lose as we grow up. Children forgive easier, forget easier, move on from disappointment so much more easily than those of us who are supposedly older and wiser. Children don’t hide who they really are. If they say they love you, you can believe it! Children do not feel awkward when they run into someone who used to like the same stupid boy they did. They just laugh about it and run off to play together on the swings! Children live in the moment. They don’t worry about things they can do nothing about. Ten minutes ago there might have been a bike mishap and a badly skinned knee, but now all washed up and bandaged, there is ice cream with sprinkles and life is good again.

I understand now, why older people always brighten when small children come into a room. They have so much in common both the very old and the very young, unburdened by rushing through each minute of life to some elusive dream of “success.” They each know how to experience joy in little things, with no strings attached. Both, free of the need to adhere to social expectations that often bind the rest of us, know that taking just a moment to stop and smile at a neighbor might brighten both of their days in a way that neither expected. I need to pay more attention when I spend time with friends and family who still have small children. There are clearly lessons I still need to learn from them.

When you are a kid, yesterday and tomorrow are far away, but right now, something good is going on and you just know if you aren't careful you'll miss it. I know what I need more of in my grown up empty nest life. I need to walk to the park and spend some time on the swings with nothing else to think about except how high I can go before I jump off. I need to smile more at my neighbors; genuine, unguarded smiles. I need to find more reasons for a good full-blown belly laugh! And when all else fails, there’s always ice cream, with sprinkles!

This piece was first published on the Bangor Daily News, Postcards from a Work in Progress, April 29, 2012. 

Marriage is hard, divorce is harder but marriage equality should be simple!

Both marriage and divorce are often made even more complicated by the very institutions that claim to have the best interests of the family at heart.

I am a notary public. In Maine, a notary can perform wedding ceremonies. I have performed several marriages since I’ve been a notary. I have also notarized divorce forms. I have, however, occasionally questioned the wisdom of the State of Maine in allowing me to do so. Seriously, what business do I have being involved in any way with other people’s marriages, I who have had such a disastrous track record in my own personal experience with marriage?

The short answer is that as a public servant, my personal experiences, choices, opinions or beliefs have no place in my role as a notary. Additionally, the choices, personal histories or belief systems of the people I am serving are absolutely none of my business. It is my job to perform the task required of me in the office I hold. This is why it seems so illogical to me that the same government, who tasks me in this way with heterosexual marriages, feels the need to define marriage for same sex couples and why when marriage equality becomes a reality in this state I will be gladly offering my services!

That being said, it is no secret that the overall institution of marriage itself is in trouble. More and more marriages fail every day. The reasons for this are probably too complex and varied to cover in this format but I can assure you it has nothing to do with same sex couples asking for basic rights. It is unlikely we will ever all agree on the reasons marriages succeed or fail. Many have proposed that, to stop the flood of couples ending their marriages, we should make divorce harder to get.

I could not disagree more. Forcing couples to stay in a union that has disintegrated to this level is not good for anyone. It is certainly not good for their children. In fact, very often, in cases of abuse, it could be down-right deadly. The sad truth is that by the time a couple has reached this point it is usually beyond hope of reconciliation. The time to repair the damage would have been in the months and years preceding.

Another problem is that divorce is often very profitable for the professionals involved. Many don’t always have the best interests of the family at heart. Lawyers often take a couple who thought they were going to have a relatively simple divorce, and turn it into a nightmare of arguing over assets and children. Each hour racking up profits for the lawyers involved and certainly not motivating them to seek a quick and less painful solution. While many states have enacted “no fault” divorces and many now require mediation before they will even hear most cases, there is still much change that needs to happen. It does no one in a family any good to spend hours in court arguing over who did what.

There are few things more painful than a divorce. One of the reasons it is so gut wrenchingly painful is because it involves people who, at one point, loved each other very much. Maybe churches, instead of focusing only on ways to prevent divorce (or sadly on ways to prevent some marriages) could instead find ways to help families through these life adjustments. Maybe they could help find ways that are less hurtful and less damaging. Divorce does not end a family, it simply renegotiates it.  Whether a couple has children together that they now must co-parent in a new way, or whether they have years of history and shared experiences, they are forever connected, there is no way around that.

One of my grown daughters recently recommended a television show I had not yet seen. "Happily Divorced," is a very funny look at life after divorce based on the real life story of a Hollywood couple who had to renegotiate their relationship when he realized he was gay. Of course, it took them a lot of heartache, tears and therapy to eventually reach the stage where their failed marriage was ready to be a sitcom! That doesn’t mean it can’t be done however. Personally, I have been relatively successful at maintaining a working relationship with my first husband, my children’s father, but it took many years before we got there. I have not been as successful doing so with their step-father, but that could be because our divorce is still new and somewhat raw. Being uncomfortable with the connection, however, does not diminish it. Again, divorce does not end a family, it renegotiates it.

