Vodka and Sexiness

So starts the new year.  

January 1st, 2014.

Out with the old; in with the new.
Blabbity blah blah blahblahblah.

I haven’t written much or posted a lot over this change in the times.  I fluctuate between feeling like I have a shit load to say, to crossing sides and feeling I have so much to say who even cares where I start...so I stay quiet.

I wonder if this means I’m officially of the middle age mindset.  I’ve spent recent time, more so in the last few weeks for sure, pondering the flip of the calendar.  I’ve caught myself really wondering where the time has gone.  I’ve felt wisps of memories of those I’ve lost over time, from the deaths of my mother or a colleague here and there, to even the loss’ of my choosing, such as my ex-husband or toxic friendships I once held.

The passing of time in general has hit me this year differently, and I don’t really know why.  While I don’t long for those toxic relationships any day (I feel I have busted my proverbial emotional ass to rid myself of them truth be told), a sense of pondering, or hindsight wonderment has occurred to me, “why did life turn out this way?”

I remain a firm believer in things happening the way they are supposed to, which to me, is different than believing in simple fate.  While I believe in a higher power, I have never feared one.  I don’t wallow in bad things happening to good people, I simply hang my hat on good things happening to nice people.  I know life goes on.  I know life isn’t about the number of breaths but rather the moments that take our breath away, or however that overused, beat-to-death Instagram viral turned bedroom wall sticker decal goes.  I get it.  Still....blah.

The moments of 2013 can be summed up in the following, if anyone catches themselves wondering, “Hmmm, I wonder what she’s been up to?”:

My kids each grew a foot taller.  Sometimes their attitudes and lip-back grew just as much, but for the most part, their hearts grew ten fold and for that I am grateful. Hopeful.

I gave up on a small personal dream of a bakery filled with good smells and loaded calories and instead invested my money and a solid portion of life and sanity into my husband’s (does everyone remember Mr. Thick Arms? Hubba hubba, still) business & dream.  This has depleted my bank account and sleep pattern, respectively.  T’is okay.  *sigh*

I saw one (or 5) too many friends buried in the ground for my liking.  This makes me sad, of course, yet grateful for the memories.  My nostalgia ramps up with these memories.  I don’t know what it is about this year and this feeling.  It’s not really SADsad, it’s more like.....uhm.  More like I’m watching my life in the motions it covers from the bleachers.  Not sad.  One step not involved tho too.  That doesn’t even make sense to me and I’m the one who wrote it.  I continue to search through the memories in my head, and just leave them as memories.  I once felt the need to share every single memory, every story, every nuance of every detail of a story, a life, a relationship, as if they were all nothing more than a funny night-out story around the bar over a tap beer.  Now, I catch myself loving the idea of holding something dear, like a memory, or the importance of a smell, or a funny line from a movie I once shared with someone, close to my sleeve.  I find myself not always sharing those details, rather just nodding along, remembering to no one other than myself.  And I’ve been okay with that.

I spent a lot of money on a stupid dog who needed emergency surgery because he ate a sock.

I quit a job that I wasn’t loving and got a new one that feels like a good fit.  I pray I do it justice.

I have cried at a kabilllion more commercials and Lifetime movies than I did in 2012 or before.

I set out to lose 15 pounds and probably gained 5. (And as long as it’s the New Year I will say this: I hear SO MANY people state THIS is the year they stick to a resolution and get in shape (IE lose weight, run a marathon, eat better, turn vegan, cut out refined sugars, break a sweat, what have you) and I really just want to say SHUT UP and just eat the damn piece of bread.  We all know you want it.  Just accept it and move on.  I really want to tell the woman in line at the salad bar, IT’S OKAY to eat what you want.  I’ve seen people deprive themselves.  They die just like the healthy ones do.  If carbs make you happy, for God’s sake, eat the slice of bread.  Be happy.

I was supposed to get pregnant and have an idyllic life with Thick Arms, and after months of trying and trying and trying (I know, I know.  Don’t cry for me Argentina.) and tests and tests and tests, I was told it was a medical impossibility.  I missed two days of work for that because I could just NOT.stop.crying. over that outcome.  I OD’d on watching baby stories on YouTube and sat my infertile ass in a recliner and cried for 10 hours a day.  It is one thing I will tear up over still if I think about.  I am waiting to get over that.  I will get over that.

Speaking of my dear husband, I did the unthinkable this year and in a absofuckinlutely milestone move, I danced for him.  And YES, I mean THAT kind of dance.  In full get up, boots and lace and shit and all.  Jesus H.  I can’t even tell you how drunk I had to be for that.  I still shake my head in disgrace if I think about it.  But, I’ll tell ya what....just this morning, this topic came up and his only contribution to the conversation was, “Ugh.  Fuckin‘ hot!” so while I’m disgraced, I guess I’m also smirking a bit to myself when I turn away, 10 shades of red.  I kept the fishnets.

