A Mom’s Paradox

Teenagers complain a lot. I mean A LOT with all capital letters.  At least mine do, they are the only ones I know.

Probably complain isn’t quite the right word.  It’s more that everything that doesn’t go the way they want is a giant injustice. The store doesn’t have the right lipstick color to match the dress, how dare they! Kroger stopped carrying their favorite brand of cereal – that can’t be right, they must have to carry all the brands, right?!?!? Their boss asked them to do something that was hard-work, how dare they!?!?

It’s always been of critical importance that my relationship with my children is friendly and that they want to talk to me. Afterall, there are only 18 years of their life where I can make them talk to me (and really not even that many, as my son has proven more than once with reticence in the face of even my most incessant questioning).  For the other 75% of their lives, if I want to know what is going on, I have to rely on them voluntarily telling me.

But I hate listening to complaining.

I don’t mind listening to people getting riled up about a wrong, if it means they are developing a plan to make it right in the future. I don’t mind an occasional rant about some awful injustice – like girls kidnapped in Africa, women who can’t vote in Afghanistan, street children in India, or the massive amount of debt in our country.  I can even deal with you if you have an unusual day of incessant whining. But when everything that you say all the time is a complaint about the minor frustrations of daily life, I don’t really want to talk to you.

Thus the mother’s paradox! I know if I want them to talk to me later, I have to let them talk to me now. But I’m not sure how much of the complaining I can take!

To deepen the paradox…notice I’m complaining.

Growing Patience

Patience has always been the one character trait I most wanted to develop.  I wanted to be able to wait patiently while my children tied their shoes on the busy sidewalk. I wanted to listen patiently to all the long-winded stories that are the fabric of childhood. I wanted not to feel like banishing the cats when they meowed incessantly. I wanted to calmly admonish the dogs when they barked uproariously at the stranger passing on the sidewalk. I didn’t want to scream at the prospective of washing more dishes and more clothes, endlessly.

I worked really hard at trying to be more patient…somedays I was really good at it, somedays I was really bad. Always it felt very random and never felt like I was making any progress.

Then one day, I realized patience is not a single trait to be developed…it’s a whole collection of traits to work on. Patience is like Calculus.  You can’t just learn Calculus. First you must learn arithmetic.  Then you must learn algebra. Then a little geometry. A little trignometry too.  THEN you are ready for calculus.

As of now, I’ve identified four traits which come together to create my patience.  So, perhaps a car is a better metaphor.  Patience is the whole vehicle, but it requires four tires all working together to let the car get anywhere. My four tires are:

• Focus — to catch the shift from patience to impatience, before it wrecks havoc
• Love — to be willing to put in the effort to keep patience at the forefront
• Persistence — to be able to keep making the effort in each moment, every day
• Silliness — so all the work involved in patience doesn’t feel like the Sisyphian task it quite frankly is

Focus I have, most days, in large supply – except when I don’t.  Focus was the one thing keeping me even moderately patient all these years.  It was the reason I was successful some days and not successful other.  That was like driving a car with only one wheel, though.  I wasn’t getting very far.

Love comes naturally for me, at least for most of the creatures who need my patience on a daily basis. Not always so much for the outside world…so that’s what I’m working on.  I’ve got the tire on that corner of my car.  I just need to put some more air in it.

Persistence I also have in abundance. I am incapable of leaving a task undone.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t get exhausted in the endeavour.  I didn’t, however, realize that persistence was a key element of increasing my patience.  It was like I had the tire, but it was sitting against the shop wall…not very helpful for getting my vehicle up and running.

Silliness is not my forte. Since childhood, I’ve taken myself and the rest of the world entirely too seriously. In the anxiety literature, I’m what’s called a “catastrophizer.” Every little mistake or inattention (or lack of focus) has potentially drastic consequences in my mind. This silliness tire, I’m going to have beg, borrow or buy from somewhere. But knowing it’s a necessary element for patience — I’m working on acquiring it.  My silly children are helping me.

Continuing my tire metaphor, I’ve turned my morning breathing meditation over to putting air into these four tires of my patience vehicle.

