Choosing

Okay God,

I don't know why you've put Tim through all of this job-related stress over the last 3 years, but I have just about had it. I am tired. I am tired of never seeming to have enough money, of busting my rear trying to minimize grocery expenses while always knowing that the stupid house is on the verge of falling to shreds if we don't get new siding. I am tired of having to pay dental expenses out of pocket because my husband's employers are too cheap to get decent dental insurance for the 400+ people who work for them. I am tired of always feeling guilty when I buy myself new clothes. I am tired of having no margin financially. I am tired to feeling endlessly frustrated by our situation.

I don't want to learn any more lessons. I am satisfied with my character as is. I don't want to be grown, stretched, enlightened, humbled, or chastened.

Why, God? Why us? Why do we have to struggle so when for other people it is so easy? Why, on a day when I was finally feeling like I'd actually accomplished something, did you have to let this additional brick fall from the sky.

"Dear Tim, thank you for your recent interview...however..."

So now we are as stuck as ever. No money, crazy boss, house falling apart, aching hearts because frankly, God, it feels like you aren't noticing us here. We are stretched to the very limit financially, and it feels like you just don't want to see us.

I have a few ideas to fix this.

1) A large financial windfall -- about 25,000 ought to do it -- to cover the new windows and siding.

2) See No. 1

All right, that's really all I've got. But Lord, it would certainly help us sleep better at night. I really thought that this job, This Job, was the one...the one that would make it all okay. We'd be able to relax a little and start saving for some of these huge expenses. I was feeling kind of excited about it, about the possibilities. Especially The Possibility, that you laid on my heart so many years ago but which we've just never been even close to being able to afford.

Do you want me to go back to work? Is that it? I really thought you wanted me home with the kids, but maybe I was wrong about that. I don't know anymore. It seems more and more like we're not going to be able to make it if I don't. I know Tim thinks so sometimes, if only to relieve him of the pressure of being the only breadwinner.

And it is a lot of pressure. And it's hard to live under that kind of stress all the time. It has made our marriage a bit strained sometimes. Not always, but it does make us feel like less of a team.

God, I am going to choose here to believe that you know best. That this dumb job is not the be-all it seemed. I choose to believe that you're not ignoring us. That you have a plan for us and we just aren't seeing the big picture right now.

I choose to keep my eyes on you, but I am freely admitting that they're full of tears.

love,

me

If I Had a Hammer...

I am frayed around the edges today, pulled in 6 different directions, feeling like I am only half getting things done. Committments are fulfilled, but not to perfection and certainly not with good grace. And then, at the end of Day 3 of the Week of Total Craziness, the neighborhood clique strikes again.

My boy went over to see if he could get in on the pick-up baseball game going on in the yard behind ours. The game in which every child in the neighborhood is playing. Even preschoolers. Even 2 year old Lola. The game hadn't quite started, but my boy was told, "no, you can't play."

Why do they do this? I have asked myself this question over and over because it happens a lot and it ONLY happens to my son. The only answer I can come up with is this:

Because they can.

It's some kind of school-age power play, this ability to exclude at will anyone they feel like. And they've decided, by some complicated process of social dynamics, that my son is The One.

And it hurts.

It hurts him. And it hurts me to watch it. I have never seen this kind of consistent exclusion in children. It is so wantonly cruel, so purposefully targeted, so relentlessly evil. And I have to watch him weep when the do it over and over and over.

I hate them.

I wish I were back in 2nd grade. I would so kick their butts.

Personality Clash

I've spent the last week reading a book about personality types with a view to understanding my children better. Here's what I've learned:

Everyone in the house has Choleric as part of their personality makeup. In practical terms, this means we all have fireball tempers and like to shout a lot.

Really, a lot.

My oldest child is first and foremost a Sanguine. This completely explains a comment she made at age four when she told us: "It is totally not fair that I'm not on television." It also explains her creativity, which is at all times perpendicular to Normal. In fact, Normal as a goal doesn't even register with her.

I, it turns out, am a Melancholy/Choleric in about equal proportions. This means I am very big on Normal. And I'm good at shouting.

My husband is a Sanguine/Choleric. He never knows a stranger and likes to crack jokes. Play is his area of expertise. He is very sanguine, so it takes him a long time to get to shouting, but if pushed he does it well.

My son is a Choleric/Melancholy, in that order. Totally explains why this kid will say the most profound things out of the clear blue. He's a deep thinker. However, he often tries to control everyone with spectacular displays of temper.

My youngest daughter is Choleric and Something-not-yet-determined. Might be sanguine, might not. She's not quite the exhibitionist her sister is, but not as self conscious as her brother. Too soon to tell, I think.

Major learning: these personality tendencies are useful lenses for viewing my family and trying to better understand what makes my kids tick, but I think it's important not to put anyone in a box.

