Hate is a waste of time

In my life, I have the unfortunate situation that I know a hater, a true meanie.  Now, this person - we'll call her Person X - is not a close friend of mine.  She is someone that I only know through others.  But she is mean and nasty.  Every time, without exception, that I have been in her presence or heard about an exchange that someone else has had with her has been full of her venom.  She never a nice thing to say about anyone; she is always the victim - everyone is a horrible person and she a saint among saints.  She will tell how she's been ripped off, abused, taken advantage of, walked upon, etc.  Yet it is she that claims income from two different ex-husbands, and has her bills paid by her current, this poor soul who never gets treated right.  She rarely lifts a finger for herself but instead has her children running her household for her - cooking and cleaning.  She'd cuss you out just to look at you.  Person X is not someone that you'd want in your life.


Now, I'm lucky, I don't have to deal with her often nor be in her presence much but she is someone that I have known for the past decade and a half and will probably have to come across her through our mutual connections once or twice more in my life.  And while I have no interest in being a close personal friend of Person X, I will say she has taught me something.  Through her vile ugliness of a disposition, I have learned that hate and anger is a total waste of time and energy.  You could match her hatefulness toe-to-toe, word for word and I guarantee you that she can out ugly you.  It isn't pretty when you have to be in the presence of such a person; it is a drain on your life.  I've seen her scars on people - the people that I know that have to deal with her much more regularly.  They are beat down, worn out by her nastiness.  All the while she's beating them with her sharp tongue, she's telling them it is their fault and not hers - that hers is the sorry lot in life.  I have expressed to our common friends that they are not to blame and should not take on that burden of her meanness.  There is no sense or purpose to her hatred - she hates everyone equally and is mean and nasty about it.


And so, she has taught me that it is far better to hold your tongue and say nothing when you have nothing but hatred to speak.  It does only damage to be mean and nasty to people.  I say, be kind - or be silent.  Spewing hate and making people feel terrible serves no purpose here.  If you seek only to hurt those around you, your life is empty and meaningless.  I can say I am not and will not ever be this way; and for that I am so glad.  My only wish is that I could help those she has hurt more than I can; I wish they did not have to deal with her at all, but it isn't within my control.  All I can do is send out my loving prayers that they have peace in their lives, despite Person X and that they can one day realize that her hatred, while hurtful to them is a waste of time just the same.  I hope one day they can be free of it and that I never have to lay eyes on Person X again.

Becoming a Step Mom

When I met and later married my husband, Ron, he came with a little extra gift.  That little gift's name is Rachel.  I met Rachel when she was just 2-1/2 years old.  She was just a little blond cutie, she smiled all the time and she was the apple of her Daddy's eye.  The very first time I met her, she was holding on to a kitty just as proud as she could be - the poor cat dangling from her chubby toddler hands.  She wanted to show her Dad what she was holding.  He nervously said, "Rachel, this is my friend Laura."  To which, she replied, "I caught this kitty," and then left the room.

Truth be told, I fell in love with Ron in part because I saw the kind of Dad he was to Rachel.  One of the early established 'rules' of our dating life was that I had to be willing to accept that he was a father and that Rachel came first.  I was fine with that - I appreciated that he so guarded his daughter.  As our relationship blossomed, I tried to interact with Rachel as a loving friend of her Dad's.  She was so young, there was no point in trying to explain our relationship to her - more important to just be a nurturing adult.  Rachel, from the start, was an openly loving little girl.  She hugged and cuddled and wanted to be around us all the time.

By the time we married two years later, we were a happy family unit.  Rachel was four years old when we got married.  I remember laboring over every detail of her involvement in the wedding.  She was a flower girl for us, we made sure to have a family picture of the three of us, I wanted her to have a special Daddy-Daughter dance but we decided it was too much for one wedding to do everything.  So instead, she danced with both of us and played with her cousins in her white flower girl dress and her hot pink tennis shoes.

Time, as it does, marched on and we brought first a sister and then a brother for Rachel.  By the time she was eight years old, she had two siblings with our family and another two on her mother's side. She was surrounded by younger children!

