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Marilyn Armstrong — Seeking Intelligent Life on Earth

Tag Archives: Family


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Daily Prompt: Unconventional Love – Strangely True

Today, tell us about the most unconventional love in your life. Photographers, share a photo that says unconventional.

Pandora’s box had nothing on this one. Wow. Sizzle. Smoke. Hot, hot, hot!!

Okay, this is a G-rated site, so I won’t go there. Instead, I’ll tell you a story and leave you free to fill in the details from your own rich imaginings.

At 18 I married my first husband. I was already in my senior year of college. Jeff ran the college radio station as Station Manager. My now and forever husband was Jeff’s second-in-command, that is to say Garry was the Program Director. The two men were best friends. Together with most of the people I still count as friends, we had a great deal of fun. Not just the usual college stuff. We were creative. Just our Fall of Sauron Day parties — scripted, costumed, with special effects — were the stuff of lifetime memories. And, because we were young and healthy, we could party all night and go the work the next day looking none the worse for wear. Try that nowadays!

I married Jeff in August 1965. I spent the next year finishing my B.A. and having my spine remodeled, so it was a few years before I got on with life. My son was born in May 1969. We named him Owen Garry, Garry being his godfather and all.

Fast forward through a non-acrimonious divorce. I later realized if you just give up everything and walk away, it’s easy to be amicable. It’s also a big mistake you will come to regret sooner or later.

Off to Israel with the kid. Not too long thereafter, a marriage in Israel about which I won’t talk, even under torture. One visit from the ex and current husband – exactly in time for the war in Lebanon. It ruined  our plans to see the Hermon and the Galilee, but created great anecdotes for another post. I have one picture that says it all: me, Jeff and Garry arm-in-arm by the Dead Sea. The picture taken by husband number 2.

Photo: Debbie Stone

Photo: Debbie Stone

August 1987. Back to the USA. Garry and I are an item. Subsequent to finalizing my long-distance divorce from husband number 2, we are wed. It’s the right marriage to the right guy. I declined to have my first ex-husband be best man at my third wedding. We did, however, have the “real” reception at his house. There was the official one at the church, but the fun was over at the old house.

Garry and I will celebrate our 23 anniversary in September.

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Prompts for the Promptless – Ep. 10 – Saudade: Remembering Mom

Saudade is a Portuguese word that describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for an absent something or someone who one loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing will never return.

My friends, who came as I did to live in Israel, shared the fear of receiving “the phone call” telling us a parent had passed away across an ocean and perhaps half a world. 

We were haunted children. Each Passover we gathered. Elijah’s cup stood on the table. It was my mother’s cup and though she lived, she was also a ghost because she was so far away. I looked at my son. When I am old, I wondered, will he go far away to live in a different country?

I was 31 when left the U.S. and moved to Israel. I left in a ferocious need to be. Nothing would have stopped me. My mother never tried to stop me. She told me she admired me – admired me – for having the courage to leave.

I lay in bed the morning my mother died. Images tumbled through my head. In my mind’s eye, I saw the funeral I could not attend, my brother, older, sadder. And my sister. My mother was her protector. What would Ann do now? Two birds twitter as they build a nest on my Jerusalem window ledge…

I lived most of my adult life within half an hour’s drive from my mother and never gave it a second thought. We talked by phone, saw each other now and then for a bit of shopping and a chat. Such was life in suburban New York.

Living in Israel – being so far away – taught me about family We saw each other through a time-lapse sequence. Each visit, she was visibly older, changed. A call – “Your mother is in the hospital” – brought panic. Nothing could reassure me.

Another visit to Israel. It is the year after my mother’s surgery and she looks so tired. I can see the weariness, yes, but she is still Mother. I saw her as I had always seen her: strong, an elemental force in my world. A friend commented: “What a fragile little woman your mother is!” That stopped me short. I had never seen my mother as fragile. Or little. She was as she had always been … but maybe my eyes were faulty.

