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. 

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. 

Parent Teens – I’ve lost some battles but ultimately I’ve won the war!

If there is anything I can share stories about in my life, it would be teenagers. I have raised them. I have worked professionally with them. I have lived with them, cooked and cleaned for them, driven them to and fro, stayed up half the night waiting for them, sat in emergency rooms with them, counseled them, laughed and cried with them, cried over them, and shared their accomplishments and joy!

My youngest child turns twenty next week. She is not nearly as excited as I am. Twenty is not a milestone birthday for her. She is still stuck between 18 and 21, in that land of “technically an adult but not quite yet.” For me, however, this is a huge milestone. My baby is no longer a teenager.  I have been parenting teenagers since my oldest turned 13, in 1997. That is roughly 14 years of teenagers. I have always said that the teen years are nature’s way of getting us ready, and willing, to have them leave home. If they left us when they were those cute, little, curly-haired, feety pajama clad, lovable children, it would surely kill us outright. So instead, nature turns them into large, loud, dramatic, hormone-driven creatures and we become much more ready to have them leave the nest when the time comes.

Nothing prepares parents for how hard those teen years can be. Sometimes you find yourself in battlefield conditions and all you can do is make sure everyone survives. Sometimes it seems like you are just moving from crisis to crisis but you get through, eventually. I hope that even when I made mistakes they always knew that I was on their side. There are still things they need to learn from you during those years, and things you still need to learn from them. There are skills you can pass on more easily like how to drive a stick shift. There are other things you can’t really teach them, like how to survive a broken heart or the death of someone they love. You just have to be there, stick beside them quietly, and let them know that yes, they will get through this. We all have.

They were years full of both joy and heartache. There were disappointments and unexpected accomplishments and times of complete hysterical laughter. There have been football games, swim meets, field hockey, track meets and boxing matches. There were driver’s ed classes, fender benders and speeding tickets. There were attempts to sneak out of the house, or to sneak other people in (eventually I installed a contact alarm on the back door, seriously!). We survived SATS, college applications and FAFSAs. There were long talks about sex and love. I’ve caught a few of them drinking. One time one of them even thought I would believe that the smell coming from his room was actually “incense” as if I had never been a teenager myself; just popped into this world in an adult sized, fun- ruining mom body! There were school projects and art exhibits and talent shows. Thankfully, there were also other parents. These were friends that I could count on, judgment free, as we negotiated those tricky years together.

I’ve lost a few battles, but yes, ultimately, I have won the war! They have served in the military, served in AmeriCorps, gone to college, or opened their own business. They have jobs, great friends, their own apartments and causes they believe in. Who knew this crazy group of teenagers, who could not even do their own dishes most of the time, were capable of such things! They have dreamed wonderful dreams that even I, as their biggest fan, couldn’t have imagined for them. Most surprising to me though has been finding out that parenting does not actually end when they are 18, that magical number we sometimes cling to when times are hard. It doesn’t end. It is just different. It turns out I am still their mother and they still need me sometimes. What has changed is that now, sometimes I need them too, just like my mother sometimes needs me. Now I am learning how to parent twenty-somethings. I am learning how to back off. (No, that has not been easy). I am learning to trust that I did the best job I could, and now it’s up to them. So far, they are doing a pretty decent job!

Happy Birthday Baby Girl!

This piece was originally published on the Bangor Daily News website, November 24, 2011. 

Honey, please pass the turkey to your dad’s new wife

Negotiating the holidays for “custom made” families can be challenging. If you’ve read my blog before you know I don’t like the term “broken” families. Nor do I choose to use “divorced” or “blended.”  My term of choice is “custom made.” This takes into account not only the family made by marriage, divorce and remarriage, but the family that we’ve made because there are simply people in our lives that we love. “Custom made” includes my extra children, the ones I didn’t give birth to but love all the same. It also includes my dearest friends, who are more like family to me than most of my blood relatives. Another term is “family of choice” which in today’s complicated world covers so many of our situations. So how do we accommodate our non-traditional families during the holiday season? How do we create memories when our families look nothing like the families in the holiday television specials?