On a happier note, a fellow blogger celebrated 24 years of marriage this week in his post "How to be Happily Married." Blogger Jim LaPierre shares what worked and what didn’t work for him and his wife. Of course, every marriage is different but the bottom line is they kept at it and overcame the obstacles. And Jim seems to be very willing to admit when he was wrong, which is a great quality in a husband if you can find it!

The point is that marriage, whether it lasts or not, is hard and complicated and very messy. It can be the most beautiful thing you have ever done, as well as the most painful thing you have ever done. Often it can be both of those things in the very same day! It should be entered into with great forethought and reverence. To me, the time for counseling and lots of prayer should be before the marriage, not only when it has reached the point of failure. Before the ceremony is the time to pause, think hard, and seek the sage advice of those who have gone before you. But all of this contemplation and prayer should take place between you and your potential partner, in your own family, and if you choose, with your own church.

Whether a couple is starting a marriage, negotiating the challenges of a marriage, or ending a marriage, it is a decision that the government has absolutely no business in. I don’t think the rest of us should have to discuss it, or debate it, or vote on it because it is nobody’s business but that of the two people getting married. It affects no one else’s marriage; it undermines no one else’s belief system.

It is that simple. Or at least it should be!

For more information on marriage equality in Maine please visit Equality Maine's website.

This piece originally appeared in the Bangor Daily News, Postcards from a Work in Progress, April 22, 2012. The following November, the people of Maine decided that marriage equality DID matter and on December 29, 2012, the author was lucky enough to perform one of the first legal same sex marriages in the City of Bangor! See - Three same sex couples tie the knot at Bangor City Hall!

Divorce, like marriage, should involve a fancy new dress and cake!

Human beings are creatures of ritual. Rituals gave our human ancestors a sense of control over all the uncontrollable and unpredictable events; weather, illness, famine, death. Rituals couldn’t prevent the death of your child but they gave you something to do; a candle to light, incense to burn, a blessing to repeat, so that you felt like you did something, anything, while you were slowly coming to terms with the inevitable. Modern life is a little more predictable. We know when it’s going to rain or snow. We are able to prevent or cure at least some of the diseases and illnesses that our ancestors succumbed to. Yet, no amount of modern science will ever make us completely in control, able to predict or prevent all of what life brings us. So, we still cling to rituals, whether religious or secular. They still bring us comfort and a sense of security.

All of our major life events still have a ritual involved, to prepare us for them, to help us through them. Birthday parties, baptisms, bar mitzvahs, bachelor parties, baby showers, weddings and funerals are all examples of modern-day rituals. Each of these events, whether or not they involve an actual ceremony, contains a certain amount of predictable elements. If you have ever been to a baby shower you know things are done a certain way, certain games are played and certain decorations are always used, just because that’s the way it’s always done! While all of these events usually contain some type of party or celebration (even funerals have a gathering afterwards with food and drinks), there is a point to the gathering that goes beyond just the party. The point is about family and community helping you transition into the next stage of life. It is about people who have been there and done that, showing support, giving advice and holding you up. It is about those who care for you validating your experience and the pain or the joy that goes along with it. “We understand”, these people are saying, “and we are here for you.”

There is, however, one major life event that does not have any rituals or celebrations. It is the one event that we still shy away from, avoid coming into contact with people who are going through it, as if it is somehow contagious. As if it will somehow call all of our own life choices into question. This event is divorce. Now let me be clear, when I say divorce I mean those marriages where people have committed to a life together and have been with each other through all those other major life events. No Kim Kardashian’s divorce does not count. What does count however, are all those relationships of two committed loving partners who had planned a life together whether or not some government or religious entity confirmed their commitment. I’m talking about those of us who really believed that forever meant forever, not the forever you said when you “loved” some in junior high school, but as I used to say to someone “real forever.”

I’m proposing divorce have a ceremony. I say it also needs cake. A mother and daughter team in New York may be onto something when they held the first ever Divorce Expo, an event that they say will help to empower those going through this life altering experience. The two-day event brought professionals together to offer the newly divorced advice on everything from finance to dating again. While I think they are certainly onto something, and I would have certainly attended something similar when I was going through my divorce, some of it may have just been a little too much. The advice from the Mary Kay expert might have come in handy but the plastic surgeon in attendance is just over the top. I certainly didn’t need anyone making me feel any worse about myself than I already did. Telling me they could fix all my problems with a little surgery may have elicited a tirade of unpleasant language on my part. The idea, however, was to offer things for a wide variety of people and I truly hope their event was successful and will catch on in other places around the country.

What would be even better though is to have an event held by those who know and love you. My own friends and family would have known I wouldn’t want to hear from a plastic surgeon. However, a new outfit, a fancy meal and bottle of champagne really would have hit the spot. A ceremony of some sort would have also provided some type of closure. I can verify that dropping a ring from a very high bridge into a very deep river on its way to the ocean feels much better than just keeping this old reminder in the bottom of your jewelry box. Maybe the newly divorced could also get “god parents!” You know, just some close friends who promise to help take care of you when you can’t take care of yourself, someone who promises to answer the phone at 2 a.m. when you can’t sleep and are up alone trying to answer unanswerable questions.