My mother was with me, then had to leave and another year passed.

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It was 1983. She had come for Passover.  I was overjoyed to have my family together. We would have three uninterrupted weeks. My mother looked wonderful. Her color was back. Just before the Seder, she tells me that she is dying.

“Dying?” I was inane in my shock. “But you look so well.”

She was not well. She had cancer. It had spread to her lungs and stomach. She said she could feel herself sliding away. “I don’t want to lose you,” I cried. If I cry, Mother will fix it, it will be okay.

“I don’t want to lose me either,” she said, and laughed.

“How can you laugh?” I said.

“What else is there to do?” she replied.

Fears and prayers and hopes. Relentlessly, she told me what I need to know about the will,my brother and sister. I am the first to be told.

We took a two-day trip to the Galilee. The wildflowers were blooming. They were scarlet and blue, white and pink, yellow and purple. The Galil was ablaze and we saw it together. I remember. The Hermon, still crowned with snow. The Kinneret, mist-covered.

My mother always talked to me. I was little, very little. I sat next to her while she ironed and she talked about life, her thoughts, her dreams. Was she lonely? Did she miss her own mother who had passed away?

The final summer of her life, I went to the United States to be with her. She still looked well. How could she be so ill? Yet the signs were there. Her will sustained her. She wanted me to remember the Mother I knew, and not as she would be in weeks to follow.

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She let me take care of her, and that spoke volumes. We talked, talked, talked. I tried to tell her all the things I’d never gotten around to saying, never found the right words.

I just let the words fall out. I wanted her to know that all the little hurts … they were nothing. Forgive me Mother … I forgive you, too.

I am my mother. I am the cycle, the pattern. I sit by a pool and watch my granddaughter play in the water, and I am my mother, and I am in the pool. I am the one, mother who is and will be.

My mother gave me a diamond that was her mother’s and perhaps, though no one can remember so far back, her grandmother’s. It was the one thing that had been passed down the generations. All else was lost, long ago, left behind in another old … older … country.

I have become the woman my mother raised me to be. As she molded me, I am – for good and ill. I am my mother’s daughter.

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Daily Prompt: Companionable – Becoming Together

The old man and his wife had been living in that old house for many years. The kids had moved away and were none too young themselves anymore. The grandchildren had children, almost grown children and long drives to visit each other were difficult. No one had much money to spend on plane fare and even if they had, there wasn’t much fun to be had at airports these days.

So the couple stayed home. That was okay. They were good together. Their marriage had come relatively late in life, after the child-bearing was done, though they’d known each other since … when was that? College I guess. more the 60 years ago. It didn’t feel so long ago, but the calendar didn’t lie.

Companions and friends.

Companions and friends.

Dan and Molly lived indoors more than they used to. They had a lot of property, but maintaining it had fallen by the wayside as back and knees and hips got increasingly creaky and painful. It was okay. The garden grew jungle-like, the flowers were a riot of colors even without tending. If the rain came, the flowers continued to grow. Even the weeds were pretty. Every year, they cleaned up as much of the fallen leaves from the towering oak trees as they could before their bodies started screaming “No!” Then they’d sit on the glider in the yard and smile at each other.

It wasn’t quite how they’d expected life to go. But they had each other. They could talk together, remember together and that was good. Special.

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They had but one important wish, that somehow when the time came for them to go, that they could do it together.

Thus was their wish granted. Together, for all the seasons in companionable peace, in the shade of the tall oaks as they gradually became part of the land itself.

 


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Bye-Bye Superwoman

Not long ago, I was Superwoman. I knew because so many people said I was, so it had to be true, right? Then life fell apart. I started to miss those leaps over tall buildings. I barked my shins and fell on my head. Finally what was supposed to be a single bound turned into a crash and burn.

Thus I learned I couldn’t do it all and shouldn’t try. Superwoman wasn’t so super any more.

