I Want a Guy..

Madeline: I want a guy who is tall and really hot and has gorgeous eyes and beautiful hair and who has some money and works hard and provides for our family but also makes time for his family and who supports me and whatever I want to do and who really loves me and is a really good father to our children.

Me: yes. That's exactly what you deserve. And don't give up until you find that.

This little declaration from my newly 13 year old daughter brought me some serious validation and peace of mind.  I don’t know how, at 13 years old, my girl has more wisdom than some of us will die wanting.  But I like to think I had something to do with it.  In fact, I like to think that her father and I, and our sincere but failed efforts to live happily ever after, taught her everything to do and not do.  

She is determined to have a hard working man who makes her feel safe and cared for.  Her father taught her that.  He has an unmatchable work ethic and knows how to earn and take very good care of his family.  His children want for nothing.  I mean, they’re kids, so they always want something.  But they have more than enough.  They’re childhood will never be forgotten.  

But that work ethic cost us at times.  My dad once told me, when I called him in tears because I was so lonely because my boyrfriend was a workaholic, “you can’t fault him for working hard.”  I’m not so sure that’s true.  There is a fine line between admirable and heartbreaking when a person puts work first.  Running a company may sound like a higher priority than pre-k graduations or t-ball games, but it’s not.  Part of that unforgettable childhood my children are having will be those memories of dad not showing up.  

She wants to have a family, because family is everything.  We’ve taught her that.  But she doesn’t want to be single-handedly responsible for parenting.  She will be a great mom who does anything for her kids, but she won’t be a stay at home mom who sacrifices EVERYTHING for the sake of her family.  She has plans.  Big plans.  And she’s gonna have it all.  But she has assured me that she believes that my staying home and raising our kids and putting myself last, always, made me happy, and was exactly what I wanted to be doing.  She knows I consider myself lucky to have had that opportunity.  She admires her dad for making it happen.  But she also sees me now, trying to get back on my feet without the help of a hard working man to provide for me.  She worries, and she is determined to never put herself in that position.  I taught her that.  I taught her to do what makes you happy, but to be self-sufficient, a lesson I learned the hard way.  And it was worth it, to give her the confidence and wisdom to know better. 

Say I Love You

Once when I was at my father’s parents house, I looked at my daughter and was so enamored with her that I grabbed her and smothered her with kisses and said “I love you so much.”  My grandmother told me that she was so happy to hear me say that to my daughter.  “Not all kids get to hear that, you know?”  I didn’t know.  How do parents resist that overwhelming urge smother their babies with love and adoration?  And in that moment, I realized how differently my parents were raised.  My father was raised by an adoring mother who knew the value of her words, and my mother was raised by a well intentioned, stern italian father who spoke more to criticize than to praise or adore.  And it showed.  

My mother struggled with words like “proud” and “love”.  Make no mistake, she mothered with pride and more love than I sometimes deserved, but saying those words out loud was usually more than she could muster.  It was as if no one taught them to her.  But she proved her undying love so certainly that it never even occurred to me to be miss the words.  On the contrary, my father won’t let me off the phone without an “i love you” exchange, and a few moments of gushing praise about how proud he is of the mother I am.  Yet I have only one vivid memory of my mother uttering such words.  It’s vivid because it was so rare, not because she was on her death bed.  

The last coherent thing my mother said to me was “I’m proud of the mother that you are to my grandchildren”.  It wasn’t exactly on her death bed, but she was in bed as she had just lost the use of her legs to a brain tumor and I’m sure she knew that the rest of her body probably wasn’t far behind.  She asked me to sit down and then said those very words, with a strength that, ironically enough, she didn’t have before her illness.   Maybe she knew her brain wasn’t going to let her remember who she loves, or what makes her so happy and proud.  Maybe her fading memory let her forget that she spent her lifetime struggling with the inner strength and self assurance to express her deepest thoughts without fear of shaming.   Whatever the reason, she said those words with a confidence and sincerity that only a terminal brain tumor could finally grow.   And those will forever be some of the most important words I have ever heard.  

