Opportunity Cost

Remember when you were little and people used to ask you what it was you wanted to be when you grew up? I aspired to many varied things, a teacher (but then, I think every little kid, or at least little girl, dreams of being a teacher at some point) an actress (I dabbled, but never professionally), a waitress (fait accompli!) , a lawyer and yes, a priest (not a nun mind you, a priest! - I have to settle for catechist until the Catholic church starts welcoming divorced women to take up the cloth). Truthfully though I spent a lot of my day playing with baby dolls. Being their "Mommy". I don't know if it was because I lost my own Mom when I was so young, or because I was always surrounded by my older sister's babies, but being a Mommy is all I ever truly wanted.

For the last nine and a half years I have had my dream job. I have never felt that I gave up anything for my kids, I have always known that I have been on the receiving end of this arrangement. I have looked at my "have tos" as "get tos". I don't "have to" get up with my crying baby 3 times a night, I "get to". I know that it won't last forever and so I cherish it. Of course, that is not to say that I don't have my moments (every day) when I want to scream and yell and pull my hair out, or that I don't wait each day for the moment when they finally "go the F**K to sleep" (as the clever book by Adam Mansbach is titled) , because believe me, I do. I am not about to paint any rosy fairy tale pictures of my dreamy June Cleaver life. It's messy, and ugly and loud and... I LOVE IT.

My daughter, all seven years of her, dreams of one day being married and having babies of her own. So sweet and familiar. Bittersweet though because I struggle with how to protect her, how to try and see that she not make the same mistakes in life that I did. But then, that's not really fair is it? To say that I made a mistake? My life is good. I have four amazing people that I "get to" guide on this journey with me. I wake up every day to their smiles and every morning I wrap them in my hugs. I send them off to school with the Sign of the Cross on their forehead and a wish that God will bless them, that they each have a "wonderful, beautiful, very good day" because, "I love them very much". But still...nothing in life is certain and I want my babies, my daughter especially, to be prepared. I have tried to plant the seed that marriage is not the goal, just part of the game. I have told her straight out that I want her to be able to take care of herself first. I have explained my situation, I don't have a career to fall back on. Nobody is hiring professional Mommies. If I could have done anything differently in my life it would have been to not be in such a rush. I would have taken my time getting married and having babies - I would have tried to trust that you can have a career and a family. I still would have stayed home with my cherubs, but at least I would have options better than the ones I have now.

Here's the crazy thing. I am smart. Really smart. I could have been anything I wanted to be when I "grew up". I still can, right? I have a degree in business. I started earning it while I was working full time and finished it when I was bouncing Firstson on my hip. One of the things I remember learning in business school was about "opportunity cost". That is, everything you do comes at the cost of not doing something else. I am at a place in my life right now that while it is so good, it is also fleeting. I feel very strongly that I have to figure out what I am going to be. I meditated on this for a while after I became a single stay at home mom. I want to take this opportunity I have been given, this time when my bills are still being paid and while my family is still so willing to help, to figure it out and make it happen. I desperately do not want to get stuck behind a desk doing some "job". Been there, done that, hated it.

I would be a great lawyer. I have always thought about it. I am a good writer, an excellent reader, I have an eye for detail and I am creative. I would love to feel like I was helping people and still be making a decent salary. (how awesome would it be to use child support payments to cover family vacations - in other words, be able to provide for myself and my children everything else) I waited for a sign and when I felt I had received it I jumped right in. I registered for classes at Empire State College to finish my bachelor's degree. Independent Studies. Not online courses, independent studies. As in, read this textbook, write a paper and give me a call to discuss.

Here's where that opportunity cost thing comes in...every time we say "yes" to one thing we are automatically saying "no" to something else. I have had a hard time with these classes, not the content, the time management. At the end of my day I am spent. I go full steam ahead from early in the am until those sweeties fall to slumber - which is usually after quite a battle. I have taken some incompletes in my classes, and I really don't know when or how to complete them. It's a mess, because I think I have to do something, time is running out!