The thing about having a superwoman image is that it’s so flattering. It’s sweet having folks tell you how much they admire you. It’s great hearing them say they wish they had your courage. Even if you don’t quite believe it, it’s nice to hear, isn’t it? The words provide validation. You feel appreciated. Loved, even.

Unfortunately, flattery has strings. Having told you how great you are, your friends feel free to tap into all that strength they admire and they know, by some instinct, that you will help. It’s a reflex. You see a need, you try to fill it. You can’t say no to such a needy soul. If you think about it, you almost never say no to anyone. It’s remarkable how popular that makes you.

Since retiring my cape, I’ve learned a few things.

Strong people, especially women, attract needy people. It’s as if we have a “get your free help here” sign on our foreheads. Everyone can see it — except us.

It took me the better part of a lifetime to recognize and accept having physical and emotional limits and understand with my heart, not just my head that I don’t have endless reserves. If I fail to set priorities, when those closest to me need help, I have nothing to give. It turns out emotional energy is like a bank account. You can’t keep making withdrawals unless you also make deposits.

I can’t fight every battle or support every cause.

The first time I said no to someone who asked for help, I felt so guilty I thought I’d drown. All these years later, I don’t say no easily or lightly, but I say it. It turns out that the world goes on anyhow. God is God. I am not.

Superwomen are easy to manipulate. Guilt and our over-developed sense of responsibility makes us vulnerable to emotional blackmail. We wind up doing the hard things that others can and should do for themselves. It’s a trap no less for them than for us.

Most people are not too weak to do what they need to do. Strength is not DNA, it’s a choice. Most “weak” people are lazy, fearful and don’t want to make difficult choices. They don’t look for solutions. They look for help. Big difference.

Of course there are plenty of people with serious problems … no end of them. Me too. I’ve had so many problems I’ve often wondered if God had a grudge against me or if I had somewhere along the line pissed off a minor but extremely malign deity or maybe am working off some terrible Karmic debt. I’ve been so sick I was nearly dead and not just once. I had no health insurance or money, but I had to survive. I worked the phones, called my congressman. I wrote letters. I don’t really know how I got through, but here I am. It wasn’t valor; it was desperation.

When life began to settle down and I was no longer fighting for my life every day, I decided I would be there for the people in my world who matter. My real friends, my real family. The rest of the world would have to find other resources. I was no longer an option.

People say that when things get tough, you discover who your friends are. From the dozens of people I helped over the years, to whom I offered a place to live when they were homeless, hours of listening when they needed a caring ear … and so much more … when life turned on me, fewer than a handful of those “friends” were available. All the rest were missing in action. That was when I put my cape in mothballs. Now I take care of close friends and family. And for the first time, I take care of myself.

Thirty-five years ago, my mother asked me an odd question. She asked: “If you were to list the people in your life that matter, who would be first, second, and third on the list?”

I listed my son, my husband and a close friend.

She said: “You’re wrong. The first name on that list has to be YOU, because if you don’t take care of yourself, no one will. You won’t be able to care for anyone else, either.”

I thought it a strange thing for her to say since her own life seemed to have consisted entirely of taking care of others. She was dying then. I suppose her world-view had changed.

But she was right. In the final analysis, we are responsible for ourselves. Only if and when we have made sure we have what we need can we take care of anyone or anything else.

God — or Superwoman — will have to take care of the rest.

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Life 101

Someone asked me what lessons I learned in life. It seemed like there would be a lot of answers to that question but actually, after I really thought about it, I realized there’s only one lesson. It comes in many forms and wears a variety of disguises and costumes. It seems, on first glance, a simple lesson yet it is the hardest to accept probably because it is a lesson we don’t want to learn. We resist it, fight it, wrestle until we are bloody, beaten and crushed. It’s not what we were promised. It is entirely contrary to what mom and dad told us when they said we could do or be anything if we tried hard enough.

