ps) Kat…hope you don’t mind my stealing two of your gifs
pss) B…if you still read this blog, laugh now.
♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
Now, I hope you all know me enough by now to know that I am picking fun here. My Mother-In-Law is a strong, intelligent, sensitive woman and we get along famously. It just took us some time to find our own relationship, as it did my husband and his Mother-In-Law. There is love and there is respect and that is all there needs to be.
It’s important to let the seeds of this relationship grow naturally, organically, outside that of the child/spouse connection.
There is nothing in the rules of marriage handbook (and I’m sure there is one out there, somewhere) that says you have to love or even be friends with your spouse’s mother.
It helps, but it’s also okay if not.
(I don’t know why, but Fathers-In-Law relationships do NOT have the same dynamic)
Love doesn’t happen just because she birthed your spouse nor for the fact that you happened to choose her child as a life mate.
That just opens the door. To be welcomed in and invited to take up space in their hearts, you must be worthy in your own right.
If there’s any hope for a relationship, there has to be respect. On both sides. And, because you’ve both earned it.
Respect is one of those things we each feel we deserve.
Just because.
Not so.
As with any relationship in life, whether personal or professional, we can respect the title/position, but the person in it, must earn it.
Also, as we cannot choose our blood relations, we do our best to love them because of our common link, but we often find ourselves in the position of not respecting them for various reasons.
Love but don’t respect – common in relationships to those we are born into.
But for those to whom we have no connection other than by proxy via our spouse, if we do not/cannot develop a familial love, we can at the least hope to develop a relationship based on mutual respect.
If not (especially if your spouse is close to your In-Law) then personally, I’d say your marriage has a boot on its neck.
Especially evident when you and your spouse have kids of your own…
Becoming a Mother-In-Law can be daunting if the relationship with the new son/daughter lacks respect as well as the love connection.
Could you imagine becoming a grandparent to the little seed of your precious apple in a relationship fraught with tension and stress because either you or your In-Law or your spouse were always on the defensive?
Nahhhh…that’s for the birds and a bit like cutting off your limb to spite your trunk, if you know what I mean.
So, this Mother’s Day, it is with high hopes that all the wives and husbands who share porch space with me here, boast a happy, healthy, loving relationship with your respective Mothers-In-Law. If not, I sincerely hope you share one of mutual respect.
If not yet, work on it. It’ll make all the difference in the world…to ALL of you.
If you’re a newbie, or a work in progress, keep at it.
The door opened the day you got married…it’s up to you to be welcomed inside.
Conversely…to all the Mothers-In-Law out there still struggling with the addition to the family…
It is with respect I say this…
“They are married.
You didn’t lose one, you gained one.
You did your job, now enjoy the fruits of your labor while they make fruits of their own.
Resist when you’re not asked.
Be there when you are.
And if you can’t…try harder.
Should you choose the right road, and it IS a choice, you’ll end up smack-dab in the middle of the intersection of Love Lane and Respect Avenue.
Yesterday I visited a too-long forgotten toy box brought to mind by a friend.
Today I found something I’d thought lost when an earlier laptop decided to commit Hara-Kiri.
I love these reminders that I’m getting old…because now when I think I’ve lost something irreplaceable, I can at least hold out hope (if I remember to) that I’ve just forgotten that I took steps to make sure that didn’t happen.
It’s like that AH HA moment of opening the freezer and finding your favorite pair of underwear!
“Ah Ha! Now I remember, I put you in there to help with the night sweats.”
I’m not the only one.
Right?
RIGHT?
Okay, sure, whatever…I’ll just say it made sense at the time and I’m glad all I did was forget I put them there and not that I forgot I had them, or that I lost them, or shit….now I’m so confused.
What was I looking for?
Oh, wait…I found something. That’s it.
I found something I thought I’d lost because I forgot I saved it just in case I lost it because I had forgotten to save it.
Ahhhhh. There…that’s better.
Right?
So…what did the Old Lady That Lived in a Freezer find?
1200 photographs of her ‘once in a lifetime’ trip to London.
I KNOW right? What a thing to think was lost and gone forever!
I was crazy pissed off at my(self) laptop for dying with my magical mystery tour locked inside.
But…I must have had a non-senior moment the day I put them all on DVD, which I found in the last box of ‘stuff’ pulled out of the garage because hubby finally got my bookcases put together.
And imagine my ginormous, humongous, silly ass, what in the hell did you do this time comes spewing out of the hubby’s mouth as he comes running to see what’s happened cause the wife is going ape shit, reaction?
Yup…like that.
Seriously, I swear I’ll never get pissed off when I lose something again (if I remember to) because chances are I’ll remember I just forgot and I’ll find what I lost, or remember what I forgot to remember about where I put it or…crap!