As I think back on those busy first few moments of dating, marriage, new step-parenting, babies, etc., I am struck by how many years have gone by!  Rachel is now 16, she is driving and she is a fully-fledged teen.  Our once warm relationship is cooler, partially by her age, partially by the physical distance between us - we live some 90 miles from her now but still try to see her every other weekend if she'll have us (remember - she's a teenager) and of course on school vacations and holidays.  But there is a coolness, too, fueled because I am her step-mom.  I think back on all the moments we've had with her and I miss so much of her when I think about how her as a child instead of the teen in front of me.

I remember going to pick Rachel up on her first day of Kindergarten.  We were so proud of her.  I took her picture at the school and I cried because she was so big.  We took her for ice cream to celebrate her accomplishment!  She was such a great kid, always helping with whatever was going on - always wanting to be with us.  I remember those times and held on to them because as time goes on, those opportunities get smaller and smaller.

I have always tried to treat her like my own child and I believe in my heart I've done that.  But that doesn't always cut it for a step-parent.  Step-parents (at least this step-parent) don't have the built in luxury of unconditional love from the child.  Rachel has always been more stand-off-ish with me as she has gotten older.  She's afraid of disappointing me, or upsetting me in some way (afraid, mainly, of a potential lecture if I am disappointed, I suppose), but what she doesn't realize is that even though she may not feel unconditional love for me, after all - I am not her Mom - I do love her unconditionally.  I have always loved her, which makes the teen distance all the more painful for this StepMom.  We don't see eye to eye on much these past few years, and it is hard for me.  I feel I don't have a say, don't want to impose my opinion although I find it very often choking the very air out of me to not speak up.  Particularly as she looks ahead to college, a subject I am afraid to broach with her because I have upset her so many times already.

I want so very much for my step-daughter.  I want her to know what success feels like, how wonderful life can be.  She has had a rough go in life, what with not having her parents together and then watching new children emerge from other relationships.  Having to get to know and understand new step-parents; watching a step-father go and another take his place. This has not been easy for her.  When she was little, she would creep closer to me, hoping for a hug, never asking.  I would often get frustrated with her quiet need, wanting her instead to just give me the hug.  I wish now I could go back in time and give her 100 hugs for every one I ever gave her.  I think what she needed was even more reassurance that I love her.  I try now to let her know through other ways that I love her.  I clean her room while she is gone, I encourage her to drive me around while she is here.  I get upset if we don't see her on our appointed visitation because I know that too soon, that will be gone.

Becoming a Step-Mom has been the most difficult thing I've ever done.  It is by far the most thankless of my roles, at least so far.  I don't know if I'm doing it right or wrong most days because I get just marked indifference at this point from our teen.  I just hope that when a few more years have passed we can look back on these years as something that eventually brought us closer.  Otherwise, I'll be just another one of the Wicked StepMothers for the fairy tales.  Only time will tell.

Celebrating a Life

                This week, I attended the Celebration of Life for my Great-Aunt Gerri.  As with all funerals, there is the normal sadness that the person is no longer with us, this was no exception.  We talked about how she loved to wear hats on special occasions and at church, in fact the ladies in her large family were wearing all 17 of her hats; three daughters, eight grand-daughters or grand-daughters in-law and six great-grand-daughters.  The minister talked about her great love of family and God, talked about her devotion to her community, her entrepreneurial spirit and her general love of life.  She was 90-years-old, so we truly celebrated a life well lived.  But the most touching, the most poignant, the most tear-jerking story was listening to the long descriptions of the love she and my Great-Uncle Walker shared.  They were married 70 years, until 13 months ago, when he passed away at the age of 90 as well.

                As my husband and I sat and listened to Aunt Gerri’s eulogies, we were both struck by the love story that was unveiled before us.  Through the words of Gerri and Walker’s daughters and grand-daughters, we heard about their love for each other.  Married at the ages of 17 and 19, surviving service in WW2, raising and loving three daughters, camping, fishing, helping the church, starting businesses, selling homes, retiring, helping with grandchildren and great grandchildren (including triplets!), travelling and finally, taking care of each other in their senior years, finally losing a battle with Alzheimer’s.  Then we watched the movie made out of old pictures; pictures of high school sweethearts, newlyweds, young family, all the way through their 80’s.  As we watched the pictures, we saw the love on their faces; we watched this beautiful life they had lived. 