I think to myself, if I can't handle this, how will I ever handle law school? Not to mention the fact that law school is expensive, and I am poor. There's the fact that jobs for new attorneys are hard to come by these days. The Niece's husband just graduated and passed the bar. Thankfully he had a job lined up, but apparently with his student loans now coming due they are actually netting less than they were before he became a lawyer and will be for the next ten years or so. Also, I think about all the sacrifices he made while in law school, and wonder if I would be willing to make the same ones. I have four cherubs who are my life. I am a Catechist and a Girl Scout leader. I am baby "G"'s favorite great aunt and thrice weekly caregiver. I make dinner. I do laundry. I decorate my house for all the holidays and I make cupcakes. All of these things are part of my job, remember my dream job? I am just temping, but I am giving it my all, I don't know what I could give up.

I remember when I was a teenager in HS and I wanted to be in every after school club that was offered, my father had an important conversation with me in which he said "you can't give 100% to one hundred different things, you need to pick something and be good at it." How could I know that some 20 years later those words would be so relevant? So, for now I am going to continue working hard at my job everyday. I am a good Mom (I am assured of this everyday when Paddy-boy yells that I am the 'wurst mommy evah!' ) I am going to live in the now as much as I can and heed the advice of my Heavenly Father to not worry about tomorrow. After all, the only thing that is guaranteed is today, right? So, I will continue hugging and blessing my babies each morning, packing their lunchboxes with carrot sticks and sandwiches, filling their drawers with clean clothes and pulling my hair out each night waiting for them to fall to sleep. I am going to give 100% of myself to this job, to this calling and have faith that God will provide.

Maybe someday I will go to law school, maybe someday I will weep proudly when Curly Girl calls to tell me that she passed the Bar Exam. All I know is that right now, I am going to pack up some snacks and pile the kids into the car for religion. It's Tuesday and the slow cooker is on. Life is good today, and today is all I've got.

Full Circle

It is just one year ago this weekend that I started to become aware of how much my life was about to change. My husband was away on business, and even though we still hadn't quite ironed out our differences from an argument a few weeks earlier, my heart ached from missing him. I anxiously awaited his return, wanting so much to feel his strong arms wrap around me and his soft lips meet mine, but I was left feeling very cold when the reunion was anything but warm.

One year ago this weekend he first mentioned how unsure he was, that he didn't really know what he wanted. Just a few days later, sitting on the beach he told me that he was "done", that he would no longer share an emotional connection with me, it was too much for him to bear. Despite the tears and the pleading and begging on my part, he pronounced that from then on we would merely be partners in raising our children. There would be no emotion involved. No love, no fighting, no sex. I told him that was the "stupidest thing I ever heard".

And so I began the fight of my life. It wasn't for at least another week that I would find out about his illicit relationships (yes, plural, but that is another story for another day), my mind was already made up, I was not going to give up easily. For the next three months that he continued to live at home, and even beyond, I fought with all my being to save my marriage. I made fabulous dinners, I made desperate love, I made counseling appointments, and I made it to Mass every Sunday and most weekdays too, because even if Hubby was deaf to my pleading surely God was not. I offered to turn myself into a contortionist of sorts, willing to bend whatever way necessary to save our marriage, to save my life as I knew it, and to protect my children from having to feel the inevitable pain that comes with a broken family.

Lord, just thinking about those days gives me a pit in my stomach. It all came about so unexpectedly. I was completely blind-sided by the break-up. It hurt. Badly. It hurt to try so hard, and get nothing in return. It hurt to be so needy. To be so broken. It was a dark, dark time in my life, and even though my strong faith assured me that someday there would be light, it was at times a struggle to keep hope. I did though, keep hope, at times I didn't know what I was hoping for, but I never gave up.

Now here I sit, one year later. I am in no way basking in sunshine just yet, but I am no longer cowering in a dark corner. I am still fighting, only now I am fighting for myself, for my children, for our future. My marriage is, for all intents and purposes, over. I am sad, but I am okay. I never thought I would, but I have survived this far and I intend to keep going.

I am in a hotel room for the weekend, in Albany, NY. I am here with the Niece, babysitting her sweet one month old baby "g" so that she and her husband can attend the nuptials of a longtime friend. It is a vacation for me. I will gladly trade four messy kids in a messy house for a sweet smelling infant, room service and complete control of the remote (plus, in case you haven't noticed, time to blog).