This is too much work. I’ll just try to remember next time that I might have forgotten something.
Right?
Oh…and for the foreseeable future, I’m heading back to London. I’m sure I’ll find something to share.
We’ll hear a tune drifting out the open windows of a passing car and no longer are we standing on a hot sidewalk in line at the ATM, but magically taken to an ‘out of school for the summer’ beach trip with our best girlfriends, laughing and flirting while sand filled our shorts and Sun-In made us all one shade of blonde or another.
Or we’ll catch a smell in the air that immediately takes us back. Maybe to a warm and tiny kitchen in the back of a house shared with the post office; where a grandmother is frying donuts in a big cast iron pot and where too, the back porch isn’t just a place to take off your muddy boots before tramping into Gram’s small but tidy nook…but a place where Gramp sits grinding fresh horseradish, tears rolling down his stubbled cheeks as easily as the sweat pours off his shiny bald knob.
And there are times, we’ll read something, like Tink’s post today, that’s like peeking into that too-long forgotten toy box in your mind’s attic…the one where you keep all your found treasures and best memories of childhood…waiting for a day like today.
Sometimes, these trips down memory lane can cover us in a cloak of sorrow or pain, bringing us back to a time and place we’d rather not go back to, for one reason or another.
Other times, happily I think most times, the places we go in our mind are…
…the places we want to be and in the company of people we want to be with.
This is where I went today, when the toy box opened…with thoughts of long candy counters and a shop owner with the patience God gives older folk…
It sits there still, where it always did.
Across the road from my where my grandparent’s lived, and up two from where I did.
One of two one-room shops in our town of less than…
where one holds the memories of a barrels of chocolate drops, returning bottles for a penny, wood smoke, and men laughing.
while the other is made of children’s dares and double dares to see who’ll go buy the ice cream from the ‘mean old lady’ behind the counter.
And this is who joined me in today’s trip…Gramp in his engineer’s cap and Gram looking the same as everyday I can remember.
And though this is where they are now…
Their permanent home is here…always here…
I thank Tink and her Crazy Train for the ride today. It was welcome and reminded me that I have enough in my heart and my mind to get me through whatever life wants to throw my way.
And maybe someday, when he’s older or I’m gone, this one will hear or see or smell something, some small thing, that will take him back to a time when he knew he was cherished.
Is it the green of the grass or the warmth of the sun? The freedom he feels when he can just run? Or the sounds of his family, the music of laughter that tickles his fancy? Is that what he’s after? The joy he exudes when brothers play ball Tears and then laughter when one of them falls He’ll often be seen, his tongue tasting air settled on the stoop, pondering there What is he thinking, what treats are in store for this legend in training, this blessing and more? As Grammy, I’d tell you, “he’s deep like his roots” But honestly his passion is only his BOOTS!
this list is far from complete, but I find I can look at no more.
those families left behind have not been idle.
they’ve formed foundations, initiated awareness campaigns, and again, the list goes on and on.
as do the suicides.
additionally, we now have, literally at our fingertips, the following, just to name a few of the resources available, as a direct result of this problem:
no bullying websites – one example
NoBullying.com features many pages dedicated to parents, teens, teachers, health professionals as well as posts related to cyber safety and the latest news about law making concerning curbing bullying worldwide as well as inspirational bullying poems and famous bullying quotes
The National Youth Violence Prevention Resource Center estimates that nearly 30 percent of American youth are either a bully or a target of bullying
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people with approximately 4,400 deaths every year
(and those stats are just here, but this is not an American problem. this is a world problem.)
PLUS:
child protection software
web filtering software
social media safety programs
free teen safety e-books
so…what are we missing?
what are we doing wrong?
or maybe the better question is…
what are we NOT doing right?
I am no judge
I am no jury
I am no winner of any super parent of the year award
however…I am a survivor.
and living proof that
‘it’s a phase’
belongs at the top of “The Worst Things A Parent Can Assume” list
STOP! DON’T ASSUME! ASK! LISTEN! PAY ATTENTION!
no one knows your child better than you do. and no one does or will ever, care more.
and then there is “The Worst Things A Parent Can Say” list
(and I’m as guilty as the next guy for saying most of these things because I heard those things):
“that’s just how kids are”
“you’ll grow out of it”
“you’ll get over it, you’ll see”
“go find something to do”
“it’s not that important”
“ignore it, they’ll get bored”
“you don’t want to be like everyone else do you?”
