NO VACANCY

I’m not exactly sure what it is about this time of year.  It might be that it marks the anniversary of when I was married (one of the happier times of my life), or that it marks the anniversary of the exhausting period of time when I had to dig my feet in and literally fight for my marriage (one of the worst times of my life).  It might have something to do with the fact that this is a time when, inevitably, I help my children to cope with some disappointment brought on by their dad.  Or it may just be the simple fact that I go to ball game after ball game and cheer for my kids alone, while their dad has the luxury of sharing that experience with someone.  Whatever it is, I seem to do a lot of looking back in the rear view mirror during these summer months and thinking about the “what-ifs” of my life.  What-ifs can be pretty depressing, so I do try to minimize them as much as possible.  But, everyone needs a little pity-party once in a while…right?!

Ten years ago, I remember being in the hospital room with my husband holding our first-born son.  In the quiet of that moment, I remember telling him that we could have no regrets after that moment because without those regrets we wouldn’t have had that precious baby.  He cried when I told him that, and looking back now, I am sure it had something to do with the amount of guilt and regret that weighed so heavily on his heart that he was too afraid to share with me.  But since that day, I have held to the belief that life should be lived without regret.  That everything in our life happens for a reason, the good and the bad.  The good things are great, but the bad things are life’s lessons that make us into the person that we are becoming.  I don’t know for sure where this thought came from or when I started believing it, but I think it probably comes from an underlying faith that I have always had.  I have never considered myself to be a religious person (whatever that means), but I think that I have always been a woman of faith.  I grew up going to church and being involved in the church all through school, but when I went away to college that all ended.  My ex did not and would not go to church with me and, for some reason, I just could not bring myself to go alone…so I didn’t.  When he left us, I felt lost and alone and found myself crying and praying a lot.  Although it was something that I hadn’t done in a very long time, my prayers came easily and brought me comfort.  They brought me back to where I needed to be.  In all of my despair, I knew that He was listening and that he loved me.

Over the past year, I have thought a lot about this idea of living without regret.  I have found a sense of peace in knowing that God has a plan for me, and this is all part of it.  Do I like this plan?  Not all the time, no.  It is hard to like something that leaves you with heartbroken kids and feeling alone.  But, I believe that in the grand scheme of things, He has something much better in store for me than anything that I have experienced so far.  I don’t know that I would be able to throw up the “no vacancy” sign to regret so easily if it weren’t for my children and for that, I will always be grateful to my ex.  What-ifs…yep, they are gonna be there.  But there is no room for regrets here.  I will never regret anything that got me to where I am today and I know, as I continue to travel forward, that I can only regret what I do not do.

 

When Is It REALLY Important...Really??

Well, it’s that time of year. The end of the school year means so much to so many people. For some parents it is a time of dread, because what will they do now that their kids are going to be home all day? Other parents look forward to the extra time that they will have to spend with the kids and make plans to keep everyone entertained during the summer months. For many it is a time to commemorate, and these days it seems that not much goes without ceremony. Remember when you used to say that you were going to so-and-so’s graduation and everyone just knew exactly what you were talking about? Obviously high school, right?! But now there are preschool graduations, kindergarten graduations, sixth grade graduations, and the list seems to go on and on. Honestly, I find it all to be just a bit ridiculous. Don’t get me wrong, I have shared in each of my child’s excitement as they walked across the “stage” for their preschool graduation and even shed a tear or two at the time. But if I am being honest, I just don’t see the point. Everything before high school is expected…by law…so what is it that we are celebrating?? That they accomplished something that they were SUPPOSED TO accomplish?? It’s like the parent that brags about the fact that they take care of and provide for their kids…isn’t that what you are supposed to do??? Last time I checked, that was just part of being a parent. Just like completing preschool and 6th grade was part of being a kid. I just think that it is hard to teach your kids the significance of such accomplishments

as graduating high school or college when they have graduated from something every year since preschool!