I Am Doing It Again

I try not to, truly I do, but once again I am patrolling the lists of waiting children, mentally plugging them into our family.

I am gingerly saying things to my husband like "how old a child do you think we could take?" and "I bet adding a fourth wouldn't be that much more expensive."

I am losing myself in all those pairs of brown eyes, most looking reproachfully at the camera.

Now, I am not stupid. I know darn good and well that a fourth child would blow our minds three ways from Sunday. I have vivid memories of how the third child did that; still does that, almost daily. But but but...

My eminently practical husband says things like, "you have to have an established income (from my shaky flow of freelance work, which is unpredictable at best), or I have to get a raise." This is actually a possibility, if he gets the promotion he applied for. But it's still only a 50-50 chance and he is pessimistic about it. He is, in fact, pessimistic about most things having to do with the kids and/or money. In fact, many of our arguments end with him saying something like "we're all going to die, homeless and alone" or whatever.

This time, though, it almost feels like we might be able to pull it off. If the money shows up. If the money doesn't just show up but decides to stay for a while. If no major disasters occur with the kids we already have. If...if...if.

Waiting for the hand of God in this one...that's the biggest if of all.

Just How Bad is American Airlines?

Lemme tell you.

We were supposed to take off at 4:55 on the first leg of our trip to California for my grandmother's funeral. The plane was delayed. Fortunately, we were able to hop an earlier flight. This one was also delayed just enough that it got us into Dallas at the time we should have landed anyway had we taken the later flight (if the later flight had been on time).

What?

We are some kind of canny travellers, we congratulated ourselves. We will make our connection for sure now! But then the flight to Fresno was unaccountably delayed. For 2 hours.

Now, there's a 2 hour time difference anyway between the midwest and the west coast, so that meant instead of getting in at 11:30 midwest time, we would now be getting in at 1:30 a.m. midwest time. And so we did. After getting the car and finding the hotel and getting our clothes unpacked and hung so as to be all purty for the next day, it was 12:30 California time -- or 2:30 in the morning for us, if you're keeping up.

Funeral Day went without a hitch. We were buffed, fluffed and on time for everything. We reconnected with family, had some laughs, shed some tears. It was good, in spite of feeling a little jet-laggy.

To get home, we had to take a 6:15 a.m. flight. That meant getting up at 3:45 a.m. CA time, or 5:45 for us. Early, but doable. The flight took off ON TIME. It was the only part of our trip that would bear that distinction.

2.5 hours into the trip, the captain came on to tell us that Dallas was experiencing a hail/thunderstorm "event." We were in a holding pattern until they reopened the airport. Thirty minutes later, he came on again to tell us that we were too low on fuel to keep holding and were being rerouted to Oklahoma City to refuel.

It so happens that Oklahoma City wasn't quite ready for us. We landed, but then sat on the ground for 2 hours until we finally got fuel and were able to take off for the 1/2 hour flight to Dallas.

In Dallas, we had a slim hope of catching our connection, which was also delayed because of the storm. However, we had to change terminals and in Dallas, unless you are Ussein Bolt and can sprint around the airport, you are at the mercy of the shuttle trains. You go as fast as they go, and that's it. We arrived at our new gate as they shut the door to the plane.

If you don't travel much, you should know that once they shut the door, they do not open it again, not even if you're President Obama. Well, maybe for him. But certainly not for us.

Okay, Plan B: we got ourselves confirmed on the 2:40 flight, which was now leaving at 3:40. 2:40 was the time we were supposed to be arriving home. So, we'd be a little late.

At 3:40, we were still sitting at the gate.

At 4:00 we were still sitting at the gate.

At 4:30 the monitor changed to say that our new departure time would be 7:30 p.m.

At 4:31, one of us started crying and two of us laughed at the utter ridiculousness of the situation. The fourth was in a funk.

Three hours later we finally got on a plane and made it home. We were on tenterhooks, just waiting for them to suddenly cancel our flight altogether. We were wound tighter than bedsprings until the plane actually took off.

We spent 14 hours either in an airport or on a plane that day. Many, many people were in similar situations. Several people told us they fly with AAL all the time and this was not an uncommon occurance. One man told us he'd been tracking his travel for the last year and out of 36 trips, only two legs of all those trips were on time. Other people told us similar stories.

Does anyone out there remember when it was fun to fly? When flying represented the height of adventure?

Now it's just a long, hard slog and it doesn't show any signs of improving.

A Passing

My grandmother passed away last night. She was 90.

It's not like this was wholly unexpected, yet I find myself sad today. She was very much the grandma of my childhood -- she delighted in small children, in the funny things they said and did, in their emerging personalities. She was less comfortable with us when we grew up and had opinions of our own, particularly if those opinions didn't mesh with her own.