“you’re too young to understand”
“sticks and stones…”
i am not being a Monday morning quarterback, at least, I hope you don’t see it that way.
i am not blaming all parents for all things as I certainly couldn’t look myself in the mirror if I took the blame for everything my children did growing up.
what I am trying to do, is shed some light on a few of THE most common, albeit loving, words of advice and/or wisdom we impart to our kids in an attempt to make them ‘feel better’ about themselves.
it doesn’t work. I know, that’s harsh.
but it doesn’t work.
our children know we love them. they know we’ll say anything to make it better (in our own minds).
but we need to stop putting acne cream or liquid foundation on what WE PERCIEVE to be our kids’ source of their low self-image, and I say that because, if they saw themselves as WE do, this would not be the fucking horrific problem it is.
they don’t see themselves through OUR eyes.
they see themselves through the eyes of their peers.
just as the majority of all of us did.
no…this is not a new war.
it’s an old war on a different battleground.
an anonymous one.
one that affords bullies (who otherwise might not ever have dreamed of pulling the trigger) a haven of relative safety with which to thrust their swords of misguided judgment and fire those malice filled bullets.
all in an attempt to…what?
you know the answer.
to hide their own insecurities, to assuage their own feelings of inadequacy, to belie the perception that they are lacking, to feel big, and most importantly…to mask their own pain. to make themselves feel better than…by making someone else feel worse than.
this is not a new concept.
and it’s certainly not only employed by teenage bullies.
knowing this…is it a stretch to think that the corporate bullies, the ball field bullies, the ‘my kid is better than your kid’ bullies, were bullied as youths?
nope.
OR
on the flip side…
if not bullied…were bullies as children, left to their own devices because ‘that’s just kids being kids”?
sadly, there is no easy solution.
it’s not easy, after all.
but…there are things we can do, as parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, friends…
stop making assumptions
stop making excuses
stop enabling our kids by ‘trying to be friends’
be a parent now and a friend later.
if you feel the no…say the no.
if ‘but johnny has one’ or ‘suzie gets to’ arguments sway you…get to know johnny and suzie a little better so you can perhaps point out to your kids the things they have that johnny and suzie do not.
allow your children to suffer the consequence of their choices but always offer an alternative to better ones. don’t take away the responsibility of their actions because you feel sorry for them.
if they say they hate you now…they’ll love you later, especially when they have their own kids.
no amount of money you spend ‘keeping up with…’ will ever make them feel pretty or popular on the outside if they don’t feel it on the inside. give them reasons to feel it on the inside. teach them compassion and empathy by living it. teach them to see beyond by doing it.
temper the time spent praising their feats by counting their blessings, whatever they might be.
teach them that each of us are blessed in our own way, some on the outside, some on the inside, but it’s all worthy of love and respect.
help them celebrate our differences by being well-rounded, informed, engaged, and interested parents who take the time to get to know their school, their teachers, their friends, and their friends parents.
yes, this is a different age. parents today have very little free time.
but…that was our choice yes?
say what you will…but every generation’s evolution is a direct result of that generation’s choices.
we cannot use ‘I have no time’ as an excuse to not raise our own kids.
we cannot blame society or teachers for ‘not giving’ our children the values we should be giving them at home.
our children need us.
they will never admit to this, but they do.
not just the first 10 years or the next…
it is a lifetime job.
and the job of a lifetime.
let’s help give our kids that lifetime, that looooong lifetime.
please
i dedicate this post to the fire starter, you know who you are, and you know what you mean to me…and i thank you for knowing i had something to say, no matter how small
Today is my one year anniversary with 50 Shades of Gray Hair.
And they said it wouldn’t last…HA!
Well, actually, I do have a history…
Remember Help Me Rhonda?
So, it’s actually my second anniversary, but I’m trying to forget deleting myself.
But, all I can say now is “WOW”
A lot has changed (and thank God for hormone therapy!)
So, to celebrate my second chance, and to show my appreciation for all the love and support you have so generously and willingly shown me here these last two years, I’d like to spread some words of wisdom.
I know…I’m better at spreading ‘da poo’ and I will again, but for today…a slight change in tone and texture (eew)
The words may not be mine, but all the same…the photos and the sentiments are, and the lessons are very real.
Last night saw the end of the longest running nightmare of our married life.
The move to Virginia
(a.k.a. As the Shade Spins)
(aa.k.a. Two Thugs and a Truck)
(aaa.k.a. The Snap Heard ‘Round the Block)
(aaaa.k.a. Row, Row, Row, Your Washing Machine)
Moving on (yikes, that phrase alone gives me heartburn)…
At 7:00pm we waved goodbye, with heartfelt thanks, to the crew that installed our new floors. Adios and gracias if you know what I mean.
By 9:30pm we’d placed the last piece of furniture, made-up the last bed, plugged-in and set the alarm clock, and hopped (the mattress sits about boob high on me. HE hops…I use a stool) into our bed with sighs (grunts) of exhausted relief.
