Halfway There...

In the summer, my girls are gone often through the week, which is backwards and inside out from normal. When the girls are home, we are so busy with all the things-spending time with friends and at the pool and of course watching all the movies-and when they are gone, it’s like a slo-motion camera, as I spend my nights reading and trying to not panic that when the girls are grown this is how my life will always be.

I’ve been watching old episodes of Designing Women, which is one of my favorite shows ever of all time. I have said many times there are 4 women that I grew up aspiring to be-Anne Shirley, Sally Albright, Corky Sherwood, and Charlene Fraiser Stillfield. Charlene always spoke to me-she would be such a different character if the show had been made even a few years later. Charlene starts out the never married one, the one who trusts so easily with all of her heart-naïve, really. That’s a word that many people have used to describe me. I’m good with that, mostly-maybe if I weren’t quite so trusting, life wouldn’t have shattered quite so hard, but at the end of the day I’d rather be too trusting than to be suspicious of the people around me. It takes a lot for me to cut ties with someone completely.

My word for this year is indeed trust. God keeps reminding me of it too. I can’t count how many times recently I have listened to a podcast that I don’t normally listen to and the theme has turned out to be trust the universe, trust your voice, trust your body. How many of my devotionals lately have spun around this idea of trust- it’s quite possible to walk right past your burning bush for years without noticing. And that’s okay, because when you are ready, you will see it. Or, at least, that’s been the message to me of late. Turning 40 is this amazing thing-I’m old enough to feel settled, I’m happy with my life and where it is, I’m thrilled, truly, to wake up every morning in this house that I wanted from the time I was a little girl, surrounded by my family and friends-my life is a small life, small but happy.

I still want to explore this world, I want to go out and see things and do things and have all sorts of experiences. I still feel young enough to want so many things. But old enough, I guess, to truly appreciate what I have. Broken heart and all.

Summertime...(in Will Smith's voice)...

It’s been a busy few weeks in our world-Betsy graduated from 8th grade, and Felicity from 5th, and there were meetings for work and dinner with friends and all the things.

(Betsy’s class was to say what they want their occupation to be as they got their certificate-Betsy wants to be a pediatrician, which has been her dream since she could talk. My mom asked me what I would have said at age 14 and the answer to that is that I wanted to be a wedding coordinator. Such dreams.)

The start of summer is mostly just the best time-the weather is fairly lovely, not yet scorching hot, and the girls are so happy to have days of staying in their pajamas, eating a million popsicles, going to the pool, staying up to watch *all the movies*-it’s such bliss.

I miss my old life most of all in summer, as I leave in the morning and miss all the fun all day long. But I do love my job and we have grown accustomed to food and shelter, so off I go.

This year is the year of Betsy and the Bug’s Brady Bunch Binge-a-thon. (I seem to have taught them that thinking up a cool name for your most geeky endeavor makes it even more cool-I firmly believe this. I’m still All 80s All the Time Summer, myself.)

Anyway, there are a lot of things that I’m loving just now:

Rocketman

All the hearts. The music is fabulous (of course), the story is so compelling-and I say this as someone who mostly knew the whole thing going in. Taron Egerton is pitch perfect and Jamie Bell is also wonderful.

I had a song that I played for each of the girls when I was pregnant, a song that is “their” song to me, and Betsy’s is “Tiny Dancer.” So of course I cried all over her when they sang it in the film. “Tiny Dancer,” to me, is about carrying this person in your heart, this person that no one else can see but that you know to your bones is there. When I was young, I talked so much about my children, and of course people acted like that was weird because it was, but to me, I knew that they were there, just waiting to meet me someday. When they laid Betsy in my arms and I looked at her big blue eyes, I cried so hard because it felt like, “Oh, it’s you. Finally.”

(Felicity’s song, if you are wondering, is “Sweet Child of Mine.” And Isaiah, who of course came into my life at the age of one, does indeed have a song, “Swept Away,” by Christopher Cross.)

I Think You’re Wrong but I’m Listening by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers

I know, I talk about Pantsuit Politics all the time, and I do so wish that everyone would listen to every episode because I love how Beth and Sarah disagree without any anger, how they parse out what their position is, how shaded all of their positions are-as a person who does not see black and white in any issue, I so appreciate the nuance that they bring to their conversations. This book lays out exactly what the parameters are for those conversations, lays out how to extend grace when you just feel like the other person is flat out wrong.

