lessons learned

I don’t usually talk about news stories. But there’s one I’ve followed and it’s on my mind. Caylee Anthony was a little girl who one day went missing. I know that happens way to often in our world but she went missing and for thirty one days no one reported her gone. I’ll give a tiny bit of credit to her grandparents and uncle and say they may not have known she was truely gone but her mother knew and in the time this tiny life was missing, her mother went out, slept over at her boyfriend’s, got a tattoo, and broke a few laws along the way.  Why this one little girl caught my attention is simple, when she went missing and was finally reported missing, I was starting to count down to the birth of my granddaughter. So my heart broke for the grandparents. Them losing something that I didn’t even understand having yet.

But as I’ve followed this case it’s confused me. Made me ask some questions of myself.

Do I love my children enough to lie for them or do I love them so much that I wouldn’t?

I think it’s harder to love them so much you won’t cover for them or lie for them. 

It’s easy for me to sit here smug, looking into someone esle’s disfunction. I can pick apart the pieces of their lives and then tell them I would never or could never…

I don’t think the Anthonys set out to create a monster, I don’t think they understand now how it happened. But what they did do is forget the boundries between child and parent. They forgot that sometimes we have to let our children face what they’ve done and we have to do it from the begining. When you never hold your children responsible for their words and their actions and when you cover for them or clean up their messes time after time, you don’t teach them you love them or how to be adults.

When you do those things, you let them grow up thinking they can do whatever they want and they don’t understand how to think of  others, not even when “others” are a tiny two year old child.

I don’t think the Anthonys saw anything wrong with covering Casey’s early messes. I know there were a couple times I fought with myself over excusing away my son’s behaviors. And I lost a couple of those fights too. I said “he would never” or “the teacher must just not like him” but I knew that wasn’t it and I stopped myself fast. My boys may have been my little angels but they weren’t that angelic and I knew it. It’s so easy to make excuses, to blame something for your child’s faults. The other kids were bad influences, he forgot he had that gum in his hand. She wasn’t trying to be mean, they must’ve misunderstood.  Excuses are a dime a dozen and I had plenty of change to buy some but I had to make myself put that change away and let my children take the fall for what they’d done (or not done).

I wanted my sons to grow up and be men I’d want to know. To have them become people I’d want as neighbors.  That’s my advice to young parents like my son. Raise your children to be people you’d want as neighbors.  Tell them “no” and teach them early on to respect you and others. Punish them when they need it, hug them when they don’t know they need it. Don’t worry about being their best friend, that’s what their peers are for. Be a parent. Don’t be their overlord or their owner.

I’m not saying  the Anthonys could have altered what their daughter has done. Not my place to say that but they raised a child who never grew up. She never learned “no” and she never learned bounderies. She took what she wanted be it money from her best friend, her own grandparents, or her baby daughter’s piggy bank… she lied about who she was, what she did, and who she did it with. She hurt people on “whim” she made herself more important than anyone else and they let her. Time after time her behavior screamed out for help and they made excuses and covered for her. And now, they still lie for her. They lie to the police, to the FBI, to the media, to us, and to themselves. They give their child their version of love and in return she gives them disrepect and thinly veiled hatred. The child they thought they loved so much that they fixed all her mistakes, took away something else they loved.

 

Look how their story is ending, a dead grandchild, an incarcerated daughter, a lifetime of hell for them.  They may face charges themselves. They’ve lost their friends and their family. They’ve lost their self respect and the respect of everyone. They made this mess and they nuured what they thought was a flower but their flower turned out to be poison ivy and everything their daughter touched is now destroyed. They will never face another day without pain and tears and they will never know exactly why but I bet they l0ok back and realize the whole path could’ve veered differently had they only said “no” and meant it.

I have a granddaughter now. They do not. My son and I have discussed this case often and I must’ve done something right because he wants to be the kind of parent who raises his daughter right by saying no and not making excuses and I have no doubt that the child he and Katie raise will be the kind of person I’d like as a neighbor.

 

We can’t change what we see in the news. We can talk about it, like I do on IS. We can watch Nancy Grace or Geraldo although I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone watches Geraldo and  I’m not allowed to watch Nancy Grace because it makes me yell at the tv. We can gossip over these people at work or at play but unless we take their lessons to heart someday we’ll be reading about another case, another family, another trgedy. 