I reconnected with some family who I had all but wrote off my page.  Others, I’ve learned how to gracefully disconnect from without fanfare or drama.  I kicked a lot of people off Facebook and learned the lesson in which ones of them noticed, and who didn’t.  Telling, indeed.  Freeing, too.

My 2013 in a nutshell has been like yours.  One of set backs and triumphs, challenges and breezes. Moments of holding my breath, and those in which the exhale has been worth it all.  In the end, we’re all buried in one way or another.  So here’s my advice, eat the carbs, down the vodka and dance the sexy dance for the person who will appreciate it, don’t fret losing toxic people, and by all means, hug the ones who aren’t.

Cheers.

Typical Schmpical

If you could enter my head for a day or two, you might be surprised to find out a few things about me.  Such as, you ask?  Why, I’d be happy to spill a few details.

You might be surprised to find out, for example, how my brain automatically always ends up looking at a clock, daily, at 9:11.  Every single day.  Ever since 9/11/01’s attack on the WTC.  Every single day.  Sometimes both AM and PM. 

You may be surprised to discover that I love to eat Skittles by first color coordinating them (yes, I suffer a sugared version of OCD.  This I know.)  Or that I cannot NOT grind my teeth together every time I touch a pet because they are so goddamn cute, I can barely stand it.  *teeth gritted* I! CAN! BARELY! STAND! IT!  

Maybe you’d be surprised to know the level of my movie star/Hollywood trivia knowledge given my absolute non existant actual viewing of most movies.  

Or, you may be surprised to find out how much I think about unmentionables.  Yup.  Sex.

Now, before you all start sending me private inbox messages on Da Book, I’ve looked it up on Wikipedia, and I’m no nymphomaniac.  My husband could attest.  I don’t suffer from bipolarism (a cause and effect, so I’ve read), nor do I take medication for Parkinson’s that would create some form of hypersexual drive (thank you Google).  That’s not what I mean.

What I mean when I say I think about sex, is, and trust me, even I’m kinda amazed at how much it is around me...us, as a society, so it’s just always *there*.  Back in my days of college sociolgy classes, I’d probably eat this shit alive from a 101 standpoint.  Now, I’m just aware of it, so it always seems to be in my mind.

Magazines, television, radio...they all sell sex.  Promote it.  Languish around in it, in their skimpy lace and satin....er...things.  Perfume ads, fashion runways, heck, even Ellen gives away sexy underwear to every guest (I love Ellen btw).  Sex is everywhere I look.  I’m constantly told, even if it is subconsciously, that I’d be better off if I had whiter teeth, a firmer tush, or if I’d walk my dog in 6 inch stilettos.  Then, oh THEN, I would turn heads, right?  The Tilted Kilt may have great beer, but hops isn’t the reason anyone goes there, just like Hooters didn’t get well known of their wings.  When it’s in my face at every billboard, commercial and Toyota selling pitchpoint, it’s only natural that I would be thinking about it day and night.  That’s what the consumer train wants!  And it’s succeeding.  Again, please God, I can’t be the only one thinking like this!

Even now, currently I am at a crossroads with my faith to an extent.  We’ve reached that pinacle in our relationship (me and church that is) when just casually handing over the teachings of a young woman’s body (my teenager) for them to handle is expected.  It’s not appreciated (by me), but it’s expected.  It’s been hinted to me that most parents would be glad to hand the topic over, to anyone really, as long as it got the parent out of it. 

Newsflash.  That’s not me.  

In fact, I was told recently, in regards to my parenting, “You’re not typical”.  

Great! ....finally....someone said it.

Compliment?  At first it felt as if it was a backhanded one at best.  Would typical mean I'm average?  Does it mean I'm good at maintaining a steady status quo, or that I'm less than good?  A clone drowning amid the seas of every other mom/woman out there or blazing a trail?

So, I guess I’m not typical.  And rather than that making me more insecure about my questionable parenting skills, it only fuels my fire and confirms to me I’m doing it right.  Whatever “it” is.  Because I’M the one who’s doing it.  I don’t depend on other people to parent for me, through the easy stuff or the tough stuff.

