Friends and The High Road

Who are your friends? What does it mean to be a friend? Do you have different kinds of friends? 

Do you like friends who tell you what you want to hear? The correct answer to this loaded question is no.  But, if I am honest, yes, sometimes I need that. I want a friend who can be honest with me, one that I can be myself around, that helps me to be a better me. I like friends that make me laugh. I value honesty over most anything, and acceptance is a fairly close second. 

Do you have many friends? Are there room for more? Really.  What about the fact that I don’t have time for the ones I have now? Do we need to weed our friend beds? 

Is there a balance between “I have never had issues with anyone” and leaving a trail of friends behind over the years?  Are certain friends good for only periods of time, like a coupon that expires? Do you consider it a failure for a friendship that has run its course? 

Are some friendships built on a false life?

And what do you do when a friend hurts you? Do you work it out? or write it off? What boundaries are non negotiable? 

My husband always speaks of taking the high road, and not burning any bridges. While I  sometimes think that he denies himself, and those that he holds most dear, I am learning about this road. Instinctively, I either take the low road, or fly over the high road on my way out. 

A few years ago, my husband took my girls to a playground.  My youngest was at the top of a slide and my oldest had climbed up the slide to help her. A lady then tore into my daughter and my husband, citing the rule book in her head about slides being one way roads that go down, and uncontrolled kids and on and on.  My husband chose to ignore her, grabbed our girls and came home.  My oldest daughter, the ever indignant six year old, came home running up the stairs ranting, spurned, as I often am, by her righteous anger. Steve, coming soon behind her, disgustingly calm, proceeded to offer his fatherly advice, “ I explained to her about not stooping to other people’s levels, not burning bridges, and how we like to take the high road.” 

My daughter screamed her response to his unemotional speech. “ MOM DOESN’T TAKE THE HIGH ROAD, RIGHT MOM?” Her implication being that road was for pussies, a road our alliance would never take. 

Part of my intrigue with relationships is exploring not only friendships, but how I act in these relationships. I have had friends come and go without incident -- either outward or inward-- these are not the friendships of which I speak. I have had relationships that I have backed away from for different reasons. Something inside me realized that they were not healthy or good for me.  And I have had friendships end painfully. 

When I look at those that ended painfully, I realize that there was conflict and my flight response took over.  For whatever reason, lack of skill or lack of desire, I did not stick it out.

Over the last few years, I have gained some skills, or coping mechanisms.  I have learned to compartmentalize.  With husbands and children, and husband’s friends, and children’s friends, relationships tend to compound. Friendships become tenuous when a  mother’s instinct to protect her child trumps everything else. 

So, I have tentatively reentered relationships that I had backed away from. I have entered them guardedly, and understanding the limitations. I am not in flight, and not giving up on my ideals. But I am acknowledging that you can’t run away from everything, and there will always be difficult situations and people with whom you don’t always share the same values. I am not denying my feelings, and I will protect myself and my children, while learning to live in a world that has many truths.  

I am trying the High Road.

It comes in waves

Inspiration, that is.  Sometimes loud,crashing, fast waves.  Yesterday, I dropped my kids off for warm up before the meet and ran two errands that took around 45 minutes.  I was having idea after idea after idea.  I couldn’t hold on to any of them.  I didn’t have a journal, and couldn’t have used it if I did. It was similar to labor; it was like contractions.  The ideas would come, and I could envision pushing the idea onto paper, into a blog post, into a short story, into the book. It was a physical urge, all I could do not to pull over and start writing. And it would ease, and I would try to plant it into my short term memory, to come back to this incredible idea. And I would relax.  Physically. 

And two minutes later, here comes another big idea.  Totally different idea, but same process.  Elation, excitement.  Hold it. This is good.  And the ideas came faster and faster and I could not hold them.  They went back out to sea, and I knew they would be lost.  Just as I was frantically trying to hold on, I knew they were lost.  

I could take the practical approach.  I’m sure there is an app that could help with that. Voice pages maybe? This would probably really help me. Let go , that is.  I do a version of this when I am writing.  Often I keep an open Pages document, and just jot ideas as they come. Sometimes, if I am writing intensely (I will just include the thought in parentheses and move it when I edit later.  If I edit.)  However, surprisingly, I rarely go back to these notes. And if I do, I often have no recollection of where that seed came from.  And if I do remember, there is no water for that seed, no energy in my mind.  But, the voice app would help me let go, would quell the anxiety of the loss, because it would be stored, not lost. 

