Category Archives: Husband

Practice Does Not Make Perfect

The kids’ toys have invaded every room of my house and it’s making me little crazy. Right now, there are three rooms in desperate need of painting, a brigade of dandelions invading my garden, and stacks of papers that have built up over a dreary, rainy season. I sigh heavily each time I look at them. For the last week I have been slightly obsessed with getting my home organized. Call it Spring cleaning, or whatever, but it has suddenly become of paramount importance that each these issues be rectified and a semblance of order restored to my living space before I can think of doing anything else.

In the last week I have been on a singular mission to create a playroom in a spare bedroom and reclaim my living room as “adult space.” I have made trips to IKEA, Target and Goodwill for donations. I have searched for more than an hour online for the just-so-perfect-paper-organizing-charging-station (which I have yet to find). If I’m being honest, I can think of hardly anything else until this project is complete. I know when I get so focused on one task that there is something larger, deeper at play, and this new zeal for cleaning and purging is no exception.

For four months I have been walking a razor’s edge. I’ve been balancing knives on a high wire and holding my breath 1000 feet under water. I’ve felt the heaviness of the unknown resting on my chest while dragging the past behind me strapped to my neck like a noose. It has been a long, hard winter for all the relationships in my life.

But today, like the tulips and daffodils that are pushing their yellow petals toward the sun from under previously frozen ground (a miracle each time) there has been a transition toward the light in my own life. Some friends have emerged as life preservers. Some family relations have been clarified, deconstructed, ready to build anew, perhaps in a healthier way. Most importantly, my marriage has shifted onto more solid ground and it too is rebuilding with a stronger foundation than ever before. At this moment everything feels like a miracle, from the flowers to my faith.

It’s been awhile since I’ve felt this assured about the future and my sole motivation to organize my home is my way of trying to hold onto that feeling; gain control of it, slap a fresh coat of paint on it and force it to stick around for a while. I believe this much is true.

I have learned a great deal about myself and relationships in the past four months by means of therapy, reading and introspection. In the midst of it, I have swung from one side of the sanity pendulum to the other sometimes in the very same day. I know more about who I am, a knowledge that came at a high price. I have confronted my anger, my anxiety, my ideas about marriage and family, motherhood and faith. My convictions have never been stronger or more flexible and neither has my body as a direct result of deepening my yoga practice. All of these are good things that have helped me grow, and yet, my compulsions remain.

life is a practiceThis is the lesson standing out to me on this clear, crisp Spring day–that like my yoga practice, life is never mastered. Life is a continuing practice because there is no such thing as perfection. Perfection is an illusion we portray to keep the deeper, larger things at arm’s length; to avoid eye-contact with the ugliness and unexpectedness that lays on the periphery of every thing we hold close.

As deep as my tendencies for obsessions and compulsions run, somewhere else deep lies the knowledge that there is no promise of ever getting it right, of having it all, of writing the perfect blog post, bending into the epitomous expression of downward dog or even another clear, crisp Spring day.

Even though I want to finish this post so that I can paint trim, I will remind myself in the midst of it that there is no such thing as the just-so-perfect-paper-organizing-charging-station (believed me, I’ve looked) or seemless, knick-free walls that do not hold with them the immediate threat of a toddler’s permanent marker adornments… or relationships without the promise of future disappointments.

My recent quest to organize my house is about me, once again, fighting this reality. In the light of this more hopeful, brighter place in my life, I am already starting to fear of the unknown, the chaotic, the foreboding season I just left, one that I know will come again because… such is life. My need to categorize my papers is me trying to hold onto something instead of slipping into the flow of life, of letting everything be perfect the way it is and trusting that everything is already as it should be… a miracle.

But the good news is that life is a practice, and part of that practice is reminding myself again and again that there is no such thing as the perfectly organized playroom and clutterless countertops. They do not exist.

If I have learned anything over the last four months, it is that life is unpredictable and precarious and the only thing we have is the present moment, whatever that beautiful mess might be, and miraculously that it is always enough. I know now that there is no such things as the perfect marriage, the perfect mother, the perfect life… that we are all just practicing at doing our best each day. Something we should learn to be more forgiving with, for, to, of.

I have changed the way I think about these things, and that new thought takes practice too. Instead of saying I am a writer, I say, I practice writing; same goes for yoga. I also practice being wife, a mother and a daughter. I practice patience and gratitude and staying present. Always practicing, never perfecting because I have also learned you can never master anything in life. (Much to my love-of-lists-and-checked-boxes dismay.)