                I’ve pondered their story ever since, I want to know their secret sauce, the recipe for making such a beautiful life.  I think the messages are in the story itself; in the description of how they struggled together, laughed together, worked side-by-side and really cherished each other as friends and as husband and wife.  Today, their story would be tragic.  A 17 year old marrying a 19 year old?  That sounds absurd!  But in 1941, not so tragic; and right away, they  persevered.  My uncle was drafted for WW2 and served three years in the war.  By 1943, they had their first child; no easy task to raise a baby while your husband is off at war.  The stories that were told about how they had little money and had to be creative to make ends meet remind me of how we each have to start out together, scratching our way through those first formative years of marriage.  No matter the challenge, you have to rise to meet it together.  My Aunt Gerri was a strong woman, she really ‘wore the pants’ in the family in some respects.  That reminds me a lot of the descriptions I hear about myself; so I really loved the touching parts about how, when my Uncle Walker was in thick of his Alzheimer’s, long after he had been able to reciprocate their deep love for each other on the outside, Aunt Gerri made sure that he had a good meal, maintained his dignity and woke up next to her in the morning. 

                When I held my husband’s hand as we walked out of the funeral, we both had the same thoughts that we shared with each other.  When our time is done, our hope is that the descriptions that were shared at my Aunt’s funeral, are similar to those that are shared about us.  How do you build a great love story?  One day at a time; loving, laughing, crying, enduring, appreciating, hugging and bonding; being constant, being all that you can be for each other.  What a mighty goal for each of us!  I believe we’re on our way.

For Ron

It is funny how one’s interpretation of love changes over time.  When I was a teenager, love was all consuming, my entire being absorbed in being “in love” with my boyfriend.  If he should forget to call, or not say he loved me or failed to mention my socks, I would fall apart into tears of despair and abandonment.  This would be followed by the highs of him brushing a wisp of hair away from my face and telling me my eyes were pretty or leaving a flower for me on my car after high school.  I would float away on Cloud 9, feeling all of my bi-polar happiness. 

As a 20-something, I was interested in a slightly more esoteric, mature feeling of love; something of substance, a coffee house experience – smoky and slightly Hemingway-esqe, but still a romantic; wanting to be at least a little swept off my feet.  I thought that I had wanted the romance Prince Charming mixed with intelligence of Albert Einstein.  However, when I met my husband, I was still not sure what true, enduring love, felt like.  At 28, I had had all these relationships that had been more of a sprint in the race for love – leaving me winded and out-paced in the marathon that love turns out to be. 

As it turns out, love and it’s endurance now fascinates me.  When I married my husband some 11 plus years ago, I had thought marriage and our love would be a lengthy honeymoon and as my kids like to say, “Nothing but cakes and cuddles”.  Reality would prove me very wrong.  Our first year of marriage was a rude slap in the face.  We had to combine money, share house work and basically live with the other person’s annoyances.  What we found in the midst of our nesting period and all the petty arguments of who should take out the garbage and/or do laundry was that at the base of it, we have a deep and abiding respect and friendship for each other.  We really like each other as people; I have found that to be enormously important years later. 

When I reflect on this love that I have for my husband, I think about falling in love with him the first time.  I thought I could do without him, the independent woman that I was, until we decided that we should take some time away from our budding romance for reasons that seemed reasonable at the time.  When he left my house after we talked about backing off for awhile, I thought I’d go to the gym but instead I collapsed in a heap on my couch after I thought about what we had just decided (I think it was my idea, mind you) and cried until I fell asleep.  I had never done that.  I woke up early the next morning and cried some more before heading off to work.  I didn’t even know why I was crying but I knew then that I was falling in love.  That was only the first leg of the race. 