I think there should also be gifts! Let’s face it, when you get divorced you lose not only half of all your possessions but sometimes half of your income as well. Next time one of my friends gets divorced I’m going to try to remember all this. It’s time we started helping each other through this life transition and stopped treating it like some contagious social disease. Maybe I’ll get a gift certificate to a fancy restaurant so he/she doesn’t have to wait for someone else to invite them, or maybe a membership to AAA for those mornings their car won’t start and they are home alone. Maybe I’ll pick up some new towels for his/her new place. Even better, maybe I’ll make one of those little coupon books that says things like “one free rant and rave session” or “one weekend of designated driving so you can have all the wine you need.” Either way there’s going to be cake!

This piece originally appeared in the Bangor Daily News, Postcards from a Work in Progress, April 1, 2012. 

Of all the men I’ve lost, I miss the dog the most!

Like many of you, I've had a lot of loss in my life. There are times, when the loss seems overwhelming. If I get caught up in the “what ifs” and the “if only-s” I can find myself spiraling down into a place that sometimes takes days to get out of.

Now my losses are not nearly as bad as some that other people have survived. I know this. I try to keep that in mind. But sometimes, when you are in the middle of a really good pity-party you just don’t want to be reminded to count your blessings. You just need to wallow for a little while. Not too long, but sometimes the best way to get over pain, once and for all, is to feel it, acknowledge it and then let it go.

As Spring comes and plants start to bud and kids and dogs appear outside, I sometimes start thinking about the things I really, really miss. When you get divorced people ask all kinds of questions that are supposed to help. Do you miss him? Do you miss your old life? Do you miss the house your kids grew up in? Do you wish you’d stayed longer, waited to sell the house, gotten custody of the dog?

The truth is the only thing I’d go back and do over is who got the dog. I thought there’d be shared custody and lots of visits. There haven’t been, not nearly enough. I made the mistake of moving to an apartment that won’t let me have pets and he made it clear that, once the check cleared and the deed was filed, I was no longer welcome in the house we raised our family in.

But a house is only a home when it's filled with the people you love.

I really miss him . . .  the dog that is. I miss coming home to his tail wagging, always happy to see me no matter what type of day we both had. I miss him sleeping on the end of the bed. I miss his warm, fuzzy little head. I miss his devotion and his unconditional love. I miss watching him throw himself against the windows in a frenzy every time another dog dared to walk down his street. I miss his optimism, believing that just maybe this will be the time he catches that squirrel even if every other attempt has failed. I miss sitting in the sun on the back porch with him on a lazy summer afternoon.

I also really miss my gardens. I miss the hope that comes with planting a Tulip or a Daffodil bulb in the fall and believing that it will survive, way deep down under the dirt and the snow, and bloom again the next Spring. I miss the perennials I planted; the Iris, Lilies, Clematis and Peony, a few more each year, with the faith that they would survive a long Maine winter and bloom again. I miss the old Lilac bush that came with the house and the Forsythia that I planted and watched grow from tiny saplings to a giant hedge that bloomed bright yellow every spring.

I miss these things that I could always count on; my spring gardens and my warm beagle. No matter what happened, no matter who else had let me down, no matter how hard life got, the garden kept blooming and the dog met me at the door when I got home.

What I have come to realize, as I pull myself up and out of this difficult time, is that my roots have nothing to do with the house I lived in or the gardens I tended.  As beautiful as they all were, the real roots I planted are still mine. They are the children I raised there, and the adults they have become. They have each drifted off like seeds on a light wind, to settle in gardens of their own, to make lives of their own, and they are healthy and safe and growing just fine.

The parts of my own life, the things that I love to nurture, aren’t gone. They are just below the surface, waiting safely until the time is right, to bloom again.

and maybe I can find a way to spend more time with the Beagle.

This piece originally appeared in the Bangor Daily News, Postcards from a Work in Progress, March 25, 2012. 

I no longer recognize myself in photos!

At work last week, our in-house photographer came around to take a new picture of me for our website. I warned him ahead of time that I am a notorious blinker and then I went on to prove this. He was very patient and kept firing away. When he finally came up with the finished product he leaned his digital camera screen in my direction so I could take a look at the picture he had decided was “the good one.” I glanced at the screen and was once again shocked to see a middle-aged woman looking back at me.

You may have had this experience at a certain point in your life. You start looking at pictures of yourself, or you see yourself in the mirror as you are passing, and are completely shocked to see someone you don’t recognize, an “old” person. Oh, I know 46 isn’t old, but it’s older than I feel on the inside most days.  I wasn’t expecting that. I wasn't expecting to still feel young on the inside but to have my body start doing things that I never consented to. I never expected for people to look at me and see someone who looks more like my mother.

And here’s some other things I never expected from middle-age:

1.  My chin. I always took my chin for granted. I never planned on it going anywhere. Suddenly, when I look at pictures of myself taken from the side, I realize my chin is slowly migrating towards my chest.

2.  Children who don’t call me every day. Why wouldn’t they? I assumed they would still need my motherly wisdom daily, apparently not!