I have been thinking about this over the past few days, as the kids and I prepare to go visit family this weekend and celebrate a high school graduation and then do the same thing in Minnesota the following weekend. Wondering if my own kids really understand the significance, then reflecting on what was happening in our lives a year ago and realizing that I think they actually do understand. Last year, at this time, I was completely absorbed in school (and we all know how I felt about that). I was finishing up my last few classes and trying to meet a deadline on my final research paper for my master’s degree. The kids were thrown on the back-burner and they worked very hard to make sure I knew how they felt about it. I don’t know how many times I had to apologize and try to explain that things were only temporary and that once I was done with school and working, we would be able to enjoy our summers together. But it didn’t stop the complaints from coming in…”You never have time for us anymore. You just play on your computer all day.” Or, “We never get to do anything fun.” It’s not easy to hear your kids tell you that they would rather be with their dad because “at least he will play with us”. But it was a means to an end and I tried to keep my eyes on the bigger picture.

My kids were there to watch me walk across the stage to receive my master’s degree and they were smiling and waving at me as I did. They were proud of me and I felt an enormous sense of accomplishment. Not only because I graduated, but because I had shown my children that you can do anything that you put your mind to. I hope that now they know what it means to work hard for something and make sacrifices and that they are recognizing how it can pay off in the end. More and more, as I look around and see what my life is becoming, I feel this sense of amazement and know that only God could have created this plan for me. Without the divorce, I am sure that I would have never gone back to school. Never been able to see the looks on Quentin’s, Camille’s, and Zoe’s face as they watched their mommy graduate from college…again. And never been able to demonstrate for them the value of an education, of what it means to work hard, to sacrifice, and to truly understand the significance of an accomplishment such as graduating. Telling them about it and showing them are two different things, and I believe their lives will be better for having seen it.

I guess this time of year, for me, is really a time to reflect. To see how far we have come and to look ahead at the endless possibilities in front of us and know that anything is possible. Although reflecting is sometimes a painful thing to do, I think it makes the looking ahead part that much better. I have been looking forward to this summer since the last one ended! Eager to spend my days at home with the kids, taking trips and going to the park and going swimming, rather than “playing” on my computer (because writing a research paper and doing homework was so much fun). I am determined to make sure that the kids see how hard work really does pay off.

In And Out

It has been so long since I have put my thoughts and feelings and life into words, and I must say that I have missed it terribly. This whole writing thing truly is my therapy. It’s the one thing that seems to soothe my soul when I can’t seem to find any peace in my thoughts. I have spent much of this time away moving in and out of new experiences in my life, on the road to wherever I am supposed to be going (and only God knows where that is).

 Over the past year and a half I have found myself in and out of school, love, loneliness, and my comfort zone. I have done my best to break down the walls that I have inevitably built up around myself during the collapse of my marriage. I didn’t realize just how big those walls were until I actually found love again. To open myself up to being completely vulnerable and trusting someone again was a lot harder than I had ever expected it to be. In the end I was disappointed and hurt all over again, but with that glimpse of possibility came hope. Hope that there is someone out there who will want to share this life with me and will love me through my walls, for all of my flaws, and will want to be a part of this family with me. I have tried to step out of the box, leave my comfort zone, and feel more than think (which has never been a strong suite for me). So much of my life has been spent trying to do the right thing. But I am starting to think that maybe life isn’t just about doing the right thing. Maybe sometimes you need to do what feels good and not worry so much about whether or not it is right. I think that is what people call “taking chances” and I can’t say that I have ever been much of a risk-taker. It’s a scary thing, taking chances, but it’s kinda fun too…and I could use a little fun!