My own parents were wonderful at this. I know it took time. The first few years after they separated were awkward, to say the least. It was the 1970s. Divorce was not common, yet somehow, my parents came up with a plan that worked for our family. By the time I was in high school, I spent holidays with my mother, my father, my step-mother, my step-mother’s x-husband, and all of the children that belonged to each. Was it easy? I’m sure it wasn’t. It certainly wasn't what they planned when they first had children. Was it worth it, absolutely!

Now I know every situation is different and every family is different. Spending holidays together will not work for everyone. So if you can’t pull it off, if you are still too hurt or too angry, then don’t try it. It is much better to have happy holidays apart than miserable times together. The holidays, for me, were always about making wonderful memories for my children. Some of those memories have been traditional and some have been unconventional but overall, the majority of them have been happy. As a family we’ve learned to deal with divorce, remarriage, death, separation and new relationships. We’ve cooked fresh game and we’ve made To-furkey, depending on the guest list. Believe me, there have been uncomfortable moments for my children and I as we negotiated holidays with their father and myself and their step-father. There have been many holidays that I invited my x-husband, and his youngest child (their baby sister) to join us for opening presents on Christmas morning. Every time I did, while sometimes awkward, it was always very much worth it. In fact, I have included my children’s half-sister in so many family events that she has grown up calling me “auntie.”

So what do you do if this is your family’s first holiday after a major life change? My advice is to hang on to some old traditions but more importantly, try to be flexible. Make new traditions. If the kids are spending time away, give them some of the family decorations so they can put them up at the other parent’s house. If you have moved to a new place, buy yourself new decorations to go with your new traditions. Did your family always cut a real tree and can't anymore because you are in a new apartment? Why don’t you start a different tradition and go out to your favorite place for waffles or ice cream sundaes, before decorating the new, “custom made” tree.

Chances are if you are sharing time with your children’s other parent, they won't be with you during the entire holiday. Whatever you do, do NOT be alone! Why not throw a party, invite over your new neighbors, go out to eat someplace non-traditional, or spend the day volunteering at a local shelter or food pantry. Maybe you could volunteer with your kids. Pick a child's name off a local angel tree and shop together for someone who is less fortunate. Concentrating on making someone else's holiday better will take their minds off anything they feel might be missing from their own. Whatever you do, go out of your way to be festive; dress up, cheer up! The rest of your life doesn’t look anything like those families on TV, why would you expect your holidays to? The season will be whatever you make it. Make it one full of wonderful memories! 

This piece was originally published on the Bangor Daily News website, November 16, 2011. 

The Condom Mom

Nothing says Happy Spring like a column about condoms!

Happy Spring, Happy Easter, Happy Holiday of your choice! In honor of Spring, the season of new life, and in order to spend the day with my family, I am posting an encore presentation of part of one of my all time favorite blogs! I had just signed on with BlogHer and had to let them know which ads I was willing to allow on my page! My number one choice for ads to run alongside my blog was contraceptives.

Why, do you say, would a mother of 4+ children want to advertise contraceptives on her page? Well other than the obvious (I gave birth four times in eight years) maybe it is time I confess one of my secret identities. That’s right, the teenagers all know but many of you don’t. I am THE CONDOM MOM.

For those of you who judged my personal life after seeing me buy boxes of condoms on sale at the drug store, now you know the truth. Believe me, it was not all fun and games. Standing in front of a condom display and choosing between “his pleasure” and “her pleasure” or regular size and Magnum Super Size for condoms that very well may be used by one’s own teenage children is uncomfortable to say the very least! However, this has been a calling of sorts for me. I have been providing condoms to teenagers since 1998. That’s right, for 14 years, since my oldest child was a freshman in high school; I have been purchasing and making available condoms of all varieties!

Of course, my free condoms come with lectures and lessons on self respect and commitment.  There is always a catch isn’t there. They also came with the knowledge that there was at least one adult in your life that you could come to with questions, any questions, who would not judge you, ever!

I had assumed that at some point, in all these years, at least one parent would come to me and say “what the hell are you doing?” None have so far. None have yet to say thank you either. If they only knew, I’m sure some of them might have. I always hoped if there was something one of my kids couldn’t talk to me about that another parent would be there for them. It does, after all, take a village sometimes.