3.  To have a “boyfriend” . . . seriously!

4.  To be the oldest person in a college class. (It has both its blessings and its drawbacks).

5.  To have co-workers younger than my children.

6.  To have friends with grandchildren!

7.  To have my back refuse to cooperate with things the rest of my body thinks it would be great fun to do!

8.  Disposable income - I really thought I'd have some by now! (The X got all the disposable income in the divorce).

9.  Not getting carded anymore when buying wine. You think it’s annoying until they stop doing it. I watched the screen on the cashier’s computer last week as she rang out my wine. It asked “is customer over forty” and the little witch hit “yes!”

While there are so many things happening to us in middle age that we don't have control over, I will admit there are also lots of great things going on that we can control. I do enjoy the luxury of not having to answer to anyone else. I enjoy having adult children who can take care of themselves (most of the time anyway). I like the idea that my future is now my own!

One thing I have managed to still get away with in my “old” age is the weight on my driver’s license. It still says what I weighed when I was 16 years old. Oh it’s not that far off . . . or maybe it is by 20 or 30 lbs, I'm not confirming nor denying. My daughters keep telling me I need to correct it. Let me just warn you. Don't be the person at the DMV who looks at my license and looks at me and tells me I need to correct that weight. Don’t even try it! I’m hanging onto to that one as long as I can! I mean, isn't it bad enough you gave me this license with some old lady's picture on it!

This piece originally appeared in the Bangor Daily News, Postcards from a Work in Progress, March 18, 2012. 

The future is often much worse, and much better than we could have ever imagined.

One thing I really love about writing a blog are the possibilities it gives me to interact with people I’ve never met and the chance to form new connections and new friendships. I have had so many great emails from folks in the last few months about things I’ve written. This week was no exception. Lots of people, online and in person, wanted to talk to me this week about the piece I did on our city and its future. The responses were, for the most part, positive. People love Bangor. They love living here but, like me, they are concerned about recent trends. The good news, however, is people aren’t giving up. They not only want to talk about it, they want to be involved. They understand that a city is a living, breathing, growing, changing entity and they are willing to be patient while we work through our growing pains.

I don’t know about you but like our city, my life has been a series of well-intentioned plans and readjustments to plans that didn’t work out, a constant work in progress. Remember when we were young and envisioned our adult lives? We had it all mapped out like a Disney fairy tale. We would follow plans A, B, and C and the end result would be living happily ever after. In these fantasies, handsome princesses never let you down and you are forever as beautiful as the day you were first drawn!

In the real world, plans change and time marches on. My oldest child recently told me that he and his friends, Bangor High Class of 2002, are planning their ten year reunion. The conversation sent me on whirlwind of adding and subtracting years in my head. How old is he now? It’s been ten years since he graduated high school? How many years has it been since I graduated from high school? I can’t possibly be that old can I? We talked about all the ways he and his peers have changed in the last ten years and all the ways the world around us has changed.

Class reunions are one of the mile markers of our lives, a time to re-assess. They cause us to look back at who we were then, at the person we thought we’d become some day, and at the person we actually turned out to be. Very rarely do those predictions and the actual results match up exactly and that’s okay. Too often, however, we look back regretfully at the things we set out to do that are still left unaccomplished instead of focusing on and appreciating all the great things we have actually done!

My high school yearbook had a section called “In Five Years.” I had a vague memory of my prediction but so as not to misquote myself, I grabbed the book and reread it after my conversation with my son about reunions. This is exactly what my 18 year old self said back in 1983. “I will have graduated from Ocean State Business Institute and be working as a secretary. I will probably be married and have at least one kid. I will also probably be dying of boredom.”

Clearly I hadn’t set the bar very high, had I? I just wasn’t capable of seeing that far ahead yet or of realizing that my possibilities were endless. One thing I’ve learned as an adult is there will never be a time when we can say “there, everything is good right now, exactly how I planned it.” So often we waste time thinking that once we find that perfect job, or that perfect relationship, or get through this or that trial, we will finally, live “happily ever after.”  It just doesn’t happen and while we are waiting for that moment, we are missing out on all the wonderful unplanned things that are happening all around us.

While some of my predictions did come true, thankfully, there is so much more to the story and so much more that I’ve accomplished. One thing I can tell you about my life, with all its ups and downs and misadventures, is that it has never for one minute, been boring. Even when I went off course, there were important lessons to be learned. I look back now, all these years later in middle age, with tremendous gratitude for wrong predictions and unexpected life events.

The same is true for our community. We work hard. We make plans and predictions but things happen we didn’t anticipate. The end result is often not anything like what we thought it would be. Some of our plans will be successful and some we’ll have to reconsider and change. We can only see so far ahead. As a community, we’ve accomplished some really great things but there will never be a time when we can say we are done, that we have found the right formula for living happily ever after. We will always be growing and learning and changing because a vibrant, alive city is always a work in progress. There is still lots to do, lessons to learn and new friendships to make. What will our community look like when the class of 2012 has their ten year reunion? The possibilities are endless and one of the possibilities is that things may actually turn out better than we could have even imagined.

