Don't shoot!
There is something magical that seems to be happening to me now that I am 4 months from turning 40 years old.
That something is a lot like staring down the barrell of a gun cringing as I wait for it to fire, my hands in the air, sweat trickling down the back of my neck.
"Your life is halfway over!" the masked, armed citizen on the other end of the gun seems to be gruffly commanding me, "What do you have to say for your existence thus far???"
Well, if you really want to know...
My existence these days consists of a cat throwing up on our doorstep just before 23 people show up for a birthday party.
I spend my time in three school pick up lines figuring out how to get my car's defective heater to be warm and the AC to be cool while it only runs at full blast. The heat and AC seem to work out of every vent but the ones that point at me. Of course.
My hours are filled with juggling a very part time job with raising a teenage son, a tweenaged daughter, and my youngest child, who, despite her doctor assuring her she is a human, sleeps in a dog bed and is convinced she is a cat.
I am now buying deoderant in bulk. The hormones are so thick in my house some days I need an emergency oxygen mask to drop from my cieling.
There are band and orchestra concerts and ballet recitals with specific attire directions no one tells me about until 10 minutes before the performance.
Fund raisers, meal plans and panicked grocery runs, clean pant shortages, a constant shortfall in the budget, dishes that are never ending, oh! And a nearly 16 year marriage squeezed somewhere in there, too, with a guy I bump into sometimes on the weekends between different activities with and for the kids.
My days are filled with juggling the best way to cultivate this little garden I like to call, My Life. What needs to be pruned back? What needs more time? How do I keep those pesky weedy time-wasters out? All of this is highlighting the fact that I am not a trained gardener. In fact, every plant I have attemtped to grow has died. Sorry, kids! It's not a good omen for you.
I became a wife and mom and responsible for my own rent, heat, water, garbage, student debt, medical bills and anything else that marks adulthood at the tender age of 23. So basically half my life thus far has been consumed by trying to keep my head above the water and pull my own weight. Or cheering on my husband as he carries part of my weight with our three kids tied to me.
That man has one strong back!
Somewhere in the midst of rubbing cream on my C-section scars and carrying around a tube of hemmoroid cream on my way out the door to get my gray roots covered, it occured to me that...well...I was old. And my long neglected body and brain were not going to get any better now that forty was knocking on my door. This garden I had been diligently tending was really sapping the life out of me. I sit up from kneeling bent over the soil and look up from the unruly plants I focus on so often and stretch my aching back to look around at the wide world. I see other roads I could have chosen to take. Easier ones, ones where I could have focused more on myself. Roads where I would have looked more successful on paper. I mean, I can make a good buttercream frosting for a birthday cake and have baby wipes and neosporen on me anytime in case there is an emergency, but for whatever reason no one asks about that when I introduce myself. It's a shame really. There are a lot more interesting responses to the question, "So what do you do?" Than, "Oh, I work for an insurance company." I suggest we list things we are good at that no one would guess. Like, "So what do you do?" "Funny you should ask. I scratch my cat in this one spot that makes him purr super loudly and slobber a little." Or, "I can scoop ice cream no matter how cold it is!"
That last one is a skill I really appreciate.
Anyway, I digress.
I have acquired skills in my 39.75 years but they are not ones that will win me wide acclaim with anyone the world would consider an expert on important things.
And things aren't necessarily going up from here as I get older.
So, I suppose the gunman pressing the cold metal muzzle against my back would look at me with disappointment at my answer for how I've spent my time thus far if he measures a worth while life the way I sometimes do upon reflection.
But then, just today, I was driving down a busy road in my minivan on my way to Costco, 80's music playing loudly, but not too loudly so I could think about the groceries I needed and the fact that I had just learned I need to wear glasses for the first time in my life, and I quote the traitor of an eye doctor here, that "it will only get worse from here", when the obnoxious sound of a tiny, dark tinted, double mufflered sports car pulled up next to me in the intersection. In the driver's seat was a very young man. Even wording it this way makes me feel like a grandma, but he really was a very young man! I can't think of a cool way to say it! From on high in my minivan I could see he was wearing a big jersey and a hat backwards. You know this kid. You've seen him around.