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Daily Meditation for Growing Patience:

(Inbreath) Focus –  (OutBreath) on the things that matter

(Inbreath) Love –  (OutBreath) is the thing that matters most

(Inbreath) Persist – (OutBreath) in being present
(Inbreath) Silliness – (OutBreath) helps with the persistence

 

True Love

When I was young, I thought true love was somebody who saw me as perfect exactly the way I was and didn’t want anything about me to ever change.  (Yeah, too many 80s love songs during my formative years.  And way to many years since then wasted trying to hide all the things I didn’t like about myself so I could be lovable.)

Now that I’m older I realize true love is really somebody who knows me, all of me, flaws and all, and is still willing to stand with me forever. Somebody who has truly heard how I want to grow and change, and is ready and willing to help me do the necessary to make the growth happen. Somebody who wants the growth and change because I do, but doesn’t hold it against me when I don’t reach my goal. Somebody who celebrates with me when I’m getting it right. Somebody who gently points out when I’m getting it wrong. Somebody who holds me when I’m discouraged at my progress.

I’m so grateful that the LOML has always known this about true love and was patient enough to wait for me to figure it out.

Grief – in Summary

Grief doesn’t look like we expect it to.  It doesn’t look like it does on TV with wailing mourners, or slow dropping tears, or even solemn faces and quiet rooms.  Everyone experiences grief in their own way, in their own space and in their own time.  Pass no judgment and give much understanding.  Just because someone’s grief doesn’t look like your grief, doesn’t make it any less painful or reflect any less meaning on the relationship that has ended.

• Grief is angry responses to normal questions.
• Grief is sudden frustration at simple inconveniences.
• Grief is tearful outbursts at minor disappointments.
• Grief is laughing louder than normal.
• Grief is frenetic movement and the inability to be still.
• Grief is avoiding quiet by constant chatter.
• Grief is a completely normal day, followed by sobbing children as you tuck them in.
• Grief is boredom, even when surrounded by “toys.”
• Grief is a heart-wrenching desire for everything to stop and be quiet just for a moment.
• Grief is a loud laugh at exactly the wrong time or wrong place
• Grief is an inability to find anything amusing.
• Grief is an urgent need to be with people
• Grief is an urgent need to be away from people.
• Grief follows its own schedule.
• Grief comes in waves. Sometimes the biggest wave isn’t for weeks (or months or years).
• Grief is a fire that drives a need to find meaning and a purpose for our existence.
• Grief is a heaviness that bows the shoulders and weights the feet.
• Grief is a sadness around the eyes and behind smiles.
• Grief is loud.
• Grief is silent.
• Grief is palpable emotions – across the spectrum.
• Grief leads to all the imponderable questions, the hows and whys of this life in human form.
• Grief brings nostalgia and stories, many of them unrelated to the deceased.
• Grief is a preoccupation and a new absentmindedness
• Grief is an inability to concentrate on anything but an aching to concentrate on anything else.
• Grief is a deep desire for everything to go back to normal as soon as possible – knowing full well nothing will ever be the same again.

Grief is all these things and more.

Conceived in the Light

We are all conceived in the light.  Don’t go off on an anti-religion rant on me, hang with me. If “the light” bothers you, think of it as, we are all conceived happy, healthy and whole…it’s just easier to express as “in the light.”

Then life – from our birth mother’s womb forward — pushes on us. In some ways it pushes us away from the light and some ways it pushes us back in. Some times we actively choose to move back into the light. Some times we walk away from the light, maybe because it’s too bright, maybe because we are curious to see what’s out there in the dark.

Unless we are careful (and are carefully tended by those with that responsibility) we can find ourselves standing in the dark with no idea even what direction the light lies in.

It’s then we must listen. Listen carefully. There is always a voice to be heard…one that calls you home. The voice sounds different to different people. It must, because we are individuals, with our own unique journeys. For some it sounds like Buddha, for some Mohammed, for some God, for some Christ, for some Shiva, for some a random stranger who has stood in this same spot of darkness before, for some their own heart.

It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in the darkness. The voice is always there and you can always make your way back to the light.

But you must be still and quiet…and listen.

Why I opted out of grad school

The same year I graduated from Kindergarten, my mother graduated with her PhD in Food Chemistry from the University of Missouri, Columbia.  It was a really big deal.  There is a picture of freckled little me in an adorable pink dress standing with my mother in her cap and gown surrounded by the entire family (all the way up to my great-grandparents).  Being a university professor was the thing my mother most wanted to do.