There have been lots of funny stories connected with this calling of mine. My favorite story was when my youngest daughter was about nine or ten. She had a couple other little girls over for a sleep over. The next morning I went in the upstairs bathroom and found that not only was the floor very slippery but the trash was full of unwrapped condoms. Knowing none of the older children had been home that night I went into my daughter’s room to cautiously ask what they had been up to. It seems they weren’t exactly sure what the condoms were really supposed to be used for but they did discover that if you slipped them over your feet you could slide all over the bathroom!

There has been more than one teenager my children brought to the house for the first time who was stunned into silence upon discovering that the kids could talk openly with me and that there were free condoms in a jar in the upstairs bathroom. There were also those awkward conversations had with young people whose parents had not even prepared them in the smallest way for the world they were living in. But we all got through it and grew closer because of it. I hope that some of them went on to make at least a few choices that were better than those they made before.

I remember one young man who came to my house. He was 18 years old. His mother had found condoms in his room and she had TAKEN THEM AWAY FROM HIM. She had told him that her religion was strictly against him having sex until he was married and that from now on he WAS NO LONGER ALLOWED TO HAVE SEX. Now really, really, how effective does anyone really think that was? I do not mean to disrespect anyone’s personal religious beliefs however, when those beliefs conflict with reality there is a time when one must say “WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?” Her son was being responsible. He had educated himself and was protecting himself and his future. How about saying something like “these are our family’s religious beliefs however, if you find yourself in a situation, or chose to follow beliefs of your own this is how you protect your health, your future, and the future of the person you are with.” Or maybe, “wow son, I am very proud of you for taking care of yourself.”

No matter what you believe, no matter what your child decides to do, do you want him/her to risk their very life because you would not “allow” him to purchase condoms? That’s right Mom & Dad. Things are different than they were in our day. Nowadays, lives can change in ways that a simple prescription of antibiotics will not cure. If you believe your child would be making a mistake by having sex at his or her age, is it a mistake worth them dying over?

Maybe some of this is personal. I was a mom at 19 years old. I do not regret that. It was and still is the greatest thing I have ever done! However, I would have been a better mom if I had waited until I got older. I would have been a better mom if I had gone to college first, instead of after, in order to better provide for my children. Not admitting that is irresponsible and not warning my children of that would be irresponsible too. I have always told them, you can change any decision you make in your life except one. You can change your school, where you live, your partner, or your career. However, once you bring another human being into the world, you can’t change that! You will love this little person so much, so incredibly much, that you will want the best of everything for them. You will want them to have the very best parents in the world. So before you do that, before you make that decision, make sure you are ready to be the very best parent in the world.

Life happens and there are so many things in our lives that are beyond our control. The choice, however, to create life or not, is in your hands. The choice to create a life for yourself, the choice to create a life for the person you love, and the choice to make a life together is yours. It is a blessing to make a life and it is a blessing to have the choice not to make another life. Our fore-mothers fought long and hard for you to have those choices. Take it seriously. Go out and make a life for yourselves.

In the meantime, if you need condoms they are on the second shelf in the linen closet in the hallway.

This piece was originally published on the Bangor Daily News website, April 7, 2012.  

Helicopter Parenting – or for goodness sake hover out of sight

“Helicopter Parent is a colloquial, early 21st century term for a parent who pays extremely close attention to his or her child’s or children’s experiences and problems, particularly at educational institutions. The term originally coined by Foster W. Cline M.D. and Jim Fay in their 1990 book “Parenting with Love and Logic: Teaching Children Responsibility.” Helicopter parents are so named because like helicopters, they hover closely overhead, rarely out of reach, whether their children need them or not. Some college professors and administrators are now referring to “lawnmower parents” to describe mothers and fathers who attempt to smooth out and mow down all obstacles, to the extent that they may even attempt to interfere at their children’s workplaces regarding salaries and promotions.” (Helicopter Parents – Wikipedia)

