Beautiful Olive

Tag: parenting

  • Do You Know What a Loser Is?

    This past Friday, I was prepared to shut down the blog. The internet was full of sadness over the passing of The Queen of Mommy Blogging, The OG Mom Blogger, Dooce. I pored over the tributes and read some of her best posts. I loved her take and will miss her beautiful words. As I took in the commentary from around the planet, I thought “It sounds like blogging is mostly dead. I think there are other platforms like Tik Tok and Instagram and a whole host of others that I know nothing about that must be the platforms of today. I missed the boat and have nothing new to add to these new-fangled ways of communicating. People don’t want to read blogs. They want visual content and it needs to be in 1-2 minute increments.”

    So I decided I would bury Beautiful Olive. Why pay for the website hosting, the Constant Contact subscription, and the domain name rights when it was just sitting out in the internet world languishing with no new content? When blogging was old-school and a thing of yesterday?

    Have you ever tried to cancel an auto-renew subscription? Well, the business-savvy peeps of the world are business-savvy for a reason. And they have figured out that if they make it really hard to cancel an auto-renew subscription, 92% of people won’t cancel it. You can buy almost anything online, without talking to a single person, with a single mouse click. But if you want to cancel something, you have to CALL someone and TALK to someone first. No amount of mouse clicks will get you there. This is why, two days later, I have not yet canceled Beautiful Olive or any of the internet extras that accompany her. I would have to make phone calls and talk to people and I am an introvert. We don’t play that way. We do not like to talk to strangers whose goals are exactly opposite ours.

    So, the blog is still here because it was too much of a pain to cancel it. And, then I woke up today and I decided to write. So, there you go.

    “Do you know what a loser is? A real loser is somebody who is so afraid of not winning they don’t even try.”

    Grandpa, “Little Miss Sunshine”

    It’s Mother’s Day and my typical MO celebration has been to do whatever I want with wild abandon. Mimosas and blueberry muffins for breakfast. Naps. Reading. A dinner fit for a queen, complete with dessert. And wine. Plenty of wine. Sometime after becoming a mom, I declared it the day of indulgence and I always indulged.

    But, some things happened to me over this past week (which I will tell you about in a minute) and all week when my husband or sons would ask what I wanted to do for Mother’s Day this year, I would answer “I don’t know. Not much. I know what I don’t want. I don’t want to have mimosas or blueberry muffins or a bottle of wine or naps. I know that’s what I don’t want. I’ll get back to you…”

    I’ve been on a collision course for the past year with my bad choices and habits. I weigh more than I should or ever have, I drink entirely too much alcohol, I don’t get the exercise I need and my ability to deal with life’s stressors is out of whack. The real struggle is in the knowledge of these things on the one hand and doing nothing about them on the other hand. The cognitive dissonance takes our anxiety to an even higher level and then we are even more unhappy with ourselves. It’s a vicious cycle. Because we are thoughtful, intelligent beings, we really should be able to figure this out. But, we can’t. So, we are losers.

    I’ve had the “Why do I KNOW what I need to do, but do the opposite?” conversation with myself so many times over the past year I’ve lost count. And every time I have had that conversation, I would follow up with “And, are you ready to do something about it?” And every time, the answer was a resounding “Nope. Tomorrow. Come back tomorrow and ask again. Maybe the answer will be different.” And I would stroll off with my glass of wine.

    About a week ago, I had the same conversation, but the answer was different. You can tell when it’s different. It feels like it rises up from your core and is straight-up bellicose. Everything starts to align and suddenly you’re just ready. You holler back at the old self who answered “Nope” every time. “Hey. Old Self. New Me is taking over. We don’t need your help anymore. We got this. Bye-bye.”

    I don’t know what flipped the switch. All I know is that I’ve been praying for it to flip for the past year and I knew I would know when it did. I was glad it flipped on Sunday because I had an appointment for a routine physical on Tuesday. “Whew!” I thought. “This is great! I dodged that bullet! Thanks, Me!” But, apparently, two days of changed habits is not enough lead time for your lab values to be whipped into shape and my doctor called me on Wednesday to tell me that I might need to go on some medication to combat some concerning findings. 😲

    Truth be told, my inactivity, my diet, my relationship with alcohol (that is a really dumb term) was really getting wildly out of control. I think it was pretty dark at times. And when it’s dark, we peer out of the hole and look around at everybody else to see how they’re doing. And when everybody else seems to be doing just fine, we clamp the shell down even tighter, don’t we? But the inner turmoil is still there beneath the surface. Somehow, we can’t figure out how to just do what we know we need to do. We are losers.

    Well, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. The switch will flip. The inner turmoil will work its way to the surface and demand a decision about who wins. I woke up this Mother’s Day and I RODE A BIKE for 30 minutes. I drank water and fasted until 2 p.m. I’m writing, not napping. At dinner, I’m going with CAULIFLOWER MASH instead of POTATO MASH. I e-mailed my physician and asked for a 6-month reprieve, medication-free, to get my sh*t in order. And I’ll gladly pay out of pocket to get new labs drawn in 6 months so I can prove that my switch has indeed flipped.

