Saturday, July 31, 2010

Get us out of this motel already!!!!!

Ten days in a motel have turned into two weeks and then some now. The RV should be ready to roll in the next week and we will be on the road again. We are heading south on California’s 101. We will pass through Santa Clara County and Monterey County before entering San Luis Obispo County to our next destination - Oceano Dunes (http://www.duneguide.com/sand_dune_guide_oceano_dunes.htm ). This is the plan anyway. But, we all know that plans are made to go awry and so far our trip has been full of awrys.

Plans. Lao Tzu said: “A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving. It is not really the arriving I am intent upon but the travelling. I am not great at this waiting game. I am irritable. I am frustrated and stressed. I am bored. I want to move on. From how much of what is going on here right now I have not decided. Muslims believe in “patience, perseverance, and prayer.” They realize that so many others before us have suffered and had their faith tested and that we shall be tried and tested in this life too. Christians believe that we are never given more than we can handle. In Buddhism patience is one of the six perfections that form the foundation of one’s quest for enlightenment. I pray to my own higher power each morning and night for patience and each day I try to practice a bit of what I pray for.

Wednesday, July 28, 2010

Out of the mouths of babes


While my daughter was wishing on a lucky penny today her four year-old daughter asked what she was wishing for. My daughter said she was wishing for happiness for all of them and out of the mouth of a babe came: “Aren’t we already happy mama?” Four year-olds don’t worry about rent or mortgages or about finding a landlord willing to rent to a couple with six children. They don’t worry about electric bills, grocery bills, or car insurance. They know that happiness comes with the bedtime story, playtime in the park, and a new toy from the local thrift store. Wouldn’t it be fabulous if we all could feel the joy of a four year old and know that happiness is found in the small joys in everyday life?

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Silencing myself

Perhaps blogging is not the way to go. Do I have to temper my words here? Or just let it go? There is a lot of stress in the air this morning. I do well with stress. I do not do well with stress. Put me in a high stress, multitasking work environment and I do great. Tell me I have to write a thirty page paper for class and it is due tomorrow and I will whip an A paper out with minutes to spare. But, don’t have personal stress around me because I will always feel like I am the cause. Whether I am or not doesn’t matter, I will feel I am and I will feel that I need to fix it.

Have you heard of Virginia Satir? Melody Beattie? John Bradshaw? I need to learn to be co-dependent no more, to heal the shame, to liberate the inner self. My father was an alcoholic, as were four out of five brothers and my only sister. I tend to marry alcoholics and or drug abusers. See a pattern? My college grad paper was on co-dependency. I spent many years as an alcohol and drug counselor. I have walked away from abusive relationships. I have been in therapy. I have talked it out and walked it out and swore I wouldn’t go there again. I am there again. Even more I sink into the role so completely that I want to believe that every problem around me is my problem to fix. And I know that I can’t. I know that I cannot fix the problems of others, especially when I have my stuff to deal with.

The transmission on the RV went out and is the RV is now in the tranny shop. While this is going on we are motel bound for ten days. It has been five now and the thrill of a pool, a daily shower, and a non-moving bed has gone away. Motels are expensive. Motels are crowded. Motels are impersonal. Perhaps a condo on the beach in Waikiki or a garden room overlooking the Seine would not feel like this. But I long for the days when I could escape to a room of my own, not just for my sake but for the sake of those around me.

I know I am not easy to live with at times. I can be irritable and morose and melodramatic. I do not do well when there is frustration and anxiety floating in the air around me. I want for laughter and music and quiet times. I want for peace and happiness and some healing words from Deepak or Pema Chodron to ease my troubled mind.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Transmission woes

$2500 for a new tranny in the RV. So, while the work is being done we are temporarily holed up at Motel 6 again. Two nights in San Rafael (I don’t recommend this one) and then a week in Belmont. At least in Belmont there is a pool and things to do in the area. And, we will be able to visit Uncle Al. If you don’t have an Uncle Al you should really consider adopting one. Alan, who just turned 74, is not an Uncle by blood but by love. He entered our lives 28 years ago, a friend of my ex-father-in-law. He has seen us through the meaty years and the lean years. He tells a mean joke and brews a lousy cup of coffee. He can make a mixed tape that you will enjoy for all the wrong reasons and will even serenade you if the mood takes him there. Some of his most lively tunes include: Alone Again Naturally, If I Were a Rich Man, and A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square. Uncle Al has watched my kids grow and their kids too. He is Uncle Owl to the littlest ones and some of the older ones too. Again, if you don’t already have an Uncle Al you should really consider adopting one.

Staying in a motel does allow for daily showers and of course the endless cartoon programming on Cartoon Network and Nick. Keeping six kids entertained while in a motel presents challenges and without a pool one way to beat the summer heat is to take laps in the bathtub. Which means that the maids work overtime providing us with dry towels. At the moment the older three boys are off with the men foraging for berries at China Camp. The younger three are coloring, playing leap-frog, and making kissy faces with mom.

Life throws many lemons along one’s journey, the trick is to learn to make sweet lemonade out of those lemons.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Mom & Dad

I am writing tonight about my parents. They never told many stories about their lives before marriage, before children. Perhaps they were too busy raising seven children or maybe they didn’t think that we would be interested. I don’t know. Of the few stories I did hear my favorite is the one of how they ended up getting married. My parents met in 1939, in Morning Sun, Iowa. According to my mother they met at church and my father would make a nuisance of himself after church, inviting himself over to Sunday dinner and cozying up to her mother. My mother would tell of how she didn’t like him much but her mother did and so he spent many Sunday dinners at the house. Some time went by and one Saturday evening my father showed up and asked my mother to take a ride with him. He told her he wanted to go and get married, she told him she didn’t want to. They squabble back and forth about this and when her mother came in to see what the commotion was about my father said that he wanted to take my mother to a movie and she was being stubborn. My grandmother pushed my mother out the door and to the “movies.” My mother returned home married.

My mother always told me that she didn’t really like my father but felt pressured to get married. She had wanted to finish Business College before settling down. She didn’t finish college. She may have always regretted that, I don’t know. She was a very intelligent woman and had she been born in a later time she would no doubt have risen to great professional heights. She did return to work in the 1950s when she thought her childbearing years were over. She worked as an executive secretary for a naval commander on Treasure Island and later for some large corporate executives. She would continue to bear and to raise children and to work both inside and outside of the home. She worked right on up until three months before she died at age 82.

My father carried a picture of my mother in his wallet until the day he died. The picture was taken when she was nineteen years old. My mother once told him he should replace it with a current picture and he said he didn’t need a current picture because to him she still looked just like she did when she had the picture taken. Whatever my mother felt about marrying too young or too soon clearly my father was deeply in love. I have seen the few pictures of the two of them together long before I was born and I have read a few of the letters he sent her from Europe while he served in WWII. They are filled with longing and love. I know only the outward troubles of their married lives, the ones they allowed us to see. I also saw the companionship that they shared in their later years, the solidarity of their union, and then my mother’s grief when my father died.

I write about this tonight because I believe that the romance of my parents love has been a guiding force in my own love life through the years. I may not truly understand what my parents had together, I know the other stories that exist about their lives together, but I know the narrative that I have constructed for them and for their love. This is the narrative that I base my life wishes upon. I have always wanted a love like my parents had. One that endured through the years, through the obstacles and the pain, and the turbulence that I know that they experienced; endured till the end. I haven’t found a love like that. I no longer believe that a love like that is out there waiting for me. I still believe that it exists, just not for me. So, I am trying hard to rewrite a script for the next years of my life, one that involves a great love story with myself.