Or I could take a different approach. Frame it differently, as I read earlier today. These fleeting ideas, that I feel so passionately about, could be used as a lesson in trust.  If I have these great ideas, there will be more. Ideas are not finite. I have room for many more. There will be more, just like those. 

I am not always mired down in sentimentality, but sometimes I am.  Some days (quite possible certain days of the month) a pool of tears just sits behind my eyes. I fear I can’t take one more beautiful sight, I can’t be thankful for one more thing, lest I burst with the fragility of it all. 

Last night, my youngest daughter had her second to last game at the little kids soccer fields.  They are quaint fields on the grounds of a Catholic Church. We often bike to the games, soccer balls and water bottles strapped to our backs. We have been doing this for 6 years, since my oldest daughter started soccer. Sally rode in the baby seat of the bike until last year.  This year she rides her own bike.  There are woods all around for siblings to make forts or bug hunt or play hide and seek. Often there are nuns strolling the grounds, temporarily lulling us into our little safe bubble where all is well. The six year olds smile and run and try hard and do group hugs. They rarely get mad and have no idea who wins.  Some of them don’t even know yet that you can win or lose a soccer game. 

Last night after the game, my co-coach (yes, I coach even though every thing I know about soccer is from my 8 year old) and I sat in the grass and watched every one leave and let the kids run barefoot and play.  This is our second year with this gig.  We did it because no one else would and learned that we loved it. We work well together, and we did it again this year only because the girls give us so many hugs. We talked about many things, more breadth than depth because every few sentences was interrupted by kids. We lamented that this would be our last year doing this -- because the girls need more than we can offer.  They need someone to teach skills, and teach them that there is winning and losing and some kids are, actually, better soccer players than they are, and some kids will be mean and say things like we don’t want you on our team because you aren’t very good at soccer.   We will leave these for the next coach, because, really, it is more than we can bear right now. 

Another reason we won’t coach together next year is that my friends little girl, less than a month younger than my daughter, will have to repeat Kindergarden next year. This decision tore at my friends heart for months, hoping that her intuition was wrong. It isn’t fair for me to focus on my sadness around it, or my daughters. The fact that they won’t ever be in class together again, that they won’t graduate together, that this dear friend will not be as close as we had thought.  Yet, the loss was coming in waves last night.

I must remember it comes in waves. If I have been given these great people and great moments in my life, there will be more.  People and moments are not finite.  I have room for many more. 

P's sweet hands on my daughter's shoulder (tears pooling)

An Evening Stroll

I tried one of Lindseys Notice Things Walks last night.  It was similar to one of my first attempts at meditation.  Meaning, my kids didn't notice things that her kids did.  There was no heart shape in a tree or noticing the way the light shines on a plant.  They were like, "I notice the neighbors house, Mom." or "I notice the road is black." or I notice the bright orange paint where they marked the gas line.  Or the big pile of black dirt.  Or the litter on the road.

I kept trying to show them leaves or berries.  I grabbed a plant with a beautiful red stem and attempted to show it to them, when my daughter yelled that I was holding poison oak.

I started to get upset because I had been looking forward to this walk all day. I was ready to give them a great experience and darnit, they better get it.  When we decided just to enjoy the walk, a few things came out.  Chloe noticed the funky smell of all the dirt dredged up in the neighbors woods.  She said, "I didn't know dirt could smell gross."

I was still trying to make this meaningful, under the guise of simply enjoying the walk.  It just wasn't working.  Just like in meditation if you catch yourself thinking, you return to your breath, I caught myself trying to make it meaningful, so I attempted to let go of expectations and really tried to be in the moment.

When I am able to give up control of the outcome, wonderful things happen.

I noticed that the Marsh is already taller than them!

We caught fish,

had water fights,




















 skipped rocks,






















made sand castles,

made grass whistle,

made wishes,

watched the sunset from the lifeguard stand,

and took some good pictures.

You see a fish.  I see little boy hands.