And now, many years later, I have fallen in love with him so many other times since then that I really can’t recall every time.  This feeling of falling for my husband is usually after a cycle of wondering what I was smoking when I married him and I’m sure of him wondering what had possessed him to ask such a harpy for her hand.  But after such a cycle, I reflect on what makes our marriage endure and at the heart of it is the truest love that I have ever felt for another person other than my children and my parents.  It is the glue that keeps us together, binds us as no legal document ever could.  When we were married, this Shakespearean sonnet was read and I think it speaks volumes of the type of love that lasts:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark 
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
Within his bending sickle's compass come: 
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

I knew that we were in for the long haul but now with our first decade under our belt and safely onward to the next one, I realize that I am now a cross-country runner in the marathon of love; well seasoned to the long miles we must run together, side by side.  I’m as happy as I could ever be with my husband, my best friend, my mate.  And now I feel our poem is like this one from Elizabeth Jennings:

Tell me where you go
When you look faraway.
I find I am too slow

To catch your mood. I hear
The slow and far-off sea
And waves that beat a shore

That could be trying to
Call us toward our end,
make us hurry through

This little space of dark.
Yet love can stretch it wide.
Each life means so much work

You are my wealth, my pride.
The good side of me, see
That you stay by my side

Two roots of one great tree.

We are two roots of one great tree, we are the pair in a three legged race, holding on to each other for support as we run our marathon together, picking up memories along the way, falling in love with each other over and over.  

Is there meaning in an average life?

What is the meaning of life? That is a huge question isn't it? Who, besides maybe Oprah, Monty Python, or Dr. Phil; could answer such a question? But what about just looking at my life; what is the meaning of my little life?

When I was eighteen, I thought knew what I was doing. Really – I was, in some ways, more positive of who I was and what I wanted than I do today at thirty-nine. I think I just didn't know what I was in for - what life would throw my way. Don't get me wrong - it is all pretty boring stuff but just life happened you know? I am married with three kids (one I inherited upon marrying my darling husband) and I work full time. So, I could say that I'm just too busy to figure out what it is that is bothering me; what is not satisfied in my life. But ultimately, I feel that I have taken a mis-step somewhere and I'm hoping by blogging about my thoughts, the answers to what I am longing for will emerge. That is what my blog is about. I'm on a journey to fulfill a more rewarding life; one that I will be proud of; that my kids and my husband can be proud of and make me whole. This blog will help me sort it out.

So how does one aspire to be average? Maybe it just creeps up on you. I think it crept up on me, anyway. My dad likes to say that I peaked early when I start to whine too much about what it is that I am doing with my life. Maybe there is something to that – maybe I was at my best early on. Maybe 5^th grade was my best year – who knew? My parents always encouraged me, so I can’t really blame them for my overly average life. They didn’t put limits on me the way I know some people feel limited. They are realists; they basically let me know that my life is in my own hands. Maybe that is where this thing started to go wrong; it was left up to me. So perhaps I'll start somewhere between my memorable 5th grade year and today. I believe I need to retrace my steps before I look at where I am right now.

The things I felt so passionately about at eighteen are still inside me, but I somehow lost the courage of my convictions. I still care about the same things. Like the environment - I'm a tree-hugger and proud of it; I recycle, I don’t litter, I plant stuff. But I don’t compost – I should really compost; I tried it but then we had to move the composter; and now it is sitting empty.

I also feel the same way I did then about politics – liberal democrat through and through. But I miss most local elections; I don’t attend my public school board meetings and I haven’t become involved with my local party headquarters. I kept meaning to – but there was always something else to do. The list of my passions goes on and on – I was going to write the great American novel in my spare time before I was twenty-five, yada yada yada.

Don’t get me wrong; I have achieved certain things that I wanted. Or maybe better put, that I thought I wanted. After graduating from college, I went right out and started earning a living and I have now gotten to a certain modest level of success in my career. Mind you, very modest success, nothing to write home about. But, having this little level of success has afforded me to get some material “stuff”. I have a house, two cars and other material crap like furniture – oh, and the middle class debt that comes with all of that; debt will be another blog topic later.

So, what is the big quandary? I mean, I think I sound like a typical middle class American. But yet, this is not what I want. This is not who my inner voice said I was headed toward. Not that I want or need fame or fortune - not that; but how did I become so average? Where did I manage to get off track and become this boring white-bread middle class chick?

Maybe I am a bit cynical. After all, I spent my youth believing that I didn’t want to be part of the establishment – I was going to make more out of my life. I would be unconventional, bohemian and rail against 'the man'. I found out, to my surprise, a few years back that I am part of the establishment, I have become what I didn’t want to be – I am a cog in the wheels of industry, I am a soccer mom who babbles about her children, I have clawed my way to mediocrity; and it scares the hell out of me.