I read another article recently about Helicopter Parents. I used to think it must certainly be an exaggeration until a friend who teaches at a local college told me some of her experiences. Then, at the college laboratory where I work, a parent called looking for research material for her son, who was working on his PhD. It was all I could do not to say “really lady, are you kidding me?” Instead, I gave her some contact names and gently tried to explain that certainly it would be better for her son if he made those phone calls himself. I am sure she heard nothing that I said. Of course, helicopter parents is not really a new concept, it’s just a new term for Jewish/Italian (insert your ethnicity here) mothers! (I would be the Modified-Italian mother. I will not help you with your PhD. but I will be quick to tell you that the boy/girl you are dating is not good enough for you and recommend a list of alternatives. Hey, it’s not a flaw it’s a cultural thing!)

My adult children have all been around this weekend, visiting on their breaks between college semesters and work. I love just sitting in a room and watching them all. It is an amazing experience to realize that those little babies you held in your arms have grown into adults, and in fact, into adults that I really, really like a lot. We all got to eat dinner together the other night. The funny thing was I hadn’t set the table, I thought we’d just eat buffet style. As children, I made them eat at the table together every night and they did not always appreciate it. While I was finishing dinner I looked into the dining room to find them pulling out chairs and gathering around the table on their own, wanting to sit together and eat as a family. It was wonderful. During the meal, I had to stop the conversation for a moment. I said to them “I just want to tell you all that some families sit around and talk about ‘American Idol’ at the dinner table and my children are sitting here debating politics and arguing over whether Freud’s theories still have any validity. I could not be more proud.” They laughed, and continued arguing. (Freud neither won nor lost, it was an even draw).

I was very involved when my children were in elementary school. I volunteered excessively and attended all their events. By high school, however, it became more difficult. There were lots of them and they participated in many activities. I had gone back to work and back to college. I could only be there so often. I certainly could not keep track of things like homework assignments and project due dates. They learned to keep track of those things themselves and I think they were better for it. I stepped in only when absolutely necessary. So when do we know when to stop hovering? How do we know when to cut the apron strings? I think it is different for every single child and every situation. Certainly, if your child is working on his or her PhD. you need to cut the strings. Yet, if that same child came home a few years later, going through a difficult divorce or some other life crisis, it is okay to mother again, just for a little while. The trick is to figure out where and when to step back. No one gets it right all the time. My oldest daughter cut the strings herself. Some of her first words as a toddler were “I do it myself Mommy.” She was not a child who needed me to hover. She was very eager to jump out on her own. A few others needed more of a shove to embrace the idea of independence.

My goals as a parent have always been clear to me; to raise children who are capable of taking care of themselves and to raise children who give more back to the world than they take out of it. My self esteem is not wrapped up in what they do or do not do. Their success or failure is theirs alone to celebrate or to learn from. My only dreams for them are to be safe and happy. Whatever form that takes, I support it and will love them regardless.

And moms, if you are going to hover, just a little, once in awhile, try to be more stealth about it. Helicopters are way too noisy . . .

This piece was originally published on the Bangor Daily News website, August 20, 2011. 

I Don't Know

I don't know. For many years I was uncomfortable admitting that. I thought if I didn’t know, I needed to find out, if not for me than for my children. Surely, there always must be a way to find out. There is always an answer to every question, a solution to every problem, isn’t there?

There are, of course, the really BIG questions. What am I meant to do with my life? Why am I here? Is there a god? Why does he/she let bad things happen to good people? These are the questions that thoughtful, intelligent people will spend their entire lives trying to answer.

Then there are the smaller, but just as important, questions that seem to, at least, have the possibility of being answered. First there are the personal questions we ask ourselves. What career path should I choose? Why doesn’t he/she love me anymore? Did I do something to deserve this? What do I do with my life now? Then there are the questions that the children in our lives ask us. Why did grandpa have to die? Why do people get divorced? Why don’t we have enough money to do that? Why didn’t Daddy come to visit when he promised?

When children are young and start asking these questions adults often feel compelled to always provide an answer. This answer may be based on our own belief system or on the answers our parents provided us with. The answers are most always based on the child’s ability to understand the answer. “Is Santa real?” and “where do babies come from?” are two questions we usually answer differently based on the child’s age and maturity level.