It should be so easy to express our joys.  Yet we often spit out the more hurtful and scarring words without any thought or hesitation, and then choke on the words that we’d all love to hear.  Why do we hesitate to say the most beautiful things, the words that pull us closer, right by the heart strings?  If my parents are any indication, it is all about the parenting (isn’t everything?).  We have the power and responsibility to teach our children to love unabashedly.  We have to give them the confidence to express themselves without the irrational fear that love hurts.  We can’t burden them with a weakeness that has them grasping at a strength which can only be found on a deathbed.   You love them.  Tell them.  Tell them often.  Tell them to ensure that they will tell your grandbabies.  

The other day, my  5 year old caught me starting at him and said, “I know, I know, you love me.”  Yes, I say it so much it’s almost annoying, and I mean it, wholeheartedly, every single time.  

Love out loud.  It’s what the world needs now.  

Charge through it.

I’ve hear the tales of mom’s who lose themselves to motherhood.  We sacrifice it all for the greater good of our family because we are mom and if mom doesn’t do it, who will.  No one loves like Mom.  Mom is Mom and there is no one like Mom.   

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed these years of giving my absolute all to my all-too-often-thankless family who far too rarely ask me what I need.  I sadistically enjoy pushing myself and striving to please people who are constantly reminding me what I’m NOT doing for them.  Those genuine smiles and fleating moments of geniuine admiration and graciousness and gratefulness, when they just can’t help but admit that I’m actually the best person in their whole life, have always been enough to shake the lingering feeling that I am a huge dissapointment to them.  But they are children.  My children.  And it is my job to shake that selfishness out of them.  Children are selfish.  Innately selfish.  And it is a huge parental responsibility, for the sake of the greater good of all mankind, to teach them that selfishness is unacceptable.  No, you simply may not walk this earth thinking that you are the most important thing on it.  And while I can’t stress enough how difficult that is to explain to a toddler, or a 15 year old oldest child, or her three younger siblings (because when you have three siblings nothing in life is ever fair, EVER!), I never imagined I would be tolerating it from the man who was supposed to be in these parenting trenches with me. I never imagined that he would let me get so much deeper into those trenches, alone, and up against four kids.  i didn’t stand a chance.  

So I lost a battle.  I sacrificed myself and took one for the team.  I took on a very big little army and I didn’t have the back up that I needed when those trenches got dark and deep.  And I let my guard down, heading into enemy territory (parenthood) with a selfish partner.  I needed someone who was going to follow me into the depths of hell when need be, and who would reach down and grab me and pull me up when it was painfully obvious that I was in over my head.  I needed that.  You can’t just hunker down and make yourself comfortable in the parenting trenches.   Especially when you have four kids.  Just because I manage to keep us all alive and get dinner on the table and rarely ask you to lift a finger doesn’t mean I’m winning the battle.  There is a war going on, and  that is not the level of solidarity and united front that wins wars.  

But that’s what mom does.  I was so blissfully enthralled in this parenting war and so madly in love with my four enemies (precious babies) that I failed to notice that my back up was…back…way, way back.   Definitely out of reach and practically out of sight, unless it was his turn for my affection.  But I charged through.  I always charge through.  Even now, after I have surrendered to one painfully lost battle, after I have armed my kids with some destructive resentment and bitterness to use against me, I continue to charge through.  after my broken heart finally convinced me that I might be stronger on my own rather than weakened by the dissapointment of a life partner who didn’t love me with all his heart and who I couldn’t count on to be by my side if he simply didn’t want to, I let go, and charge through.  

That’s what mom does.  And it was worth it because if there is one thing my kids have learned, it’s that I would take a bullet for them, even from their own smoking guns.  I’m mom, and you will put me through hell while I raise you to not be a selfish prick, and you will hate me and you will blame me and you will unleash all of your frustrations, whether significant or utterly ridiculous, my fault or yours, on me.  It will all fall on me.  Mom.  Because only a mom can forgive you over and over again as you fail and grow and (god willing) learn to get over yourself.  

I feel like a lone soldier these days. Deeper in the trenches than I have ever braved before.  But somehow I feel stronger just knowing that I’m on my own rather than looking behind me and always feeling dissapointed.  

Milestone: Our first broken heart...

“I was always worried about his feelings and ignoring my own. I apologized when it wasn’t my  fault. I allowed myself to tolerate it when he stopped showing me the kind of affection I wanted. I think I lost myself a little.”  

She sure did.  My daughter fell hard in love.  She held out for the real deal and she went all in for the very first time, and it was big.  It changed her.  She wore a giant smile and exuded a radiant happiness.  Love.  She had discovered love. She was in love.   His happiness meant everything to her, and it can be very easy to lose yourself to that.  