It’s not a ‘church’ thing, per se.  I don’t want anyone teaching my child about personal things; I believe that’s what I’m here for.  It’s not a control thing, or a glutten for punishment thing either.  Nope, I’m no masochist.  I’ve worked hard to raise them thus far the way I have been, not how I want them to turn out because I believe that is up to God.  But I raise my children to be a way that the world will benefit from.  This means, yes, we support gay marriage.  It means, yes, we support all gay rights.  I believe in contraception.  I will give her a condom when she’s old enough if she asks me to.  I will put her on the pill.  And yes, I talk to my child about pornography and masturbation and what’s appropriate and what’s not.  I talk about sex, and female empowerment and hell no, you’re not going to get out of this house wearing those shorts.  Why?  Because girls are mean and boys are stupid.

I have never, EVER handed down a rule under the pretense of “Because I said so” and nothing else.  Even the shorts (“Because your ass cheek hangs out and you look like a wanna be hoochie.  Go.  Change.”) or the masturbation (I recall a time when a young 2 year old was laying on the living room floor, ahem, shall we say, exploring the nooks and crannies.  Her father panicked, ran to me in the other room, “Make her knock it off!” he pleaded.  The problem, as I saw it then, and still see it to this day, was not in her exploring, but in her father’s reaction.  Gut wrenching pain (normal for a dad, I understand) and fear.  So I calmly went into the living room and said, “Sweetie....if you’re gonna touch it, go touch it in your room.”  Why?  “Because that’s a private thing.”  End of story.  She left.  And I scraped her father off the kitchen ceiling.  It never came up again.

So does this make me a bad mother (ohh, haha, thank you, but no, that’s not what I meant), or a new age kinda hot mama.  Neither.  I may not be typical, but I find normality in my so called abnormality.  Listen, I make mistakes daily.  Probably hourly.  Even I sometimes cringe when I hear myself saying the things I say.  I could always be doing something better to benefit my children.  I could be setting a trillion better examples such as exercising more and swearing less.  My kids probably shouldn’t know my favorite wine is Moscato.  My children learned to swear, in correct context tyvm, by my example, no doubt.  Am I proud?  Sometimes not, but then I think about some dark stairwell she might find herself in as a meek college freshman and maybe, just maybe, when the sketchy janitor looks a little too long at her legs, she won’t hesitate to scream the F word at the top of her lungs when she kicks him in the balls.  

Furthermore, my kids are not swayed or shocked by a lot of words or situations.  They are taught to listen but they are also taught to never ignore their gut.  Do they have their issues?  Of course.  They have crushes, but still think Cooties is a non curable STD that floats around out there.  What shocks them is meanness, rioting, and when the crazy comes out of the family tree.  None of the sexual things out there seem to really bother my kids...which is fanastic in my opinion.  Why should it?  Out of my fear that they may get their heart broken or grow up too soon or have premarital sex, I need them to be afraid of things?  No way.  Rather, out of my fear, I need them to be informed. 

That’s my take on parenting.  We’re the kind of family that has tackled upsetting subjects and dealt with them from a very early age.  Divorce; Check.  Homosexuality; Check.  Sex; Check.  Drugs; Check and double check.  And we use real words, and descriptive phrases and always talk about the consequences of our actions, and what to do when life doesn’t go the way you planned.  I’ve taught them that life is not going to go the way you plan in fact, because that’s the way life rolls and she’s a bitch.  We use honesty and laughter and frankness because the rest of it?  It’s fluff.  And when it comes to the seriousness of these topics, fluff can be as dangerous as the cocaine I tell her never to snort.

Scary shit, man.  

Tough subjects, no doubt.
Easy approach to it all? Not at all.

Just because I may come off as blazee to someone, doesn’t mean I’m not dealing with it the best way I know how and exactly how I want to.  My mom used to play this game all the time.  Before she told me anything, she’d say, “You want the good news or the bad news first?”  She always put a positive spin on a bad thing.  (The good news is we don’t have to spend time in the hot car this summer weekend!  The bad news is it’s because the car broke down and I had to cancel your birthday beach party.)  My father, a retired police officer, went for the more direct route.  “No party this weekend.  Car took a shit.” and he let the pieces fall where they may.  The officer in him told me years later when delivering bad news, if you try to fluff it up with the good news, people always know bad is coming.  It’s not like you trick them into believing the good makes the bad less bad.  He had delievered too many midnight knocks on doors letting parents know their child was just killed and he said they just knew what it meant when they heard the knock.  He wouldn’t have even had to speak.

He hated playing my mom’s Good News/Bad News game.

I think maybe I’ve taken the best of both of their ways and applied it to my own form of parenting.  While I’m a biproduct of their genetic makeup, I also derive from them each strands of approach.  From my mom, I learned the bonus of positive thinking.  She always commented how bad things happened to us, to everyone, in life.  In her years here, she saw many illnesses, many sad situations, the loss of her own son, and countless funerals throughout for friends and loved ones.  I saw her ill.  When she was fighting her first bout of cancer back in the 80’s, I was a young child, but old enough to want to never be seen as “uncool”.  Her illness found me making obscenely stupid gestures, completely uncool (I was really a dork.  You just don’t understand.) every day outside her bedroom door, just to get her to smile.  I saw her cry.  But I saw her smile again, every time.  Eventually.  I learned by her example.