I’m a grandparent now, a role I take seriously. But I was a mother first and the hardest part of parenting is the part I’m glad I did.

If you haven’t read about Casey Anthony, please do. And if you’re the praying sort please offer up a prayer for her parents. They still don’t understand and when they do it will destroy them. They thought they loved their daughter so much that they covered for her, but they needed to love her enough to let her fall.

it’s rabbit season

it’s okay to throw in the towel when you’ve fought a long battle and you can safely say you stand no chance in hell of winning.

I quit. The deer win.

We’re pulling all the bushes around the house. For the past 7 years I’ve tried everything short of a cranky bear on a chain but the deer just keep eating my bushes and plants. So they win. I give in, I can’t make them stop and I’m tired of trying. Every year, without fail, they have managed to nibble the bottom half of every bush so it looks like it has an bad hair cut. Bald on the bottom, lush on the top. I think the deer have started growing though because this year they ate even higher.

When I first moved here I thought it would be wonderful to look out my windows and see the deer and the rabbits and the raccoons. I’d work outside in the yard alongside my woodland friends and the birds would chirp, the sun would shine, and all would be happy in my little kingdom. tra-la-freakin-la. 

I was wrong.

Don’t let their looks fool you, deer are wily and evil critters. They will dig up every bulb, sheer all the green off every tree or bush, and leave little poop pyramids, strategically placed,  all over the yard. They will frolic all summer all cute and innocent like and they’ll watch you put in a whole new crop of bulbs. Then Winter hits and their eyes start glowing and they start to eat. Cute my ass.

I put in bulbs they don’t like, they ate them anyway. I planted things with prickers, they ate them anyway. The only thing that kept them away was spraying the bushes with wolf urine. The neighborhood dogs loved that. I accidentally brushed against a bush carrying groceries into the house and had to throw the jacket out. 

The next year I saved up film canisters and drilled holes in them and filled them with moth balls. The deer ate around them.

I even bought mechanical light up Christmas deer to frighten them into submission …the deer posed for pictures with them.

I’m feeling pretty good about giving up. In a sense I win because I’m taking away their salad bar. I still can’t plant tulips and a few other deer delicacies but daffys look just as pretty when they make it to adulthood. 

This also eliminates forcing a son, whichever is handy at the moment, to trim the bushes. Not a bad thing, the last time the boy did it it looked a little too much like one was flipping me off. I’m probably better off with them gone.

So I’m a quitter and proud of it. Nothing wrong with figuring out that you’re not going to win. It’s getting too expensive (and smelly) to fight this war and I’d rather put my energy into other things… like wabbit hunting… let’s see how lucky they are with four feet still attached  With God and the dog as my witnesses, I hereby swear I will grow violets and lily of the garden…or die trying.

alert the masses

 

Someone in my house is going to get it today. I’m pretty sure I know who too. I always go into a mood on bathroom cleaning day but this one’s extra special. I’m pretty sure any men reading this will tune out soon, I’m also pretty sure the women might feel my pain.

Someone (male) missed, more than once. Someone (male) left razor frumpies in the sink and on the vanity top. Someone (male, see the pattern?) left a shampoo bottle open and it’s now diluted 9/1 and useless, and worst of all… Someone keeps wiping toothpaste on my towel. Unlike my oldest son, who thinks the towel fairy keeps us in clean fluffy towels magically, I reuse a towel. My thinking being that when I use it I’m already clean so I can use it again. So I neatly fold it and place it on the towel bar. That’s what it’s for right?

But someone(male) keeps wiping toothpaste on my towel. I switched it to a different towel rod….same thing. 

I live surrounded by menfolk. I don’t mind most of the time, I actually like it.  No offense women but too much drama annoys the snot out of me. Today the males have set me off.  Someone(male)

I’ve learned to let little things go and accept that they don’t mind my need for flowers and plants and decorative things, they just don’t want to talk about it. They’ve learned that dirty clothes placement is important. We coexist very well. I was very worried about Burg staying here. Now I know I’ll miss him in August when he goes. He’s learned to help out and I’ve learned to not nag. It makes for a much better home.

