As Mother’s Day approaches I have some thoughts on motherhood.  Where did we get so off track on the idea of what makes a good mother?

When did we begin believing that it was expensive and elaborate themed birthday parties, or the complete absence of gluten, germs of any kind, or peanuts within a half mile radius of our homes?  What led us to believe that filling every spare moment of a child’s life with lessons, practices, meetings and homework so that they fall asleep at the dinner table is of some benefit?

Furthermore, when did we start to believe that being a good mother meant being a friend first and an example second?  Why did we decide to abdicate the teaching of things like good manners and respect for those around us, or giving up on the idea that integrity is a more valued commodity than being cool?

These are of course, generalizations and before everyone hastens to inform me about their friend’s sister’s nephew that has a life-threatening peanut allergy, I know, it happens.  But the message is not in the details.

To all the mothers approaching “your day” exhausted, stressed and overworked…oh well.  That’s life.  There are a bunch of fathers out there feeling the same way and that’s what we all signed up for by being a participating member of the human race.  Instead of trying to meet the expectations of Hallmark or your socially ambitious neighbor when it comes to what makes a good mother, I submit an alternative.

First and most basically, love your children.  Among other things love them by setting a high, yet attainable, bar and continue to give them tools to learn how to reach it.  Goals are not bad, competition is not bad.  Learning to work hard, strive, and sometimes fail in the attempt of acheivement is not bad, it is confidence building at its best.  Do not, I repeat, DO NOT love them by doing whatever they want in order to ‘make them happy’.  News flash, they are often not happy no matter what you do and they will often be sure they hate you, frequently well into adulthood.  This has nothing to do with you…remember that.

Second, give them the gift of learning to be alone.  Not alone with their smart phone or the flat screen, but alone with a thought-provoking book, alone flat on their stomach in the yard or the park examing a blade of grass and trying to make it whistle, even staring at the wall as they begin to contemplate existential theory.

Third, try not to fight their battles (remember they will hate you).  Instead of railing against the bully; which by the way, bullies are not a new phenomenon and they have existed for hundreds of years, give them the ability to render the bully powerless.  And no, things like this are not easy.  But the idea that life will often present itself as difficult is a better lesson than the one about ‘you are unique and special and deserving of nothing but unicorns and glitter’.  While we may wish it so, it is a disservice to suggest it.

Finally and most important, do you put your head on the pillow at night knowing you have done your best?  Don’t buy the hype or accept the pressure of a society that wishes you to feel bad that you don’t do enough, try enough, buy enough; that you are not enough.  Don’t wonder if you are perfect, you aren’t; none of us are.  But if you have done your best then you ARE a good mother, case closed.  It is all any of us can do and even then, sometimes children will go astray, they’ll make bad choices.  No matter.  If you can end each day with the knowledge you did the best you could and you will make the same effort the following day, you are enough.  You ARE a good mother.  Happy Mother’s Day! 

I am working on the second book in my Silver Shores series.  The working title is “Pros and Cons” and I am about 25,000 words into a book I forsee will end around 90,000.

 Writing has always come easy to me.  I’ve written a lot of crap in my life, but I’ve never been at a loss for words.  There was always something to say.  But when I was but a few chapters in to this new story the man, my dear friend, that served as model for my character, Patrick, was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  He died exactly three weeks after his diagnosis.  To say I was devastated doesn’t begin to describe it.

Make no mistake, these books are works of fiction.  However, they are based in an industry, a world if you will, that I spent most of my career involved with and there were traits, good and bad, of actual people that I incorporated into my characters.  The character of Patrick though was my friend to a tee.  There were a few liberties taken to drive the story but his essence was there…no doubt about it.

There are two reasons I must have done a good job; first, those that read the book and also knew him  recognized him in the character and I wanted that.  Second, those that hadn’t met him still recognized and remarked on Patrick’s goodness, his kindness, and of how much they liked him; exactly the reaction my friend drew wherever he went.

Though it may be a strange concept to non-writers it is absolutely true that one’s characters exist.  They speak to the writer with their own unique voice and their very individual personalities.  They “demand” the dialogue and action involving them play out a certain way.  But, they also show their compassion, their humanity, their empathy. 

On the day “my” Patrick left us, I was working on a scene where he played a major part.  I just stopped writing…I couldn’t do it and it has taken me several weeks to sit down at the keyboard again.  He has more he is anxious to say, more he wishes to contribute and I fear I cannot do him justice.  I don’t know that I possess the ability to portray him as he should be.