 More than anything, I have tried to forgive and move on and appreciate all of the wonderful things about my life instead of dwelling on the stuff that I really have no control over. I have embraced my strength and have become confident in myself in a way that I have never been before. My own strength and resilience amazes me. The truth is, it was always there. I just never took the time to recognize it or to put it to good use. I believe it is something that is in all of us. It is our God given gift. People say to me all the time that they don’t know how I do it; how I survived my divorce and continue to help my children through it, how I went to school and got my masters degree as a single mother of three, or even simply how I work full time as a single parent with three young children. The answer is simple. I do it because I have no other choice and I do it the best that I can. It’s not always pretty, but I get it done. A lot of people do. Millions of women do what I do every day. That doesn’t make me any less strong or resilient; it just means that I’m not alone. But then again, I already knew that. I am never really alone. For as lonely as I may feel, I am surrounded by people who love and support me. I always have been and know I always will be.

I look forward to catching up and sharing some of the ins and outs of my journey over the past year and a half. Let’s just say I was stuck in traffic…I think it is time to take the next exit and get moving again!

Survival Mode: OFF

It's time. In fact, I am sure it is probably well past time. It's just that I have never actually been taught what the rule is on how much time it should take to get back to a place of normalcy after a divorce. It has been almost a year now since our divorce was finalized and three years since he first left the house, which is still hard for me to believe because I remember it all like it was yesterday. During this time we have been running on survival mode around here and, if I am honest with myself (which I am trying to be), I have started to use this as a crutch whenever things seem difficult. This would bring me to my New Year's resolution for this year. I am turning off the survival mode and reclaiming our family life...no excuses.

I first made mention of this plan of mine in my last post about my dining room table, this desire of mine to give my children back the sense of family that we lost when their father left. I said that in the new year, no matter how painful it was for me, we were going to go back to eating our meals at the dinner table together. After writing that post, I started to think more about this survival mode of ours and all of the different ways that it is affecting the way I raise my children and I realized that there are a lot of things that I am not satisfied with. After three years, I think that it is time for me to stop passing all of the blame and to start taking responsibility for the current state of my family. Now, does this mean that I am no longer angry with my ex? No. Am I still bitter? Yes. Do I still find myself filled with resentment at times? Yes. And that is exactly what makes this resolution such a challenge for me. But, these are all things that I am trying to find a way to let go of as I move forward in my life. Maybe if I am more happy with what our family has become in the home, it will be easier to let some of that go. So, I have come up with two things that I will focus on this year:
1. Eat dinner at the dining room table together.
2. Less TV, computer, and video games

These new house rules took effect this week with the return to school and so far, I have been pleased with the results! The kids are no longer allowed to watch TV or play on the computer or with their video games without my permission during the week. The initial response to this new rule was indifference, but after day two it met some resistance. This was to be expected. I am sure it will take some adjusting to, but I have already noticed a decrease in the amount of yelling and fighting in the house. As far as the family dinners go, everyone seems to be happy to be back at the table...even me.

Maybe I just needed some time, but this change has been much easier for me than I thought it would be. I think I am just ready for us to be happy in our house again and I recognize the fact that that happiness is just another one of those things that I need to take control of. The only thing that I was accomplishing by blaming someone else for all of our unhappiness, was giving him the power to control our happiness. So, the survival mode is officially off now and it is time to really live. We'll see how it goes!

The Dining Room Table

It has been two long months since I have last had the time to sit down and purge my feelings out on the keyboard of my computer. Life planted its feet in my path and would not get out of the way long enough for me to find one moment of peace for myself...and when I say "life", you should know by now that that actually means school. But I am happy to say that my semester is finally complete and here I am, still standing. My children have said to me more than once in the past week that they are happy that I am done with school now so that I can get off the computer and play with them. It makes me sad the way my children miss me, even though I am right here. It is bad enough that I watch them miss their father every day, but to miss me when I am in the same room... I just keep telling myself, "this too shall pass". So I have waited for an opportunity to write when it would not take away from my time with the kids because even though I have been feeling a desperate need to write, my children's need for time with their mother was more important.