To say the day went off without a hitch would be completely out of character for me, so in keeping with keeping it real…I suppose I must share that too…
I’m usually the one in charge in all things ‘house’. But due to my slight limitation in mobility, I reluctantly gave up control and took my place as the minion this one time, physically anyway. (For some reason my mouth just can’t give up being the boss!)
Anyway…I was placed inside the frame of the bed, to help place the box spring. But, as my hands were catching the box, my eyes spied the very obvious fact that the bed was NOT in the right place. Why weight it down with box and mattress when we could easily move it first?
So naturally, I dropped the box spring where I stood (I may have spouted something here, but I take the 5th) and turned to exit the interior of the bed frame so I could move the bed to where it belonged.
In doing so, I didn’t quite clear the hurdle that was the side rail…tripped…and landed flat on my face (and boobs and belly and though I didn’t realize it at the time, my left wrist.)
(Did you know that OOF is a real sound? IT IS!)
Anyway, I gave a shout out to the Big Guy upstairs, thanking him for yet another reminder of my bad temper, cradled my wrist, and left the other big guy to finish. Turns out, the tendons on top of my left hand took the brunt, are strained, and yell at me when ever I lift my hand…but other than that, the other bruises will heal.
Considering my history, I’d say this was one of my better days. 🙂
I climbed the mountain that is my bed, and sat up for a while, thinking about the last 10 weeks {‘how the hell did we get through this without killing each other?’ was my predominant thought} realizing that it was going to be the first night since moving in, that I didn’t dread the following morning.
The nightmare was over.
That light at the end of the tunnel that everyone talks about is there.
I can see it.
Today is the first day for the rest of our lives.
Today is a day for emptying boxes, hanging pictures, filling bookcases, marinating steak to put on the grill…
Today is a day for doing NONE of those things because my hand is screaming.
Today is a day for waiting for tomorrow to try again.
Today is a day for blaming no one but myself for things going wrong.
Today is a day for eating humble pie with my grilled steak.
Today is also a day for giving thanks that we’ve made it through the nightmare still optimistic about tomorrow, regardless of what happened 10 weeks or 10 minutes ago.
Today…Is a Good Day!
It is also a day for meeting our new neighbors…they just moved in…next door…a cute couple…and she, like me, seems to be in charge of the house.
I wish them well.
I offer NO advice yet will keep my garden open to them.
Welcome new neighbors…when you get settled, stop by and we’ll sit and chew the suet and reminisce about Moving Day!
By dinner time tomorrow, our soggy, box-full, furniture-empty, house will feel like home despite it all.
He leaves the deep freeze on the shores of the Arctic Ocean tonight and will arrive on the unusually frozen southern shores of the Atlantic tomorrow. Knowing he had not planned on bringing his arctic gear, an emergency phone call took care of that. True winter in the lower 48 awaits his arrival. He doesn’t mind though, winter is kind of his thing…
We’ve not seen him for over a year, Christmas 2012 to be exact. So much has happened in his life and ours since then, I’m not sure his two weeks will be enough time to sort it all out. And sort it out we must, for as much excitement as there is in his return, it wears the shroud of sadness that only a broken heart wears.
You see, he fell in love with a dog, who owned the girl, that stole our son’s heart…
He chose the ring for the knot that means a great deal to her and announced to the world “SHE SAID YES!” on July 20th…
She chose the dress in the color that says “I am not afraid as I face the world with the man I love”
They chose the date, Friday, February 13, 2015, to tell the world “We have no fear of your superstitions, we’ll face it together”
They spent every spare moment they had together, traveling the land they both love so much…
One of the hardest things to witness is the breaking of your child’s heart. Whether 2 or 25, the heart cares not the why or the how, only that it’s a pain unlike any other.
The life plan has changed. The love won, now lost. “She said yes!” echoes hollowly in the darkness following “I’ve changed my mind, I don’t want to be with anyone”
As his mother, I grieve for his tender heart and shattered dreams.
As his mother I silently thank the girl for knowing this truth now and being brave enough to say so.
As his mother, I weep for and with him, longing to make it better, but knowing I can offer nothing but a safe place for him to cry.
So, it’s time for this boy, this man, our Matthew, to come home to slide into the open arms of his Dad and me; the only place he can let it all go.
The place where the man can again be the boy who needs what only his family can give him…a safe place to grieve, a hearth to warm the bone deep chill of lost love, and the touch of those that know the truest nature of him…love. He shines with it and has since he was born.
He will find The One.
Someday.
One who will see him for who he is, and love him completely for it.
We know this.
He will too.
One Day.
Until then, we’ll do what we have always done…love him, guide him beyond his feeling foolish for having loved “too much”. With the gentlest of reminders that no love is ever foolish or ever wasted or ever “too much”. That to deny the best part of himself for fear of being hurt this way again, would be to deny the very air he breathes.
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50 Shades of Gray Hair 
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