Every once in a while I just get a little fed up. Usually on bathroom cleaning day. Not my favorite chore but not something I want to let slide.  If I wait until the counter top needs a shave, I’m going to gag a bit too much. Which really only amuses the dog.  The animal who’s afraid of the broom and the vacuum thinks the mop is fascinating. She’s an odd dog but she’s our’s and we love her, quirks and all.

The last straw for me was finding an empty toilet paper spool sticking out of the only girly thing I have in there. A small antique pitcher with flowers in it. For all you men who think that a small pitcher with flowers in it is too sissified for any bathroom… you may bite my shiny metal ass.  I tolerate a lot but this is just wrong

Still I am laughing. It’s going to be a good Saturday but someone’s gonna have to take one for the team and I’m pretty sure I know which one.   

(normally I call them the “penises” but I didn’t want to offend)

word doodling (from 5/07)

the parades are set to start going by my house again.

word doodling while on the phone

Every May, two parades go by my house. One early, one midway through the month. No marching bands or clowns (because clowns are skeery). First golf carts heading from storage to the country club and second a procession of wagons with seats and tops closed off from the rain or sleet.

What it means when the wagons go by, is that we’re ready for the planting/picking season to begin. Just on my road alone they grow corn, pumpkin, squash, cabbage, onions, something beanish-looking. There are two apple farms and a left turn away is a large strawberry farm. We get a wave of migrant workers every year too. It’s part of the village history and our community reflects it.

We welcome the workers in the Spring and say goodbye in the Fall. They add something to our community and we’re lucky enough to have many who’ve stayed and become important parts of our lives through work, school, and becoming our neighbors. We have special classes for learning English and others geared specifically toward students who will be here short term. We even have summer classes available. Our doctors, dentists, and Governmental offices are all bilingual.

 

I’m sure that there are villages and towns all across the country that are similar in this but I think what makes our’s special, at least in my eyes, is that no one seems to mind. There isn’t an antimmigrant leaning, no one is hassled.

Unless alcohol’s involved but those are mostly because alcohol makes stupid even stupider and not because of anything else. And there is the occasional love related issue, that’s just par for any course.

My village is a strange mix and it’s the fact that we’re all a little different that makes it work so well. We have a few retired folks who want to sit on their decks at night and see critters and stars not buildings and floodlights, we have handful of higher income families trying to be in the country without the realities of being in the country, some families whose names have been in this area since the Erie Canal was key to survival and of course we have the college students and staff. We’re a hodgepodge of people and nationalities. But my village also has sixteen churches and other religious places of worship, so maybe that explains the lack of hate?

 

This morning I was outside weeding by accident. By accident because I didn’t set out to weed, I set out to pick up garbage in my front yard and got distracted. I’m three houses from a stop light and for some reason people waiting at the light think it’s okay to throw their garbage/junk mail/cigarette butts out their car window and drive off. The junk mail I sometimes return if I’m going by the address. Just being a kind citizen, pay it forward and all that. I keep picking it up, they keep throwing it.  

I can accept it but I refuse to look at it. So every day I pick it up. It’s like a game only no fun for me.   

While I was accidentally weeding the parade came down the hill. It took some time to get here but I could hear it coming. They don’t go fast and they rumble. By the time the rumble drowned out everything else they were passing my house. I know they’ll be passing back and forth soon but one or two at a time not all of them in a row again until late Fall when they all thunder past the other way and our village empties out a little until next Spring. 

 

One last call to make and I’m heading out to get some work done. If you just read this, thank you for keeping me company while I’ve been on hold.

 

who’s on first? (from 6/8/07)

this was written 6/8/07… so many things have changed. No more Dave in my life, Blocky survived his hurt heart and had a girlfriend for a bit, and is eagerly looking forward to his next girlfriend

I remember some of my firsts. First kiss, first boyfriend, first dance, first date, first heartbreak.  All the same boy by no fault of my own. I got better at the kissing and the dating and the dancing but up until a few years back I hadn’t quite figured out how to avoid the heartbreak part. Thank the Lord for Dave and his courage, any man who braves a first and second date with me in a gym full of very big HS wrestlers is worth keeping don’t you think?