Chaucer still skipping rocks (left, on dock)

It was wonderful!

Just Wondering....

Sally: Mom, Dad is 7 years older than you, right?

Me: Right.

Sally: You are 41 and Dad is 48, right?

Me: Right.

Sally:  Does that mean Dad is going to die before you?

Me:  Well, I hope not.  I hope I die first.

Sally:  Why?

Me:  Because I would be really sad and I would miss Daddy.

Sally: But he isn't your Dad, he's our Dad.

Me: But I love him.  He is my husband.

Sally: Oh.  Where did you find him anyway?

Did I say that out loud?

I am writing a book.  I wrote that out loud. It is a memoir.  It has been hard for me to explain to others and myself what it is about. 

At first, I didn’t know it was a memoir. I inadvertently discovered this genre of books. For my birthday a few years back, my husband gave me a book.  I need to stop and clarify what a HUGE DEAL this is.  He does not read books.  His reading consists of emails, the sports page, and the business page.  He has tried over the years, mostly during the months there is no baseball, to snuggle in bed and read.  This definitely comes under the category of making huge efforts to make your marriage better. His attempts at shopping for books for me earns many more brownie points.  He is as comfortable in a book store as an elephant in a china shop. Long ago, by choosing this wonderful man, I gave up the idea of a romantic date night being a nice dinner and browsing in a book store into the wee hours. 

But, being a first born  extroverted child of a hard working mid western family, means that he thinks he can do anything, and usually can. He asks people about books - he asks my mother, he asks friends, he asks strangers, he asks the book nerds (his word) in the book stores. When he buys me books, it is more than a gift.  He has put effort into something he knows I love, something that is as far from natural to him as it comes. He does this wholly and completely for me. 

The book he gave me that year was Jen Lancaster’s Pretty in Plaid. I hadn’t heard of the book or the author, but I picked it up and read it easily, laughing out loud along the way.  I loved the way she seemed like a regular person, not famous, not rich, not from a well known family, not in politics, not an eccentric writer, not writing for a not so well hidden agenda. It was simply musings in which I could identify. My husband explained that the book that was actually recommended to him was called Such a Pretty Fat, but he wasn’t comfortable giving that for Mother’s Day/ birthday.  He was scared of the repercussions.  Maybe he had a point. 

I read several others around this time in which I felt connected.  Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love, Kelly Corrigan’s The Middle Place, and The Motion of the Ocean by Janna Cawrse Esarey stand out as some of the firsts. I fell in love with reading these stories of real people, people that I felt like were similar to me. While reading these books, I felt like I was having a conversation with a friend. 

And I began to think that I could write a book like these. I still wonder if thats falling under the spell of the authors that make writing seem so easy.  

The year or so before I turned 40, I started thinking about what I would do to mark the occasion.  I didn’t want a big party. I wanted it to be meaningful.  A beginning of a new part of my life.  I wanted some time to stop from the day to day, the busyness of getting from here to there. I wanted to evaluate how things were going, and move forward according to my values.  I wasn’t living life the way I had planned, or wanted.  Outwardly maybe I was, but my insides were knots and I wanted them untangled. 

I wondered if I could write a memoir from my perspective.  A woman turning 40 plagued by the way life, calendars, email, voicemail, and other minute details were running my life. I had no tragedy, no before and after.  I had no big trip, no grand voyage. But I haven’t been able to shake the fact that there are many out there struggling with the same challenges I am.  Women, and men, who want to live life more fully, more according to their dreams and values, than expectations and calendars. 

As I started the process, I realized I couldn’t quite define who I am.  I couldn’t write the “about me” clip on my blog. It is so much more than mother, daughter, wife.  There are some things that I really miss about my former life. And other things not as much.  I have grown and changed. 

So, the marking of my 40th birthday became to write a memoir.  It is written from the belief that all of us have challenges to overcome, even if they aren’t visible, maybe especially if they aren’t visible. Even if we aren’t extremely wealthy or extremely poor.  Maybe especially if we are plain middle class with no tragedies to help define us.  It is written from the belief that we can make extreme changes and grow while staying in our marriages, and staying in our communities, and staying present in our lives.  

My memoir is about  remembering who I was, and meeting the person I have become, and making peace with the changes. 

