Indiscriminate Drivel

Don’t Look Down

Fear-of-HeightsI’m not afraid of heights. Not really. I mean, I can easily do Ferris wheels and tall buildings. I’ve stood on the thick plexi-glass floor on the top level of the Sears tower. I’ve been to the top of the Space Needle. Had drinks at the Metropolitan Museum rooftop bar in New York.

I’m not afraid.

But watching my children maneuver when they are somewhere high up where they could possibly fall? That terrifies me.

It’s a good metaphor for life, I guess.

The general advice for people afraid of heights is don’t look down.  Of course you know down is there but if you look, you could get dizzy and that increases the risk of the very thing you fear, stumbling, falling, jumping.

Life isn’t a vertical journey, though. We have what’s up ahead and we have what is behind us. Often people will tell you not to look back, leave the past in the past, soldier on, move forward. That’s all good and fine but I have a different view. I think the equivalent to the person afraid of heights looking down is the person unsure about the future looking ahead. It can cause dizziness and fear.

And looking back doesn’t have to mean holding onto that which you must move past. You can look in the rear-view mirror simply to see the progress you’ve made.

Back when I had a team of people reporting into me, this was a mantra of mine. Often, we were so busy, spending so much time seemingly banging our heads against the wall, feeling like it was impossible to get anything done, I would often say “Look back and see what we did.” Because your progress is easily visible when you look back. And if we can look back and see progress we’ve already made, even in tough circumstances, then it’s logical that we can expect more progress in our futures, even if it seems impossible in the moment, dizzying, head-bangingly frustrating.

That’s my life right now. I get dizzy looking ahead. Things still have not settled down. I have that horizontal fear of heights regarding my future. I’m anxious for everything to be orderly, and yet right now I’m still unsure of how it will all come out. But when I look in my rear-view mirror, I know there is progress. Adjusting, adapting, coming to terms with the new reality of my life. I’m working. I’m sleeping at night. I go out socially with good friends. I grocery shop on Wednesdays. I have a routine, a brand new routine that now includes mowing the lawn and repairing lamps. I bought a drill. And if I have an occasional day where I barely get out of bed (ahem, yesterday I binge-watched The Newsroom all day), it’s because I choose not to, not because I just can’t.

If looking forward makes you dizzy, just don’t. Don’t look down.  Look back to see how far you’ve come and let that give you assurance that you will continue to move forward, even if things are still unsettled. Even if you’re still trying to work out some really big stuff. It’ll be OK. You’ll get through it. Life’s gravity will pull you forward.  Just do your best, it’s almost always good enough.

Signed,

Talking to Myself

 

By |July 11th, 2016|Indiscriminate Drivel, Not even a little funny|Comments Off on Don’t Look Down

Perfect Attendance

 

Mom 1Our mothers are our first and most important female role models.

In those early years, they are the center of our universes. We think they know everything.

A few years later, the eye-rolling starts and before long, we’re bound and determined to do the exact opposite of anything our mothers tell us we should do.

Here is the one thing you should know about my mom – she had perfect attendance in high school, a fact she never failed to throw in our faces.

“MOM! I think I have that flesh-eating bacteria. Or maybe leprosy. I can’t go to school today. Call the attendance office and tell them I won’t be in.”

“Linda. Get your uniform on and get to school. I had perfect attendance in high school, you know.”

Now, it’s possible it didn’t go down that way. Probably, she didn’t throw it in our faces at all. In fact, I may never even have had a flesh-eating bacteria.

Memory is a fallible thing.

Maybe it went something like this:

The young, sassy version of me standing in the kitchen, hands on my hips. “Pam’s mom is a nurse. Peggy’s mom works for Century 21 and wears a gold blazer. Lisa’s mom makes homemade ravioli on Thanksgiving. Have you ever done anything? What do you have for me to toss into this competition, Mother?”

And she’d be all lower-lip-trembling, blinking back tears, her voice breaking up “Well… I did have perfect attendance in high school, but, really, it was no big deal.”

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle of those two scenarios. I don’t actually remember Mom telling us she had perfect attendance. As a little girl, I remember going through her big leather jewelry chest, one drawer at a time, and seeing that high school perfect-attendance pin laying there on the red velvet next to her class ring and some of the most amazing giant daisy clip-on earrings I had ever seen.

I just always knew my mom had perfect attendance in high school.

Some years after high school, she married my dad and before long, she had three babies in diapers at the same time.  We weren’t multiples, we were just Irish. And Catholic.

Eventually, my youngest sister joined the family. Once all four of us were in school, my mom went back to work. It wasn’t  gold-blazer job or anything like that, but still, it was a darn good job. I don’t think they gave perfect attendance awards at work, but if they did, she would have gotten one. Well, until the blizzard hit.

In 1982, St. Louis had a huge blizzard. Over 18 inches of snow fell on us on a quiet Sunday. The whole city came to a stand-still. Monday was, of course, a snow-day for us kids, but my mom was determined to go to work. She had all four of us out there digging her car out of its city block parking spot. And we did. We dug that car out. I remember thinking “Now what, Mom?” I wondered if she was going to have us run ahead of the car and shovel the road all the way to Anheuser-Busch.

If there was a perfect attendance award at her work, she lost it that day. She couldn’t get to the office. She was not happy.  My mom didn’t like to miss work. She wasn’t the type to not show up.

Because, as you know, she had perfect attendance in high school.

In contrast, I did not.

My siblings and I knew better than to try to fake illness with my mom to get out of school. Fortunately, she left early for work and my dad was the parent in charge in the mornings. My strategy, once I reached the devious and brilliant age of adolescence, was to wait for Mom to leave and then approach Dad.