Writing is easy, until it isn’t.

It has been a week of devastating news for some of my friends and for me of course, because they are my friends.  Terminal illness for one, and a serious diagnosis and surgery for another has shaken them to the core and shaken those that love them.  I have begun the process of grief which may seem odd and ill-timed but a quote has come to mind this week that explains much.  Sadly, I don’t know the original author so the quote will stand as “Author Unknown”.

“Grief, I’ve learned is really just love.  It’s all the love you want to give but cannot.  All of that unspent love gathers up in the corner of your eyes, the lump in your throat and in that hollow part of your chest.  Grief is just love with no place to go.”

Such a succinct description, yet grief seems to overflow into other channels.  All those channels involve love, but the tentacles of grief reach to unsuspected places.

I find myself grieving for the life I’ve loved.  With each friend or loved one that succumbs to stroke, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, the prediction that “no one is getting out of here alive” is slammed home.  I have lost the carefree spirit that (wrongly) believed I was immune; the feeling as one friend explained to me regarding her life, “I thought I was Superwoman.”

I am grieving for how little it seems love can really do.  We desperately say “I love you” again and again, hoping it will somehow be enough before that final parting.  Hoping the feel of that love can be carried within each other.  But though love is inarguably a spiritualistic buoy, it cannot heal, it cannot cure, it cannot reverse the trajectory of a life nearing its end.  We cannot wield love to do the very thing we would wish primarily to do.

And now, I grieve as the idea that we are given a wonderful life and opportunity to do something good in the world, no matter how big or small, proves itself to be more than we thought.  Just when we find the cognizance to appreciate the happy wag of a dog’s tail, the beauty of a sunrise or sunset, the value of a true, loyal friend, we have already begun the descent to the stage in life where these things are imminently finite.  Trying to make an impact on the world may not be nearly as important as making and impact on our own world..

Grief is truly love with no place to go and there will always be love left over; it cannot all be spent as it regenerates again and again with hope and promise and optimism.  We owe ourselves the feelings of grief and its ultimate healing properties yet just as much, we owe ourselves the promise not to squander appreciation and love of what we have been given.  This is not original thought, but there is a constant need to remind ourselves again and again to honor ourselves and those that go before us.

Several days ago a senseless tragedy occurred in a Broward County, FL high school.  A senseless act that citizens are now rushing to try and make sense of.  But at the simple root of that word – senseless – is the very definition that has many beating themselves and more to the point each other, like moths at a porch light on a summer evening.  It was a tragedy completely lacking sense.

We are a society craving solutions, explanations, and reasons for everything that happens to and around us.  We want things tied in a neat little bow in the time frame of a twenty minute sitcom or a forty-five minute drama.  Present us with a problem and then wrap it up and we’ll move on in our lives.  To a large extent, complexity is not in our wheelhouse.  We don’t wish to be visited time and again with the thoughts of seventeen innocent people that left their homes that morning with no idea they would never return.  We don’t wish to imagine ourselves in the nightmare the families of the dead have found themselves in.  Let’s blame guns, or the President, or the FBI, or the killer’s parents, or bullying, or some fundamental ideology.  Let’s point those fingers and move on.

Social media took up the cry shortly after the most recent incident.  It was the “ban assault rifles” crowd vs. the 2nd Amendment group.  Self-proclaimed friends called each other names, insulted each other’s intelligence, and posted endless memes to prove the righteousness of their position.  I had to step away, so to speak.  I find that in my advancing age, the world is infuriatingly not black or white and I struggle with those that insist it is.  As I read and tried to wrap my mind around things, I came across the words of social scientist Brene Brown, from her 2017 work “Braving the Wilderness” and she says it so much better than I ever could.

“The ability to think past either/or situations is the foundation of critical thinking, but still, it requires courage.  Getting curious and asking questions happens outside our ideological bunkers.  It feels easier and safer to pick a side.  The argument is set up in a way that there’s only one real option.  If we stay quiet we’re automatically demonized as “the other”. “

I do not believe that an average citizen should have access to or any reason to own an automatic rifle.  A simple statement but there is too much complexity for that to be the end of it.  

California has the most stringent gun laws in the nation.  But in the minds of those that wish to do harm to others a law means nothing.  These mass killings are not spontaneous crimes of passion.  Every action is plotted for maximum result.  These people have nothing but time and they use it while we are not yet watching.  The largest school massacre in the United States happened in a community of just over 300 in rural Michigan in May of 1927.  It was carried out by Andrew Kehoe, a local farmer with gasoline, a rifle, and explosives purchased to remove tree stumps from his land.

