Change

When my mom used to utter the words, “They grow up so fast,” she would say it with tears in her eyes. Now it is my turn, and I have learned to say it with tears in my eyes and big ache in my heart. No one told me about the big heartache. I had to figure that out when I became a parent, when realized how fast they do grow up. My ten-year old is finishing up fourth grade and in about ten days, he will be “almost” a fifth grader. When I dropped him off this morning, I watched him climb out of the car and walk away with confidence and for the first time, it finally hit him how grown up he really was. He wasn’t that scrawny and shy fourth grader that I dropped off at his new intermediate school in September. He was taller (two inches shorter than I am – to be exact), his shoulders were wider, and his confidence level is something to be admired.

A part of us, as parents, wants to believe that they stay “little” forever. I remember the first time I got one of those “they grow up so fast” moments. That ten-year old had just turned three, was all potty trained, and graduated from the toddler room to the preschool room at his daycare. I remember him “reminding” me to pick up his blanket and pillow, because “big kids don’t nap, Mommy” is what he told me. I dropped him off in the “big kids” room and went to pick up his blanket and pillow. By the time I got back to my car, I was in tears and balling like a baby. For the first time, I realized that bundle of joy that I brought home from the hospital three years prior was growing up (whether I liked it or not) and before I would know it, he would be an adult, and that really scared me. It still scares me and now, I am not having one of those “they grow up so fast” moments, because those moments are turning into “all grown up” moments.

Like all parents, I cannot and do not want to believe that my kids are growing and changing. And yes, they do grow up fast. They grow, they change and they mature. As much as it scares me, they will grow up and they will turn out just fine, and yes, I will never stop being so darn teary eyed at every milestone in their lives. That is what a mother does. Now, I am not saying that there are days I don’t wish that they were older because things would be easier me, especially those days when I am ready to pull my hair out. There are days when I wish for quiet mornings or for a full night of sleep, but then I realize that those things are not as special as they are. There is a Trace Akins song that brings me tears but reminds of why I am here. It is called “Then They Do”.

A few days ago, my ten year old found out that his best friend was moving and I could tell that he was really hurting despite the fact that he was trying to hide it. I told him that I knew he was sad but that life is all about changes and moving on. Things never stay the same and we have to learn to move forward regardless of how difficult or painful it can be.

Humility

I recently found out in the last day or two that another dear friend of mine had recently lost her mother in late February. She had also lost her father in November. She lives in another state and we not been in contact since about October because my life had gotten busy in recent months. My friend and I used to live in the same city but our contact had slowed down since I moved away from Pennsylvania two years ago. My friend did not tell me of her mother’s passing (or her father’s – their deaths happened only four months apart) because as many of who have experienced death know, it is surreal and takes a long time (sometimes many months or years) to fully grasp what has happened.

My friend’s mother lived her life with grace, confidence and humility. In 1944, she and other members of her family were deported to a Nazi death camp in Poland. All but she and her sister-in-live were killed. In 1945, her camp was liberated and within days of that liberation, she sought work and a new life in Germany. In 1946, she met an American solider who was working for the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in Hanover on refugee resettlement. They married in 1947 and moved Switzerland where her husband graduated from medical school. They eventually settled in Wallingford, CT where her husband practiced medicine and they had three daughters. She was the kind of woman who lived her life with pure happiness and she always shared her happiness with those around her. Even though she was a “survivor,” she never wanted to be remembered that way. In the 1990s, she located many of her U.S. Army liberators and personally thanked them. She and her husband moved to Pennsylvania to be closer to her daughters in 2005.

My friend’s mother was someone who made me feel welcome after I moved to PA in 2003, a state where I had no family. She always made my son and I feel like part of her family. She was warm, kind, loving and generous and she will be missed dearly. I wanted to share her story because she was always good to me and also because her story is one of humility. One of my favorite quotes is by James M. Barrie. “Life is a long lesson in humility,” and my friend’s mom was a woman of true humility.

What it all means

Humility is a part of living life and it isn’t about our chaotic and busy lives. It is the lesson learned and the road travelled. It is all the in the stuff in the middle of everything that comprises of our lives – who are we are, who we become, and why. Humility is how and why we live our lives and the rest is what change is about – memories, stories, living and dying. Humility is why we are remembered and mourned after we are gone.