On that magical preteen day we discover the opposite sex not only smells pretty good but also makes us feel a little fuzzy inside, we also open the door to puppy love, dear John letters (ironically the name of my boy of many firsts), broken hearts and repuppy love the next week. Nothing feels as bad as a broken heart when you’re just a kid yourself. Ok, maybe something’s do but it hurts bad and you want to crawl into bed and cry but you’re too big for that and you don’t want the world to know, especially if you’re a boy.

Remember the advice you’d get for your aching heart? advice from your friends, advice from your folks, teasing out the wazoo from your older siblings if you had them. “Nothing ventured nothing gained”, “it’s better to have loved and lost”, “time heals all wounds” “she was a bit slutty/ he was a dork anyway”….. all that happy horse crap we do not want to hear but people insist on saying and saying and saying.  

 

My young friend Blocky(a loving nickname given by my son) hangs out with me a few days after school until his folks are out of work. He doesn’t need a sitter although his two younger brothers do but neither he nor his folks are too comfy with him home alone too often. He’d rather be here a couple days a week. Although he’s 12 and fine home alone, I think he kind of likes the company. Today he got off the bus with a long face, his first crush has a new crush on another boy, one who’s coasted through puberty and emerged full of muscles and confidence of which poor Blocky has none 

Poor kid. Remember how much that hurts? I wasn’t sure what to say and was stumbling my way through it when the Boy wandered downstairs in search of both cold and frosty treats…it’s very hot here.

I could tell he was listening and I guess he took pity on Blocky because when I left the room (on purpose) he went in and sat down. I eavesdropped (shamelessly too) here’s pretty much what I heard:

 

The Boy: girls suck

Blocky: yeah

The Boy: but they’re fun

Blocky: yeah

The Boy: next year you’ll be bigger

Blocky: yeah

The Boy: sucks though

Blocky: YEAH!!! 

The Boy: next time go for the smart ones you feel comfortable with

Blocky: why?

The Boy: they make you smarter and they aren’t as shallow.

Blocky: ok, I will

The Boy: school’s over soon

Blocky: yup

The Boy: you’ll get through it, just don’t look at her and you’ll be okay  

Blocky: ok, she’s not in my classes

The Boy: good! that makes it easier. want to play Halo?

Blocky: yeah

The Boy: cool.

 

and they’re playing right now. Blocky’s chattering about wrestling camps (he and his brothers all wrestle because The Boy did and they look at him like an older sibling who they never see) and he’s laughing at something and I’m sitting back here typing this and letting them talk because somehow I think it may be the best way this could’ve been handled.

No mom smothering the kid with kisses, no dad saying “you’ll get back on the horse when you’re ready” and “you’ll be dumped by many more girls in your life” <<< why do people say that anyway?

just two guys in a room playing Halo and talking about  girls and camps and girls and video games and laughing.

 

is it that easy?

shouldn’t it be?

 

movin’ on over

(from last December)

Last night was our local HS’s first home wrestling meet. I went even though I don’t have anyone the team. My friend’s son is a Senior and I remember a couple of away tourneys where they stayed until the finals to cheer Trev on even though their son was out early. They could’ve headed home and gained some extra time but they stayed to cheer him on. So this year I’ll go to as many home meets as I can and cheer Aaron on. They had to work the ticket table so I stood inside the doorway sipping my coffee and watching the people settle in. I’ve never noticed the seating patterns before, probably because I was part of it. But last night I was just a fan, no longer a wrestling parent or booster club member, just a spectator.

 

The middle section of the bleachers is mostly all parents and families of wrestlers. A sea of blue and black. We always did our best shirt sales to the JV parents.  They’ll buy anything to support their school colors. I know, I myself had an entire wardrobe. Even though they sit as one, they’re divided into two sections. You can tell the JV parents from the Varsity parents. The Varsity parents are the loudest. Laughing and talking, the men about wrestling of course and the women about anything but wrestling. Mom nerves are pretty bad at the beginning of the season. They have inside jokes and a comfortable ease with each other. They greet each other by name an share that bond already. 

