Life is Life-y

There was a time when this photo was what people meant by family. Mom, Dad, six kids, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and assorted strangers who came to stay and never left.

That was how I saw my mom's family. Most of them are in Indiana and as far as I know, there's still a massive family reunion each July 4th at the family farm.  Just one of my cousins has a dozen children, so I imagine it's a pretty overwhelming clan.

That was how I saw my dad's family. They were a close knit group of four siblings - my grandmother, her brother and two sisters - and they spent every single summer together in a little farmhouse in upstate New York. The cousins grew up like brothers and sisters. Even some of the cousins of my generation are that close.

I'm an outsider in both groups, comfortable on the fringes. I was an only child and my mother was separated from her family by geography while my father kept a distance from his family by temperament. I have loved them all, but at arm's length.

Yet I have my own extended family. There comes a time when all of us have to widen that definition.

For us, it's kids and parents.  My son stayed with us a few summers ago when life was weighing heavily on him and he needed some time to be a kid again. He made the most of that hiatus and roared back into life with all engines firing.

KB's son stayed with us for a short time, too. He had some family issues to sort out and needed a little space to do it. He did, and he's back to his life.

Now KB's mother is here just for a few days, recuperating after a serious hospitalization and not yet ready to go home. We're sharing hosting duties with his sister, and it's an opportunity for everyone to get to know each other better, to talk openly, to maybe be a little better than we were before as a group.

Here's the funny thing - they're all family. And not by blood or even marriage. 

KB and I are family. We chose not to get married; we've done that, we don't choose to do it again. So his family is not technically my family. But I find myself being treated like family and behaving like family. It's okay.

My son isn't related to KB. But KB has treated him like family, welcomed him, welcomed my daughter, welcomed their significant others.

One of my dearest friends is my wonderful former father-in-law's second wife. She's no blood relation to any of us. But she has been a magnificent grandmother to my children and the best mother-in-law anyone can ask for.

Since my mother's death, she is the closest thing I have to a mother.

None of us is an individual living together in a vaccuum.  We accept the friends and families we bring along and understand the obligations that may mean.  We accept it with as much grace as we can muster and we do the best we can because that is what decent human beings do for each other.

I aspire above all things to be a decent human being. I think it's the one thing we owe the world in exchange for the space we occupy.

I am Remarkably Slow on the Uptake

I choked up at the frozen food aisle when I was shopping tonight. I haven't cried in a grocery store in a very long time, but tonight I did. It was the frozen dinners.

My dad's been dead almost ten years now, but I guess even when you think you're done grieving, you're not. There's still lingering regret to deal with.

It was a rough time, my dad's illness. His actual illness was fairly merciful, for cancer. After seeing what my mom had gone through just a little over a year before, we were both grateful that dad wasn't in pain, wasn't terrified, just slowly dwindled until he drifted away altogether.

We were both still in shock over Mom, and I think he took some strange comfort in the thought that he wouldn't be apart from her long. I didn't have that - I knew I'd be left to deal with it all in a way I just couldn't deal with it as it happened. There was too much to do.

I was working full time, my kids were teenagers, I was an only child - there were no brothers or sisters to call on for help. So I raced through the days like a robot, trying to do everything that was needed and keep a brave face on for everyone. I did a lousy job, I know now, but I tried really hard.

Each night, before making dinner for the family, I walked across the driveway to Dad's apartment and made him dinner. I sat with him while he ate it and we chatted. I was the only company he had all day unless you count the nurses as he got sicker. He really looked forward to me stopping by on my lunch hour and spending a half an hour or maybe an hour in the evening. I didn't mind, either.

But I didn't really cook. I guess I did a few nights a week, but today in that freezer aisle I remember how he'd ask me to get a particular brand of frozen dinner because he really liked it. He'd ask for them a few times every week.

What he liked was knowing that it wouldn't taste bad and I wouldn't have to cook it. He knew I was running on empty. And today was the first time I realized it.

We didn't get along at all when I was growing up, my dad and I. I think maybe we were too much alike in all the worst possible ways - insecurity,sensitivity, neuroses. I didn't want to be like him. I wanted to be like my mom.

All the defenses dropped at the end for both of us, and we liked each other a lot. And I'm sorry, so sorry, now, that I wasn't able to make him amazing, tasty meals every single night.

But I was so lucky. The night before he died I had the chance to ask him, "Did I do alright, Dad?" And he said in the strong voice I hadn't heard in a long time, "You did great." I guess he knew I did the best I could.

I just wish I could have done better. He was a good man.

What's Life About, Anyway?

My guy often bemoans the fact that when he gets together with his family (every holiday - his mom likes holidays) they seldom talk about things that, in his words, mean something. Big questions, things like what life means, what they honestly think, what ticks them off or delights them in a cosmic sense.

We all get trapped in that mundane conversation sometimes; it's safe. It's unlikely to lead to choppy waters if you stay in the shallows talking about traffic on the highway this morning. And it's deadening.

My daughter was visiting this week and I am happy to say we seldom get stuck in the shallows. She's 21, that age where all the questions are big and the answers are murky. This time her dilemma was one that got me thinking, too. It mirrors my own questions. I bet you've thought about it, too, if you're at all out of step with mainstream culture.