For some reason, he bothered me. It's rude and unnecessary to have two mufflers. I took Automechanics in High School before he was born. I know you don't need two mufflers! I mean, you don't, right? No, no, I'm sticking to my story, you don't!
All the noise coming from his car and all his posing at the driver's seat highlighted the contrast in the stages in our lives. This kid is maybe 17. I am almost 40. I am in a minivan meant to tote other people safely and comfortably from point A to point B with the most efficient gas mileage for a seven seater. This kid's car was meant to make him look good and to move himself and maybe one other person sort of comfortably and not at all safely from point A to point B while getting as much attention as possible. Wasting as much gas as possible. The revving of the motor made sure anyone nearby didn't miss this.
Then the light changed.
With a lot of revving and grinding and exauhst this kid took off.
Now, whether he sped down the road leaving me in his fumes or his mufflers fell off and he stopped right there didn't matter to me, as long as we had a little space, I was good.
But I was surprised when my mom-mobile calmly and coolly beat him out of the intersection and lost him a couple car lengths back in no time at all!
The poor kid. He didn't really even know how to DRIVE his car. All his noise and style really wasn't helping him much if he couldn't even operate his car the way it was supposed to run.
Then it occured to me. It takes TIME.
It takes time and practice and making mistakes and asking for help and trying it on your own to figure out what in the world you are doing. And how to do it.
This mom mobile may not look like much, but it's got half a lifetime of experience under it's slightly beat up hood and scratched fenders. It can get a lot of people from point A to point B with as much comfort and efficiency as possible.
And that, my friends, is the answer I will give to myself as I sit up and look around at my lifetime so far. No, it hasn't always been easy and I spend my days doing thigs that may not look spectacular on paper, but I have richness in this soil that is the gift of time.
My work here is not done, and I am sure gravity and gray and wrinkles and poor eyesight await me as I keep on tending my garden. I am more gaurded. I know every day won't be sunshine and birds chirping. But I know by now the rain and cold winters help produce better fruit and flowers. And I hope the gunman sees in my eyes the joy and hope I hold for the next 40 years. I hope he pulls up a lawn chair and an iced tea and watches to see what my little garden might produce. Maybe not in my lifetime or his, but sometime. With a little time.
That something is a lot like staring down the barrell of a gun cringing as I wait for it to fire, my hands in the air, sweat trickling down the back of my neck.
"Your life is halfway over!" the masked, armed citizen on the other end of the gun seems to be gruffly commanding me, "What do you have to say for your existence thus far???"
Well, if you really want to know...
My existence these days consists of a cat throwing up on our doorstep just before 23 people show up for a birthday party.
I spend my time in three school pick up lines figuring out how to get my car's defective heater to be warm and the AC to be cool while it only runs at full blast. The heat and AC seem to work out of every vent but the ones that point at me. Of course.
My hours are filled with juggling a very part time job with raising a teenage son, a tweenaged daughter, and my youngest child, who, despite her doctor assuring her she is a human, sleeps in a dog bed and is convinced she is a cat.
I am now buying deoderant in bulk. The hormones are so thick in my house some days I need an emergency oxygen mask to drop from my cieling.
There are band and orchestra concerts and ballet recitals with specific attire directions no one tells me about until 10 minutes before the performance.
Fund raisers, meal plans and panicked grocery runs, clean pant shortages, a constant shortfall in the budget, dishes that are never ending, oh! And a nearly 16 year marriage squeezed somewhere in there, too, with a guy I bump into sometimes on the weekends between different activities with and for the kids.
My days are filled with juggling the best way to cultivate this little garden I like to call, My Life. What needs to be pruned back? What needs more time? How do I keep those pesky weedy time-wasters out? All of this is highlighting the fact that I am not a trained gardener. In fact, every plant I have attemtped to grow has died. Sorry, kids! It's not a good omen for you.
I became a wife and mom and responsible for my own rent, heat, water, garbage, student debt, medical bills and anything else that marks adulthood at the tender age of 23. So basically half my life thus far has been consumed by trying to keep my head above the water and pull my own weight. Or cheering on my husband as he carries part of my weight with our three kids tied to me.
That man has one strong back!