It is so ironic. We just never know where life is going to take us, do we? I promise you this, eventually, it comes full circle.

I haven't been to Albany since I left here in tears in January of 1995, over fifteen years ago. I had been a student at the University of Albany, right out of high school and with enough financial aid that I didn't have to worry about much. I went away to college for the wrong reasons though, and it didn't work out. I wasn't a party animal, but I wasn't a good student and it caught up to me. At first I was on academic probation, and then finally I was, how did they put it? Oh yeah, "Kicked Out".

It all seems so far away now, I almost forget that at the time it was Armageddon. I didn't tell any of my family until all was over and done with. I struggled in secret for weeks with what I knew was certain failure and I kept it all to myself. I wrote a letter to the administration, I sat before the board begging for a change of heart that didn't come. At the end of the day I had to pack up my dorm room and call my family to tell them I was coming home. It was awful. My soul sister Chiquita was there to drive me home while I cried and sobbed and basically fell apart. When I got home, my family was there to help me pick up the pieces. It was a dark time, not something I like to talk about, I really truly thought my life was over. I couldn't see past the failure of that "today" to even imagine the success of my tomorrows. I did it though. I picked myself up and I kept going. I eventually earned a business degree. I eventually married, bought a house and I have four amazing cherubs, and beautiful friendships.

I am once again faced with a failure of "today". This time however, I see the possibility that is held in my tomorrows. I am not going to let myself be defined by my divorce any more than I am defined by the "academic dismissal" that is on my permanent record. I am so much more.

I am healing. I am growing as a person, becoming better every day. I am strong. I am not broken, just bruised. I have no idea what the future is going to hold for me, I know that it will be at times wonderful and amazing, and I know that at times it will be dark and scary. I also know that the darkness doesn't last forever.

Princess of Power?

On the infrequent occasions when I sit and consider myself in comparison to children's fictional characters I usually lean more towards She-ra Princess of Power than say, Little Miss Muffett. Usually. She-ra is known for her superhuman strength, speed, stamina, agility, reflexes, and durability. That's me. I take it all on, no fear. I even shop the cereal aisle with four children and emerge unscathed with my box of plain old "toasted oats" - if that doesn't demonstrate stamina, agility and super-human strength you probably use Peapod.

Since my husband left I have had so many people offering to help. Friends, neighbors. You know "please let me know if there is anything I can do" - "Thank you, I will". I am pretty self-sufficient, uncomfortable taking help. In the beginning I could barely function and so I did have friends and family here helping all the time, but only the people closest to me. They were here, helping with the kids, cleaning the kitchen, sorting through baby clothes, etc. Some neighbors have brought over groceries, flowers and even dinner on occasion, but still, they offer to help, "if I need it".

My therapist tells me that it is important to accept other's offers of help. It helps them feel helpful. In other words, my acceptance of help is actually a charitable act of my own. I consider myself to be a generous and charitable individual, so this view presents me with a bit of a conundrum. I feel compelled, but I don't know what to ask for. I don't know how to let these people help. In truth, I don't need that much, save for some magic potion to shake some sense into Uncle Dad and bring healing and restore trust in my broken marriage. Short of asking for black magic, I just don't know when the opportunity would present itself that I could help these people and allow them to help me. Imagine my surprise when, a few weeks back I was presented not just with an opportunity, but with an absolute dire need for neighborly assistance.

I was sitting in my living room on a lazy Saturday morning enjoying my Christmas tree and the company of my dear friend from Philfadelfia, DD. I was in my pajamas, sipping some hot tea, and she was relaxing on the chaise singing nursery rhymes to her godson Dexter (both in pajamas). All of a sudden we heard a "thud" (incidentally, I LOVE a good onomatopoeia, don't you?). DD declared that she definitely heard eight individual, yet synchronized thuds. Upon further investigation I found that she was indeed right...it was the biggest, huge-est, most insanely large arachnid I had ever seen.

She-ra: exit stage left. Miss Muffet: enter stage right. Cue girly screaming. Ew. Spider!