Recently, I found myself driving in front the house that I grew up in until was in high school. I stopped, parked across the street and just stared at it. My parents sold it when I was fifteen because my father had gotten sick, could no longer work, and they could no longer afford to make the payments. I had completely forgotten that we had lived there until it was right in front of me. For whatever reason, I had forgotten that house. For the next few years after the sale, my parents rented, and my mother did not purchase a new home until years after my father’s death, and it was something that she wished she was able to do when he was alive.

I choose to forget that house because it was a time when all of us were together – my father, my mother, and my siblings and I (seven children) living all under the same roof. A couple years later, my older sister got married, and I married about couple years after that. Less than a year after I married, my father passed away. Slowly and one by one, we grew up and moved away. Today, it is just my mother and my baby brother under the same roof and he heads off to college several hours away in late August. Then, it will just be my mom and the seven of us coming and going with her nineteen grandchildren.

For me, it seems normal that we all moved on and away, but for my mom, it seems so surreal. In few months, she will be all alone in that big house, a home that did not include my father and all her seven children (only five of her children actually lived there because my older sister and I were moved out when she purchased it).

I have never understood my mother and she and I have never seen eye-to-eye. We disagree about everything from raising children to the role of a woman in this world. But she is my mother and if anything, I get my resilience and strength from her. She tells me she is content that she raised seven children and that they have all gone on with their lives, but in her eyes, I see a different story. I see a woman who wishes she could go back to the days when we lived in that white four-bedroom colonial – the one with the family room when you walk in the front door, a warm and welcoming kitchen, winding steps in the middle, the four bedrooms on the second floor that faced each other, and that finished attic; and the home where my father’s memory still lives and where all her seven children were all one under one roof.

Now that I am a mother I can relate and I can understand. I want to hold my children close by and I wish that they could be little forever. However, I know that one day, I will be in my mother’s shoes wondering where the years went and at the same time, proud of who my children have become. My mother was a homemaker all her life and in my eyes, she was very successful. She raised seven children who all turned out to be hard-working and decent people. If that is not success, I don’t know what it is.

It has been quite a few days since I last posted and it is mostly because I have had a really busy week. I sometimes post several times a week and sometimes only one or two per week. I think that my posts are going to go down to once or twice a week for the sake of my own sanity. Blogging takes up a lot of time as many of us know so I need to cut down.

Yes, my week has been very busy. On Monday evening, I had to get rid of that abscessed tooth. Because it had a root canal done in it, it was very long and traumatizing procedure. With you have joint and muscle pain, the last thing you want to get is spend a half hour getting a tooth pulled. If a tooth has had a root canal, it will split into pieces when it dentist attempts to pull it. Three days later, the area where the tooth was pulled still hurts. The good news is that is the last tooth in my mouth and my dentist says I do not need an implantation.

The boring story behind the loss of this tooth is that we could have prevented it. The problem was that I did not want to do dental work while I was seven months pregnant. It started as simple cavity and then, by the time the baby was born, the tooth needed a root canal. I was a new mother with a newborn at home and the last thing I wanted was to go into see the dentist. Plus, I was dealing with a nightmare RA flare-up, and I could barely take care of myself. That was also the time I received my RA and FM diagnoses. Needless to say, I was not able to see the dentist until April of last year which was about eight months since the tooth needed a filling. At that point I needed a root canal which the dentist was not sure would hold but he convinced me that I should make an effort to save the tooth. About a few weeks ago, however, I started getting migraines. Then there was the facial pain, neck pain, eye and ear pain, and fevers. The tooth pain was the last to come so I went in to see the dentist who told me the tooth was toast. He put me on antibiotics and ten days later, the tooth was pulled.

I lost a tooth because I refused to put my baby’s life in danger when I was seven months pregnant – anyone can see that I do not regret my decision. It was a tooth and it was not worth risking my baby’s health. That is life – we make choices and well, our kids come first. When it comes to our kids, it is always worth the risk to us. Like any mother, I would put my own health at risk before my child’s. So when my Indian dentist (my son calls him “Kumar” as in Kal Penn from Harold and Kumar) says, “no, no, you should not wait,” I can say “yes, I should and I will.”

I have also been working on my final paper for my family law course which is due next Tuesday. It is about creating parenting plans that meet the best interests of children pursuant to Ohio law. Yes, the topic is boring – I know. The legal field is boring and as am I. I have read about fifty custody cases in the process of doing this assignment, and I cried more than I have cried in my entire life. I am a crier – I can’t help. Divorce is messy business and I say that from experience. It is even more difficult when children are involved.