I am writing a memoir.  I wrote that out loud. 

My New Community

I have found a group of bloggers that are going through many of the changes and facing many of the challenges I am.  

When I first discovered them, a couple of months ago, I needed them desperately.  It was good that I didn’t meet them in my real life, because I would have been so needy and obnoxious and chased them away almost immediately. As it was, I stalked their websites, not believing that these women were describing me.  That other people had the same feelings, fears, challenges that I had was , to say the least, a relief.

There is Lindsey, a self described melancholic (is that a word?).  The combination of her  observations, insights, and her amazing gift for articulation sucked me in first.  I discovered her in Talking Writing when she wrote a review for Dani Shapiro's book Devotion called "Looking for Answers."  

Through Lindsey, I discovered Christine. I wish I could remember the first post of hers that I read, the moment I knew I would come back.  It could have been the one on writing and community.  I was so drawn in by the words, the insights, the parallels to my life that I didn’t even think about her being a writer.  I felt like I was in a conversation with her from the beginning. I had taken up writing again last fall, and was enjoying the clarity it brought to my life. I had the urge to call her up and say, “Hey, we could be friends.  I get everything you say.  And we could work on our writing together.”   

I became reacquainted with my blog and starting writing a bit.  I tell no one about my blog, except my mother.  It is an exercise for me. Apparently one day, I became brave and reached out and commented on a post by someone else.  Well, Christa clicked on my comment and visited my blog, without my knowing. I came back one day and her comment was just sitting there. It was like waking up early, walking into the quietness of my own kitchen, and having someone sitting there. 

The range of emotions that this one comment created surprised me.  Surprise, fear, warmth, compassion, connectedness. I had been writing for myself.  To clear my head, to know what I was thinking, to ground myself.  I also tend to write when I am not in a good place, as a way of searching.  This is the part of me I haven’t like to share, because who wants to be around someone who brings them down? Also, I thought it wasn’t the real me.  

Christa’s blog, Carry it Forward, is simply beautiful.  Her photography makes me want to go back to my camera.  I’ve returned to the pen, but not the camera. She has beautiful quotes, and I absolutely love her strolls. She combines art, writing,and living in a way that makes me believe it is possible. 

Finally, Pam came and she stayed.  She followed me!   I am still wondering if my mother or husband hired her.  How can such few chosen words do so much? She compliments and encourages. And she makes me believe that she means what she says.  I mean, this woman can write about Batman  and Ulysses with equal intrigue. How can what I have to say mean something to her? 

Through these writers and mostly through word itself, I can tap my essential hope. On occasion, I am weighed down by fear, darkness, hopelessness, or sadness.  Lindsey writes often of her tendency toward melancholy,  her dark side sprinkled with bright, bright stars.  I think of myself as the opposite of that,  whatever that is.  I see a bright, sunny sky, with occasional black holes that spring up out of nowhere, like land mines. Her personality leans towards feeling goodbyes; mine towards feeling hellos.  In this, I am more like my mother and her mother. I generally like being this way; however, the black holes threaten to take over when I come to the edge, and it is the scariest place possible. Part of me thinks if you live on this edge, you are more equipped to deal with it, than if you only visit here occasionally.  

On some days, yes, I am overcome with the fragility of it all, the passage of time, this moment in time being forever gone.  Many days, my best days, I am overcome with awe of this world. I am overcome with gratitude for everything I have.  There are so many things I want to do and learn and read.  So many people I want to meet.  When I learn new words or ideas that lead me to new places and thoughts and hope, it is the opposite of my black hole.  Is there a white hole?  I am overwhelmed with all the good things and places in this world, that I can’t pick one. My thoughts are flying around and I can’t grasp any of them.  I am scared to grasp one, fearing the ones that fly away.  I am sad for all the experiences and people that I won’t meet, for there is so much good out there. I find myself constantly and endlessly fascinated with everything out there. 

All this to say, I am creating another community. I am discovering, yet again, something new. Writing has always been, for me, a private journey. A place to escape.  Something I don’t share for many different reasons - fear, perfectionism, incompleteness. I am discovering that so many of my interests converge here in this world. Writing, discovery, ideas, and, now, community.  Slowly emerging, I am learning how wonderful this community can be.  You are helping me discover myself by exposing  yourselves.  You teach me, you help me, you engage me, you share with me, you push me, you challenge me, and now, you listen to me. 