But perhaps with diligence of effort, commitment to the cause, and a willingness to be vulnerable and take risks, I’ll get better at all of them? Maybe?

I don’t believe happiness, serenity and forgiveness comes naturally for anyone. Life is difficult and testing for even the most enlightened and faithful among us. But I believe the more we commit to practicing gratitude, being present, forgiving and loving thy neighbor, the less harsh the winters may seem.

My tendencies are for control and perfection and certainty, but today, on this rainy, shiny, Spring-filled day, with its Chartreuse leaves twisting in the wind and bright tulips unfurling to the sunshine, I know that practice does not make perfect, but I am CERTAIN it will make good enough.

Because there is no such thing as a garden without weeds, relationships without falter, children without messes… and would we ever want it any other way?

Life Puzzles

life puzzlesWe have several wooden, peg puzzles for our children. I started purchasing them when our first child, our daughter, was barely a year old. We have letters, numbers, shapes, colors, animals… you get the picture. I thought it would be a wonderful way to teach my children the basics. My three-year-old has all but abandoned them having tired of the basic puzzles long ago but because of those puzzles, she now associates the letter K with Key, X with X-Ray and T with Daddy’s Tie.

My 16-month-old plays with them regularly. He isn’t proficient enough yet to put them all back together but we do it together, just like I did with his sister. At the end of the day they are inevitably scattered into a pile of mixed up pieces and upturned boards and each night I sit on my knees putting the A back in the Apple slot and matching the blue fish tale with the blue fish head. It’s a nightly chore, like any other. Sometimes pieces go missing for days and I am on the look out for them because if the puzzles don’t have all their pieces and aren’t reassembled, what’s the point of having them? At which point will my son learn how to match the number 5 puzzle piece with the 5 butterflies if the pieces are forever scattered and missing?

My husband, he doesn’t see the point in such nonsense. His answer is to brush all the pieces aside in a heap each night. Sometimes, when he steps on an errant pig peg piece, in a huff he suggests throwing them all away because they make such a mess. He doesn’t understand my logic and why I insist on putting them all back together each night. I can’t ever get him to help me put the puzzles back together, either. It is always my job. And I do it, usually, no matter how tired.

We’ve been together for over 11 years, married for 7 of them. We met when I was 23 and he was 24. Previous to meeting my husband I had a couple of “serious” relationships, but nothing that lasted more than a year. Mostly, it was tragic lineage of one mistake after another but on the bright side; by the time I met Brian, I was pretty sure I knew what I didn’t want and decently sure I knew what I did.

I couldn’t believe my good fortune when he came along. He was everything I’d been looking for and much more. I fell, we moved and then married. Eight years in to our relationship, and four years into our marriage, we had our first child. How could we have ever known what to expect? How does anyone?

Personally, becoming a mother rocked me to my core. I knew it would be hard. I knew it would be wonderful. I knew it would be one of the most important things I would ever do and I knew (logically) that it would “change everything” (or so people liked to advise), but how was I to really know what that meant? How does anyone?

How was I to know that I would become a different person from that girl 11 years ago who was pretty sure of what she didn’t want and only decently sure of what she did? How was I to know that having children would push me to the precipice of all my shortcomings and then throw me into the fire of change? How was I supposed to know that wooden puzzles, writing and women’s issues would become important pieces in my life’s puzzle? How was I supposed to know that in the process of shifting the lens of my life onto a child, it would create such a profound shift in me that I no longer recognized the piece of ground on which I stood?

When we first became a couple we fit together so well. We were two people with the same ideas about the same ideas and what differed, didn’t seem to matter. We wanted the same things about the same things and those were the most important things, so it seemed. But then, the two pieces multiplied and at the same time divided into four. Now the puzzle contains more pieces than available slots and some pieces are missing all-together. Right now, there’s a difference in opinion as to how it should all be put back together.

It’s hard enough to make you want to run away.

But the biggest piece of this puzzle we’re facing, is that no one is doing that. No one is giving up on trying to figure this out. No one is ready to shove all the pieces in a pile and move on. I do know that, and for that, I am grateful.

As for my half of this conundrum; I’m trying to focus on the fact that he knows all these wooden puzzles by heart because he has gotten down on his knees dozens of times to put them back together again with our children. I’m trying to become softer, to fit into places I’ve never been before and learn to mold myself to a new, better shape so that it might complement this new structure because I love this structure.