The hardest question I ever had to field from one of my children came when my middle daughter was in second grade. She had a little friend named Abby. Abby’s grandmother died. However, Abby’s grandmother did not die at a ripe old age surrounded by loving family and friends. Abby’s grandmother was brutally attacked, beaten and murdered while still young and healthy. It was all over the news. Everywhere we went people were talking about it. There was no way to shield anyone from it, not even a little girl in second grade. I’ll never forget it. “Mommy, why would anyone want to hurt Abby’s grandma?” my daughter asked.

For the first time I begin to worry there would be more of these questions I could not answer. Not only questions I didn’t have the answer to but questions I feared no one had the answer to. I didn’t know, I didn’t even know who to ask and I didn’t know what to say. So I said simply “I don’t know honey, I’m sorry, I just don’t know.” It was a scary time for both of us. We talked about how sad it was and I did what I could to comfort her in spite of my own fear but somehow I felt I had failed her.

Most often, we see people in situations like this desperately trying to make life’s unexplainable moments fit into the rules someone else gave them. Too often, those rules involve a very strict standard of religion. When the answer can’t be found in the “rule book” it is chalked up to God’s will or Karma or some other blanket way of trying to answer an unanswerable question.

While living a strict, black and white faith may be very comforting to some, I found it even more frustrating than not having answers. The rules were too complicated and nearly impossible to follow. I could never make it make sense to me in today’s complicated world. The round peg doesn’t fit in the square hole and stop trying to tell me it is supposed to! I just couldn’t live a satisfying life in constant fear of punishment from some deity over every little thought and deed. Religion can’t be about hate and punishment. The same God responsible for the beauty of a new born child would never later hate that child for being who he or she was born to be. I just refuse to believe that. I don’t even get it when you try to point it out to me in your rule book.

Life is not black and white. There is no one perfect set of rules. There is no one religion no one faith no one lifestyle that has all the answers and everything will finally make sense if you just find it. Life is grey. The rules are sometimes conditional, the outcome unclear. For me, this conclusion was freeing. We are human. We make mistakes. We do our best. No matter how rocky the path, no matter how many times we lose our way, if our intentions are pure, if we don’t give up, if we have faith in love and in each other, our outcome will be the right one for us.

As years have passed, I’ve come to realize that one of the most useful things we can say to our children may be “I don’t know.” It gives them the opportunity to see their parents as human. It is dangerous to portray to your children that you are all-knowing and flawless. It will be devastatingly disappointing when they eventually discover the truth. It also sets them on a path of trying to become flawless themselves. None of us should have to feel the pressure of trying to live up to something so impossible.

However, saying “I don’t know” should never end with a period. It should always be followed by “but I am willing to listen” or “I am willing to learn” or even “let’s try to find out together.” Saying “I don’t know” gives them the opportunity to go out and find the answers for themselves. The freedom to keep asking questions, the willingness to listen to all possible answers and the unexpected joy of the paths those questions lead us down are gifts we give our children. They are gifts far more valuable than any answer we could hand them. How arrogant it would be for us to assume that the answers we discovered would fit everyone! No one else’s answers will fit all of my questions, all of my circumstances! No one else’s truth can be entirely my own.

Now, in my forties, I find myself answering a whole set of questions I never expected at this age. Is there life after divorce, again? Is true love even possible? Can I stop worrying about my adult children long enough to enjoy my own life? Will I be able to handle the workload of earning another college degree while also working full time? Can I have a viable financial future when I’ve given up home ownership for apartment life and I don’t even have a 401K? Does doing the RIGHT thing eventually pay off? Is God watching all this crap and why hasn’t he/she intervened?

If I find out any answers to these I’ll let you know. But then again, those same answers may not work for you! Stay tuned.

This piece was originally published on the Bangor Daily News website, May 14, 2011.

On Motherhood

If you come within a certain radius of me, I will mother you. Let this serve as your warning. It’s what I do. Some of us are just born caregivers. We take care. Maybe it is some deep seeded flaw on our part that makes us not feel complete until we are caring for others. Or maybe we just have an extra gene for love. Either way, it can’t be changed. For years I resisted being defined by my motherhood only. I am, of course, many other things. I am woman, friend, daughter, partner, student, writer, worker, political activist and damn lots of fun to boot! It seemed somehow politically incorrect to let motherhood be the majority of my identity.