Aladdin

I really enjoyed the new Aladdin-I don’t compare the live action versions to the animated movies, I go in with no real expectations, so perhaps that changes things. What I loved the most to be honest was that Will Smith seemed to be having an excellent time-I am old enough to remember those summers when Will Smith was in the blockbuster movie of the summer, and the thing that I loved about those movies was that he always seemed to be having such a good time. (I think that, at least at the beginning of his career, Will Smith just thought he was so lucky to be invited to the party, and it showed in his enthusiasm for his projects.)

Booksmart

My gut reaction to this was, it’s a bit much. I went into it expecting something a bit different than it was-parts of it I thought were hilarious, and parts just uncomfortable. Sort of similar to how I feel about Bridesmaids. But in the time since watching it, I listened to a podcast full of people who loved this movie and they did illuminate me to bits that I just glazed over without much thought. So perhaps I need to think about it some more.

So far, summer is delightful. Betsy is working a 5000 piece puzzle, so my family room is sort of a disaster, and the girls are inhaling The Brady Buch and we are watching The Wonder Years (they make fun of me because I cry at the end of every single episode) and we are catching lightning bugs and jumping on the trampoline and getting ice cream from the Dairy Duchess and going to the playground (it is hilarious to me when they talk about “when they were little” at the elementary school). It’s a summer that mirrors all the summers in my life, which is what happens when you live in the same place for 40 years.

But I promise, I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Both Sides Now...

Somehow it is the middle of May. Betsy is off to Washington D.C. next week. I swear that it seems like just a couple of years ago that I was in Washington D.C. with my friends.

(I was just getting over a cold when we were in D.C. and so the last stages of a cough always take me back to those three days with my friends in which I felt like such a teenager, an actual teenager with a social life.)

Watching Betsy be fourteen is a delight. She is so very much like me anymore. It’s all a bit strange because for all the years that we were the family of four, Betsy was such a tomboy and such a daddy’s girl. For all that I have changed so much during the past almost 4 years, Betsy has changed too-it all took its toll on her as well, but she and I have come to this new place where, as she says just about every day, “we are so much happier.” Which is very true.

In the beginning all of this change was overwhelming-the experience of Nick leaving for me and the girls was very jarring. Everything happened suddenly, and our world flipped upside down, and there were new people and an entirely new routine and there was just so much to mitigate. Betsy’s personality is to be pleasing and so she tried as hard as she could to act like none of this change bothered her, but the reality is that change bothers Betsy more than any of us.

The other day she and I were talking and she said, “I remember that I always wanted to be with Daddy. But then it’s like that doesn’t make sense.” Listening to her try to make sense of all of this change helps me to understand why it’s so difficult for me to find the right words sometimes-the words to describe what living through such a profound change does to you. Because you come out the other side and you feel like your old life was forever ago and also just yesterday.

It feels like a fraud to forget-to not acknowledge the good parts of the old life, the parts of life that we remember still with joy. Because that’s the bit about all of this that is so profoundly difficult, and I think is particular to divorce-there are all of these memories that exist that contain really wonderful, happy memories, but it’s all wrapped up in memories of the way that Nick left. It slants everything, and I’m sure that there are people for whom getting divorced was not a terrible trauma to live through who think that we seem overly dramatic.

It’s all a dance, and watching Betsy helps me to realize that I’m not the only one who remembers the good while struggling with what to do with the damage of the bad, and that coming to these realizations is difficult.

I am so very lucky to have these girls to go through this journey by my side. Because frankly, there are bits of this life that we live that only make sense to us. I don’t know that I am even able to write it down in terms that explain-the best way to put it would be, we remember, quite happily, bits of life that existed prior to Nick leaving, but we always come to this realization that life now is better. And I can’t explain how that can possibly be true, but it is.

The thing of it is, we had all of these wonderful years that we were a family. And I don’t want to deny that part of my life. But I also want people, particularly the people who have reached out to me about being in a similar situation, to know that life on this side of being divorced is actually really wonderful. I would have given anything, about 4 years ago, to have someone say to me, “It will be okay. It will be glorious. Life will twist and shift until you can remember that it was happy before, but that you know that it’s happier now.”

Change is still not my favorite, and never will be. But I’m not scared of change like I was 4 years ago.

