Happy Mother's Day!

This is an excerpt from Chapter 8 “Challenges of Being a Working Mom”

from my upcoming book titled Mothers Fulfilled which will be out late 2012.
    

“Pictures, journal entries, home movies are treasures and I still watch those often…but they will never replace the real face-to-face observing, remembering how soft their skin to my touch, their eyes dripping with tears, their baby smells, their wet butterfly kisses on my mouth, their exploration and wonder of the simplest things.  It is watching children for extended periods of time that remind us what joy is in case we have forgotten.

I wish, while lying with Ben, I rubbed his back more.  From when he was a toddler, he would always lift the back of his pajama top to have his back rubbed.  It soothed him and gave him great pleasure.  I did rub it a lot, but never enough.  At 17, standing over six feet tall with 34-inch pant legs, I sometimes just look at this man and try to remember his tiny frame, his bony back, my fingertips feather light touching all corners of it.  I so clearly remember the times when he asked me to rub his back, when he asked me to lay down beside him until he fell asleep, when he asked me to read just a little bit more. 

I did not draw enough with chalk in the driveway, play Star Wars with their figures, paint with my fingers, build with blocks.  I did all of it, but my point is these things are so short lived, I wish I had done more.” 

 

 Photos:  the mothers and kids in my life

Get on the Train

It doesn’t matter where the train’s going.  
What matters is that you…get….on.

paraphrased from a closing line of Tom Hanks’ in “The Polar Express”

I paused when I heard the movie line.  Oftentimes, I pause like this when a phrase or quote touches me in some way.  I need to pause to see if it really rings true for me; if it touches me.  Sometimes it takes me a minute to process; it’s not sudden or a light bulb moment.  

Does it really not matter where you’re going?  I think of another line, maybe from Alice in Wonderland, that says the opposite:   “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will do.”  Should we take any road?  And not know where we’re going?  

Should we get on the train, not knowing where it’s going?

I think the answer is sometimes yes, get on the train.  And I think our gut tells us when “yes” it is.  

I think there is a time, it’s much of the time in fact, to be a planner and set out on a well charted course.  (I’m the girl who always did – does – her homework.)  I hope it’s a good idea since that’s how I’ve lived my life – always in the future, always knowing precisely which step I would take and then always taking it, never procrastinating or second guessing.  But is there a time when too much planning can happen?  Too much order and control?  Oh yes, I think so.

Some people jump on the moving train easily and happily.  I may need to push myself and give myself the self-talk of “just do it,” but at this age, it’s time for me to jump on now and then and let que sera sera – what will be, be.  

Photo:  The Gardens of the Biltmore, Asheville, NC

The Mount Washington Hotel

As we leave winter behind (woo-hoo!!), I must share a February visit to the Mount Washington Hotel before putting on my short pants and smelling the lilacs!

My husband decided that with the money he received from his birthday and the football pool winnings he received, he would buy, not the sea kayak he considered, but instead a night for the two of us at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.  It’s like Frank to do this sort of magnanimous thing.  (In his thirties, he bought a Kitchen Aid mixer for well over $300 with his Superbowl winnings since baking is one of his favorite pastimes….how lucky am I to be on the benefit side of what he chooses??)

Frank and I love the Mount Washington Hotel and have been there several times.  We’ve been going to the White Mountains since we were teenagers – hiking, skiing, driving the Kancamagus Highway.  We have a deep connection and affinity for this area of New Hampshire and a bit of a sense of pride in the Mount Washington Hotel itself, the Grand Dame representing another time in our history.

We can’t afford a week or even three nights….but we can afford one on occasion with two full days on the grounds, and the joy it brings us is worth every penny.  I’m the sort who would rather travel less and do what I want in beautiful spots than to economize and go more often.  This may have developed from something my father used to say to me as a girl.  He would take me to beautiful hotels in Kennebunkport and say, “We may not be able to own it.  But we can go in and touch the drapes, now can’t we?”  And that’s what we would do.  We would go to the most glamorous spots on the ocean in Kennebunk and have breakfast or lunch, walk the grounds, touch the drapes, and then go back to our “real” lives feeling so blessed.  