The word mother, for me, conjures up images of a June Cleaver type woman, clad in pearls and heels, meeting her tired family at the door at the end of hard day with a plate of warm fresh baked cookies. Yet, how many of us have ever met such a creature? In spite of that, how many of us believed at one point that this image was something we should aspire to, and in fact, felt bad about ourselves when we did not?

In 2011 the family looks considerably different than it did in the 1950s and 60s TV Series. Whether there ever really were a majority of families who fit this model is a sociological argument for another day. In reality, the 1950s and 60s moms who had the luxury of not having to work outside the home were most likely socially, emotionally and intellectually unsatisfied, secretly envying their husbands for being able to leave the house every day and pursue interests that did not involve household appliances.

This was the image that I had in mind when I first became a mother, almost 27 years ago. Or maybe it was more like Carol Brady from The Brady Bunch of the 1970s. Either way, motherhood appeared effortless and always lots of fun. Every problem could be solved in a half an hour, including time for commercial breaks. The house was always spotless, the children well behaved. Then, I didn’t really have a lot of real life experience to go by. I was an only child, raised by a single divorced mother. I never had a chance to learn about sibling relationships first hand. It was just the two of us. . My mother had neither the desire nor the time to regularly bake anything. So, my dream was to create that giant perfect family. I accomplished this by having four children in eight years. If that wasn’t enough, I went on to mother several other children who came into my heart and into my home as well. Turns out none of it was anything like the Brady Bunch.

What motherhood is has absolutely nothing to do with fresh baked goods and spotless houses. In fact, it has nothing to do with the act of giving birth. It’s about everything you do every minute afterwards. There are many women out there who have given birth but never been a mother. There are many amazing mothers who did not give birth to the children in their care and in today’s world there are many men out there who, in the absence of a female in their family, have mothered their children in a way very much deserving of a holiday that is all their own!

The best bit of advice I ever got about motherhood came from my own mother who told me “you have one job as a parent, to teach your children to take care of themselves when you are no longer there. If you haven’t done that one thing, then you haven’t done your job.” At the time, I was still wishing she had baked more cookies but as I grew as a mother, and as a woman, I came to understand the incredible wisdom in this advice. You have one job, not to raise children, but to raise healthy independent adults.

Motherhood is a balancing act. You balance between giving as much of your heart as you can possibly spare, and keeping a little bit for yourself. It is a balance between caring for your children in a way that meets their needs while also teaching them the necessary skills to care for themselves. It is also about modeling for them someone who cares for the world as a whole as well. Motherhood is not about being a martyr. It is not about living up to some fictional standard of cooking and housekeeping. It is about teaching them what is really important; living a satisfying life, loving other people, and hopefully leaving this planet and the people on it a little better than you found it.

It is a balance between lovingly home cooked meals and ordering a pizza now and again so you have time to play in the park. I bet of all the times I worked to make a meal wholesome and healthy, one of the most memorable meals for my children would be the time my best friend and I let our total of seven children have ice cream sundaes for dinner. We had spent the entire day with them stranded in the house during an ice storm, a kitchen full of paper and crayons and yarn, doing hours worth of crafts. Maybe that meal was not as nutritious for their bodies as others but I hope it fed their souls.

So if the standard is being able to raise healthy independent adults, I would consider myself a success. I have raised an amazingly self-reliant, intelligent, successful group of twenty-somethings. However, what I am most proud of as a mother is not the fact that my adult children can take care of themselves but the fact that while they are doing so they also take care of other people. Whether they have served in the military, served in Americorps or served meals at the local shelter, they spend time serving. They spend time helping the world at large! They take care. They care for their friends and they care for their family. As a mom, nothing could make me more proud, not even their diplomas and degrees, not their fabulous cooking skills, or even their need to have spotless floors! While none of them has yet gone on to become a parent, they are all, without a doubt, fabulous at mothering!

This piece was originally published on the Bangor Daily News website, May 7, 2011.