I won’t stop putting the puzzles back together anytime soon because that’s my job, but I’m also trying to respect the fact that he doesn’t feel the same way. My intuition tells me that all married couples traverse these crossroads at some point in their marriage. There is always a moment (or moments) when you look around at the pieces of your life and have to make hard changes and choices as two how their all going to fit together on the new ground on which you stand. Some puzzles are too hard and all require change.

Right now, we are both being forged by the fires of change and I won’t lie, it hurts. It hurts like hell. There is no definitive answers as to what shape we’re going to be in when we emerge from this crucible but because we’re here together, my hope is that we’ll find a way to fit together again. There are pieces coming together as I write this.

Right now, I’m trying to withstand the heat for the sake of all the things I care about most deeply. I’m trying to put aside the pain and focus on the hand that’s shaping me blow-by-blow because the only way to make something as strong as steel into something softer and more malleable… is with flames and pressure. It’s hard work becoming soft, but I’m trying like hell.

We’re trying like hell. And that’s got to be worth something… right?

I feel good about 2013. I’m hopeful, grateful, blessed and evolving… not giving up, but learning to give in.

Driftwood: Reflections on My 7th Wedding Anniversary and What I Should Know By Now

Intertwined II

Seven years ago today I was looking out the window of a hotel room onto an habitually grey, Seattle sky trying not to bite my acrylic nails. I was thinking that the worst thing that could ever happen to me would be rain on my outdoor wedding.

On the list of things I could never know in that moment was that it wouldn’t rain that day. The clouds would dissipate, taking my worries with them, and I would be married under a perfect, bright, blue sky. Of course I would proclaim it providence—surely a sign! that my marriage was destined to be similarly divine.

Today, and no longer on the list of things I could never know, is that rain on my outdoor wedding isn’t the worst thing that could happen to me, or my marriage.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know if I’m doing this whole married thing well. I spend half the time thinking we’re on a collision course for disaster, and the other half reveling in my smuggness that we are the best married couple in the history of married people. This vacillation usually leaves me exhausted and more than one definition of the word confused.

Honestly, there are days that I want to run away, take a vow of silence and solitude and live out my days on a remote, uninhabited island just so I don’t ever have to make one more god damn compromise. That’s the child in me, which (all too often) voices her opinions louder than she should.

Speaking of my inner child… when I was 12 my best friend moved to a new house and thus, to a new middle school. She and I would be in the same high school in two more years, but back then, it felt like an eternity. I was so upset by her “leaving me” that months before she moved I picked a silly, frivolous fight which I blew up into epic proportions. I became indignant and righteous over essentially nothing. On the list of things I didn’t know then, was that this was my preferred self-preservation tactic. I could abuse her, but I could not lose her. I could alienate her, but I could not face my own aloneness. Instead of missing her, I could hate her and my anger could take up all the space available in my heart so that pain could not take root.

I know this tendency of mine runs deep because it is the cycle I find myself in now. Anger is a feeling I sit well inside. I’m accustomed to shoring myself up with barbed wire and a pile of sticks and stones by my side. To me, that feels safer, physically stronger and more in control than sitting alone in a room made of glass and reflections.

And yet, on the list of things I should know by now, is that this never works. My highest self knows that beyond that glass room is a view worth beholding and my reflection in it, is worth beholding, too. It is only through the strictest of vigilance and mindful practice that I can calm myself amidst all that transparency and admire the view for what it is, and accept it for what it is not.

It’s not easy, but I’m trying; same story goes for mothering.

Marriage and motherhood, they are like water to me. Like the rain that I feared on my wedding day they are necessary for my growth. They imperceptibly shape me; nourish me, make me easier to hold and behold by smoothing out my rough edges and taking away my splinters. It’s like the driftwood that bobs endlessly in the Pacific Northwest tides; it goes in rough, covered in a thick layer of bark, but over time and water, it comes out something else entirely, something beautiful, worthy of being called “art.”

On this day, seven years ago, on the shore of these Pacific Northwest waters, my husband and I agreed to intertwine our lives. With the best of intentions we committed to building a life together, and with all the arrogance and naivety required of young newlyweds we believed we knew what that meant. On the list of things I now know, is that no young, newlywed couple ever knows what that means because time and water will change everything you think you know.

As I write this I’m sitting on a ferry, in these same waters, on my way home from several hours spent alone on an island that sits just across the Puget Sound from downtown Seattle. I have had a rare day by myself to quietly reflect on all of these things for reasons not unrelated to the purpose of this post, our relationship. I am brimming with unnamed emotions and thoughts deeper than this ocean itself and these are the conclusions I have come to know today.