I can only wish the same for my children.

So maybe I come across as crass sometimes.  Maybe I hear “I can’t believe you just said that” a little more than most.  I wouldn’t know who to compare it to, because I simply don’t care to compare my kids to other kids.  I don’t compare my style of parenting to many others because I don’t give a rip how other parents do it. What matters to me is that if at the end of the night, my daughters come up to me and say, “hey mom....today when you said ______________, can we talk about that?”  

And they do that.  

Often.

So whatever this parenting thing entails, I know I don’t have it figured out.  But the way I’m doing it...for now....is keeping the dialogue open with my children.  If that’s not typical then....yeah, I’m okay with that.

Young at Heart

So, this aging thing, sometimes has me befuddled.

The age I am right now has been a pivotal time in my life, whereas it has become the “official” age at which I have heard myself officially declare, “I’m too old for that” many times.  So, 38 must be the age an *ahem* adult, becomes too old for nonsense and tomfoolery.  38 is the age where I no longer wish to try bungee jumping.  38 is the age where I’m too old to stay out until bar time.  38 is definitely the age I prefer a good nights’ sleep, when I make sure I have a healthy dinner before a bottle of wine is consumed, or when I start worrying about retirement funds.

So, I suck.  

I’m boring, and I’m old.  All of a sudden, this shit snuck up on me.  At 30, I got my tongue pierced an thought it was cool.  At 38, I SMH at that goofy girl and wonder what other 38 year old women thought of me back then.

At 32, I was still under the presumption I was a young-ish mom to my daughters, able to keep up with them.  At 38, I realize I wasn’t all that young back then, and I worry what does that make me now!

At 34, I was taking the first scary steps through a divorce I never saw coming.  At 38, I wish I would’ve given myself some damn credit for doing exactly what I needed to do, and the strength it took me to do it back then.

At 36, I was flexing my dating muscle, healthily, and now, at 38 and remarried, I’m happy.  

I’m happy!  But, dear God, am I “settled”?

Some days, all I want to do is take a nap.  Other days, being “settled” unsettles me way too much to rest my mind or body.  Hence my befuddlement.  I’m stuck in that vortex of ‘old’ and ‘kicking-and-screaming-trying-to-remain-cool-cuz-I-don’t-really-wanna-be-there-quite-yet.’  

Flashes of ideas come into my mind on how to prove my youthfulness to myself.  And the fact that my younger husband just turned 30 (one of my personalities mutters, “asshole”, while another one screams, “GO ME!”) left me pondering how to ring in his milestone year in a fun way for him, but a reasonable time for me as well.  

Boring.  

I know.

But I was determined to make it worthwhile.  I began my quest with the simple question; What do people want to do?  Do I go special?  How should we celebrate?  Private or big?   “Old” brought to mind vacation spots, a nice dinner out, or worse yet, a nice dinner in that I end up having to create.  “Young” left me contemplating binge drinking on pepperminty shots in a sticky club or a huge family party (that I’d have to create as well).  I was already getting tired.

It was obvious I needed valued input.  I text a few friends, male and female, with a simple deciding factor I wanted their opinion on.  I boiled it down to two distinct choices, which would verify my existence as ancient or youthful.

“...30th birthday....casino, or strip club?”

Surprisingly, most of my friends replied with the casino.  Maybe my friends are old too.  Maybe they were just being polite and didn’t want to let their freak flag fly via text.  A couple said, “Both!” and I took that as a sign they really wanted to say the strip club, but were simply being politically correct.  Even fewer opted for the good old days of youth and admitted full out to the strip club adventure.  I also assign accusation that they said strip club just to see if I’d blog about it.

So in other words, my friends’ combined answers left me spilt 50/50, right down the middle, no further decided than what I was when I asked them and basically, thanks a lot, collectively they were no good to me.  I still had to decide.  Hmmmm....a casino.  Problem is, neither Bicepual or I are good at gambling.  We don’t really know how to gamble well, we don’t count cards, and we’re not good at just throwing money away.  We married in Vegas and didn’t gamble any worthy time while there.

On the other pastie...a strip club.....throwing my money away with the awkwardness of shoving it into places I shouldn’t be enjoying.  I hadn’t personally been to a strip club since my 20’s.  Hubby hasn’t been to one since before he met me.  We have never went to one together.  

Wait.  

I smell intrigue!  