These precious girls that I get to raise, they just keep teaching me all the things. I don’t know how I was so lucky to get to be their mom. But I’m grateful for every single second of it.

In the Songs of Yesterday...

Oh, gracious. So many words.

I went to a concert.

It sounds trite and simple.

For me, it’s a big deal.

I have a thing about crowds. I hate them. I tend to panic. I’ve taught my girls, when we walk into a large room-like the movie theater-to immediately find the exits. I don’t know why that’s my own particular quirk, but crowds send my heart racing and my blood pressure rising. I leaned on Nick a lot to help me with this particular issue-he knew to squeeze my hand harder, to help push me through a crowd of people-and of course, now it’s only me. Even worse, it’s often me with the girls, which means I am the adult and then expected to know how to navigate the circumstances I get us into.

Last year, in the year of being brave, I tried out many things and conquered many fears. This particular fear is one that I’m not certain can exactly be conquered-mitigated is likely a better word. I’m always going to feel slightly panicked in a large group of people, I’m always going to figure out two ways out of a room, I’m always going to do my best to avoid masses of people if I can help it.

But I proved to myself this past weekend that I can navigate an entire concert experience, including being surrounded by drunk people, one of whom vomited on the girl in front of us right as the concert was beginning; I can lead my girls through the streets of Cleveland in search of my sister, who did the driving so that we didn’t need to park the car; and generally, I can be an adult in yet one more situation that is something I really enjoy-listening to music live-but am rather terrified to deal with.

The concert itself was most fun. My girls love the New Kids. Debbie Gibson has been my most favorite singer since I was 11 years old. (I have every one of her CDs and Debbie was my very first concert ever-Michelle and Tanya and I went and saw her in Wheeling when Tanya turned 12. Tanya and Michelle were neither one even necessarily Debbie Gibson fans, but they endured my complete fangirl love with perhaps an ironic gleam in their eye, which sums up nearly everything they ever did because I asked them to.)

Tiffany, Salt-n-Pepa, and Naughty by Nature were the other acts, and the girls and I had a blast singing so many songs that we love. Betsy said that she loved it and wished it would never end, while Felicity leaned over at 10 and asked me how much longer it would last. Which encapsulates their personalities perfectly-Betsy always wanting me to know how much she loves me, and Felicity feeling comfortable enough to tell me that she’s ready for this whole thing to be over. I’m grateful for both, the yin and the yang of their personalities, and of the fact that we are all three us-we do everything together, the three of us, and it’s been the best side effect of life falling apart and not exactly fixing itself.

Many people, having been alone for coming on four years in a couple of months, would have moved on to at least one serious relationship. But that’s not how it’s working for me, and even though there are definite disadvantages to that, one of the best side effects is that the girls and I are a unit, we do everything together. Sometimes I think that’s my biggest stumbling block-I have this rich, full life 90% of the time, and then on the weekends that the girls are gone I wish to the depths of my soul that I had someone to hang out with-as my dear Felicity has pointed out, I need a friend. Which is not at all to say that I don’t have friends, because I do and I love them so much, but all of my closest friends have young children and are not just available for me on a rather boring Saturday night.

Anyway…I have gotten extremely off topic.

The entire weekend was lovely, if jam packed full. The girls and I watched my niece Mallory in her high school’s production of My Fair Lady on Friday night. The cast was absolutely amazing, and all the more so because they were working with a shoestring budget. The school district that my nieces attend cannot pass a funding levy, and so their arts programs have been cut to the bone. It was quite a visual to me, having watched John Glenn’s production of The Music Man in an auditorium just a few weeks ago and watching this production of My Fair Lady on folding chairs in the gymnasium. I don’t have all the answers to the school funding question, but I definitely think that what we do as a state is not sustainable. As a person who loved the arts programs provided by my school, I definitely think that they are not extra or unnecessary programs-they are, for some kids, a reason to participate in their class.

April and I also saw A Bronx Tale at Playhouse Square-it was so good, April and I neither one knew anything about it going in, and it was a lovely and moving piece of theater- and I took the girls to see Ugly Dolls, which was cute and had a good message about loving someone who isn’t perfect. And I got to have a galley boy from Swenson’s, which is my all-time favorite sandwich. So overall, excellent weekend.