Clearly, where there’s a will…  This is not to say a ban on assault rifles is not a good step, but it is only a step and in and of itself will stop nothing.  We have to exercise the critical thinking Ms. Brown refers to and examine our mental health policies, our security in public venues, the role of other countries and black market arms deals, the function of social media, and most importantly to my mind, our attitudes and responses to one another.  In a time where we must become creative in our thinking and exercise vigilance in our lives the “if you’re not with me, you’re against me” mantra is one of the most certain ways to halt discussion, problem solving, and isolate ourselves from each other.

Let’s get this out of the way.  I don’t know who wrote chapters 1 – 13 but I know they are there and I had to start somewhere.  No doubt there are infinitely more…but I digress.

Recently a friend told a story of finding an old photo.  It was taken at a princess party; a party the friend gave for her two small daughters.  The girls, now adults, were dressed as a Disney princess and a cartoon character respectively, and the friend and her sister had donned old prom dresses to join in the moment.  It was so long ago, the girls don’t even remember and the friend’s observation was, ‘I can’t believe I wore a dress with a giant bow on my ass to the prom’.

Fast forward to the Mars and Venus part of the story.  Any woman hearing this would understand that the important parts of this story are: a) a mother and an aunt going the extra mile to dress up to give a party to two girls who will never remember it, and b) another woman has experienced the ‘aha’ moment when she sees herself in an outfit she originally felt was smokin’ hot only to realize she had a giant bow on her ass.  But in a man’s world, these elements are lost forever…conversation as follows:

Wife: “So, talked to my friend X today and she told me she found a picture of her and her sister at the princess party she gave for her girls.  The girls don’t remember and she can’t believe she is in a picture wearing a dress with a giant bow on her ass.”

Husband: “Wow, most women can’t fit into their prom dresses.”

Wife: “Yeah, well I guess she did, but she couldn’t believe the picture she found.”

Husband: “How many years after the prom was this?”

Wife: “I don’t know…who cares…she wasn’t talking about prom. It was the picture of her with her girls in princess dresses and her dress with the bow on her ass.”

Husband:  “That doesn’t happen very often.”

Wife: “What?”

Husband: “That women fit in to their prom dresses.”

Wife: “That’s not the point!  She didn’t call to tell me the dress fit.  It obviously fit because she was wearing it.  Why are you fixated on this?  It’s about the princess party and what she wore to be a part of it with her daughters.”

Husband: “Exactly!  She wore a prom dress most people couldn’t fit into after they had children.”

Wife: “NO! She wore a dress with a giant bow on the ass so her daughters could have their princess party! ” Then, walking away, “Never mind…”

Husband: Muttering as he retreats to the other room, “I wonder how many women even keep their prom dress, I mean, it will never fit.”

And the mystery of Mars, Venus, and what makes each of us tick continues….

A recent conversation with a friend got me thinking about blogging.  What gives any of us the idea that what we think or how we feel about things is of interest to anyone but ourselves?

Of course, the beauty of most blogs is that one must go to them, they rarely come to you and if the subject is of no interest to you as a reader you can immediately opt out of the read.  But as a matter of course do most of us want to read about the writer’s recent trip to Rock and Jump with her two toddlers, or the latest road rage incident on the last foray to Trader Joe’s?  I suppose if you are in a Mommy and Me group there would be an appeal but where I’m going with this is that I want to read a blog that is interesting or thought-provoking or funny or all of the afore-mentioned and is of interest to more than a select group.

Often these goals are more easily written of than acheived but what I am sure of is that any blog of mine will not be limited to one, or even a handful of subjects.  All my life if something has been on my mind it has likely manifested itself as the written word eventually, and my promise to anyone choosing to read here is that you never know what you will find.  Visit when you feel like it, read what you choose, and comment if compelled.  I love the power of the written word and the writing process and I promise, no “what I did today” entries.

Yes, maybe it was the title of a Todd Rungren song, but also the three words that come to mind as I embark on this new adventure.  I believed I was done challenging myself, testing my limits and finding myself again and again outside my comfort zone but I was dead wrong.  I look forward to my new world and all the surprises it holds for me.  As I reinvent my place here once again, all I can say is…hello, it’s me.