I decided.  I Googled.  (Did you know that there are actual websites out there scoring God’s Country strip clubs down to the detail?  There is.  And I read and re-read ratings and looked at pictures like it was my job, people.  Such a dork approach.  I know.  And some of you better be my friend and delete my web browser history when I kick the bucket.  Don’t judge!)  

I had been to strip club’s a few times before with friends.  I certainly schouldn’t be intimidated, but man, I admit it, I was!  I had this (mis)conception that women in strip clubs (dance clubs, young bars, movies, magazine ads, the list goes on and on) all have perfect bodies with big boobs, flat bellies and perfect lips.  Both kinds.  While nakedness doesn’t bother me in general terms, gyrating is all together a different story (I’m too old for this!).  I don’t want bits and pieces shoved in my face.  I damn sure don’t want it done strictly to get strangers to hoot and holler for more.  I surely wondered if I’d want to see it all shoved in hubby’s face.  Ummm.  It boiled down to this: Am I secure enough?  Am I too old, really?  Am I still young enough?

With that, I booked a hotel room at a casino, non-refundable.  We were going.

Bicepual came home from a week long getaway fishing expedition to a “good to see ya! Now hit the showers”.  The car was already packed.  Money was already set aside.  Within an hour, we were back on the road.  I didn’t tell him where we were going and I drove.  

I told him nothing as we made our way south and I told him not much more as we checked into the hotel.  We dressed up and had a nice dinner of crab legs and prime rib (so grown up!) and as we gambled away the high roller amount of $40 (I really hate throwing away our money).  By the time we meandered back to the room, slowly, we just enjoyed a conversation; something we had missed with his vacation and my recent on site job training was simply talking and laughing again.  Relationships are good, but life sure tends to get in the way of them.  

Back in the room, somewhere around this point in time, he took notice of the mini-bar I brought along in my suitcase.  As I unpacked midget bottles of Cherry Promises here and there, he added ice to the drinks I mixed.  And let me tell ya, I mixed mine stiff people.  Because I, of course, had a point to prove to myself and it wasn’t gonna get proven sober.

I just *happened* to book the casino room in the same town as a “couple-friendly” strip joint.  

Whether or not we would end up there directly correlated to the amount of liquid courage I was going to consume and I knew it.  I was losing my courage with the time I spent dawdling at the concept of going.  God, the idea of being trapped in some frat boy nightmare with T & A bouncing everywhere was .....well, there wasn’t enough Cherry Promise in this room, let’s put it that way.  Everything leading up to this point stressed me out.  What do I wear?  A skirt to show off my once youthful legs?  Or is that then a skirt that would make onlookers take pity on the 38 year old in the room who was sadly trying to compete with a 21 year old hipless hottie.

I ended up changing out of the skirt, but still wore the leather knee high boots. 
I added a little more eye shadow for dramatic effect, but skipped the extra perfume.

I did an extra shot of Cherry when Thick Arms wasn’t looking, and then handed him a gift, decorated in Happy Birthday stars gift wrap.  As he ripped it open to expose a favorite cigar atop a stack of 30 single dollar bills, he laughed at what I was allowing us to do.  The gift wasn’t in the money or the cancer stick I forbid the other 364 days of the year, but in the uncharted territory I was allowing us to charter together.

Lewis and Clark with a smidgen of Bonnie and Clyde.  Just for the excitement part, not so much the slaughter.

I paid our cover charge and we entered into the world of unfamiliarness of G strings and nipples everywhere you looked.  Lights and smoke, I declared, “It smells like vanilla body spray and glitter up in here.”  I make Bicepual laugh, but I didn’t want to be one of those buzz-kill women who cracks stupid jokes out of nervousness (and let’s face it, I was her.)  I quit the one liners and made my way to the bar.  Let’s call a duck a duck here, folks.  If I was going to be okay with most of this, I had to be drunk.  

Is going to a strip club with your wife hot or lame?  Would I watch him out of intrigue and attraction, or out of jealousy?  If I found a comfortableness in this, what does that say about me?  This really could’ve been a night to delve into my psyche and it’s boundaries of sex and lines to cross had it not been for the many (many, many) vodka lemonades I was downing. 

Strip clubs, or the few I had been to in my younger days, were different from the one I now found myself standing aloof in now.  One of the first things I saw was a woman shimmy her way up to the top of a pole on a 20 foot ceiling.

Damn.  Okay.  That’s actually kind of impressive.

Next thing to catch my attention was a tiny blond getting huge amounts of hollers and whoops because she could make her butt jiggle in a way that even I was left to wonder, as I tilted my head to a 90 degree angle, “How in the hell.....?”  Lemme tell ya, she made it rain bills her way, for sure, and as my husband looked on I said, “I hope the other girls in this place pay attention to her....”  It was damn right tutorial.