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It turns out that we aren’t the drivers of the bus that is our lives. We are passengers and whether we get a window seat or find ourselves scrunched up at the back with lots of other riders, we are far from the driver’s seat. We have not been advised of the itinerary or destination nor do we know the schedule or even if there are stops along the way.

We are free to ask the driver to take us where we want to go. If the driver complies, we assume this shows we are in control. If the driver goes somewhere completely different, we blame ourselves, the world, our parents, fate, whatever. After all, when things go wrong, it has to be someone’s fault, right?

But no one is at fault. Life happens. If life treats us gently, we are happy to take credit for our great planning and skill in life management. If things go poorly, we look around to see who we can blame.

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Control is our fondest, most beloved illusion. As thinking beings, we are irrevocably committed to making a good faith best effort to accomplish whatever we set out to do. If our goals align with what life intends for us, we get to accomplish some of what we planned. Regardless, sooner or later, we learn – easy or hard – we are not in control, never were, nor ever will be. Life is not a course we plot on a map. It’s not a route laid out with appropriate stopovers along the path.

Life simply is.

That’s the lesson. Where life takes us, that’s where we should be and where we need to apply our efforts. Our greatest success won’t be the result of how successfully we manage our lives but how well we take advantage of the opportunities and challenges life throws at us.

Free will is a limited franchise. Our life takes place in a designated space within which we have some options: we can sit in this chair or on that sofa. We can look out the window or chat with whoever is sharing our space. But we are not moving to another room. That’s the essence of Karma.

Your real task is to find satisfaction with what life gives you. Otherwise, you will waste your days pining for what will never be, angry because it isn’t what you want, and depressed because you feel cheated. There is always some good stuff going on, no matter how difficult it may be to find. This is not the answer anyone wants to hear. It seems so unfair.

Fair or not, this is the answer and the lesson. You are not obligated to like it. You are required to deal with it.

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Living Mom’s Life

The other night, I was poking around the music section of Amazon. Since getting my cute little Kindle Fire HD, I have started to listen to music again. It’s been a while and I wasn’t aware how much I missed it, especially classical music. I often hear the melodies in my head, distant echoes of my younger self. I played the piano for a long time and was a music major in college, completing all the requirements except for 1 credit of chorus, at which point I changed majors. I didn’t want to graduate with a degree in music, already knowing it wouldn’t take me where I wanted to go professionally. I loved music and I was a pretty good pianist, but that’s not a career. It’s a hobby.

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I was particularly good at Bach. The music fit my hands, something which could not be said of  my hands in context of Chopin, Grieg, or Beethoven. My hands are tiny. Child-sized hands on a full-grown body. It’s especially odd because I’m not petite. Short, yes, but not petite. I have big feet, broad shoulders. Solid peasant stock. So what’s with the tiny hands? Don’t say anything. It’s all been said before.

Anyone who tells you the size of hands doesn’t matter to a musician doesn’t play piano. Once you get past kiddy music, you need hands that can span at least a 10th, more if possible. You need full-size grown up hands and a good deal of physical strength. To put it simply, the piano was the wrong instrument for me. I needed an instrument for which the size of my hands would be irrelevant.

I wanted to play the drums.

“Girls don’t play drums,” my mother said.

“Why the hell not?”

“Watch your language.”

“Who says girls don’t play drums? Is there a rule written somewhere?”

I dragged in my high school band teacher into the argument. Still no go. GIRLS, said my mother, don’t play drums. There was nothing for it. I was a girl so no drums. It was a bit strange because my mother usually was a pretty strong feminist and frequently reminded me that I could be whatever I wanted to be. I didn’t need to be a nurse: I could be a doctor — except I wanted to be a nurse. Had Life not crashed into me when I had just started my MS in Nursing, I would have been, though I wonder if I would have wound up writing anyhow. I wanted to run public health clinics. It was my reformer persona taking charge. Life had other ideas.