It was a great first love, one that appeared worthy of my girl.  He often recognized and gushed over all of the beautiful things about her, inside and out.  They wore matching giant smiles.  It was genuine and unabashed and I admired it.  It reminded me that love is beautiful and happy and well worth the risks, and quite honestly, it healed that last seemingly loveless piece of my broken heart.  It made me wholehearted again.  And then it shattered my baby’s heart.  

I was lucky to be wholehearted again, and to have healed my own shattered heart just in time to have the strength and wisdom to help her put her’s back together.  I will never forget the tears and despair and pain and confusion in her eyes as she sat across from me, blindsided, trying to make sense of it all.  I remember her asking me questions that she knew I couldn’t possibly have the answers to, even after 43 years of dealing with boys and love and heartache.  She was in so much pain that she was pleading with the one person that she often seems to think doesn’t know anything, for any answer that would make it hurt a little less.  How could love feel so good and then so very bad?  And with all of my newly healed heart, I felt my own first devastated broken heart all over again.  And while we both knew I didn’t have any answers for how someone who loved her could rip our heart out,  I had the experience and wisdom and scars to know that we were both going to survive this, and persevere.

My girl is, by nature (and nurture), strong and not easily rattled.  She is calm, cool and collected.   So as I watched her wallow and sink into sadness, rattled as hell, it shook me to my core.  I cried many, many tears at the very thought of my girl’s tears and the shared sympathetic pain that inevitably comes from being forever connected to my babies by the heart strings.  I knew what she was carrying was very heavy and nothing I could do could ease that.   I knew that to her, it felt eternally hopeless and painful and insurmountable.  But I knew better.  I knew that not only would she heal and love again, but she will also have her heart broken again...and again and again. 

In true Madeline form, she’s bounced back nicely, seemingly well aware that it’s his loss.  If we are very lucky, we learn some very important lessons from our first gut wrenching broken heart, and each one that will inevitably follow. Listening to my 15 year old reflect on her first love and loss with wisdom beyond her years and  resilience and sincere honesty and genuine introspection, and when all is said and done, no regrets, gives me great comfort and hope that she will one day, even before her time, be nearly unbreakable.  

I like to think that my children were all Inherently born with all of the lessons that I already learned for them the hard way, but love and loss is one of those things we all have to live and learn.  

Wholehearted

"She never seemed shattered;
To me, she was a breathtaking
mosaic of the battles she had 
won."

My heart is not shattered anymore.  It is no doubt battered and bruised, but I am once again, wholehearted.  I’ve let go of angry and bitter.   I think sadness may always linger.  And that’s ok.  I no longer resent the fact that I gave so much of my time and heart and oozed love for someone who couldn’t do the same.  I’m sad that our family had to pay so dearly for that.  But I found a strength that I desperately needed to walk away from it, by digging deep to get my kids through it.  And I have found a peace of mind and heart in hearing my once broken hearted babies assure me that they understand why I gave up on my relationship and still know, unequivocally, that I will never give up on them.  

I’m not afraid of love.  I remember it so fondly.  It has quite literally barged into my life these last few years, when I most desperately needed to be remind that I was worthy of it, and when I most certainly could not reciprocate with my shattered, war weary heart, as wholeheartedly as I was genuinely built to do.  I’ve learned some crushing lessons the hard way.  One is how selfish it is to offer a genuinely passionate lover with the very best of intentions, who looks at you as though they see their home and future in your eyes, and feels lucky, genuinely lucky to have you, anything less than the very same in return.  And another, is that I can love a man with all my healing heart, and still know when to look him in the eye and say “you’re just not the one”, because I was not built to be that selfish.  We all deserve someone who is convinced we are the one. 

I’ve had some great loves.   Loves that have shaped my vision of love and made me feel worthy of my quest for genuinely happy ever after.  Loves that have taught me that I deserve respect and loyalty and honesty and friendship and love.  Loves that I will love forever, even if they taught me a few of those lessons the hard way.  Loves I have loved enough to let go.  And I’ve been reminded of and become very familiar with the kind of lover i am when i am fearless and wholehearted; selfless, nurturing, supportive, romantic and passionate as hell, and how lucky someone will be to have the whole hearted me again.  