Somewhere in the midst of rubbing cream on my C-section scars and carrying around a tube of hemmoroid cream on my way out the door to get my gray roots covered, it occured to me that...well...I was old. And my long neglected body and brain were not going to get any better now that forty was knocking on my door. This garden I had been diligently tending was really sapping the life out of me. I sit up from kneeling bent over the soil and look up from the unruly plants I focus on so often and stretch my aching back to look around at the wide world. I see other roads I could have chosen to take. Easier ones, ones where I could have focused more on myself. Roads where I would have looked more successful on paper. I mean, I can make a good buttercream frosting for a birthday cake and have baby wipes and neosporen on me anytime in case there is an emergency, but for whatever reason no one asks about that when I introduce myself. It's a shame really. There are a lot more interesting responses to the question, "So what do you do?" Than, "Oh, I work for an insurance company." I suggest we list things we are good at that no one would guess. Like, "So what do you do?" "Funny you should ask. I scratch my cat in this one spot that makes him purr super loudly and slobber a little." Or, "I can scoop ice cream no matter how cold it is!"
That last one is a skill I really appreciate.
Anyway, I digress.
I have acquired skills in my 39.75 years but they are not ones that will win me wide acclaim with anyone the world would consider an expert on important things.
And things aren't necessarily going up from here as I get older.
So, I suppose the gunman pressing the cold metal muzzle against my back would look at me with disappointment at my answer for how I've spent my time thus far if he measures a worth while life the way I sometimes do upon reflection.
But then, just today, I was driving down a busy road in my minivan on my way to Costco, 80's music playing loudly, but not too loudly so I could think about the groceries I needed and the fact that I had just learned I need to wear glasses for the first time in my life, and I quote the traitor of an eye doctor here, that "it will only get worse from here", when the obnoxious sound of a tiny, dark tinted, double mufflered sports car pulled up next to me in the intersection. In the driver's seat was a very young man. Even wording it this way makes me feel like a grandma, but he really was a very young man! I can't think of a cool way to say it! From on high in my minivan I could see he was wearing a big jersey and a hat backwards. You know this kid. You've seen him around.
For some reason, he bothered me. It's rude and unnecessary to have two mufflers. I took Automechanics in High School before he was born. I know you don't need two mufflers! I mean, you don't, right? No, no, I'm sticking to my story, you don't!
All the noise coming from his car and all his posing at the driver's seat highlighted the contrast in the stages in our lives. This kid is maybe 17. I am almost 40. I am in a minivan meant to tote other people safely and comfortably from point A to point B with the most efficient gas mileage for a seven seater. This kid's car was meant to make him look good and to move himself and maybe one other person sort of comfortably and not at all safely from point A to point B while getting as much attention as possible. Wasting as much gas as possible. The revving of the motor made sure anyone nearby didn't miss this.
Then the light changed.
With a lot of revving and grinding and exauhst this kid took off.
Now, whether he sped down the road leaving me in his fumes or his mufflers fell off and he stopped right there didn't matter to me, as long as we had a little space, I was good.
But I was surprised when my mom-mobile calmly and coolly beat him out of the intersection and lost him a couple car lengths back in no time at all!
The poor kid. He didn't really even know how to DRIVE his car. All his noise and style really wasn't helping him much if he couldn't even operate his car the way it was supposed to run.
Then it occured to me. It takes TIME.
It takes time and practice and making mistakes and asking for help and trying it on your own to figure out what in the world you are doing. And how to do it.
This mom mobile may not look like much, but it's got half a lifetime of experience under it's slightly beat up hood and scratched fenders. It can get a lot of people from point A to point B with as much comfort and efficiency as possible.
And that, my friends, is the answer I will give to myself as I sit up and look around at my lifetime so far. No, it hasn't always been easy and I spend my days doing thigs that may not look spectacular on paper, but I have richness in this soil that is the gift of time.
My work here is not done, and I am sure gravity and gray and wrinkles and poor eyesight await me as I keep on tending my garden. I am more gaurded. I know every day won't be sunshine and birds chirping. But I know by now the rain and cold winters help produce better fruit and flowers. And I hope the gunman sees in my eyes the joy and hope I hold for the next 40 years. I hope he pulls up a lawn chair and an iced tea and watches to see what my little garden might produce. Maybe not in my lifetime or his, but sometime. With a little time.
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