The trick to this marriage thing, is to love the wood in all it’s many forms, for what it is, and is not. To know that it will change, over time and waters, but that change is a part of life. To hold in reverence the water, the ocean and the rain for the power they wield and the life they give, but know at the same time that it is not punishment or providence. That we must find a way to take the waves however they come, and yet remain entwined by a force greater than the ocean. A big part of this is letting the expectations that cling to us like bark be washed away with the tides.

What I know now is that I need to lay down my sticks and stones for good. I need to realize them not as comfort, but as combat which only leads to greater discomfort.  I need to learn to behold and accept the view that is in front of me for everything it is, and is not. To let life be life, and let it wash over me, smooth my rough edges and reveal something greater underneath. To love whatever is underneath and inside me, first, before I can love it inside him, too.

While I was thinking all these things over the course of this afternoon I solemnly roamed through quaint shops and art galleries. In one of them, I found this sculpture. It whispered to me all that I have written here. In that moment, I knew what I was getting my husband for our anniversary the next day–this post, sitting next to this:

Because we are all just driftwood bobbing in the tide. A few of us tangled together, most of us mangled by time and water, all of us connected through the experience.

Happy 7th Anniversary, Babe.

What do you know, or not know about marriage?

Flossing and LSD

Right Brain, Left Brain

They say the logical, methodical, rationale brain is on the left side. It’s the side that calculates, figures and defines the world into measurable increments. It’s the side that tells you to floss, obey traffic signals and balance your checkbook. Apparently, the right brain is the opposite of that. It’s the dreamer, the creative, intuitive, impulsive side that drops acid and then writes a poem about it using the pages of your checkbook.

The first part of my life I lived in the right brain. I dreamt hard, loved impulsively and felt everything. As fun as that sounds it didn’t work out so well, particularly the acid part. I was scared a lot and I didn’t know how not to be. At some point I decided that if things were going to change I needed to do the exact opposite of what I had been doing. I reasoned that if I married someone with all those left-brained skills then I could learn, by proxy, how to operate in the world using more information than what I could glean from a mood ring. So I did just that, and it worked. I now floss… sometimes.

Since meeting my husband in 2001 I’ve steadily developed that left side of my brain. It was partly because of him, but also because of the residual effects of growing up and taking on more responsibilities. Over time, I learned how to create PowerPoint presentations, analyze medical research and calculate the interest rate on a mortgage. As boring as that sounds, I also learned the value in knowing these things and to my surprise, I enjoyed them. Facts made me feel safe. The more I knew about my world, the more I felt grounded in it instead of dog-paddling against the current headed for an imaginary, rainbow-colored waterfall. (Okay, that might have been the acid talking, but still).

Today, I can honestly say that I love biology, physics and even the Dow Jones. Understanding these things has allowed me to create a good life.

So here I am, coming full circle. I haven’t worked at a job that has required my left brain for almost two years. In this space, my natural, right-brained tendencies have resurfaced. I’m writing, reading and painting with primary colors and those fat, toddler-sized paint brushes. I’m singing lullabies and making up bedtime stories and the synapses on the right side of my head are lighting up like the Fourth of July sans acid. (Because two hours at Target with my toddler is enough of a bad trip for me these days.)

What I’m saying is that for the first time, I am feeling whole. Now, maybe that has something to do with the residual effects of growing up and taking on more responsibilities, but I also believe it’s because I know who I am and what I’m capable of doing. What I was able to accomplish in the left-brained corporate world of numbers, figures and measurable increments showed me the power of those things, but more importantly, it showed me the power of me.

Had I not spent years working out those logic muscles it wouldn’t have mattered how strong I was creatively–because any strength, when overused, becomes a weakness.

Learning facts has helped me to feel better, dream harder and love more…  which is ultimately, obviously, how I like to operate in the world anyway.

Oh, and also the flossing. Flossing is good, LSD is not… as good.

Arrow Root

Sometimes, I get creative ideas in the wee hours of the morning when I’m either barely awake or not yet sleeping. Either way, I’m on the cusp of something and it is in this space that my creativity abounds. Metaphors and imagery flow freely as if they’d been there all along. I love this weary dream-state because I feel uninhibited. The inherent problem with this burst of creative juice is that I’m tired, too tired in fact, to get out of bed and write down whatever it is that is so juicy. Stephen King claims that he never writes down ideas. He says that the good ones always stick. But if ask Anne Lamott, she’ll tell you she carries a notepad wherever she goes. Both of them are great writers who have written bestsellers on how to be great writers. I think maybe they are both right but what do I know? I’m just an embryonic writer. However, I am a fan of anecdotal evidence so let’s test this theory, shall we?