This lack of time, this busyness, and sometimes chaos, now seem to be what symbolize my life. It is what my life has become. Always running around, putting out fires, and trying to find the time to get everything done that needs to be done while, at the same time, trying to continue to do the things that I want to do as a mother. I will be glad when this part of my life is over and I can start to move forward again. Right now, I feel like I have just come to another dead end and I am waiting for...well, I am not sure what I am waiting for. I guess I am just trying to figure out what road I should take next. Hopefully I can find a road that will bring me some peace, because more and more I am feeling a need for it.

Something else that symbolizes my life...my dining room table. You know, you can tell a lot about a person by their dining room or kitchen table. Is it big? Is it small? Is it piled to the ceiling with papers and other things? Is it trimmed beautifully with an elegant centerpiece, place settings, and fine china? Is it simple, decorated only by a small centerpiece? And then at dinnertime, is it empty or full? My dining room table is one of the very few quality pieces of furniture that my husband and I chose to spend what little money we had on. I love it...or I did once. It is a large table that can be made even larger with the built-in leaf. We bought it with our family and friends in mind. We thought of the Thanksgivings and Christmases in the years to come that would be spent at this table and knew that it was perfect for us. At dinnertime, we would shut off the TV and gather our family around the table. The room was filled with laughter and conversation, me sitting at one end of the table and him at the other with our three small children in between. Every day I felt like I was giving a gift to my family. I looked forward to planning and preparing our meals so that we could spend that time together.

A few weeks ago, as the kids and I were eating our dinner around the coffee table in the living room in front of the TV, one of them asked me why we don't ever eat at the table anymore. This was followed by the other two chiming in with the same question and all three of them telling me how they miss eating at the dining room table. After dinner I got the kids tucked into bed, came back downstairs to my dining room table, and cried. I sat there, reflecting on the dinners that I have shared with the kids since their father left. After he left, I gradually lost that joy that I got from planning and preparing meals. This mostly had to do with the fact that my kids wouldn't eat half of the stuff I prepared and now there was no one there to eat it with me. Dinnertime became more of a frustration for me, trying to get the kids to eat was a battle every night. And then there was the empty chair. Every night a reminder; a slap in the face. It quickly became less painful for me to throw together something that I knew the kids would eat and drop it down on the coffee table. But the saddest part is that there are some days that I don't even eat with them. I use it as my break or my chance to get a few things done before I have to put them to bed. I am embarrassed to admit this and can't tell you how sad it makes me. But still, I cannot seem to bring myself to sit at the dining room table.

My dining room table is beautiful, but it is empty and lonely. It is simply set, with nothing more than a small centerpiece in the middle, just as it was when my husband left. My family is broken now and I can't change that, but I think I owe it to my children to sit back down in my chair. Consider this my first New Year's resolution.

TUTUS!!!!

I have been so busy. Over the past month, my PTA duties have kicked into full gear and now school has finally caught up with me, which I knew that it would, and I have been trying to keep up with all of the different assignments. More and more, I feel like the information of value that I am getting from these graduate courses is at a minimum. For the most part they are just a lot of busy work. Yes, there are a few exceptions to this statement but for the most part, that is just the way it is. Between school and the other frustrations in my life (yes, I am still struggling with that), I have just felt like I am in this terrible funk that I can't seem to pull myself out of. I am stressed, tired all the time, and probably pretty miserable to be around. I realize that I have not had a lot of time for myself lately and certainly haven't had any time to do something fun for me, which probably has a lot to do with my current mood. So I decided that maybe I needed to get my creative juices flowing and do something that I could have fun doing. In an ideal world, I would have all kinds of time and money available to do the crafty and creative things that I really enjoy doing, but the reality is that my scrapbooking room has been collecting dust for the past year and a half. It's depressing.

The girls informed me about a month ago that they wanted to be bumble bees for Halloween and so, with the thought of trying to save some money, I started looking online for costume ideas. Low and behold, I stumbled across a super cute picture of a little girl in a tutu and dressed as a bumble bee. Having seen some handmade tutus recently, I immediately thought this might be something that I could actually do...and boy, was I right!!! I have had so much fun figuring out how to make these tutus and accessorize them and now have tons more ideas for future tutus. This has been a great release for me and the best part is, the girls LOVE them!