Damn it! Where is a man when you need him! Ugh. First Son, is unfortunately just as afraid of spiders as I am. Fortunately though, he is quite capable of dialing the phone. I screamed the neighbor's phone number and had First Son tell them that Mom needed a Man NOW!!! (hmmm...I am only now hearing just how..wrong that sounds...) I kept my eye on the creature while we waited for help to arrive. If we had lost sight of that ...thing, I would have had no choice but to put the for sale sign on the lawn and head to the Motel 8, cuz there ain't no way I be sleepin in the same house with a mutant arachnid. (That's right, I said "ain't")

So there I am in my living room, in my pajamas, on the verge of tears doing my charitable good deed for the sake of my neighbor down the block. I won't mention his 12 year old daughter who stood in my hallway watching the whole scene unfold and laughing her ass off, though perhaps there was charity even in that.

I can handle a lot. I have four little kids. I have seen poop, and vomit and temper tantrums that would make your hair stand up. I can tell you true life stories that the greatest writers of our time could not make up. I am not a lightweight, but to be fair, this spider was no Charlotte of Wilbur's "Some Pig" fame. This spider would have eaten your baby just like a dingo.

She-ra. Princess of Power. At the end of the day, still just a girl afraid of a spider.

A dream denied

Life is not fair. It's not. Life is not fair.

Tell me something I don't already know.

Today is my birthday. The anniversary of the day my mother so gracefully brought me into this world. For a long time, this day was the one I have most anticipated, celebrating as if it were a sort of unofficial holiday. Then I became a mother. Now my most favorite days are my children's birthdays. All four of them. I guess when you have a child they automatically become more important, more amazing than you are, even in your own mind. Since I have become a mom I have come to think of birthdays as being as much a celebration of the mother who did the birthing as it is of the child who was born. For the last 28 birthdays, I have had to celebrate without my mother.

When I was six years old my mother died. She was sick. A lot of my memories are of her being sickly. In and out of the hospital. Having to be careful and cautious. I remember wanting so badly for her to be able to come upstairs and tuck me in to bed, and my Dad being upset if she did. She needed to "take it easy". Then, one spring day when I was six years old my world changed forever. I was in first grade and I had been sitting with her reading Sally, Dick & Jane. Suddenly she didn't feel right, she needed to go into the bathroom. Next, she was asking me to wet a cool washcloth for her, and go wake up Daddy. Not long after, I watched her wave to me for the last time from the passenger seat of our car as it pulled out of the driveway and my Dad rushed her off to the hospital.

I am 34 years old today and the memories of my Mom leaving that day still bring me to my knees.

My sister and I went "across the street" to our neighbors and friends and played Atari. Later that night we returned home, and I went to bed. I could hear downstairs that other people were there, and the Stanley Cup hockey was on. I already felt so lonely and scared. I pooled all of the blankets around me in a circle, creating a sacred private space for myself to try to feel safe, but I fell asleep feeling very scared. In the morning it was my aunt, my mother's sister, who came upstairs to tell me that there was "no more Mommy".

No child should have to hear those words, or words like them, but they have rattled in my brain ever since. Life isn't fair.

As you might imagine, from that day on I was changed. Just as a mother is defined in the moment her child takes her first breath, I was defined when my mother breathed her last. I was formed into the mother I am today so many years ago when I became a motherless daughter.

Although it means different things for all of us, we all want better for our children than we had for ourselves. I wanted "normal". I wanted the sitcom family a la "The Cosby Show", "Growing Pains" or "Family Ties". I wanted a family. I wanted family dinners with lots of siblings around the table sharing stories about the day. I wanted drawers full of clean clothes, lunchboxes full of carrot sticks and sandwiches. Milk and cookies and Mom waiting after school to help with the homework. I wanted fresh Christmas trees, Sunday church and pot roast. I wanted a Mom and a Dad.

This year when the anniversary of my mother's death approached it was particularly poignant for me. My FirstSon was six years old. It struck me hard to realize that in his short life he had already lived more time with his Mom by his side than I ever did with mine. I also realized that while the past six years have created rich memories for me, have been in fact the greatest time of my life, FirstSon will probably not remember much of it himself. Basically, it hit me this past spring that if I were to die (and as irrational as I know it is, I am always afraid that I am going to die), this whole time would boil down to very little in the memory of my precious children. It made me sad to think of it.