This piece first appeared in the Bangor Daily News, Postcards from a Work in Progress, March 4, 2012. 

Relaxing is accomplishing something - or overcoming perfectionism

Why can’t most of the women I know ever really relax. I mean really, what is it? Is it some outdated Puritan value that our New England ancestors, for whom idleness was one of the greatest sins, passed down to us? Is it our need, as women, to feel that we must constantly prove we can do it all, have it all? Many of the men I know are happy to spend a Saturday afternoon watching movies or football. I am incapable of doing that. The only way I can sit on the couch an entire day is if I am burning up with fever.

I think I came by my busyness as a result of raising so many children. There was a time when rest was not an option; there was always another meal to be made, another load of laundry to be done, a nose to wipe, a knee to mend. It simply never ended and that was okay! Once the kids got older and I found myself with some time on my hands, I filled it with all the activities I wasn’t able to do when they were little. I volunteered for all sorts of things. I went back to school. I don’t regret any of that. I have accomplished some great stuff, learned lots of new things and made some wonderful friends. I would have never done all that if I’d been home on the couch. Yet, I have to admit. Sometimes I go overboard. So, I try to remind myself that relaxing is accomplishing something, that it is vital to my health and my success in all the other areas of my life.

I had a master plan on Saturday. I decided I was going to have a no pressure day. I was not going to work from home. I was not going to do homework. I was going to stay in my pajamas all day. I was going to chill out for once. I was going to relax, and enjoy the peace and quiet.

So how did I do? Well you be the judge. I did end up spending the day in a pair of yoga pants and an old t-shirt. That was a start. I spent some time actually doing yoga, and that was great as I haven’t made a lot of time lately to actually take care of myself. However, the fact that the first half of my day of “doing nothing” also resulted in three loads of clean laundry and two freshly washed floors told me I was somehow on the wrong track. So I made some tea, grabbed a book and hit the couch. I ended up spending the entire rest of the day and good portion of the night with that book. Now you would think this was success wouldn’t you. After all, I really loved the book. What I haven’t told you is that this is a book I specifically picked to do a book review on for an English class. So, while I enjoyed this time, and did actually sit still for awhile, in the end I still accomplished something I needed to do.  I call this a success. Some of you may disagree.

Maybe some of us are just wired differently. Maybe I know that life is short and I am trying to squeeze every bit of adventure out of it while I can!  There is nothing wrong with being motivated! The problem is when we take it to its extreme, when we are unable to strike a balance. A day full of accomplishments and hard work is a wonderful thing but I have to make sure that it is meaningful work and not just busy work. Am I cleaning, yet again, because I am trying to avoid the thoughts and feelings I don’t want to deal with? (This would explain why the more unhappy my marriage became, the more beautiful the house was). Am I still taking time to take care of myself? If I am so busy that I don’t find time to enjoy a quiet walk, to exercise, or to eat right, than I am way off target, aren’t I?

Sometimes we just have to be willing to let go of the picture we have in our head of what we thought our lives were supposed to be. If I can give up the fantasy of the perfect house and the perfect relationships, I can ease up on myself a little. I can ease up on those around me. I can learn to enjoy the life that is right in front of me. I don’t have to live up to anyone else’s standards. I don’t have to try to “have it all” because what I do have is more than enough!  I don’t have to go dust that shelf across the room where the sun is coming in right now and I can see the . . . oh who am I kidding. I’m going to go dust that shelf but it’s okay. After all, I’m still a work in progress!

This piece first appeared in the Bangor Daily News, Postcards from a Work in Progress, February 13, 2012. 

Choosing to live creatively in the middle of Maine

I know, I’m probably preaching to the choir here but I’m often asked by friends and family from away, why I choose to live in Maine. Keep in mind Rhode Islanders (where I originally migrated from 23 years ago) rarely travel farther than 30 miles in any direction. Traveling farther than that in R.I. requires a GPS, a detailed plan and a lot of patience for traffic! My moving 300 miles north to a place they assumed didn’t have any modern conveniences was a lot for most of them to handle. The answer, for me, is simple and complicated at the same time.

To live in Maine is to live creatively, with both intention and purpose. There are two kinds of Mainers. Some Mainers live here because they were born here and have chosen to stay. The rest of us, born in other places both near and far, looked around, and of all the possible choices, decided to make Maine our homes. Whether you were born here or migrated here most of us live here because we have chosen to live our lives outside the box. We have chosen to live our lives creatively and this is the place to do it. We have chosen to build lives that often look nothing like the lives lived in other places.

To build a life in this beautiful area of Maine we have come to accept the difficulties. To live here is not a destiny it is a bold decision! We know that winters will be very long and very cold. We know that the economy will be challenging at best. We know we might have to carve a living out of several part-time jobs rather than one steady one. We know that our budgets will always have to be creative. We know that all these things take a certain type of personality to overcome and we are willing to do what it takes because to make a life here is worth all that.