My Sweet Girl

If I have said it once, I have said it a million times. My kids have NOT handled this divorce well. I don't think that there is ever anything that could have possibly prepared them for what our life has become, just as nothing could have prepared me. And although I do everything I possibly can to make all of this easier for them, it just seems that it will never be enough. So, everyday I worry. I think about how all of this will affect each of them as they grow into adulthood. I wonder about the things that I might be doing wrong. I see them struggling and I ask myself when this will ever get better.

When Camille was born, she gave me the most wonderful gift that I have ever received. Something that I had ached for since having Quentin a year and a half before. You see, after all of the waiting during my labor with Quentin, my doctor inevitably decided that the best thing to do was to have a cesarean section. At that moment, everything was happening so fast that all we cared about was making sure our baby was okay. I never had time to think about what was about to happen. A mother spends nine months nurturing and loving this baby inside of her, preparing for childbirth and all of the wonderful emotions that go along with it. In an instant that was all taken away and once it was over, I was sad. I wasn't the first person to hold my baby. I didn't get to spend his first moments bonding with him. I wasn't even there when my family met my first born child; their first grandchild and nephew. Everyone was there but me. But on that cold and snowy day in March (that's New York for you), Camille came into our lives with complete grace and my birth experience exceeded my expectations. It was the most intimate of experiences with only my husband, mom, doctor and nurse in the room. The room was quiet and dark, with only a small light for the doctor to see, and within five minutes Camille was born. She was instantly placed on my chest and before they took her away to get her all cleaned up, the doctor and nurse left the room to give us some time alone. It was so special and I will never forget that gift that she gave me. I will never forget laying in that dark and quiet room, holding my baby girl for the first time.

Camille was talked about throughout the hospital as "the baby with the hair". The girl was born with a full head of it...so much that it really looked almost like a toupee. Nurses would come by my room just to see her. She was as beautiful then as she is now. I love telling Camille these stories now because she is a shy little girl who seems to be somewhat insecure about herself, but when I tell her about the day she was born her whole face lights up. And when I tell her about how everyone came to see the prettiest baby in the hospital, she giggles. I love Camille's giggle and the way that she scrunches her nose up when she does it.

Unfortunately, Camille doesn't giggle as much as she used to anymore. Over the past couple of months I have noticed her giggle fading away. She has always been an extremely emotional child and for that reason alone I have worried about the effects that her father leaving would have on her. Temper tantrums, hitting, and crying were things that Camille did very well as a toddler. But now it's different. Camille cries. She cries about everything (or at least that's what it feels like these days)and she has started to withdraw at home. I have noticed her laying around the house more, sometimes on the couch or sometimes even going up to her room and just laying in her bed. There are other things too, details that I won't completely go into, but definite causes for concern. So I worry...more. On top of that, I get angry. What has my ex done to our baby girl? I just want her to be better. I want her to be happy. I want her to giggle.

It's an overwhelming thought, the idea that my ability or inability to handle these problems now will undoubtedly mold Camille into the woman that she will become and effect future relationships that she will have in her life. I can't screw this up! So we have started our journey to wellness. The first stop was the family physician, where we checked everything out to make sure that there were no medical causes for the problems that she is having. The physician sent us on for an xray and then also referred us to a GI doctor in Kansas City (I guess I should mention that she has been having accidents). Along with this, she also referred us to a psychologist. So far we haven't found anything major. The doctor's office found nothing unusual in her blood work, but the xray did show that she is completely backed up. It does feel good to have a little something to go on I guess. So now we will wait for the rest of these appointments and in the meantime I will continue my search for a good therapist for her. This is going to be a real journey, but if it ends in a happy place and helps my sweet girl get her giggle back then you will not hear me complain.

There's that giggle...

She's always marched to the beat of her own drummer...

And if I ever get her to stop sucking her fingers, it will be a miracle...