Do the opposite

 It’s easy to become maudlin these days. If we keep our eyes laser-focused, we can’t help but get overwhelmed by the never-ending stream of information that is as noxious as toxic sludge.

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It’s enough to make us ill.

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We have tune it out to some degree if we hope to stay sane; how could we get up in the morning and go to work or school, and work toward a future if we can’t imagine  there will be one?

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Yet, if we glaze over, or look away for too long, we run the risk of losing touch with our humanity and becoming numb just the same.

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Summer will be upon us soon, surrounding us in a dismal soup that might feel like the inside of a pressure cooker … without an escape valve for steam, we will have to deal with an explosion rather than a delightful stew.

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Of course, it can feel calming to scroll from reel to reel … watching whatever it is we’ve mindlessly ordered from the algorithm that seems to “float our boats,” as our parents might have scoffed. But by the time you realize you are watching a woman who lives alone in a big city — with no friends, and no social life — coming through the door wearing a new outfit, but doing the same things: hugging her cat, making dinner for one, and settling in for a quiet night. .. you have frittered away the better part of an hour or worse. You’ve wasted the best part of a good night’s rest.

Finding the right balance can feel as steady as a roller coaster.

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What other choice is there?

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Might as well practice joy.

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Find it out of thin air if you need to; take a deep breath when there is a gentle breeze, let it relax you just a titch. Smile when you feel the sun on your face, close your eyes and let your shoulders drop away from where they’ve been tensing around your ears.

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Might as well practice service.

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Start a conversation with an elder in the grocery store; make it your mission to notice when someone else is struggling, and to tell them how you plan to help, and let them accept. It can be as insignificant as reach for a can on the top shelf or striking up a conversation that isn’t about the price of chicken.  

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Might as well change your mind and let those new thoughts change your mindset.

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Approach something you’ve been struggling with from a different angle. Maybe even from the polar opposite view.

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We don’t have to convince others of our righteousness, we just have to confirm that what we “know to be true” has veracity to back it up.

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Remind ourselves that an understanding can change into a misunderstanding quietly as new facts emerge. We need to be ready to expand our thoughts, and not just retract the words.

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The heat is coming back, but we can survive it by making good use of breathing room.

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Be ready to inhale fire and exhale the chill. 

Enduring

 I had arrived early for a late lunch at the diner.

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As I sat at the table, waiting for my friend – a woman, like me, whose children were all of a sudden grown – I exhaled.  It was a spur-of-the-moment meal. The kind of thing we usually say we will do, but never schedule. Until one day, in some unspoken alignment brought together by random texts bearing silly jokes, we set a date and see it through.

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My stomach growled as I looked over the menu.  

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I would order the same thing I always order: Swiss cheese omelet with rye toast. No jam. Hot sauce, please. She has no usual. When my friend arrives, I know she will make a game-day decision.

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The server brings me coffee.

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When she walks in a few minutes later, the room will come to life. Her voice carries, as mine does, but unlike mine, she has a clear tone that has a distinct melody. No one would ever accuse her of being monotonous.

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I smile, thinking about all the ways her voice changes. Our conversations meander and overlap, the way good advice discourages. “Don’t answer their story with a similar story of your own,” the inconvenient narrator in my head tries to interject as I push forward with my response.

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The history of our friendship could be put into words and follow a chronology stemming from our children’s early education, but it wouldn’t be able to describe the things that make the friendship seem effortless that don’t also align with happenstance.

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We would talk, and laugh, and yell, and say things that make the neighboring tables blush. We swapped stories of how the kids are moving on, how the husbands are still the same, but somehow we are getting grumpier.

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We avoid talking about the things that are heavy or create anxiety because we have accepted these as problems beyond our control, so we commence in complaining about the things in our lives that we could change … even though the likelihood of us changing them is less than one iota.

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Time gets away from us, but not the same way it transformed our kids. We blinked here at the table, and it was nearing late afternoon; we blinked with our kids at a kindergarten assembly, and somehow they’d graduated from college.

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When the check comes, she reaches for it, over my objections. “A belated birthday gift,” she says matter-of-factly as she holds the curl of paper over her head, where I couldn’t reach if I jumped.

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I love her for that kind of mischief. And I vow that we shall meet again in a fortnight to celebrate hers.

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Being of the same “vibe” feels like an inadequate explanation as to why friendships like ours endure.  Perhaps the word “enduring” is the key since it could mean “long-lasting” or it could mean “long suffering.”

It is not lost on either of us that, regardless of how long we stretch between meetings, we are in the struggle together. And the conversation will continue as if it never ended the next time. Whenever that is.

A little motherly advice

However it is that we understand Mother’s Day … whether we celebrate, mourn, or bridle at the notion of yet another day commandeered by marketers to sell us things we probably don’t need and don’t want; it is once again upon us.