Yesterday I took the day off just to sleep and watch soap operas and it was lovely. So much of the time, I get so caught up in my checklist of life, it was nice to just have a day all to myself to do whatever I wanted. (Always having to give myself permission to do that, you know.)

And today, the sun is shining, “Here I Go Again” is blaring through my speakers, which seems most appropriate, and all is lovely and shiny and new.

"Like a drifter I was born to walk alone.
Cause I know what it means,
To walk along that lonely street of dreams.”

Are You Happy in This Modern World?

Easter weekend is all wrapped up, and it could not have been more lovely-my mom goes out of her way to make holidays fun for the kids (and the big kids, too)-we play games and hunt eggs and eat too much candy. It’s delightful.

I also took an extra day off just to spend with my girls, and it could not have been a lovelier day. Each of them got to pick a movie to watch- Betsy is going through a Dirty Dancing phase just now (Betsy in many, many ways is her mother made over) and Felicity picked Return to Oz. I loved Return to Oz as a kid. It’s a bit of a trip to watch as an adult because it truly has many frightening moments for a kid’s movie, but it is also just so much more true to the nature of the books.

(We watched The Wizard of Oz on Saturday because I always associate it with Easter because when I was a kid, that’s when it was on tv. The version that I had taped as a kid-on a Beta tape, mind you-had a commercial for McDonald’s that I loved so much, and I looked it up on YouTube and showed it to the girls-it’s called “My Little Sister” and it’s about this brother and sister growing up and sharing McDonald’s together and I swear to you, it’s the reason that I always wanted to have a big brother.)

We also, of course, are continuing with our 90210s, and we have reached the college years (Betsy has rightly assessed that they are not as good as the high school years). It’s interesting, watching these storylines that meant so much to me when I was a young teenager and seeing them through my wizened, 40-year-old eyes. Paul Johansson portrays John Sears, who is the newest wrinkle in the Dylan/Kelly saga-I love, love, love Paul Johansson because he is Bart Jeffris in the tv movie, The Laker Girls, which is honest to goodness one of my sister’s favorite movies of all time and I love that character.

Anyway, in 90210, Paul is the guy trying to lure Kelly away from Dylan, and since I have never been a fan of Kelly and Dylan, the first time that I watched this, back in 1993, I wanted John to succeed-even though he of course turns out to be a total louse. This time around, though, he just seems like a creep-he’s one of those guys who only really wants Kelly because he can’t have her, and it’s obvious that he would dump her if she did break up with Dylan for him.

(It is the opposite of Dean Cain’s character, Rick, who truly fell in love with Brenda, and who she dumps because she wants to be with Dylan-the girls and I both agree that even though we love Dylan McKay with all of our hearts, we would have chosen Dean Cain over him-and they have never even seen him as Superman.)

It's a bit fascinating to me, how differently I feel even toward fictional characters on television shows- I want to scream at Kelly, I want her to realize that a guy who will cross any line to get her to cheat on her boyfriend is not worth it. I want to insist that she and Dylan realize that they tend to coast on obvious physical attraction rather than truly discuss hard topics.

Does it make me wiser this time, that I know these things? Or does it make me unable to push past my hangups to reach that bliss that is falling in love? I don't know the answer, and I promise I know that it's more complicated than Kelly and Dylan's endless breaking up and getting back together.

But just now, as spring has given way to these beautiful 70 degree days, and my girls still want to watch all the movies and 90s tv shows, and Jesus has risen and all is right with the world, I'm grateful for all of these hard as heck lessons in humility and grace that the past 3 1/2 years have seen fit to send my way. We'll figure it out as we go.

Til The Sound of My Voice Will Haunt You...

This past weekend was not my weekend to have the girls, and so one of my tasks was to create new index cards for our movie collection (the old ones were color-coded, and my aesthetic tastes have changed and I want them all to be black ink on white cards now). When I showed the girls the new system, Felicity hugged me and said so sincerely, “I love you, Mommy, but you have too much time alone. You need a friend.”

It was too sweet.

I perhaps do have too much time alone, but it’s all good.

(I listened to a new-to-me podcast while I was redoing all of the index cards called 80s All Over in which the hosts dissect every single movie that came out in a certain month of a certain 1980s year-I listened to January 1980 and February 1980 and both were completely fascinating.)