I’m convinced I’m reincarnated from 1910 England.  I have such an attraction to people born at that time, the gentility, civility and formality of life, the excitement of the inventions of the time, and, of course, the fashion.  Give me a fitted gray wool “Mary Poppins” coat over my short, lace up Victorian boots any day!  (Downton Abbey Sunday nights on Masterpiece Classics has become one of the few TV shows I watch.)  

At the Mount Washington, we are in love with the scenery, the building’s architecture, the history, the magnificence, and the food.  It was built by Joseph Stickney of New Hampshire who made his fortune in coal mining and the Pennsylvania Railroad and then married a 25-year old young woman from Bethel, Maine, when he was fifty-two.  Ground for the hotel was broken in 1900 and construction was completed in 1902.  It was considered “the most luxurious hotel of its day.”  Their diningroom is a AAA four-diamond restaurant.  Our meal rates in my top three ever – 4 courses:

• Boston lettuce, marinated beets, goat cheese (the beets - mmm, tangy, cheese complementing)

• hearts of Romaine with shaved parmesan, marinated onion, delicious vinaigrette

• veal shank, Israeli couscous, root vegetables (melt in my mouth, the ultimate comfort food)

• bananas cooked in brown sugar and butter on a bed of chocolate & crushed pecans with homemade ice cream

We took long walks on the grounds and rode in a “one horse open sleigh” on snow at the foot of Mount Washington, while our neighborhood when we left that morning was nearly fifty degrees and snow-free.  

And the hotel was packed! We walked around in awe – are we not still in a recession?  Could families of five truly afford to come here for school vacation to ski at Bretton Woods?  They came, car after car into valet parking; they swam outdoors in the ninety degree heated pool, steam rising from the water; they road dog sleds; they snow-shoed & cross country skied across the golf course acres.  There were so many children all over – I was impressed with how well behaved they all were.  Obviously, they had done this sort of thing before.   

We sat before a roaring fire in a fireplace as tall as me; we read; we drank our pre-dinner glass of wine in oversized wicker chairs looking out the glass conservatory from all angles at the mountains that mark what New England is.  Can’t wait to return….maybe in summer to see the green, green golf course and lounge around the new pool.....

Tolerance

Watching the daily roster of  Republican Presidential candidates shouting their ideals at us and each other  and then Rush Limbaugh who didn’t just outrage a well-spoken female Georgetown University graduate student but women everywhere….my twenty-one year old son said quietly:

“We need to stop the tolerance of intolerance.” 

                                                                                                    …..enough said. 

Photo:  The Landing, Falmouth Foreside

Why I’m Glad I Work……….. #2

 

I enjoy Portland more as a fifty-year-old person than I ever did when I was young.  Certainly, it’s changed in the last thirty years, and for the better, in my opinion, but it takes some age, distance, and time apart to make us appreciate what we have and see things more vividly.

I’ve worked most lunch hours in my career – many hours of the day straight through with only an afternoon coffee run to break up the labor – but when I’m “being good,” I force myself out for an hour.  And like many things, when we just make the effort and the leap, we wonder why we don’t do it more often because we get so much enjoyment from it.

Had I not been working and on a New Year’s tact of  “being good” and getting myself up and out for an hour mid-day, I would not have seen the beautiful wreaths on all the colorful doors of the brownstones on Park Row near the Victoria Mansion in Portland.  They were unique and complemented each other.  They made me feel homey and welcomed.  They were festive and different than the plain green cookie-cutter wreaths with red velvet-like bows that are a dime a dozen on many front doors in the ‘burbs.  

One wreath on a brown door had no red or maroon or holiday colors at all.  It was made up of browns and greens – gorgeous, tasteful and so suited for its old fashioned door.  Another wreath was a square, hung on an angle in a diamond shape.  Another matched its earthen ware jar of winter boughs placed near it on the front stoop.  The gold plates at the bottom of the doors and the artisan door handles and knockers beautifully accented the wreaths.    