I have so many memories of her from when I was little. Trips to Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, Magic Mountain, the beach...she was forever taking us places like that, places kids love and seldom get to visit. She always kept excellent treats around like WonderBread, which we thought was manna from heaven, and store-bought cookies of the chocolately kind, and cheetos, which she knew we loved. She took us to movies and to play mini-golf. She rode the Ferris Wheel with us when she thought it might be too scary and came along with us when we drove Tin Lizzies -- the kind that were really just fancy golf carts on rails so kids could drive them and not get hurt.

She loved stories and she could remember all sorts of little incidents from our babyhood. She told us our own stories and laughed about them all over again. She was our number one fan -- nothing we did could ever be wrong and she'd knock down anyone who said it was. In fact, she couldn't bear any of us to be criticized and when we were older and did things that deserved criticism, she would still take the head off anyone who dared to do it, even someone in the family. Even us.

Her life was touched by sorrow. She'd lost a sister in a fire and a baby brother to illness. She lost all her older brothers to alcoholism. Her father died in his 50's of a heart attack. She married my grandfather in 1938 and got pregnant on her wedding night. She had her first child at the age of 19. By age 23 she had 3 children and her husband enlisted in the Marine Corps (he is still living. He's 93 and in the VA hospital, mind as clear as a bell). He was sent to the South Pacific and she moved next door to her mother to have some help with the kids. She lived to see one of her sons divorce 3 times, her daughter divorce once, and 4 of her eight grandchildren divorce 6 times. Just before her 80th birthday, in what would be the last lucid year of her life, her middle son died of liver cancer.

Parts of her life read like a scene from a movie. Her sister Clarice was married to an abusive husband, so she and my grandfather helped Clarice move out, and activity which ended with my grandpa beating up his brother-in-law and his brother-in-law's brothers. Seems like that should be played by Marlon Brando, trailing a cigarette from one curling lip.

Other parts read like a comic novel. When she gave birth to my dad in 1938, she was given the first episiotomy the hospital had ever done. Consequently, the entire surgical and obstetric staff came by to see her stitches. Mortifying for a 19 year-old Catholic girl. Another time, she tied my 3 year-old uncle to the clothesline outside to keep him from wandering away while she went to get another load of wash to hang. When she came back, his overalls were hanging from the line and he was wandering around downtown, naked as the day he was born.

She kept secrets, and I think this is what really shaped the second half of her life. Her middle son, my uncle, was a stinker as a child, but as an adult he dabbled in more than his fair share of shady enterprises, finally landing in prison for a while. That was something we were never allowed to speak of. Her daughter got pregnant and had to get married. Her middle son abandoned his first family. One of my cousins had a drinking problem. Another did drugs. Her daughter had an affair that ended her marriage. All very hush hush. I think the strain of keeping it all in and trying to keep straight what lie she'd told to whom to cover it all up made her touchy beyond belief. She liked to be the spider in the center of the web, but it was a role that was too much for her in the end.

She has been lost to me for the last 10 years, slipping into that hazy half-world that some older people inhabit. She hasn't recognized anyone in 5 years, hasn't been able to speak for 2. It's a release, I suppose. And yet, I would have her back, selfishly, because for all her frustrating ways, I knew without a doubt that she loved me.

I am spending today wrapped in my memories, dabbing at the odd tear, wishing I could see her just once more and tell her that without a doubt, I loved her too.

Mid-Week Musings

Every morning, I am treated to Dinosaur Train. I love Dinosaur Train -- it's the main reason my hair looks okay and I have a little color to my face. Without it, I'd be a lot messier.



But while I am watching it, I can't stop my mind from turning over a few issues that it raises for me. Like, what will the Pteranodon family do when Buddy grows up and eats them?

I mean, I'd be a little worried if I were them.


I find it funny, the way the series soft-pedals the whole carnivore-thing. Buddy's favorite food is "carrion" with no clear explanation that carrion isn't just random meat lying around in the primeval forest like so much cafeteria fare. "Buddy, do you want the carrion or the jello salad?"


It's hard to make velociraptors cute and cuddly, but Dinosaur Train does it. However, I can't escape the layering of Jurassic Park images on top of the friendly little dinosaurs tripping off to the Dinosaur Train; there's always a little voice in my mind saying "Clever girl!" followed by a shrieking crescendo of death-wails.



Sometimes my thoughts go in a completely different direction. See Don, on the far right? My mom brain looks at him and says "Whoa, look at that underbite! That kid is going to need serious dental work, maybe some jaw surgery...wouldn't want the bill for that."


I'm just sayin'.

Other times I wonder why Don and Shiny don't get to ride the train as often as Buddy and Tiny do...I worry that their emotional health isn't really considered here.


I mean, you know...in cartoon land.


It's very weird in my head.