"Should I be planning for a career," she wondered, "or should I be planning for a future that interests me?"

Now don't bother objecting that those don't have to be mutually exclusive; we know. The problem is that for a person who apparently should have been born in the sixties, the professions of today hold little appeal. Lawyer? Economist? Doctor? Teacher? Politician? She sees their value but also sees them as intrinsic parts of a system that she thinks is inherently wrong; a system that holds profitability as its highest value.

She is considering the growing field of sustainability, a place where she sees a possibility of doing work she finds interesting as well as making a positive impact.

But here's the basic problem as she explained it: Do you pursue a career to make money, have a nice place to live and a nice car and spend your life working to hang on to them, or do you create a life that needs little and allows you to breathe, to enjoy the hours of your day and pursue your interests? Do you work in an office and make the big bucks, or do you live on an organic farm commune and dig in the dirt for your keep?

She tells me the organic farm idea is catching on with some kids- it even has an acronym: WOOF. Work On an Organic Farm.

Can you blame them? The job market is atrocious - I listened to an NPR interview with Georgetown law graduates who took on massive student loans anticipating six figure jobs when they graduated. They can't find any. And they think they probably won't; when the economy recovers, the big firms will hire students in that year's graduating class, students who intern with them and who they can train from the start.

So here's my daughter, midway through college, intelligent, idealistic and considering a completely alternative lifestyle. Part of it is the influence of friends, of course, but part of it is something that resonates with her. How do I know? It strikes me, too.

And here's where it gets a bit rattling. I spent my life managing to stay on the fringe of the system; I was a journalist, a teacher, a mom. I was connected, but I never worked in places where I felt immersed in the corporate world. I do now.

I get up early every day, slip into my torturous but very attractive high heels, grab my jacket, slip on my security pass, throw my blackberry into my briefcase and commute to a very nice high rise office where I have a lovely office. I sometimes have to go to New York City and go to our sister office on an upper floor of a very tall building. I am up to my neck in the corporate world.

It's not bad. It's different. The people are great, there's a work ethic and a commitment to doing a good job that I admire. But there are very clear, unwritten laws. Thou shalt not submit anything that has not been edited by at least two other people. Thou shalt maintain a paper trail. Thou shalt always consider any new idea from a dozen angles and vet it through at least that many people. Once part of the system, there is a heavy pressure to not rock the boat, to do a good job without making big waves.

I can understand why. Yet it also stifles creativity. I've heard management almost beg employees for ideas, yet no one wants to stick their neck out and offer one.

And is this where I belong? I rationalize, telling myself that I have spent a lifetime skating across systems that swallow other people, and this is just an interesting and very useful experience that suits my purposes for the moment. I'm still working on radio as well, I'm still writing a book. Who knows what happens once the kids are out of college?

Yet it makes me think about my daughter's question. What's life about? Jobs like mine are about security, making enough money to cover whatever bills exist. Security is a good thing, but it doesn't seem compatible with a life that's full, that's challenging, that's interesting.

And damn it, I demand that of my life. Apparently that's a gene you can pass on to your kids.

Letting Go - Not My Strong Suit

It's been a rough emotional week. You don't need the details nor do I need to share them, but suffice to say that I'm getting slapped in the face with the fact that my kids aren't kids anymore. They're young adults. If I even consider forgetting it, I get hit again.

They're good people, my kids. My son's now 22, my daughter will be 20 next week. They're struggling, as almost everyone is right now. They've got the mandatory worries about their future plans that no one except perhaps a zealot ever escapes. They've got talents and they've got interests, but they also worry about choosing the wrong way, putting too much energy into a choice that later proves to be a dead end.

Then they're worried about money. And that worry is compounded by the fact that their parents are worried about money, too. College, something their dad and I managed without much angst, is a loan-heavy monster they both must carry on their backs while I try to find ways to get rich and help them.

They're carrying heavy responsibilities, adult-sized worries that make my heart ache. I want to scoop them up, hold them close and rock them until the burdens fall away. I wish that I still had the super mommy power to make everything alright, to let them rest knowing that they're safe, that someone who loves them dearly is watching over them, someone who would throw herself in front of a freight train to save them. I would still do that.

And there's my conflict. For me, having children was an experience in not just responsibility, but empowerment. I've always been "easy to get along with". I will bend into shapes impossible for a yogi in an attempt to avoid conflict. Unless you mess with my kids.

"You aren't very nice where your children are concerned," my father informed me after I made it clear that teasing his three year old grandson until he cried was unacceptable.
"You're a tiger."

I was. I am. I make no apologies. But my cubs are grown.

So what do I do with this hard-wired imperative to protect them at all costs? They probably, in some ways, wish I could leap in, clear the obstacles, solve the problems, turn them toward a point in the distance and say with confidence, "Go that way. There's your happy future."

In other ways they, quite rightly, don't want me involved at all. These are their lives.

So I am forced to stand by the side, aware of their struggles, longing to fix everything, to save them pain, yet unable to move because I know those struggles are part of what strengthens them for the challenges life inevitably brings.

I am rooted, a coiled spring of potential energy with nowhere to go.

Nobody told me about this part of parenting. Not that it would have helped.