We live in a place where we enjoy both the mountains and the valleys. We have cities full of art and culture just a stone’s throw from all the natural beauty we could ever want to experience.  We have warm sunshine and gentle ocean breezes. We have fall seasons of bounty and harvest and explosions of Nature’s color. We have sparkling winter snow. We have crystal clear lakes and the comforting scent of pine. We have a place where whatever we create, or whatever we grow, we can leave it on a table at the end of our driveway with a box with a slit in the top and know that the people who come by will not only be appreciative of our offerings but honest enough to leave the money for them, even if we aren’t there.

I chose to make a life here in Maine because I don’t want to have to choose between a city life and a country life. I want them both! I want to grow herbs on my window sill and visit the Farmer’s Market and then decide at the last minute that I don’t feel like cooking and walk downtown instead and eat something amazing with a glass of wine and good friends. I want to buy and eat local not because I am making a political statement but because we simply have the best damn stuff around, right here! I want to be able to leave my apartment and run all my errands for the week and never get in my car if I don’t feel like it. I want to be able to wear either my high heels or my Bean boots to any event I go to, depending on my mood, and know either would be fine!

Maine isn’t this way by chance. It’s this way because we work very hard to make it so. We’ve all worked to carve amazing lives out of a harsh and beautiful landscape. Maine is about community and diverse culture. It’s about home cooking and home brew. It is Bean Suppers and Beano. It is Acadian culture, Jewish bagels and amazing Thai food. It is downtown pubs, fish & chips and sweet potato fries. It is Italian bakeries and art shows and local farms! More importantly, Maine is people who still have faith in the world. We volunteer in record numbers. We vote in record numbers. We give above and beyond our budgets. We care, we believe and we do because that’s not just the way life should be, it’s the way life is.

 This post originally appeared in the Bangor Daily News, Postcards from a Work in Progress, February 6, 2012.

Parenthood: Menial labor, unfathomable love & unspeakable terror!

I have heard it said that being a parent is like walking around with a part of your heart forever on the outside of your body.

Our children just don’t get it do they? I don’t mean small children, I mean those of us who have “full grown, don’t tell me what to do I’m an adult” children. The state says they can drive, they can own their own property. They can vote or get married or have a beer.  None of this means they are actually old enough to get it.

There was a time when I didn’t get it either, way back before I had children. It was so long ago I don’t really remember what life was even like then. In fact, it was almost 28 years ago now. For every parent, there is a day when you just get it. It might be the first time you felt your unborn child move inside you. It could have been when you gave birth, or when you watched your partner give birth. It might have been the first time, as an adoptive parent, that someone handed you this young child and walked way, leaving you, just you, responsible for this small life. Maybe it was the moment you married the birth parent of your children and you realized you were saying “I do” to a whole family and the responsibilities that went with it. However you became a parent, you remember it, that moment when it all became clear.

I was only 19 years old when my son was born. His father and I thought we got it, but we didn’t, not until that moment he was born. We could hardly believe when the hospital actually let us take him home; this tiny, fragile human being. He was ours, ready or not. Every decision whether it involved feeding him, or keeping him warm, or getting him medical care, was now in our hands. Every decision we made for the rest of our lives would affect him, would shape his life and would eventually shape the lives of his sisters as well.We tried our best to make good decisions. Sometimes we fell short but everything we did, from that moment on, involved him, his life, his happiness, and his future.

It doesn’t change. No matter how old he gets. It doesn’t change. Whether he’s 7 or 27, that very same feeling of overwhelming love and responsibility never changes. I know it annoys him sometimes. I know it annoys his sisters as well. He does not understand that we are no more capable of walking away, of not caring, of not being involved in his life than we would be of deciding we no longer needed oxygen.  When you are a parent, your children are your oxygen.

Even when they are adults you still hold your breath the way you did when they took their first steps and the way you did the first time you dropped them off at kindergarten. The difference when they get older is they are no longer under your control. You can’t make their decisions for them. You can’t pick them up and hold them and make everything better. Yet, you still hold your breath with every step they take. You hold your breath when they fall in love. You hold your breath every single time they board a plane or get in a car and take a trip. You hold your breath when they leave for college or join the military. You hold your breath and you pray and pray and pray.

I lost my breath this past weekend in that moment when the phone rang at 2:45 am and I found out my son had been in a very serious car accident. I am still struggling to catch it again. This is, after all, what parenthood is all about isn’t it? The majority of it is hard work and menial labor. There are proud moments and moments of embarrassing laughter. There are moments of unfathomable love and tremendous joy.

Occasionally there are moments of unspeakable terror. There are moments when all you can do it sit there, by their bedside in the hospital. There are moments when there is absolutely nothing you can do, or say to fix it. You can’t even explain it to them. There are simply no words.

All you can do is be there and breathe with them and know that someday, when it is their turn, they will get it. In the meantime, we rely on each other, fellow parents, all of us who are forever living with a part of our hearts on the outside of our bodies. We lean on each other when words are neither necessary nor even possible.