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Meanwhile, on the music front, I suggested voice lessons. I had a decent enough voice and I was pretty sure girls were allowed to sing, but Mom always wanted to play the piano. It was too late for her, but her daughter was going to be a pianist. I was living my mom’s dream. It’s a pity her dreams and my hands were so incompatible. I had some talent, but I was studying the wrong instrument. After a great deal of effort, I achieved a high level of mediocrity as a pianist. If I’d been more dedicated, I could have achieved “almost good enough for concert work,” a special Hell exclusively for aspiring but unsuccessful classical musicians.

Getting stuck in your parents’ dreams happens in all kinds of families. It is not exclusive to any ethnic group, class, color, religion or even nationality. Wealthy parents want their kids to do what they weren’t able to do as much as poor parents. We all try to give our kids what we wanted, even when it’s not what they want. It’s almost a reflex.

I needed freedom as a child; even more as a teenager. I was self-disciplined. I merely wanted to go where I wanted to go and do what I wanted to do without being watched all the time. Since that was not going to happen, I became highly successful at sneaking around. I went where I wanted to go, with or without permission and I just didn’t tell my mother. It was one of the important lessons I learned about parenting: You can’t stop a determined kid, so you might as well help him or her do what they want to do safely.

I was never interested in hanging out at the mall or a movie. I snuck off to museums and libraries. My nerdy idea of adventure was a day trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s a world-class museum and if you are ever in New York, it’s worth a day of your time. It isn’t just one museum, either. My favorite part of it is the medieval section, The Cloisters overlooking the Hudson River in Fort Tryon Park.

“Too dangerous,” said Mom. When I pointed out that she was going on ski trips to Bear Mountain when she was 14, she said she had been more mature than I was. I believe I chipped my first tooth during that conversation. I got to say classic lines like “How will you know I’m responsible until you let me have some responsibility?” and she got to give me the “As long as you live under my roof … ” line. Stalemate. I was going to live my mother’s dreams and be beholden to my mother’s fears.

If I were easily bullied, I’d have done the rest of my mother’s life for her and become a teacher. I have nothing against teaching as a career and believe it’s as important a job as you can do in this world. I simply didn’t want to be one.

My Geekscape

Despite sporadic side trips, deep down I knew I was going to be a writer. I toyed with other things: nursing, music, photography. But when I dreamed, I dreamed of being an author, seeing my name on book jackets, the smell of printer’s ink and the soft crack of the spine when you open a new book. A writer I became and remain, but my mother was always sure I would never be able to earn a living as a writer. I did well, but she never believed it was a “real” career. It was not substantial, like teaching.

It is hard to resist giving in to the pressure and doing what mom or dad always wanted to do because it makes them happy. Pressure to do their thing rather than your own can be very intense yet subtle. In the end, it doesn’t work, unless your dream happens to be the same as theirs. Everyone needs to do what he or she was born to do.

As a parent, it can be tricky to teaze apart the strands of what you want from what your kids want. It can be painful watching them fail and failure is always possible. You have to let them sink or swim on their own. It’s not a choice. Kids grow up to be who they need to be. The best we can offer is support, to help them find and follow their own paths.

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You get what you pay for

There is a lot of internet discussion about kids having no manners, offspring who display a complete lack of civility towards adults in general and their own families in particular. I hear a lot of squawking from families how “they didn’t learn this from us!” which I find amusing. They learned it somewhere, so I’m guessing home is exactly where they learned it.

The way you treat your children, each other and the rest of the world is going to be exactly how your offspring will treat you.

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When we were younger and on predictable schedules, our extended family had nightly (or nearly so) family meals. As we’ve all gotten older, I got tireder. I stopped being able or willing to cook for a crowd every night and figured there was no reason I should. I’ve been cooking family style for more than 40 years. I’ve served my time (yes, it’s punny). These days, I try to keep life and meals simple. Garry and I eat differently than the kids. My son hates fish, mushrooms and other stuff that Garry and I love. My granddaughter won’t eat anything with even a hint of hot spice. My daughter-in-law won’t eat steak. Bottom line? It’s easier and more fun to cook things Garry and I like. Nowadays, making us happy is my priority. The younger generations are welcome to do the same for themselves. It doesn’t exclude communal family occasions, but it shifts the responsibility for making it happen from me to them. Fair? I think so.

