Groaning from the Ambition Gene

Sometimes I wish someone would just shut off the damn amibition gene in my DNA. Since that probably isn’t possible, could I just have a lobotomy? In the style of Julie & Julia, I’ve decided to blog about my journey to writing The Great American Novel. What the hell? I’ve never been one to jump on a bandwagon or take to a trend. This must be the one I’ve been waiting for. So, yeah, I’m gonna blog about it…. write the pain, sorrow, stupidity, blah blah blah…. actually for those who have been privy to my serialized accounts of my life in Italy, this will be round two and for those that have never read them, well hold on….. you’re in for a bit of romantic fodder. It’s not just the story of two people falling in love…. it’s my journey through the ups and downs of living in a foreign county… dealing with a foreign man…. raising a toddler alone and as an ex-pat…. but also a journey to understand myself better.

Something feels very different about this goal…. like this is the one that REALLY matters… .the one that’s the culmination of years of knowledge….. the one that will count almost as much as the goal that took me Across the Pond.

Let’s hope, huh?

gloria

Daughter’s First Heels

I bought my daughter’s first pair of heels yesterday. She’s excited. I’m having a stroke. She’s only 11!! Yes, we attend many events throughout the year where a little dressier shoe would be appropriate rather than her forever flats. And yes, I could have said ‘no,’ but she’s worked on me. My dear daughter is very subtle in her manipulation. It’s never whining. She understands that there are times when the budget is limited, and that she can’t have everything that she wants. She’s just as content curled up on the couch with me watching a movie as she is going to the cinema. She’d rather go to Borders and read the magazines for free and simply enjoy a small dessert coffee than to come home with an arm full of teen gossip rags. She’s a good kid. She’s a patient kid. She does the laundry for both of us, takes care of her rabbit and helps clean the house. And she questions. Her manipulation for the shoes consisted of once a week stating (within the context of a discussion we were having, of course…. she’s really slick), ‘but I can’t wear heels until I’m 13, right?’ ‘Right,’ would be my reply. Until yesterday at the store. There was a BOGO for 50% off and we couldn’t find another pair of shoes that would work for ANYTHING. It just wasn’t happening no matter what we looked at, and I already have too many pairs. I walked around the corner and there they were…. a 2 1/2″ black patent pump. I brought them over to her, hoping and praying that she’d say they were too impractical for school (she’s actually very practical for the most part). Yeah, no such luck.

The heels weren’t in my hands for 3 seconds. She grabbed them, put them on and her legs instantly rose to her neck. Hurt me. She said, ‘you know you can’t take these back now.’ Yes, I knew that, so I rewarded her with the heels. I just hate that they are a venue that allows her to walk a little further toward her independence from me.

Oh, and did I mention this is her first year of middle school? Wake me up when she’s ready to graduate please…..

News for July 4, 2009

There was one very poignant article that I read this morning in the New York Times, that I decided would be today’s focus for my blog:   The Family Friendly White House.

At first I thought perhaps the White House tour would be reopening.  Just my luck, I thought.  I was just there for the Cherry Blossom Festival and have no plans to return this year, at least.  Instead the article focused on the strife the people who staff the President and the First Lady feel when they miss dinners with their children, or their children’s school functions and basically these years when their young children are growing up.  While I understand completely the choices that must be made in order to keep a job and in order to do a job well, one NEVER gets these moments back.  And your child may not remember the first couple of times when you can’t be there for them, but by the third time, they come to expect it.  At some point, they will no longer ask you to attend anything.  This happened with my daughter and I tried to be at as many functions as I can, but it usually wasn’t two in a row.  After I finished nursing school and was a little more available, I chose to work every weekend night so I could be with her at some of the functions.  Wouldn’t you know, most functions were scheduled on Wednesdays which was my typical one night of the week that I had to work!  I switched whenever I could, but she had come to the conclusion that I was not available most of the time, and I stopped hearing about events.  When I would discover that a school party had taken place, or an important meeting that I had known nothing about, her defensive reply was “I knew you wouldn’t want to do anyway.”  In her mind, I didn’t want to go….. it had nothing to do with the fact that I couldn’t go.

So I toss my .02 to the support staff of the Obamas and say, “good luck,” because you’ll need it.  Nowadays, I bug my daughter’s teacher to make sure that I am staying in the loop, and I have positioned myself to work 8-hour night shifts and not 12s so I can be at any and ALL functions.  Of course, that just adds more items to my to do list, but I’m not just working for me.  I’m working to provide a good life for both of us, and if that means I cut my hours to spend more time with her, then we’ll just cut down on some of the extras that we don’t need…. like Starbucks and phone minutes.  We have a home phone and I don’t recall my grandmother, my mother or even my friend needing text messaging just to stay in touch.

Gloria

The Skin Horse

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

–Margery Williams Bianco.
“The Velveteen Rabbit”

I love this passage from this timeless children’s book. It speaks to who you become as you age and the love of the people in your life. I have seen this love in the eyes of elderly couples as they struggle with an illness. I have seen the devotion of one partner to the next in their staying at the bedside night after night. It is for those people that you know that visiting hours do not apply…. that your care of the patient extends to the family member too. Although your primary concern is that of the patient, that the loved one is made as comfortable as possible in whatever manner is possible. I have witnessed nurses going to a patient’s home to pick up something for the loved one who couldn’t get there or who was afraid to leave…. medications, clothes, a favorite ‘anything’. I have seen doctors return to the room after a 12 hour night shift and sit with the patient and the family member for a time. I have seen nurses aides VOLUNTEER to sit with a patient and the family member on their own time, to provide additional comfort.