This post originally appeared in the Bangor Daily News, Postcards from a Work in Progress, on January 13, 2012. 

Holding each other up through tough times & slippery crosswalks!

One thing about writing a personal essay blog is that it leaves you very open to criticism. Each week, I put myself out there and share my experiences with people that I don’t know and may never meet. My hope, when I started this, was that I would strike a chord with women and men who have had similar experiences, so that we wouldn’t feel quite as alone as we negotiate middle-age. It’s all we can do for each other sometimes, when faced with life’s challenges, is to hold each other up. I hope to share a lesson or two and when I have nothing wise to say (which may happen more often than not), I hope to at least give folks a good laugh!

I have to admit, I was a little worried. There are, on occasion, those folks who seem to have nothing better to do than write very mean, critical comments on the paper’s online stories. How will I react to one of those? I am not sure yet. All of the comments left by readers so far have been wonderful!

This week, however, I did get my first personal email from a reader, although the tone of his note suggested he thought he was emailing the paper directly and not me personally. While it wasn’t really as mean and hateful as some comments I’ve read on other writer’s pieces, it was not in any way a compliment. In fact, he called my writing lame and blamed it on my being from Rhode Island! (I am well aware that having lived here for almost 24 years in no way makes me a true Mainer but that is a subject for another blog).

I have to agree with you though Reader. Some Rhode Islanders are certainly lame, but not in any greater percentage than the rest of the country. Then again, maybe it was very lame of us to cover our beautiful state in condos and sub-divisions until we could no longer see the ocean nor afford to even live there.

On a lighter note I also got my first bit of actual fan mail this week. It even contained a gift! Pat from the BDN emailed me one morning to say that a package had arrived at the paper’s office for me. Not expecting anything, I asked him to go ahead and open it and see what it was. Once he had verified that it was not 1) ticking or 2) sent by mistake, he forwarded it along to my post office box.

I have to say, Heather from 32North, you really made my day! Thank you so much.

Heather Wasklewicz is the Social Media Marketing Director of 32North in Biddeford, Maine. 32North is the manufacturer of STABILicers. If you aren’t familiar with them, STABILicers are those attachments for the bottoms of your shoes with the little metal cleats that cling to the ice and keep you from falling. They come in a variety of styles and colors and secure to your shoes or boots in various ways. My favorites, however, are the lightweight rubber ones that slip easily over your shoes! Not only did Heather send me a new pair of them but she sent me the pink ones! I was already a huge fan of these. In the years that I worked at the LL Bean Call Center during the holiday season, I learned how fast the colored ones sell out and how hard they are to come by sometimes! This is not just a shameless plug for Heather, I really love these things!

What was even better than Heather’s gift, however, was the personal note she took the time to write. She had read my essay “Humbling Middle-Aged Moments” in which I described my recent slip in the middle of Main Street! She thought the STABILicers would help me stay on feet while walking downtown. She also mentioned that she has been going through her own trying personal challenges lately and that my articles had given her hope. That’s all we can do for each other sometimes isn’t it? When times are tough and there is nothing we can actually do or say to solve a friend’s problem, we can just be there for them. It is our friends, old and new, who stick by us, give us hope and hold us up.

Sometimes we do it with our words and sometimes with a nifty new pair of STABILicers!

This piece was originally published on the Bangor Daily News website, January 8, 2012. 

I will never be the same

Sometimes, when I am wallowing in my challenges, full of resentment and anger, I worry about that. How will I ever get past this? Will I ever be the same! I was in that mood when I came upon Jim LaPierre’s column “Forgiveness and Freedom,” this past week. The fact that I’d been home from work several days with a badly infected, and very painful tooth was clearly contributing to my mood but that little voice inside me said “read this one, pay attention here!”

I try to listen to that gentle voice inside me, although I’m not always sure where it comes from. Is it my own reason? Is it my Higher Power? Sometimes I wonder if it is the voice of my ancestors, the generations of women before me whose blood runs through me now. Maybe it’s all those or maybe I’m just crazy, or this week just under the influence of pain medications! I just know that in difficult times, if I have taken a moment to be still and listen to that voice, I have made much better decisions than the ones made in the heat of the moment, out of fear or anger.

I remember as a kid watching TV and whenever the main character had a choice to make two options showed up represented by an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. To us watching, the choice seemed clear. There was good and there was bad and we’d cheer for the good side, even if we secretly suspected as the character did, that the bad might be way more fun!

If only life had actually turned out like that, every choice represented by two options clearly marked good or bad. As grown-ups we discovered that life’s choices are never that simple, never marked so obviously and that there were almost always more than two in any given situation. Ah, but that’s the key right there isn’t it. There are always choices. Even if in that moment of deep heartache or despair, we don’t see them. The choices are there. The trick is to be quiet, patient and still long enough to hear the answers when they come to you.

So that brings me to forgiveness and Jim’s column. Forgiveness is hard! Forgiveness is especially hard when someone else’s behavior has not just hurt our feelings but actually changed the course of our life. Forgiveness is near impossible when the person who hurt us is unable or unwilling to acknowledge the level of the pain they caused. To us it looks like they are just strolling along, happy and unaffected, while we are back here on the path they left, wounded and bleeding.