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And with it, my inbox overflows with classic gift suggestions like chocolate and flowers, perfect for delivery mere hours before day’s end, if you happen to be the offspring of the last-minute variety.

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Not that I’m complaining. Were they to ask — and they have despite an experiential clairvoyance that has had them preface all fact-finding queries with “and don’t tell me … —  “that I just want my children to be happy.”

“Might as well ask for world peace,” they retort … 

Which makes me wonder, again, if a good mother would just give a suggestion, something readily attainable. Or whether they would acknowledge the uncertainty?

The media constantly reminds us how unhappy our kids might be. How unhappy we are, too, as we dwell in the discord.  But can we block it out? 

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Sandwiched in between are other ideas I probably NEVER would have considered prior:

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For instance, late in April, my spam mail asked me if I wanted to opt out of their barrage, acknowledging, no doubt out of market research, that the idea of motherhood is fraught.

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Relatedly, a few weeks later, a law firm pitched their expertise for any timely stories being written on … the legal ramifications of motherhood in the modern age, where women are embarking on their path to parenthood later in life and perhaps with more intention than ever … two things conservative America has been somewhat successful in thwarting through more onerous policy and the curtailment of certain standards of medical care.

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You know … the romantic notion that your custody battles could be intense in this “brave” new world.

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And your children will cut you off because you told them “NO” too often … or not enough, or because you were suffocating or you were stoic and unhelpful. Because you never listen or didn’t hear what they were saying. 

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Your best wasn’t enough. And it wasn’t the mistakes you made as much as it was the mistakes you wouldn’t admit or acknowledge. The things you can’t talk about without feeling hurt or defensive.

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Our actions or lack thereof may have been imminently defensible, but we never discussed them like coherent human beings. Perhaps we never even considered they were up for debate.  

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Many of us were raised to “do as you are told,” and we fully expected our kids would, too. Although many of us made good-faith attempts to be friends with our children, perhaps hoping we would be trusted confidants, always in the know.

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And while that may be the case, we were never just friends. Our job was always to give them building blocks and structure, and their job was to break those guidelines into pieces from which they could build something new. Something that is mostly their own. A life that one day, won’t include us.

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Once our parents are gone … and our children grown, mothering can feel lonely. We might feel like ghosts of past selves.

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So on this Mother’s Day, I want to urge that we give ourselves some extra careful mothering. We might just listen. We might apologize. Our memories will live on for at least a generation.

Because if we are here now, we have an onus to meet the moment. 

Hidden Gems

In the four years our daughter navigated university life in Boston and a course load I could barely pronounce, let alone wrap my head around, I had spent about a month of days trying to navigate its streets.

I spent many mornings piecing small runs through the parks that connect the city’s famed Emerald Necklace. Often getting lost, alternately confused by construction and the city’s natural complexity. 

While we visited during family weekends, we tried to be available but unobtrusive. It is natural, even if painfully so, that our very presence elicits conflicting aspects of wary and welcome. 

The first time we visited, she took advantage of the safe-haven familiarity offered in our hotel suite. This time, it was clear she was home in the world. All along, she had to push against our pull. 

A tightrope walk, for sure, but also, in truth, a feat of spectacular proportion.

We are constantly reminded of that delicate balance as we sit as guests waiting for the pomp and circumstance to begin. 

Speeches are filled with commendations about the graduates’ drive and resilience. Speakers gave generous praise to the parents who helped make it all possible. We are reminded about their fortitude in the face of struggle. How success and failure are intertwined. And how experience is at the heart of all education, which, ideally, is never-ending. 

It is our story, as parents, too.

We made small talk with the parents around us in a line that stretched around the block, past a celebrity burger joint she never tried, and the bullseye department store she mused was always cleaned out of stock by the density of college-aged consumers it triangulated. 

I got unexpectedly emotional as we shuffled slowly past. Camera in hand, but in an ocean of people … Like I had missed a silly photo opportunity to come full circle. “We should have come here … I had forgotten we were in Target when she got her acceptance letter!”

“Yesterday, we did a photo shoot at Dunkin’s,” said the lady next to me, and the line reverberated with stories of following their cap and gowned grads into their favorite bodegas and random spots on and off campus. 

We had followed our daughter through a fancy shopping center, down an escalator into an underground burrow where she had found her own hidden gem - a little closet where a cobbler offered instant shoe repair. It was a tiny moment that felt momentous.

As we file into the storied stadium and sit in seats we’d envy during a ballgame, the bigness of all hits me in a way that it hadn’t during two other ceremonies we’d already attended in as many days.

We all experience moments like this, and we interpret them in different ways. Sometimes we marvel, and sometimes we take for granted. We often experience excitement with anxiety. We even filter out the shine and focus on the little spots of tarnish. 

We may even look back and see something we missed the first time. Hidden in plain sight. Hope.