Although there are nights that I’d rather be anywhere but at work, it’s usually on those nights that I witness miracles, love and devotion that I am not certain will abound in the future generations. My friends and I have come through the 60s, (yes, as kids, but we’ve witnessed it and my aunt liked to drag me right through it with her whenever I stayed at my grandmothers). We’ve seen long hair, free love, the ERA and the NRA. We’ve attended World Series of Rocks, we’ve watched the end of the Vietnam War and understood what it meant. We remember the hostages in Iran and Terry Anderson. We partied at the Cleveland and Akron Agoras. We listened to WMMS and WNCX when they used to duke it out for Cleveland’s No. 1. We matured, moved away, and came back. We’ve tried to keep pace with technology, but remember a simpler time. We’ve searched for love, found it, and lost it, and were worried we’d never find it again. We did, or we will. And hopefully, when we have it, we will not see the hair rubbed off, the loose joints, the shabbiness….. we will see the eyes of our love…. and hope our love sees the same, as someday one of us will take our place at the bedside with the devotion and love this generation still has.

Gloria

The fallacy of time and regrets.

Remember as a kid summers seemed to last forever? The lazy days spent on the swings, in the trees, playing hide and seek at night, running around barefoot? The days had an ease to them. A peace, and if you were lucky, your parents kept your world that way. You were able to relax and enjoy being a kid.

It’s so difficult for parents to maintain that today. Email, 100+ channels on the TV, iPods, cell phones… reading email on your cell phone, watching TV on your cell phone, sending text messages which take more time than an actual phone call. Hell, we even date through the aid of a computer now! So what happened to real time? Is that to become one of those archaic phrases that our children’s children will ask our kids, “What’s that? I’ve never heard of that.”

I returned from living in Italy almost six full years ago. I can’t believe I’ve been back that long. The time flew, I was 41 when I returned and am now looking at approaching a midlife number that used to be, in my mind, reserved for celebrating golden anniversaries. I think when I do reach that magic number that I should throw myself a golden anniversary party. It is the golden anniversary of my life after all.

It is my hope that by the time I reach that age that I will have my dearest love at my side. I don’t know that I know who he is just yet. He could be someone right under my nose, but as time goes by, I’m not so sure. And as time goes by, unfortunately, we will have less and less time together. I hope that when I realize who he is that we both understand that time is finite. I hope we can move quickly from point A to B to C and have a trust and faith that is built on faith and trust in the universe. I so love the universe’s way of correcting wrong actions and wrong thinking so he needs to understand that. In case you don’t know what I mean…..

The universe, God, or whatever you wish to call it has a wonderful way of bringing things and people into our life that we need and want…. sometimes they are not always perfect…. sometimes we just have to trust that the universe knows a little more about what we need and want than we do. The kicker is: the universe won’t let you keep it, unless you appreciate it. Like the old saying: ‘it giveth and it taketh away.’ The gift, for the most part, will remain unphased by the actions of the universe…. somehow someway, the gift will find its way to another deserving soul who appreciates it.

I had this happen for a time with my writing. I lost my edge and I still don’t have it back completely, but it’s getting there. I’ve never had it happen with a person…. I appreciate people and the gift that they are to my life. It only takes losing one to learn that lesson. Sometimes I think about people I truly care about. I picture them in a hospital bed in ICU and ask myself “could I lose them without EVER EVER EVER having the chance to speak to them again and have peace in my heart? Do they truly KNOW how much they mean to me?” I can say with conviction that I could think of 10 people in my life (because I just did) and know that they know how much I love them. They know how much I care. I don’t want regrets.

Regret. Now there’s a million dollar word. I don’t have many. And I’m determined that I will not have many more. It’s no way to live. I don’t want to get to the end of my life and feel I haven’t done some things that I had always wanted to do…. always wanted to try. And very soon….I’m going to dive into an area, that at 20-something, sounded half-repulsive. Yes, I said half. I’d like a hand to hold along the way…. literally. But I’m not waiting for it, because I don’t think it’s forthcoming anytime soon. (I could be wrong, but I’ve already been wrong once this year, so it’s unlikely! ha ha) The universe will back me up. It will tell me when it’s okay to take this next step. It’s been something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while now. And the time has come. It’s time to fish or cut bait, because time keeps tick tick ticking away, and I don’t want the universe to take THIS gift away from me. Because in the form that I have it now, it is a gift. The trust I need to feel is already there. It would just take too long to try to explain it to someone and to get them to wrap their head around it, and for me to trust them. So if I have to go there alone, although it’s not the ideal, I’m okay with that. The universe will provide the solace in its own quirky way.

Carpe Diem, soon.

The universe has been pulling out all the stops for me lately in my writing and I’m not going to ignore any of the gifts it is giving me right now. Because everyday there is something new that is pulling me along so quickly with its energy, I feel I’m being swept away to something I’ve wanted for so long. I DO NOT KNOW what it is…. I don’t know if it’s a someone, a some place or a some thing. But I know that it has a very big energy to it. It has the power to knock me off my feet. And it’s going to show up in my life as if it were always here…. kind of like walking into a brick wall… it didn’t just spring up over night, you just never walked into it before…. for me it would have to be something more girly, like I didn’t notice the Monet hanging on it and now I do.

Whatever it is, whomever it is, or whereever it is, I promise the universe this: I will be open for it, and I will not dismiss it if it arrives in a less than perfect package. I want no regrets.

I can’t wait to be surprised. Because truly, with all honest conviction in my heart, I have no idea of what’s coming. I’ve had these feelings many times before in my life, and each time, something absolutely mindblowing came out of it….. my daughter, my life in Italy were two of the big things. So I must wait and try not to be impatient, but I am a little giddy inside just waiting for it to be revealed.

Blessings,
gloria