Of course, I also read, and the book that I’m reading is too wonderful not to gush over, even though I still have about a third of the way to go until it’s over. Daisy Jones and the Six came so highly recommended by many people whose opinion on books I trust and it has not disappointed.

It’s fiction, but written as an oral history of a band’s creation and ultimate demise. I’m sure that it helps that I love oral histories (my all time favorite being Live from New York, which such a dense look at my most beloved Saturday Night Live). It’s an interesting approach that I appreciate as a reader and a writer and a complete and total lover of dialogue.

The band at the center of the book, not by accident I am sure, is reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac. I grew up loving Stevie Nicks, as girls of my age do. But Fleetwood Mac, like all the things about the last few years of my life, became a lifeline to me when I couldn’t find words to describe what I was grieving at the end of my marriage.

(I sort of always want to tell the people who reach out to me to ask how I managed to handle the grief, “You will have your Rumours period.” I don’t, because of course not everyone is me, but I always think it.)

My Rumours period began with just listening over and over to the album, and to “Silver Springs,” which of course was Stevie’s contribution to the break up album that got shunted aside. I dived into these peoples lives, Stevie and Lindsey most especially, and I would sink every night into the sadness of their relationships ending and marvel at how they had the ultimate karma of making each other sing these songs about their infidelity.

I still have days where I just want to sink into their grief, find solace in the fact that I’m not all alone in trying to make sense of what to do with the bits and pieces of a relationship that has no home anymore. Living in the aftermath of a person that you loved turning into someone that you do not recognize-that is what most of those songs are to me.

I also had the absolute joy to see our high school production of The Music Man and it was absolutely wonderful. I say again and again that my girls and I are so blessed to be a part of a public school system that values the arts as well as sports, and I truly mean that with all of my heart-I wish that all kids could have the kind of well rounded education that East Muskingum Schools provided to me as a student and that they are providing my kids.


And Tiger Woods won the Masters, and Saturday Night Live was new, and I had a glorious weekend, mostly alone.

This Holy Week is full of all the things-track meets, piano lessons, Passover dinner with friends. So it was grand to have a weekend to myself to be quiet and get my book geek on. Even if, as my girls so gently try to point out, I maybe need to get a life.

Suspend Donna Martin, Suspend Us All...

Listening to Olivia and my Johnny croon “Summer Nights” makes for a pretty fabulous lunch hour.

Last night, the girls and I finally reached what is likely my most favorite episode of 90210 ever, in which the entire Class of 1993 walks out of their final exams in the most 90s protest of all time, “Donna Martin graduates!”

Anyway...

This past weekend I managed to watch two movies in the theater, which is a lot even for me. But I was desperate to see Us.

I don’t mind at all seeing movies by myself, but I have found myself wishing that I had managed to find someone to go with me to see this one because it is a movie that requires much dissection and thought processing after it’s over. I’m still piecing through much of it in my head. I am most fortunate to live in 2019, though, and listened to three separate podcasts about it- 1A, Pop Culture Happy Hour, and (the best one) Still Processing, which compared the storyline to Toni Morrison’s Beloved and was a bit mind blowing to me.

The last time that I can remember feeling this much soul stirring over a movie was District 9 and I completely took for granted having a husband to talk it over with, days and even months after we watched it. It’s these tiny little pieces of life that hit you hard and make you feel ridiculously alone.

The girls came home early from their dad’s house on Sunday and so we also managed to see Dumbo, which I thought was very good. It’s quite different from the animated Dumbo, but in ways that make sense for this telling. Tim Burton can be one of my favorite directors (see Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands), and he can also be one of the most exasperating (see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and character choices that I may never forgive him and Johnny Depp for). Dumbo is going to be among my more favorite Tim Burton movies, with its message of the magic of a mother’s love of course going straight to my heart.

In the meantime, track is in full swing, and my girl is doing amazingly well. I have promised the girls that I will watch all of the Marvel movies in order to be properly prepared for The Avengers: Endgame. (I did really enjoy Captain Marvel, which I do recognize was marketed to women about my age, and it has given me hope that with Betsy’s help I will be able to understand the other movies that spring from these comic books-I have a hard time following comic book movies sometimes.)


Spring is here, Olivia is now singing "Strange Twist of Fate" from one of the most underrated movies of all time, Two of a Kind, (I know, maybe I just love Olivia and John too much), and life, for today, seems most charmed.