The next day, I got myself out again for the noon hour, with camera in hand, and went back to Park Row.

Funny how one’s reasons for enjoying going to work may have absolutely nothing to do with the job.

Why I’m Glad I Work……….. #1

A few Friday’s ago, we had a snow storm and Portland schools were cancelled. I still had to go to work; our office is more dependable than the U.S. Postal Service and doesn’t close for 5:00, snow storms, weekends or even 9/11.

As I drove down Ledgewood Road in Falmouth, I marveled at the sun shining off the snow at 8:00 a.m. Early morning sunshine after freshly fallen snow is one of the most beautiful sights to me and one of the reasons we, Northerners, live where we do. We’ve not seen enough of it this winter – what with unusually warm temperatures and lack of snow. Even more beautiful were the trees heavily laden with snow, looking like the Arctic or the Snow Queen’s wintry landscape.

If I didn’t work, I wouldn’t have been out driving around at that hour and by even as early as 10:00 a.m., the scene would be lost and would look completely different – the white pristine snow now muddied and trampled; the snow on branches having long since melted or fallen to the ground; the sun higher in the sky and not as awe-inspiring.

Funny how one’s reasons for enjoying going to work may have absolutely nothing to do with the job itself.


Photo: Wolf's Neck State Park, Freeport

Intimacy

Intimacy is an elusive word. You think you’re intimate if you love someone. Not so. You think you’re intimate if you’re physically connected to someone. Not necessarily so. The definition of intimacy is “a close personal relationship,” but that seems lacking to me for what I truly think it means. I think it means to commit and give yourself over in a way that is deep and authentic. The most deep and the most authentic. It’s when you don’t hold back; you don’t reserve, preserve or protect yourself. You give yourself over in the most complete way you can – with un-abandon. Obviously, you could never do that with anyone but the closest and most trusted person.

I have participated in a Leadership Intensive course twice. I did it the first time with a very close, long term friend. Thank goodness, since I describe it in hindsight as “scared straight.” It was the most intense, scary thing I had ever done. From the course leader, I was told I had no feeling from the neck down, that I was so controlled that I probably couldn’t even recognize my feelings when they occurred, that I lived exclusively in my head and not my physical body.

I was offended. And then I thought –well, that was what I was told to be. I had worked at it. It was succeeding in the male-dominated field I chose. I did it intentionally and with lots of practice and effort. I thought that was what I was supposed to do as I got older -- get rid of emotion, buck up, say and do the hard thing.

I was brought to the abyss in my first session at the Leadership Intensive when I was told my children would mimic my energy…which sadly, was a frightening thought to me. That was the last thing I wanted. My energy can be intense. There are certain places in my life where my intensity has allowed me to succeed; it’s been a positive. But when I look at it with clarity, it’s not something I would wish on my children.

This picture of me from that Leadership Intensive that I had not seen or thought about myself, and then my foray into motherhood, showed me something new. Motherhood opened up my locked self and taught me intimacy.

It’s not that I’ve not been in love or not had deep and long term friendships. It’s not that I haven’t given myself over to someone else; I have. But what I’ve learned is that I’ve not been truly intimate with anyone but my children because with children, there is no choice. I cannot hold back. I cannot disconnect or watch from the sidelines. The beauty and most frightening thing about motherhood for me has been to become intensely intimate with my children, with absolute abandon and no control.

“Wearing your heart on your sleeve” is the phrase that I identify most with motherhood. I feel everything about my children more deeply and with more emotion than with any other aspect in my life – my own family, growing up, my marriage, my career, my friendships, my own emotions.

I’ve said having children has made me more human. Sounds odd, right? Not so. I’m more human because I’m a feeling, emotional being with no control over those feelings. And I’ve learned at midlife that that is actually a great way of being, a more intimate, authentic, human way of being. My children have given me something I never could have found or discovered without them – intimacy.

Happy Valentine’s Day!