Now of course, I didn't die. No one has. Not really. My marriage. My dreams, maybe. My children can't possibly comprehend what they have lost. They will live a new "normal", and it will be okay, but I will remember. I will remember the time when we were a family, when we were everything I ever wanted.

I wanted so much more for my children. I tried so hard. I thought I had it all. I did have it all. Something, no, someone changed somewhere and now it is gone. Everything that I didn't want for my children to experience is happening, and it is out of my control. IT SUCKS. It sucks to realize that you cannot control what happens to your children, that you can't always protect them from getting hurt. Right now the best I can do is hold them in my arms, kiss away their tears and love them. Life is not fair, but they have their mother.

I Will Find Joy

This has been my mantra of late. I don't know where it came from, but it has been playing over and over in my head. It is true, my life right now is nothing that I ever thought it would be. It is nothing short of a nightmare. In a million years I never thought I would be googling "divorce mediation". I never pictured myself packing an overnight bag for my kids to spend the night with their father. I am living in bizarro world. It's weird, uncomfortable and I don't like it. It is a work in progress though, and while there are a lot of bad days, lately there are some good days too, and for that I am grateful.

Have I mentioned that I have the four most amazing cherubs? They bring so much light to my world, to my life. Every night at least one of them crawls into my bed and shnuggles up close to me. In the past I would have been diligent about shuffling them back to their own beds, but lately I am way too tired, and besides, I like having them there. In the morning we hug and shnuggle, we giggle and talk. They are absolutely delicious, better than cinnamon rolls oozing with sweet gooey frosting. They are my reason for being, they are the ones who make me smile, even make me laugh. My children are my greatest blessing, and in them I will find joy.

I Don't want a Strap-on

There's another thing that happens when I am having a bad day. (such as today) I start missing my husband with a terrible ache. I imagine a patient who has lost a limb in some terrible trauma waking from a coma to find that their life, their very selves are irrevocably changed. The arm is gone, they scream, they cry, they get angry, they grieve. After a while they accept, a prosthesis is created, a strap on, semblance of what used to be. Skills are re-learned and eventually life goes on. They learn to live this new one armed existence, but, each morning when they first awaken- reality stings. They expect their arm to be there, reaching to shut the blaring alarm, but nothing it seems is where it is supposed to be.

I want to call my husband, text him, e-mail him. I want to say:

I love you.

I am sorry.

So sorry.

Please come home. Please let's fix this.

Please, I love you.

I want to wrap my arms around him, I want to burrow my head in his chest. I want to feel his lips on mine. I want to wake up with two arms, damn it!

Today is a cold rainy day. It reminds me of a day we shared thirteen years ago when we were young, in love and relatively unencumbered by responsibility. We were in college. Separate colleges, but mine was on the way to his and so he would drive me. On this particular morning we got ready for school and climbed into his cold ugly gold mazda pick-up truck and headed on our way. Well, we only got to the first exit on the parkway before we decided that it would be a much better idea to turn around and go back home to cuddle under the covers - just skip school altogether and spend the day instead wrapped in the warmth of each other's arms. That was the day that a family tradition was born..the "shnuggle". An early morning, still under the covers, warm and cuddly hug that lasts half a day or more. Our children love to shnuggle.

Today is a day like that. Only, I have woken up once again to find that my arm is missing. I must start the process all over.

I have said it all. I have begged. I have pleaded, I have bargained. I have said I love you through tears, and with calm, steely resolve. I am gifted with words, and I have used them. Every combination I can think of. I keep thinking that there must be some way to get through to him. If I could just figure out the riddle, unlock the code. Sometimes I get discouraged. I feel like I have tried everything, and I am exhausted. Emotionally exhausted. Physically exhausted. Bent. Broken.

It is frustrating, but the truth is that there is nothing I can say. He has to want to be here, and right now he doesn't.

I love you. I miss you. I want to make things right. I want to fix our family. Please. Come home. It is a cold, rainy day. Let's go back to bed