Thank you. 

Seasons and Patterns

For the first time ever, I left yoga in the middle of class today. 

I forced myself to go because I know its good for me, and I almost always like it when I am there, and I always love it when I am done. 

It isn’t my favorite yoga class, but the time works well and I glean different things from this class and generally use it to my advantage.  So, I had actually forgotten that it wasn’t one of my favorites.  I laid the mat down, already annoyed at something minor.  (O.K. I wasn’t going to say it because of how petty it is, but in the spirit of honesty, I will. The view from the room is peacefully gorgeous.  It looks out on a marsh with birds flying around, and forest in the distance. Someone had left a TV used for a presentation parked on the left side of this view. It annoyed me so I went to the back of the room. Thats it. Really.)  Then I went to the bathroom, got some water, and tried to settle on my mat.  I could not get comfortable. My mind was still racing from a troubling conversation from last night. 

Without writing all the boring details, I tried my best.  I was desperately  wishing I had taken my ritalin this morning.  I was not able to even sit to start, do any of the moves, the breaths, the letting go.  I started watching the clock.  It had only been 15 minutes; there was no way to get through this.  What was the point? I can not do any of it.  Finally, at 8:35, over half way through, I rolled up my mat and left.  Immediately, I thought it was a mistake because my right side felt stretched and good and my left side felt tight.  Oh well, imbalance is my specialty.  

My mother sent me an email last night asking how we are doing.  She said, “I figured it is half way through June and ya’ll are settled into your summer routine.”    I almost cried.    I am so far from settled into any summer routine. Or I could just end the sentence at settled.  I am so far from settled.  

Reading your post this morning reminded me to take a deep breath. Reminded me to be in the present.  This IS a transitional week.  They were still in school last week.  This is the first full week of summer, even though you wouldn’t know it by the weather.  I say this flippantly, but the unusual coolness messes with the senses when you are shivering and covering with towels by the pool and at the lake. Perhaps we rush from thing to thing, season to season, without honoring the transition.  Can we compare the last week of school to surgery? Jumping from one row of squares on the calendar to the next row of squares cuts into our daily routine like few other times in the year. Can we really move seamlessly from one to the next? Although I am new at it, one thing that is said repeatedly in my yoga classes is, “ Honor your body. Honor where it is today.”  Perhaps we can honor the transition time. Especially if we are more prone to feeling goodbyes, rather than hellos.  

At the beginning of the yoga class that I went to this morning, the teacher was telling us of a training she went to yesterday on therapeutic yoga.  She likes to give these little updates; perhaps it’s her way of sequeing from the every day into the practice.  I sometimes find it annoying but often come back to it later.  Go figure.  

She said she needed to process the training before she integrated it into her teaching, but would give us a little glimmer.  Much, if not all, of what we do is determined by patterns that we create consciously or unconsciously.  For example, wrap your fingers into steeple pose.  Now do it the other way.  It just doesn’t feel right.  It is not better or worse, but an exercise in feeling from a different perspective.  

Thinking about patterns in my life, I do not need to classify them as good or bad.  Some patterns work at times in our lives, but not others. I can not follow the same schedule in the summer as I do during the school year while I have school age children.  After having a baby, I can not return to the person I was before I was pregnant.  There are different circumstances.  The question that your writing provoked in me is this:  Are we always the same person emotionally, or can that, too, change? 

Will you always “inhabit a dense, mostly dark place, speckled with blindingly bright stars?”  Or if inhabiting that place becomes too much,  could learning that, acknowledging that, and living that for years be enough? Could this be a familiar pattern? One that is easy to slip into, like a favorite glove? 

It has taken a surprisingly long time to write this post. Most of the day, actually.  Rarely do I take this time, but I had the time blocked for writing and this is what became of it today.  It was triggered by Lindsey’s post today.  It started as a comment on her blog and then morphed several times into an essay, then a letter, in several different voices.  I “killed several darlings” to get this out.  At first I was writing to her, then to some vague audience, then myself. 

Ultimately, it landed here.  Seasons and patterns. One we can’t change.  One we can.