I grew up in academia.  Wandering the university campus and especially the stacks in the libraries.  Family friends were mostly professors.  Family vacations were at the annual conference.  Somewhere deep in my heart the idea was planted that academia was the highest pinnacle of a well-lived life.  To this day, spending time on any university campus makes me feel as if I’ve come home.

Life going one way and another, going straight through school for my PhD wasn’t a realistic option. Instead, I built a lovely career as a statistical programmer in the pharmaceutical industry.  A career which has given me the great luxury of working from home and having an amazing work-life balance, while still bringing home a sizeable salary.  In my late 20s, the idea of a PhD and a life in academia started to creep back up.  In my mid-30s, I reached the now-or-never point.  If I was ever going to go on that journey, I needed to start now.  So I applied, and was accepted, to an excellent program at a good university with an assistantship that covered tuition plus a small stipend.  I spent a year doing the grad school “thing.”

Either academia has changed or, more likely, I have.  I decided not to go back.

Not because I couldn’t hack it — I was doing more than fine and had been invited by several professors to work with them on projects.

Not because I didn’t like it — because I loved going to class, having long conversations about the minutiae of research, developing hypotheses, and analyzing data.

But because I’m clear now on what it was I was hoping to get from that life —  to spend my days learning about diverse topics from different perspectives and to have opportunities to share my perspective with the world.

There was a time when academia was the only place you could do those two things.  With MOOCs, online learning communities, blogs, discussion boards and a whole host of other venues, the days of universities being the only place of meaningful learning are long behind us.  It is quick, easy and free to explore all sort of topics and discuss them with 100s of people from different perspectives, all without having to take time away from home and family.

As for sharing my perspective, academia is like standing on a stage with 100 other really bright people all of you shouting your ideas at a small subset of other really bright people who may or may not be interested in what you have to say (and are probably already formulating arguments to refute you as you speak).  Everybody essentially trying to prove to themselves and to the world that they belong in this elite group of people who have been marked as society’s purveyors of knowledge.

I prefer to stand quietly on a corner and talk with whomever happens to pass by, whomever happens to be interested…talk to learn and to share, and in that way grow my knowledge and spread my ideas without trying to prove anything to anyone.  This blog suits that purpose very well.  And I get to do it on my own schedule, gracefully maintaining the work-life balance I have discovered is so critical to my happiness.

Veggie Broth – Not Nearly as Difficult as Imagined

We’ve been mostly vegan for a very long time. We have for not quite as long, but still a good 5+ years, tried to limit our processed food intake.  One of the items I’ve never really considered replacing with homemade was vegetable broth.  It just seemed too complicated and time-consuming to consider making our own, when a nice steri-pak variety which contain only whole ingredients could be bought for an affordable price.  Why did I want to invest such a huge amount of effort?  Lately though, as our hearts get older, we’ve started working to reduce our sodium intake as well.  If you’ve ever checked out the FDA Nutrition label on even the “healthy” veggie broth, the sodium can be a little daunting.

So I bit the bullet and gave making my own broth a try.  Turns out it can be SUPER easy, and relatively quick.  Plus I can make a big batch and keep it in the fridge for up to a week, or the freezer for even longer.

My current favorite recipe is this: 

Vegan Eggplant Meatballs

Thursday is spaghetti night in our house.  Occasionally we mix it up a little and have lasagna.  Since we had found some beautiful eggplants at the farmer’s market, this week was supposed to be a lasagna week.  This morning I dutifully sliced and salted my eggplant in preparation. When I went to make the lasagna, however, I realized I had neglected to pick up the other ingredients I needed, most notably the lasagna noodles.  Which sent me on a search for a recipe to avoid wasting my beautiful eggplants.

A quick search on “vegan eggplant recipe” turned up this Vegan Eggplant Meatball recipe.  Meatballs would be perfect to go with the spaghetti.  After a few modifications, to match the ingredients I had on hand and to make it gluten-free (so I could eat them too!), the recipe looked like this:

My first attempt at most recipes gives barely edible results, but these were very yummy. Scoring 7/8, meaning 7 of the 8 people in my house both ate them and were willing to eat them again if I made them.

We call that an unmitigated success around here.