Behind them are the JV parents. They’re quieter because they really don’t know each other yet. They will soon enough. First comes the remembering of names and which kid goes to which parents. Then after a few months of hour after hour of sitting together in gyms the conversation will flow. They’ll learn who can be teased and who you never poke.You learn who to sit near for the best baked goods and who yells the loudest (it used to be me). You have silly  nicknames for each other’s kids and road trip horror stories that some how end up being part of the fun. It takes a little time and a lot really bad coffee to properly bond.

 

The far end of the bleachers is all students. At the top the older youth wrestlers, old enough now to not sit with their parents and young enough to be in awe of the boys older than them. They giggle and make frequent tripsto the bathroom and snack bar.

A row or two down are the modified boys. Most still in shirt and tie from their own meets. Even though they know the youth squad they pointedly ignore them and kind of hover near the Varsity boys, their friends, and their girlfriends.

The Varsity team is too damn cool for eye contact or conversation with their parents. They sit together a with their friends and girlfriends around them. The “no girlfriend’ rule was made for my oldest (for good reason) and discontinued when he graduated. But the girlfriends still respect the team space and gladly sit in front of or behind their wrestler.  The boys laugh at the JV during their meet and make little comments, forgetting how much those comments can hurt. Some comments are harsh (but usually true) and the good comments can make a kid soar.  A “nice match” from a Varsity starter can make the smallest of wrestlers feel huge. Tradition says someday those JV wrestlers will be the comment makers and the chain will always continue.

 

Halfway through the JV match the Varsity Coach stands up and walks toward the door, he is soon followed by his team and the modified boys slide quickly down to the vacated seats. As the Varsity takes the mat to warm up the modified are relegated to their original seats and the JV start wandering out from the locker room with half buttoned dress shirts and wet hair.  The JV is a much more parent friendly group. They can actually eat food and mom and dad are usually holding the money (or the food).  They’ll suffer a hug if they have to, and the moms savor it because they know public hugs won’t be happening all too often in the future. 

 

The last section of the bleachers is my new home. It’s  the alumni section. All my old friends are there and we trade stories about our lives and our sons. We catch upon break ups and divorces and who’s dating who now. We see photos of grandchildren and we reminisce about when we lived wrestling 24/7. We don’t wear the blue and black anymore and we don’t all make every home meet but we’re still part of the wrestling family. Just more like a cousin twice removed. We did our time at the snack bar and the pee wee tourneys. We sat in parking lots at midnight waiting for an away bus that always was an hour late.

Once we couldn’t imagine the day when we wouldn’t spend every weekend in a gym, now we can’t imagine doing it again. Some of us do still have wrestlers. Either on college teams or in a college club but our kids are off at college so we can’t go to every match.  We (and they) are okay with that.

On Christmas break all our sons will be back and they’ll go with us. They’ll do the walk of honor, nodding to wrestlers they know, shaking hands with dads and old coaches and hugging the moms. For a few, whispers will follow them. “he went to States twice” “he only lost 3 matches one year” and you can tell they hear it because they get their struts on a little.  

They’ll gradually end up down with the Varsity and will lean up against the wall during warm ups and offer little tidbits of wisdom. A couple will even take off their shoes and help an old practice partner out. Sooner or later they make it back over to the far corner and will sit up there saying “remember when we”and “oh that’s nothing, once I…” while the other alumni parents and I make our promises to keep in touch better and to get together soon even though we all know we’ll just continue our pattern of home meet chat ups and saying”hi” in an aisle at WalMart or Wegmans.

It’s part of being a wrestling parent I think. Or any sport or club for that matter. You spend so much time with the other parents and for a few years they become extended family but you also gladly slide over on the bleachers when it’s time to. Even though you cheer loudly for the team it really isn’t the same. These boys aren’t your boys and once you’ve reached this end of the bleachers you stay there.

 

I never noticed these little sections before. Looking back now I can track my path from the outer circle of the middle all the way to where I sit now. It was a hell of a road and I loved every exciting second (mostly) but I like where I am now. I used to wonder how I’d manage without wrestling, now I know. It’s their turn now and I really don’t miss it as much as I thought I did and I really think that’s exactly how it should be.

tears of remembrance

they’re different than tears of pain or tears of regret.