And I have forgiven the man who once had this whole hearted and devoted love in the palm of his hands, nurturing him and his children with all her heart and soul, and shattered it because he couldn’t help but always wonder if he could do better.  I’ve healed enough to know that he probably did love me quite a bit, but wasn’t about to (or able to) make himself vulnerable enough to do so as selflessly and unabashedly as i thrive on.   I’ve grown enough to feel genuinely sad for him (for us) for that, and to know I can’t fix it.  

Love.  I am not short on love.  I have been swimming in love since the day I became a mother and I soak in that blissfulness.  But my healed, whole heart has reminded me that I am a lover; a fiercely passionate lover.   And it’s scars remind me that I’ve earned my high standards and great expectations and that it takes courage to love fearlessly and with an insatiable passion,.   And it’s peaceful resilience has convinced me to be patient and that I can trust it, wholeheartedly, to know when it finds and feels “the one”.   

A Decade Without Grandma

Just before my mother lost the ability to communicate, she told me that she was proud of the mother I am; that I am a good mother.  It was out of character for her to praise like that.  She was more of constructive criticizer by nature, with a very loving, well intentioned heart.  But I think she knew things were about to go very downhill, and she didn’t want to leave me without saying those words.  And those words, from her, were gold.  To this day, “You’re a good mother” is my most cherished compliment.  Her words ring in my head often and have pealed me off the floor in some of my darkest parenting moments. 

I have a horrific memory of one of my mother’s last days on her death bed.  We had reached that hopeless point where we were left with no hope and could only pray for the peace and comfort of death for her.   She was suffering but clinging to what little life she had left.  She was fighting so hard for her every breath and her body was writhing in discomfort.  I hugged her and cried and begged her to let go.  I whispered in her ear, telling her it was ok to go.   “Madeline is going to be ok.  I promise.”  Madeline was her beloved first grandchild/best friend/new found reason for living.  And suddenly, she seemed to stop fighting quite so hard.  She let her guard down and seemed to raise her white flag before dying in the wee hours of the next morning.   It occured to me, in that gut wrenching moment, how badly my mother did not want to leave her grandchildren.  I was pregnant with my third child when she died, and aside from how very much she cherished her grandbabies and deserved to soak up the utopia of grandparenthood for many, many years, and fought for that privelege, literally until her very last breath, I’m certain that a lot of that fight came from her concern for her poor daughter who was about to be in way over her head with three children.  

This spring will mark 10 years since my mother died.  I think I’ve cried at least a tear or two, every single day, since someone pointed that out to me a while back.  10 years without my safety net/lifeline, and all while taking the biggest leap and fighting the biggest battles of my life.  A decade of motherhood without our grandma.  I fantasize all the time, about having that other human on earth, who may have loved her grandchildren even more than I love them.  And I resent that she’s gone.  Her grandchildren brought her a pure joy that she had yearned for her entire life.  I so enjoyed seeing that twinkling joy in her eyes.  And I gave that to her.  I owed her grandchilren, at the very least, and I delivered.  I like to believe that I redeemed myself, just in the nick of time.  

So I cry because I resent that she’s gone and missing out on the blissful hell that is her grandchildren and the opportunity to pretend that they are all bliss and no hell, all while silently snickering about the well deserved hell we both know I’m enduring in motherhood.  

And I cry because I need help, from no one on this earth, more than my mother.  I need that one person who’s footsteps I’m following through familly  and motherhood;  That one person who taught me everything she didn’t know either but we both learned along the way.  That one person who knows my children are putting me through hell sometimes, and genuinely sympathizes, but kind of enjoys it and loves her grandchildren even more for it.  I need her.  Grandma is the only person on earth who will almost always move mountains to help in the deepest deaths of parenting hell.  And this last decade of stay at home motherhood/housewife turned divorced single mother of 4 has had me at rock bottom (God willing).  I need her.  I need that person that will support my every whole hearted (often failed) effort, and my every blind, irrational decision, all while pointing out every mistake I have made or could be making along the way (none of which I asked for and millions of which I would never even have thought of).  I need her.  My kids always accuse me of telling them how beautiful they are or that they are good at everything they attempt because I'm their mother and I HAVE TO.  I need that person.  