Depression – To the People Who are Standing With

Robin Williams died yesterday.  Of an apparent suicide. Yesterday evening my Facebook feed was full of caring messages from people.  “If you are struggling with depression, seek help.”  and “If you have a friend with depression be there for them.”

I agree wholeheartedly with both those sentiments. But I think they carry a harmful implication.  It seems clear from the news reports that Robin Williams was seeking help and that his family and friends were standing with him.  It still wasn’t enough to help him survive.

If you are sharing your life with somebody with depression, as a friend, as a partner, as a parent, as a child, you need to hear (and know) that sometimes you can do everything you can do, you can do everything right and still not “fix it.”

In the same way being diagnosed with cancer, getting the latest treatments and having all our friends support us for years doesn’t necessarily mean we will be a survivor, being diagnosed with depression, taking our meds and having our friends constant support doesn’t mean we can survive depression.  In both cases all those things help, but in both cases they aren’t always enough.

And just like you wouldn’t feel responsible if your friend loses their battle with cancer, please, please, please, please, don’t feel responsible if they lose their battle with depression.

Parenting Teenagers

I have a friend who blogs here. She does a beautiful job of being honest and hopeful.  I always find myself thoughtfully examining why I make the parenting choices I do after reading her posts.

Recently she joined me in the world of teenagers (see her post on the topic). Under our roof we currently have three true teenagers (13, 16 and 18), two twenty-somethings who are still making progress, and a 9 and 11 yr old who are getting entirely too close to teenage for comfort.

In her recent post, my friend asked for any and all advice.  Which set me to thinking what advice I would give.  After much thought, I think I can sum up my guiding principles for teenagers in three ideas.

Guiding Principle #1: Sometimes teenagers just need to be heard.

They just need you to listen as they rant (or whine or complain or scream or cry) about how awful their day (life or week or friends or school or job) truly is.  They don’t want you to fix it.  They REALLY don’t want you to give them advice.  They’d prefer you didn’t try to convince them its not as big a deal as they think it is.  They just want you to listen.  Let them know you understand.  And remind them that it’ll all be ok.  (Really, isn’t that exactly what we all want most of the time?) At which point they may still roll their eyes and/or stomp away.  But that’s all they need from you.  They can work through the rest on their own.  Give them a bit, you’ll notice the weather change before too long.

Guiding Principle #2: Sometimes the parent just needs to say something.

Teenagers are horrible monsters sometimes.  They just are.  It’s part of figuring out who they are as adults.  They say mean things. They do dumb things. They make poor choices.  They have weeks (months or years) of self-centeredness.  As the parent, sometimes (not always, but sometimes), we need to point out to them when it’s happening.  We don’t need to belabor the point.  We don’t have to hold it against them.  We aren’t always required to hand out consequences.  Sometimes we just need to let them know that this behavior or that approach is not acceptable and will lead to trouble.  They will most likely yell “you just don’t understand” and storm from the room.  Or even worse (at least in my opinion), their eyes will fill up with tears and they’ll look completely destroyed.  Sometimes you just need to be the one that tells them they have lettuce in their teeth, and then let them work out, on their own, how to get it out. As adults we expect the people who care about us to do that, in a kind and gentle way.  We should do the same for the almost adults under our care.

Guiding Principle #3: You have to say things over and over and over again.

In some ways, teenagers are big toddlers.  When they were toddlers, you had to tell them No over and over and over again.  When they are teenagers, you have to have the same conversations over and over and over again.  But also, just like when they were toddlers, if you are consistent (and keep the right attitude/tone) you’ll find you have good results after a while.  The first time you give them some advice they may storm from the room yelling “you just don’t understand” (see Guiding Principle #2).  The next time they’ll roll their eyes at you and change the subject.  A few times later they’ll have a civilized discussion with you about why they agree or disagree.  A few times more and they’ll ask some questions to clarify their understanding.  Then one day you’ll overhear them giving that same advice to somebody else.  I know it sounds miraculous.  I wouldn’t have believe somebody either, if I hadn’t seen it happen myself, more than once, with very different children.

I have no evidence (yet) to suggest these principles are helping my children grow into loving, emotionally-balanced and responsible adults.  But I do know they help me stay grounded and patient (more days than not, anyway), which can only be good for our relationship in the long run.  I’m relying on the hope that it’s that relationship that really matters.