Eventually hubby and I made our way to a table, and I was surprised how people were acted throughout the evening.  I overheard a joke here and there about single moms paying their way through law school of course, but for the most part, men and women were polite to each other.  There was the bachelor party, yes.  And there was that overweight man in the corner who licked his $5 bill and stuck it to his face begging “Suzy” to summon it with her boobies.  Of course there were a sprinkling of women like myself with their men.  There was one noticeable couple who looked painfully out of place.  Talk about old.  I suddenly felt better and it was the vodka working in partnership with this exact couple.  Shit.  If they could do it, I could do it.  My courage bloomed just a tad.

So we moved to the seats around the floor.  Now I’m faced with nakedness.  And.I.mean.right.here.in.my.face.literally.I’m.faced.with.all.kinds.of.nakedness.  A sliver of me free fell into panic when hubby left me to go get a new round of drinks, but I had $5 Bill Face and now “Lexi” to entertain me.

Courage struck hubby all of a sudden and he plopped down a wad of singles in front of me.

Dear God, please stop now.

After a few ridiculous attempts of shoving the money back at him, I accepted my role here as “wife at a strip club” and decided to just take my public lashing and get it over with.  Like moth to a fire, here she comes, shimmying and crawling my way.  Lord.

In my head, I’m telling myself, “Sit back.  Enjoy (yeah right).  This too shall pass.  Woman up.”  I look over at my husband, someone I shared vows with not all that long ago, and he is thoroughly enjoying himself at a degree of which should be unjust only because I don’t know if he’s liking the girls, or how he anticipates his wife is going to react to them.  With one fell swoop, she took the dollar he handed her and, literally swiped the rest of the money from in front of us.  She was gone in the neon flash of a forgiving red light.

“Did she just take all my money!?” he asked me in disbelief.

This might be kinda funny after all.  By the end of the night, we had spent more and drank more than usual.  He had been kissed, I had been kissed.  We skipped the lap dances, he had been wished a very generous (said in my best Marilyn Monroe voice) happy birthday several times over, I had been asked to dance, I got dragged up on and bent over backwards on the stage, his lap had been assaulted by all Utah standards and common laws, and I had been told (by 2 separate girls TYVM!) “nice boobs!”.  

My work here was complete.  

Just as I was really appreciating the evening, some asshole announced last call and the lights of reality came up.  How rude.

Back at the hotel, sitting on a barely lit patio in the best autumn weather we could ask for at this time of year, Bicepual puffed his cigar with reverence on the evening.  He didn’t say a whole lot now.  The most shocking moment of all he declared was not the boobs or the leather or even the touching or the amount of money we spent, but that I went one for one with his drinks.  Something obviously way more out of my element than even the fact I was at a strip club.  We relived little parts of the night until I groggily hugged my pillow later, and I heard him say, “do you know it’s almost 5 am....”  To which I replied, “Shhhhut up. Don’t tell me that.”  

Ignorance is bliss they say, and a very common trait among the young so I’ve heard.

And then....

The next morning....

I had a hangover from hell.  And I realized just how old I am.

I am 38.  The exact age when a completely normal boring mother of 2 drinks her way around naked nervousness to plunge right into the very things that she has created most fearsome in her own mind.  

I got caught up in trying to keep up.  

I’m old.  And I'm not even gonna try to deny it.

Those 21 year old girls, who I’m telling you, no way in hell were single mothers because, as God as my witness, I’d swear those tiny little hips never gave way to a birth canal right of passage, told me, I had “nice boobs”.  

Twice.

Boom!

Age is just a number.  And life is too damn short.

What's Your Name? Come Here Often?

As I was driving the kids to school this morning, a typical sarcastic spout took a negative turn in our car, and I found myself....I won’t say outwitted, because I refuse to ever be, but I was just a bit ....*blah*....with the whole schtick, so I stopped talking to the offspring I created, both physically and whatever it is that controls the sarcastic gene.  This gave me time to just think and have wandering thoughts and be silent for ten minutes. 

Nice!  I honestly might take this up as my next hobby.  I hope it lasts longer than my stint in scrap-booking or hot yoga did.

As the last child dragged her wet sneakers out of the backseat, each foot seeminly weighing in at a hefty 600 pounds, slinging her heavy backpack to the hump day drudgery that awaited her, I waved her off and stomped on the gas pedal.  Have a good day honey, now get out.  Frankly, I had found myself enjoying the quiet and I wanted more of it.