The other day, my dad called to tell me that I am a good mother.  He tells me two things often, “Your mother was a saint” and  “You’ve mastered the art of parenting.”  And on this day, I was a master of parenthood.  And I cried, because just the night before, I was lectruing my boys about how I have dedicated my life to,  and poured my heart into raising good, kind, positive children, and how much it hurts me when they absolutely cannot get along and respect each other despite all my efforts.  I shamelessly told them that it makes me feel like a failure and that I didn’t think I deserved that.  I could tell it tugged at their heart strings just a little bit, but not enough to actually conquer sibling rivalry.  But here was my hero dad, to save the very next day, by spontaneously calling me to echo my mother's golden words;  "You're a good mother".  And while we both know that I am more the "Jack-of-all trades, master of none" type of mother, and I’m still entirely winging it every step of the way, we also both find comfort knowing that I’m following my mother’s footsteps (and I can feel heartbeat in every step).  But I need her.  And I’m guessing I’ll need her for decades to come.   

A decade later, my mother’s precious Madeline is now 15.  She is precisely the age I was when I started being a nightmare child to my poor mother.  She is the product of every ounce of the blood sweat and tears that I have poured into motherhood, and she is a gem.   She is the lovely young daughter my mother always dreamed of, and I hope my mother knows how much of an angelic hand she has had in that.  

Divorce is Hard...I Hope You Never Have to go Through it.

A while back, I was watching someone I love dearly go through a divorce.  He was in pain and I blamed and judged his ex, who I also loved.  I tried very hard not to judge, for a very long time, but one day she asked for my opinion, and I judged, harshly.  I threw things at her that we both knew she already knew and probably regretted and had already beaten herself up about.   And she responded with something like “Divorce is very hard.  And I’ve tried really hard and done the best I could do through those darkest moments.  I hope you never have to go through it.”  I can’t even wrap my head around how much of an understatement that was.  And then I beat myself up a little for kicking her while she was down.  

Years later, I went through my own divorce and darkest moments.  And I let myself crumble a few times and made very painful mistakes, some that I will never forgive myself for.  I was numb for a year, and breathless and dizzy and lost and angry and sad and trying to charge through all of that like a warrior, with my children in tow, determined to get us all through it, not just fairly unscathed, but better off because of it.  It was an even bigger challenge than it sounds.

I apologized to her, and told her how often her words rang in my head every time I tried to talk myself into forgiving myself for my darkest times and weakest moments.  The ones that inevitably come from the devastating failure and heartbreak of shattering your perfect family and giving up on happily ever after.   I felt sincerely terrible for adding insult to her injuries.  She was graciously forgiving and grateful for my long overdue understanding.  And so sorry that I was going through it.  

“Divorce is very hard.”  And for a very long time, it gets harder and harder.  Giving up on my lover was hard as hell.  Shattering my family was gut wrenching and life changing and often, seemingly unforgivable.  It was by far, the greatest casualty of this war.  Memories of our happy family still haunt me every single day.  And in those dark moments of my post-divorce life, when our new family dynamic took my kids away from me for days at a time, and we missed each other terribly, I wallowed in failure and guilt and cold, heartless, bad decisions.  When I wasn’t devastated, I was numb.   

But I have some feeling coming back now.  I’ve seen smiles return on my kids faces.  I’ve heard most of them tell me that they understand now.   I’ve listened to my oldest son vow to find a great love and treat her right so that he never loses her.  I’ve watched in awe as my teenage daughter chose a first love who oozes genuinely good intentions for her and isn’t afraid to tell her.  I watched my children watch and admire genuinely good men and learn the true meaning of selflessness and “love it or lose it”.  And just like that, two years and many regrets later, it was not all in vain.  

I’ve been dreaming about healing for years now.  But I think I’m ready.  I think I can muster up enough faith in my family’s strength and resilience to forgive myself for ever asking them to take on this fight in the first place.  ( And I believe I can thank myself for that.)  I think I’ve finally convinced them that when I said “trust me, we are all going to be ok” over and over and over again (with tears in my eyes), I meant it, and I was right.  I know they know, that in my life, they are first and foremost.  

It is very healing.  It’s much easier to forgive myself knowing that there is a good chance my children will forgive me.  It’s much easier to imagine letting another man love me knowing that my children believe that I deserve that.  It’s much easier to imagine letting myself love, wholeheartedly again, knowing that my 4 little hearts are mending again.  

“Divorce is hard.  I hope you never have to go through it.”