My husband and I eat together, mostly in front of the TV, because the tray tables are cozier than the big dining table. When the whole family sits down together about once a week, it’s pleasant but everyone is off in a different direction as soon as the last bite is chewed. It’s not so terrible. Everyone has their own schedule, especially “the baby” who at 16, is a young woman and wants to do her own thing. It would be odd if it were otherwise. I was much the same and I think I turned out alright.

Despite no longer dining together, we are reasonably nice to each other. We have our beefs, but “please”, “thank you”, “excuse me” and similar expressions are normal parts of conversation. Our ability to get along isn’t tied to the dinner table. If it were, we’d be in serious trouble.

Not having family dinners has not turned us into barbarians nor did having them make us civilized.

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I keep reading posts deploring the loss of family dinners. It’s apparently the clearest sign of the end of society, of civilization itself. I don’t agree. Society’s disintegration is a lot more complicated than that.

All over the Internet you hear it. The younger generation has no manners! Hot flash! The older generation is incredibly rude too. As far as I can see, out in the big wide world, parents talk to each other and their children without so much as a pretence of civility. They order the kids around like drill sergeants or ignore them except to complain about them. They threaten them with dire punishment, shout at them until they are hoarse. The kids don’t hear them and eventually ignore them. The shouting combined with toothless threats becomes background noise. This is true with kids and pets. If you always yell at the dog, the dog ignores you too.

And of course there are all those posts promoting spanking as the ultimate solution. Spanking teaches only one lesson: whoever is biggest and strongest wins.  What could possibly go wrong with that?

Eventually, all offspring rebel. It’s normal, natural, inevitable and healthy. They should rebel. However, if their entire upbringing consisted of being alternately yelled at, nagged, bullied and threatened, interspersed with an occasional hug, they aren’t going to rebel then come back. They’re gone. Mom and Dad figured a bit of hugging and an occasional “I love you” would fix everything and make it all better. They were wrong.

Kids become teenagers, so now their folks want civil behavior and (drumroll) respect, but it’s a bit late. Their children don’t respect them and don’t see any reason they should. Respect isn’t something you can demand. It was and remains something you earn. You can make them fear you, but not respect you. Why would anyone expect respect if they’ve never shown any?

“My kids never talk to me.” This classic is right up there with “I don’t get no respect.”

What are they supposed to talk about? If you have some interests in common with the young adults your kids have become, it would help. Most parents are only interested in what their kids are doing so they can stop them from doing it — something of which the kids are well aware. Their folks have no interest in their world. If they aren’t outright scornful of it, they are completely disinterested and ignorant . You don’t have to love everything the younger generation does, but it doesn’t hurt to know something about it and what it means. It is a very different world than the one in which you or I grew up. No need to be proud of ignorance.

They tell the entire world how much they don’t like their kids’ movies, music, games, personal habits and relationships. They announce with enthusiasm via Facebook, the modern intra-family bulletin board, how clueless the kids are.

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The kids may be clueless but so are their parents. To coin a phrase, the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree. I doubt most of them have made any effort to understand the world their kids live in. Why are they surprised the disinterest is reciprocal?

Kids learn by experience. They treat others as they have been treated. You can’t expect respect from kids who have never experienced it, nor good manners from youngsters whose parents wouldn’t know manners from a tree stump. Your children are unlikely to make an effort to understand you when you have never tried to understand them.

If you think you don’t need no stinkin’ manners when you talk to your children, husband, friends and strangers, your children probably agree. Why should they be nicer than you were to them?

Raising kids is the ultimate example of “you get what you pay for.” Or less.

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