Two early morning’s ago the word ‘arrow root’ came to me. I had a whole theme behind it that I thought was pretty good, so when I finally got out of bed and to my computer, I saved it as a possible title. I went back to it today and realized that I didn’t write anything else down besides ’arrow root’ and I couldn’t remember what it was that inspired me. Stephen King would say to press delete, Anne Lamott would say to write a shitty first draft. Shitty first draft it is…

I decided to see if I could re-inspire myself and figure out what it was that captured my attention about the word arrow root. I already knew that arrow root was used as a thickening agent in cooking but that’s as far as my knowledge base went. I headed straight to one of my favorite places on the Internet…Wikipedia. What an amazing time sucker website that is. I’m fairly certain that without the need to sleep, have a BM or care for small people, I would not find my way out of that wormhole. <—– Do NOT click on that until you’re done reading this, you will not make it back, trust me.

Wikipedia told me… “It is invaluable in cooking when you wish to have a clear, thickened sauce, for example, a fruit sauce. It will not make the sauce go cloudy, as for example will cornstarch, flour or other starchy thickening agents…. Substitute two teaspoons of arrowroot for one tablespoon of cornstarch, or one teaspoon of arrowroot for one tablespoon of wheat flour.”

Ah ha! I remembered. Oh, hmm, I guess arrowroot is one word.

Before I met my husband I was a bit of a mess on the life-planning/ financial/ career front. I had been a college graduate for less than a year. I was working at my first sales job for only six months and all my credit cards were frozen in a block of ice in my freezer.  My rationale for the latter was that by the time I could get the cards thawed, I would have talked myself out of buying whatever it was I thought I needed. Without access to hot water, it might’ve actually worked. Anyway, my first job was one I fell ass-backwards into because I had no definite career goals.  I took the job because it was one of the few internet companies in Kansas City and all I knew at the time was that I wanted to, “have something to do with the internet.” My ambitions were exactly that vague. In other words, I was short on long-term plans. It wasn’t until I met my husband, who was also a sales person in the same industry, that my career ambitions became more clear. He showed me what a sales career could do for me and (like usual) he was right.

My husband is well aware that I want to be a writer. He is the first person to ever hear my secret dream. He’s usually the first person to hear of any dream and he is generally supportive, but he also a realist to his core. He has always wanted for me what I want for myself, happiness; and, “If writing makes you happy, then go for it,” followed quickly by, “but don’t forget we have two kids to put through college.” Encouraging, and also anxiety producing motivating.

He is a consummate planner, a researcher if there ever was one. There is rarely an item that crosses our doorstep that hasn’t been cross-checked with consumer reports. We order organic coffee from Columbia which is fantastic. We have the best rum I’ve ever had in my life from Guatemala. We got ”the best deal” on the grass-fed beef from Texas which my husband cooks to perfection on our awesome infrared grill using tried and true techniques he found on the internet. His success rate hovers in the 99% territory. The man knows what he’s doing. He’s so good at research, that I rarely bother to research anything. I trust him completely to make all those types of decisions and if I’m being completely honest, this ability of his to make informed choices ranked super high on my list of reasons why I wanted to marry him.

Yes, but what in the world does all that have to do with arrowroot? My husband is my arrowroot. Imagine it as I first wrote it, two words, arrow root. He is the arrow that points me in the direction I want to go and also a root to grounds me in real life. Arrowroot… invaluable… clear… thickens; it is potent, keeps things clear and yet substantiates whatever you add it to. Without my husband, I am loose, liquid, meandering with the potential to be delicious. With him, I am thicker, richer, a full meal capable of filling you up– “the name may come from aru-aru (meal of meals) in the language of the Caribbean Arawak people.”

Yes, Arrow Root.

Being the definition of an informed consumer/ voter/ citizen, it kind of amazes that to me that he went and married a woman who didn’t even bother to research which university she would attend. I’d like to think it was another one of his good decsions. Afterall, his percentage for success is about 99%.

Epilogue: Shortly after writing this I revisited my Thanksgiving shopping list…

Perhaps I’m not as creative as my semi-conscious state would have me believe.

So what do you think? Stephen King, or Anne Lamott?