“Uh, Dad? I have really bad cramps.”  I would say. He didn’t ask questions after that.

That only worked until Mom found out, because even with menstrual cramps, Mom showed up.

The truth is, I didn’t even finish high school. I had to do that Catholic schoolgirl walk of shame, my white blouse untucked from my uniform skirt to cover up my burgeoning baby bump. I finished my diploma via correspondence courses.  My mom made sure I showed up, even if it was by US Postal Service.

My first daughter was born when I was 18. I was still living at home. I needed some time to get my mom-legs steady under me and learn how to handle this whole being-in-charge-of-another-human thing. My mom showed up for me through all of that.

Eventually, I moved out and then had a second child. When the marriage to their father failed, I found myself a single mother. I had my kids and I had a job, but he took the only car we had, so I had no vehicle and no money with which to buy one.

During that period in my life, my mom showed up at my house every morning. She picked me and the girls up, drove to my babysitter’s house so I could drop my kids off, drove to my office so she could drop her kid off, then she went to work. At the end of the day, my mom showed up to pick me up from work, then took me to pick my daughters up, took us home and finally went home herself. For over a year, five days a week, until I could afford a little used car of my own, my mom showed up for me.

Over the years, my mom showed up for a lot of things. Softball games, band concerts, birthday parties. Sometimes I landed on her doorstep with an overdrawn checking account or a failed marriage and she showed up for me then, too.

Looking back, I kind of wish we would have shoveled her all the way to work the day of that blizzard in 1982.

I can’t go back and do that, of course, but what I can do, and what I’ve tried to do, is follow in her footsteps and show up for my daughters.  And while I’ve been tempted to join the Witness Protection Program during those teen years, thus far, I’ve been true to her example.

I’ve shown up for them because my mother, the most important role model in my life, always showed up for me.

Needless to say, I stopped rolling my eyes many years ago.

There’s a lot going on in my life right now. I’ve just started a new job. I’m in the middle of a divorce. Sometimes I need someone to pick up my kids for me and sometimes I need someone to pick up the phone for me. In any case, I know I can reach out to my mom, because where motherhood is concerned, she has perfect attendance.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!

Mom 3

Mom 2

Mom 4

 

 

By |May 4th, 2016|Indiscriminate Drivel, The Parent Hood|Comments Off on Perfect Attendance

Pam: A Tribute

When I was in second grade, my best friend, Terri Pederschmidt, moved away. I was despondent. Trust me – there is nothing more pathetic than a despondent 7 year old.

Shortly after that, a house went up for sale, just down the block from Clancy’s Market and Our Lady of Sorrows church. Our Lady and I – we knew sorrow. Jack and Marilyn Hobart bought that house and that’s when Pam came into my life.

I think we should have renamed the school Our Lady of Let’s Get This Party Started because that’s what happened.  That’s when it all began.

Me and Pam

Pam was a firecracker. A unifier. An organizer. Pam made things happen. She was the lynchpin of our social circle.

When we moved to the big world of high school, Pam branched out and made friends with everyone. She never met a stranger. Everyone knew her. Everyone loved her. But she called me her best friend.

Just after high school, I got a quick jump on getting married and having children (not necessarily in that order). Pam was my pillar.  She stood by me and helped me in every possible way. She never let me fail.

She was also a helluva lot of fun to have around and she made sure I occasionally left the stress of life behind and shared some of that fun with her.

Pam was my best friend and I was lucky to have had her.

Here’s what you need to know about Pam.

  • She cussed like a fucking truck driver.
  • She rocked the banana clip.
  • She hated her middle name.
  • She made the best chicken salad, which is why I make the best chicken salad.
  • She organized the most incredible float trips. And Halloween parties. And birthday parties – especially her own.
  • She compulsively cleaned which was only one of the reasons she was great to have at a party.
  • She made everybody dance. When Pam yelled at you to get your ass out on the dance floor, well, you got your ass out on the dance floor.
  • She was amazing with kids. Especially mine. My kids had 2 mommies way before it was trendy. My daughters were the first to call her  Aunt Pammy, but she was Aunt Pammy to many children before she had a niece and nephews of her own.
  • She never ever liked to waste a beautiful day. It didn’t matter how late she was out the night before, she’d be up early trying to get us moving to go outside, go to the park. Or something.
  • She had an endless supply of energy. She never stopped.

Well, until now and I just can’t fathom it. I can’t wrap my brain around a world that doesn’t have Pam bustling around somewhere, cleaning something, yelling at someone, making someone laugh.

I haven’t seen Pam much in recent years, but often on my birthday, my phone would ring and there she’d be. “Hey, Girl! Happy Birthday!” and it was like no time had passed at all.

I always expected Pam and I would have time in the future, when my kids were grown and we were retired, where we could sit together and reflect back on the good ol’ days. We would look through old photographs and lament over how we’d lost touch. I would say things like “I’ve missed you.” and “I should have come visit.”

But who am I kidding, that would never happen…. Pam did not sit. She’d be busy organizing my spice cabinet or something.

It’s been 20 years since life took Pam and me in different directions. That’s a long time, but I’ve never stopped referring to her as my best friend. I’ve never bestowed that important title on anyone else in my life.

Because Pam? Well… she’s irreplaceable.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Godspeed, Pam. I’ll miss you, and I’ll come visit.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Author’s note: Pam passed away in the spring of 2016, in her 50th year. The tribute above is what I read at her memorial service. I still talk to Pam, it’s just that now she can’t interrupt me. That’s probably hard for her but it makes me smile every time I think about it.

By |April 25th, 2016|Indiscriminate Drivel|Comments Off on Pam: A Tribute