Then, there was Tuesday evening when I picked up my ten year old from daycare. He was having joint pain which eventually by bedtime escalated to all over pain. He spent the whole night moaning and I was scared to death. He could barely walk in the morning so I called off work and we went to see his doctor. He took ibuprofen in the morning so that lessened some of his pain. I was told it was “growing pains” but the doctor ordered blood work to rule out arthritis and other conditions. But, I was scared to death. I remember when I was growing up and my mom took me to doctors and they would tell her “growing pains;” she disagreed with them and she was right. So I cannot take any chances. This is something I have to be on top of.

Aside from the usual hectic nature of my life – motherhood, work, school, and advocacy – my moods are better. Perhaps, it was the tooth all along. I am less tired and I did not really use the pain meds that the doctor gave me for the tooth pain which means I am either nuts or I have a higher threshold of pain than the average Joe. (Anyone want to buy a Vicodin? – Nah, I am kidding – my pain meds aren’t for sale.) I will be catching up everyone’s blogs in the next couple of days so be patient.

I put the job search aside because it is really hard to do with my life being so crazy. It is really stressful and I know need to really be working part-time but perhaps, I can convince my current employers later on. Right now, I still have bills to pay and IRS knocking on my door (another story). We also got this new social media policy at work and basically, we were told to be careful what we say online. (Yes, I deleted a couple posts – to be safe and all).

We are going to see Shrek Forever After on Saturday evening. My ten year old is excited and he is taking his best friend. I am taking the toddler (as my date), who is picking up new words everyday, while the two best friends fight like a married couple. (Tell me how they can be best friends when they fight all the time and even say they hate each other. Is it a boy thing? Ten years – you think I would have figured boys out by now.) We will catch a late showing so that the toddler can fall asleep when he gets bored and he will be a hostage in stroller so he will sleep for sure (don’t call CPS – I am a good mother – really). This is the same kid whose favorite word is “MINE” and since he knows how to throw a tantrum – everything is his.

I have been thinking about vlogging so maybe you will see a vlog or two from me if I do not chicken out. I also started this whole new health thing at my house because I am trying to lose weight and get everyone healthy. Needless to say, my husband is not thrilled. My ten year old, however, is on board and the baby, well he is too content with life to care. It occurred to me to this morning that I am back on track too. My moods have improved and I feel happier than I have felt in a long time. It might be an epiphany but I feel good. And the RA and FM, I have good days and I have bad days but hopefully, this new health thing will help to me to have more good days. I will also be blogging less so any rumors of my demise will not be true because I eventually will resurface. I have recently become an NCIS fan and my DVR is loaded with episodes that I often stay up late to watch so that explains the lack of sleep and my blogging absence.

Anyway, until next time…

A dear friend of mine lost her mother a few months ago. The other day she asked me if she would ever stop missing her. I told her “no, but it gets easier.” For those of you have lost those most close to your heart, you know exactly when I mean. I told my friend that it has been nearly 15 years since my dad died. When he died, he only had one grandchild – my nephew who turned sixteen in March. He missed many graduations, weddings, and the birth of eighteen more grandchildren (we are seven kids), and a whole lot of other wonderful memories.

When he died, I was nineteen, newly married and pregnant with my first child, and I needed him in my life. I didn’t have a good relationship with my mother and I was going through so many events in my life that warranted a father in my life. After his death, I missed him terribly and I felt like I had buried a piece of my soul with him and the years that followed were the most difficult of my life.

The problem was that I grew up in a culture that taught me that a woman needed a man to take care of her and protect her and that she was incapable of doing it for herself. At the time of his death, my brothers were ages 16, 15 and 3 (and they needed me) and the validation I needed at the time wasn’t coming from my mother. In the end, I learned that I didn’t need a man in my life to feel protected, safe, or to take care of me. I needed to learn that I was capable of doing that all on my own and I did, but his death and the years that followed have forever changed me.

I am also certain that if he had not died I may have never learned the lesson his death taught me. Death and loss are difficult but they force us to change the direction of our lives and death is imminent so that means change is as well. Every so often, I think of my dad but instead of mourning and grieving, I treasure his memories and I treasure the person that he made me become. When I had no one to lean on, I leaned on his memories and that alone gave me the validation that I was seeking.

It was James Barrie (the Scottish dramatist & novelist – he wrote “Peter Pan”) that said that “life is a long lesson humility,” and I know with absolute certainty that it is just that. We mourn death and we treasure life, and the rest, what is between, is humility. It isn’t about our chaotic jobs and lives, the debts we will attain and perhaps die with, or even the things that cause us pain; it is the lesson learned and the road travelled.