Last night I cried tears of remembrance. We’re doing a closet shuffle so that the Boy can have his clothes in his own room. In order to achieve this daring feat of closetry, we’ve had to remove 23 years of his brother’s crap. Katie didn’t believe that Burg had an (almost) entire wardrobe of orange clothes in his HS soph. year. She’s seen proof now, she’s amused too. Especially because he greeted each orange article of clothing like a long lost dear friend. He’s keeping three quarters of it . Poor Katie, it’s her problem now not mine. I told her that if her child decides to wear mostly orange for a year I really hope it is the worst of the problems she will face.
 
After we excavated HS momentoes and fossilized bits and pieces of Christmases past and Easters long forgotten, he really got down to work.  He tossed old prom prizes and all his missing track spikes. Now he remembers where he put them. I kept a local sports store in business buying track spikes. He’s decided that he’s dropping them off to the HS track coach to keep in the first aid box. You might call it the Chad Memorial Fund, donated to help others  who can’t get from point A to point B without losing a brand new package of track spikes.
We got past the stuffed animal collection. Those are all garage sale bound. He’s keeping his NY Giants stuff. <no comment on the super bowl, it’s a hell I’ll live for a full year… go Lions
He found a lacross stick and played Gretsky scores into the garbage pail with an odd number of shoes. Not odd looking, just an uneven number and of that uneven number there were three no matches.. Those missing shoes, like crop circles, may never be explained. He finally finished and we all settled in for a fun family night of Family Guy.
I didn’t cry from the memories we unearthed when we liberated the closet. That wasn’t it.

It was what I found of the bottom of the top shelf that did it. The last thing to leave the closet. A Sports Illustrated from September 24th, 2001. ‘The  Week That Sports Stood Still.’  I’d put it aside and we finished up the closet. All orange clothing lovingly transferred to it’s temporary home in the hall closet and more given up than kept. A successful day!
 After the dust settled and we all oohed and ahhhed over a box of photographs I took the magazine to my room. Last night I leafed through it before I went to sleep and I cried tears of remembrance. It’s not that I’ve forgotten 9-11-01. I haven’t.  While I don’t dwell on it, I haven’t forgotten it. Feeling so scared and vulnerable, knowing so many lives were lost and the people who these people loved would never get to say “goodbye”. Or “I love you”. Or even “I’m sorry”  Children losing parents, parents losing children. And the destruction. I spent that day watching tv and trying to tell my blinding Mother what I was seeing.
But in the time since, while I keep the memory, I don’t feel the sadness, I’ve put it away. Last night I remembered as I read the stories and saw the photos. And I cried a little for a few minutes because while my life went on just fine from there, the people who lost their loved ones will always have a hole. And the babies born soon after will never know their fathers.
Yesterday my children were with me. Making fun of the orange wardrobe and teasing each other a little. That makes me lucky. Earlier yesterday someone told me that he always says “I love you” to his children when they head out to do something. That makes him lucky too.
It’s important to remember how lucky we are that we can tell the people we love “goodbye” or “I’m sorry” and “I love you” because no matter how smart we think we are, we just don’t know what could happen. The one thing that can come out of something horrific and bad is a reminder of what’s important and how lucky we really are.  I’m keeping the magazine and probably in a few years I’ll find it again and I’ll cry tears of remembrance again. I just hope that I’m still saying “goodbye” and “I’m sorry” and I love you” to the people who need to hear it but if I’m not, I know it will remind me.

sometimes I sit down

and my words just flow onto the screen. I talk a little about this, a little about that, but mostly about my world and my thoughts. What I’ll put here are those words and my need to get them out. You won’t find any pattern or any one topic but you will find a little bit from inside of me. The musings of a 44 year old woman whose life may be dull to others but isn’t to me.  I am, simply put, just another person in this world who thinks she knows more than she does and who tries to be the person God made me to be. I don’t always live up to my own set standards but I always see the humor in life, even when it doesn’t feel to funny.

 I’m going to be bringing over some old blogs from a site I’ve become disillusioned with. I realize they’re going to be out of sequence but they’re my words and I don’t want to lose them. They will help anyone, who stumbles into my blog, understand who I am and what’s important to me.