When I’ve been hurt or wronged, I wanted the whole world to stop and acknowledge my pain. I wanted everyone to point to the person who caused it and say “shame on you!” I wanted justice! But sometimes there is no justice, or reason, or resolution. Sometimes the rest of the world is too busy dealing with its own pain and I’m just going to have to handle mine on my own. Oh, I have the help of a group of people who love me but really, when it comes down to it, we all have to work this stuff out in our own heads, in our own hearts, and with our own voices!

Jim is so right when he says our “our resentments limited us – not them. They moved on and we stayed stuck. We cannot be free as long as we carry the weight of the world on our shoulders.” Some days I feel like I’m hiking with a back pack full of rocks. Every time someone does something that hurts me, I throw another rock in the pack and hoist it back up on my shoulders, no matter how heavy it gets. If someone offers to help me carry the load, I always refuse. Sometimes I sit down and go through the pack, intending to discard some of it but like a bad episode of “Hoarders,” I can’t let go of things that are clearly of no use to me anymore.

I forget that I have choices. In fact, one of those choices is to just let go of the back pack! Of course that doesn’t mean it will be easy. I’ve tried before. I've tried just “choosing happiness,” saying it out loud “I choose happiness, okay here I am, I’m happy now.” It hasn’t worked that way. I can’t just let go of that entire bag all at once. What would I do with my hands with nothing to carry?

Maybe the answer is to keep trying to lose those rocks one at a time. Maybe while hiking, I can drop them off slowly, in quiet places in the woods where they won’t hurt anyone else. Or I can make a trip to the beach and fling a few in the ocean. I'm sure if I can free up some room in this bag I can find lighter things to carry, things like joy, and hope. There may even be room for forgiveness in there.

This week when I was worrying, feeling like I will never get past the hurt, or ever be the same person again, I read Jim's column and felt a little lighter. In fact, I heard the voice inside me say "no, you will never be the same, so what, you aren’t supposed to stay the same. You are supposed to change and grow and be BETTER!"  So here's to moving forward, a little lighter, minus one badly infected molar and a few less resentments! None of which were doing me any good anymore!

This piece was originally published on the Bangor Daily News website, January 6, 2012. 

Humbling Middle-Aged Moments!

All we really get are moments. There are happy moments, embarrassing moments, heart breaking moments and moments of incredible joy but it all comes in moments. In between is a lot of hard work. It’s remembering those moments, both the good and the bad that gets us through. When we look back on our lives it is those moments we remember; the sweet moment when someone said “I love you,” the overwhelming moment when we held our newborn child, the moment full of pride when we watched one of our children cross the stage at their graduation. We remember the exact moment when someone broke our heart, or the last moments we held the hand of a dying parent. It is all these moments that make us who we are.

It’s been a few weeks of moments, hasn’t it? Holidays tend to magnify these moments. There was a humbling moment last week.  I’d had a great day at work. Here I was, feeling all metropolitan, crossing the street in front of Paddy Murphy’s on Main, in my new fabulous outfit and sexy high heels, when I slipped on who knows what and landed smack dab in the middle of Main Street, in the rain, just when the light had just changed and none of the cars could go because I was lying in the road, looking for my shoe. Ah yes, humbling moments you just have to laugh at.

Even this was better than the moment a couple years ago, that I woke up alone in my new apartment and the fact that was I middle-aged and unexpectedly divorced hit me in the chest like a sack of flour.

There was a moment on Christmas Eve. My mom, who is 77 now, was reading “The Night before Christmas” to all of my children the same way she has done every year, for over 20 years. I looked around at all my children there with us, all grown safe and sound and home and I just cried silently the rest of the way through the story.

There was the moment at midnight mass when the choir sang “Silent Night” and I felt a peace I hadn’t felt in quite awhile.

There was a moment on Christmas morning when I was making breakfast for mother and all my children. I was remembering all those other mornings when they were growing up, and all the breakfasts, and all the times that were both wonderful and frightening and all that we’ve survived and learned from all these years.

There were the moments Christmas Night when I gathered with a dozen or so friends, new and old, for a non-traditional celebration. We laughed and we ate and we shared stories about all the moments in our lives that lead us to this place and time. I was truly grateful for all the love in my life and all the people that have become a part of it. There was a moment later when I felt rather silly because my friend Judy’s story about our non-traditional Christmas meal came out in the BDN and we all looked rather sad and lonely.  Then I realized it was okay, really, a moment we can look back on and laugh at because we were anything but lonely. In fact, we were all pretty darn good!

This is what life gives us; moments of joy mixed in with moments of challenges. If we can only remember during those hard moments that they will pass, more joy will follow if we can just hold on. Another wonderful moment is right around the corner. Maybe I should wear flats today instead of heels so when that incredible moment comes by I’ll be ready for it.

This piece was originally published on the Bangor Daily News website, December 26, 2011.