    Will I feel as sure tomorrow or the next day or the next as I do today? I don’t know. This isn’t my first rodeo. We are all a work in progress, all of the time. Today, I woke up and I felt like writing. I felt like riding a bike instead of drinking a mimosa. I felt like eating an orange instead of a blueberry muffin. And I felt like being a better mom to my boys, which means some of my dark, crap habits have to take a back seat. So many of us are fighting crazy fierce battles. We get really good at hiding them from the world. Keep the conversation going with yourself. Let her answer “Nope” as long as she needs to. When the timing is right, she will suddenly answer “Yes” and you will know. And you will always be a winner in my book.

    Happy Mother’s Day, my beautiful friends. You are nothing short of fabulous today and every day.

  • Saturdays.

    Last weekend, my youngest and I spent two big, fat, glorious days together. The other people that live here were occupied in various ways so we went wherever the day carried us. Saturday was a gorgeous day – 65 and sunny. We did some work in the backyard. We weeded and trimmed. He hammered some wayward deck boards. We ran the dog in crazy circles. Then, we climbed into my husband’s truck, rolled down the windows and sunroof, and set off to Boulder. He was in charge of the music. We sang, tapping the steering wheel and the armrest to every beat. We discussed the song lyrics, the state of the nation, the state of the world, the state of our minds. We hiked. We shopped. We ate. We laughed. We let Saturday circulate all around us and it was good.

    Yesterday was Saturday, again. I texted my son “Hey, Trader Joe’s, Costco, Dick’s…Come with?” An hour later, we’re cruising around town again, playing more tunes, carrying on more conversation. We bought all the unnecessary things at Trader Joe’s, commented to each other on the inordinate amount of people who seemed to be in a hurry at Costco (we decided those people would be better served if they shopped on a Tuesday evening) and, let Saturday settle all around us once again. On the way home, Journey’s “Who’s Crying Now?” came on Sirius and we really cranked it. It was so good.

    At one point, I asked him if it bothered him that I sang along to the music. He said “No. You don’t really sing loud or anything.” And then he went on to say, and I’m paraphrasing, that he enjoys hanging out with me, he enjoys listening to music with me, he enjoys having conversations with me, and that he likes having fun with me. Did you hear that?? He said I was a cool mom, even if he didn’t say that exactly. The rest of yesterday, I was strutting in my coolness. I was like “I’m that mom. I have his ear and his heart. I am so smart and so wise and I know how to parent. All you have to do is drive with the windows down and listen to Journey, people!”

    This morning, I was alone with my thoughts, sipping coffee in the quiet house. A nagging thought started coursing through me and it wouldn’t leave. I sat with it for a while. Then, I went and found that 14-year old, youngest son and said “Do you remember yesterday when you said you enjoy being around me? That I’m a good mom to hang out with, that you’re glad we like many of the same things? Well, I want you to know that you won’t always feel that way. In the next few years, you are going to like things that I don’t. You are going to have opinions opposite of mine and feelings that are contrary to mine. You are going to do this because part of growing up is cleaving away from your parents – both literally and figuratively. In order to grow up, you’re going to seek out things that your parents don’t like and you’re going to do this all ON PURPOSE. You’re going to become contrary and it’s going to cause some friction between us. You’re going to find a way to be different than us. I know that doesn’t seem possible right now, but it will take place. So, right now while I have your ear, I want to tell you that this will be completely normal. And all I ask is that, when you are going through this growing-up necessity of life, you pause often enough and listen to your soul guide you on what is wrong and what is right. When that time comes, you won’t want my compass but you can use your own – it will be reliable and you will be ready. And, finally, while I still have your ear, if you want to rebel in something, don’t pick music. I like just about every kind of musical style there is and I will keep up.”

    I so wish these thoughts of mine would have appeared in my conscience when I was younger. I wish I would have said these same things to my oldest, who is now 19. How much easier would entry into adulthood have been for him if he’d been warned about what to expect and reassured that it was normal? If he’d been told that he had a fine compass and that we couldn’t wait for him to use it, all by himself? Hindsight is always so crystal-clear. For some reason, our eldest children are parented more from a place of fear than from a place of assurance. Fear is the “emotion experienced in the presence or threat of danger” whereas, assurance is “a state of mind in which one is free from doubt.” (Merriam-Webster) By design, we become better parents through age, experience, trials, errors, misjudgments, good judgments, and sometimes, total and complete flub-ups. As we become more seasoned parents, we become more assured and less fearful. The good thing is, it’s never too late. We can always roll the windows down, play some music and ride around with our kids as sidekicks. We can keep connecting with them in whatever way they will let us. And that is truly a good thing.