The mental wandering got me thinking about nothing.  20 minutes prior to, I muttered to myself, but loud enough for the kids to hear my intoned guilt, exhaustedly, “Fine, I’ll just be the chauffeur today”, cuing my children that they were on a very thin line of making me feel pretty undesirable right about now.  Somehow that led me to the motherly ultimate question, “who am I?” 

Okay, not that I’m always this prolific at 8 AM, but for whatever reason, the topic of names came to me.  Who am I, as in what name I go by, came to me.  NameS to be more specific.

Before I actually materialized in this world, inutero, I’m sure I was named “Surprise” for awhile.  That gave way, eventually to “The Baby” and somewhere along the line, my parent’s faith would have them believe “Blessing” was in order.

In my family, my parent’s had the rule, mom would name the girls, dad would name the boys.  Yay for sexist ruling of the 70‘s.  Upon my arrival, “Eugene” had to be retired (thank God!) and I was “Girl” for a minute.  I would have been “Danielle”, but my mother had a friend who took that name from my family and named her child that 12 days before at her own daughter’s birth.  This put my mother into a tailspin of unsuredness.  My father settled on “Theresa”, after the nun who would be named my Godmother, ironically.  Mom said I didn’t look like a Theresao, so she had to come up with something better.  Fast (Dad had no patience).

My mom, given to whims of verbal play and since my birthday was in late spring, almost went for the folly of “April May” (oh, the therapy we nearly avoided!) but settled instead on “Cherie Lynne”. 

What most people, even some friends, don’t know, is that my mother actually named me “Cherie”, pronounced “Sha-Ree”;  the French, pretty version of “Cherie”.  No one in my entire life ever called me by this, except for one friend of my grandmother’s.  When I see her, to this day, she still calls me “Sha-Ree”.  I tend not to punch little old ladies, so I let her get away with this trick that would have me throat throttling anyone else who tried.  I don’t feel like a “Sha-Ree”, I’m not Frenchy feeling and sexy like a “Sha-Ree” would be.  I don’t smoke long handled cigarettes or set me paint easel in the cobblestone streets.  I do eat croissants however, so maybe there’s something to it.

If my mom named me “Sha-Ree” I don’t know why she never called me that.  I don’t know when she decided it wasn’t worth the trouble and just Americanized me in one fell swoop.  Knowing my mom, she was too tired to put in the French effort out of fear she’d be enslaved to talking in an accent for the rest of her life.  I was probably destined for Cherie before the belly button stump fell off.

In the moment I became “Cherie”, I subsequently also became “5th Child of Jack & Helen”, “The Baby of the Family”, “Little Sister”, “Daughter”, “Granddaughter”, and “Youngest Cousin in this Generation”.  These are names that have never left me, to this day.

Growing up, I had no nicknames to my knowledge.  I know a brother referred to me as “Embarrassment” but that was more due to his teenage self coming to terms with the fact I was a by-product of our parent’s having sex.  Thankfully I never went by the name “Bed Wetter” or “Booger Eater”.  In today’s Toddlers and Tiaras world, I can assure you I never went by “Princess” or the like, not even for Halloween.  I was probably more of a tomboy; I do not remember a summer that didn’t have me picking off scabs on my knees.  I spent my childhood not caring about a single thing as long as I could ride my Hot Wheels plastic trike to the point of wearing out the big black tires.  One year I purposely tied one end of a rope to my trike and the other end to my Barbie Tour Bus, fully loaded with the voluptuous blonde there’s-no-way-I-can-ever-live-up-to-this role models and took the sharp turn at the end of the block over and over again until I got the right speed down in order to catapult each and every Barbie out of it and break the bus in the process.  *Damian’s work here is done.  This house is clean.*

Upon getting to junior high, my dark looks and black hair led a loud boy to dub me “Squaw” for a few years.  Given my real Native American lineage, I guess he would’ve been more amused if that had bothered me.  It didn’t.  To the point I didn’t even notice either when eventually that name dropped from existence.

In high school, my then boyfriend’s big rusted out blue pick up truck led socially awkward horny stupid bro-friends of his to call me “Heavy Chevy” for a time being.  I never understood this; at first I thought it was them insinuating I was husky and overweight.  My boyfriend assured me it was in reference to us getting “heavy” in the “Chevy.”  I still didn’t understand it, and figured all boys were just stupid.  Side-note: The lad who started this obnoxious nickname, flunked out of high school.  I guess “Correct” could be added to my monikers (see aforementioned stupid reference).

Throughout high school, I was of course temporarily at times called “Girlfriend” and then “Ex Girlfriend”.  I was a few times called “Funny”, or “Cute”.  I was dubbed “Shy” by some, “Loud” by the next.  Many years later, I laughed at the man who first seriously called me “Hot”.  I still shake my head when my husband calls me “Sexy.”  It makes as little sense to me as all the others.

I became “Graduate” in the early 90’s. For awhile I was “Socially College Student” but after a few years I named myself “Drop Out” (See “Working Stiff”) and moved back home to become “Fiance” and then eventually “Wife”.  I had previously turned my head to the names of “Horseback Trail Lead”, “Bank Teller”, and several times over as “Assistant Manager”, always “Responsible” and “Level Headed”.

“Bride” lead into “Newlywed” which lasted only a little while, and as time passed, “Wife” (Look up “Grocery Shopper”, “Coupon Clipper”, “Cleaner” and “Endless Toilt Paper Re-Stocker”) turned into “Mother” (see also, “Mom”, “Mommy”, “Ma”, “Mama”, “Chauffeur”, “Maid”, “Chef” and “Laundry Aide”.)  I’ve been “Cher” a few times over to some friends, most of whom only said it when it was too difficult to drunkenly add on the ‘ie’.  

I was “Awesome Bartender” (“The One With the Fuck Me Eyes”) when it was as easy time in my life to be a bartender and a few people threw “Best Shot Maker in Town” out there.  I’m pretty sure that was a compliment, but they were drunk by then, so who knows.  During this time I heard a lot of different names, most in good fun.  I’d like to think the man who punched his wife in the face that night right in front of my eyes tells his grandkids I’m “That Bitch Who Thought She Was Something Special When She Slammed Me Into The Dart Machine”  (See also “Winner”).  When I got offered $50 to flash a guy in the bar, I hope he refers to me somewhere today as “That Ballsy Lady Who Told Me They Were Surely Worth $100....Each”.  (I’ve never gone by “Girl Gone Wild”, what can I say?)

I’ve been called a “Good Mom” and a “Bad Mom”.  “Too Fat” and “Too Skinny”.  “Smart” and “Stupid”.  I’ve toggled between “Rights Activist” and “Fag Hag”.  It has been requested of me from time to time that I take on a roll of “Nympho” but am always required to be more “Motherly” when someone around me has a runny nose (and not necessarily just the kids).  I am the official “Tour Guide”, “Planner” and “Packer” (“Bears Fan” for those of you who follow football, tyvm) when it comes to any family vacation.  I’ve been “Juror # 8” and once was a “Defendant” in a court case.  

I have spent time being “Home & School President”, “School Board Member”, “Artist”, “Baker” or “Blood & Plasma Donator”.  By the time I was “Divorcee”, I simultaneously was “Secretary” at work and “Single Mom” (AKA “Juggler”) at home.  Often referred to as “Strong” and “Independent”, not I found myself hearing “Bitch”, “Prude” and “Whore” tossed my way more often than I cared for.  “Cheater” was a favorite of my accuser for awhile.  In reference to this, my current husband calls me “Jezzie”, short for “Jezebel”.

Somewhere along the line, this new man who had entered my life spent evenings inviting me into his arms calling me “Interesting”.  

He called me “Funny” again. 

“A Lifesaver”.

“Beautiful”.

He still calls me “Beautiful”.  Everyday.

There are a lot of names that I’ve been called.  A lot of names I’ve been blessed with, or accused with, depending on how you look at it.  There are probably some I haven’t even heard to my face.  There are more that encompass who I am, not mentioned here.

I realized something: It doesn’t matter what I am called. 
What matters is what I answer to.
P.S. And yes, I do answer when he says, “Hey Jezzie, pass the bread.

------------------------------

“What's your name,' Coraline asked the cat. 'Look, I'm Coraline. Okay?'
'Cats don't have names,' it said.
'No?' said Coraline.
'No,' said the cat. 'Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. 

We know who we are, so we don't need names.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

All Gave Some

Today is September 11, 2013.  9/11/13.  9/11.....a day that comes to the minds of millions around the world as a day of destruction, hate, and death.  In 2001, the Best Country in the World felt incredible pain as a whole, the only time I, in my 30+ years, have seen.  

People hugged tighter in the grocery stores.  Coffee clutchers had all they could do to pour over newspapers.  Everyone shook their head.  No one seemed to know how to feel about it, much less how to process it.  We all knew it would engage a full on war.  It really had to; there wasn’t much of a choice for anything else.

A few years after 9/11, my husband told me he was thinking about joining the service.  It was a simple statement in our tiny dining room, where he had been Googling enlistment procedures. 

In the dozen years we had been together up until this point, it was the first time I ever heard him talk about the military.  Within 48 hours, a recruiter knocked on my front door, and I watched my husband, the father of my 2 children, sign on the dotted line.  I heard this desire to enlist in the service happened often after times such as 9/11; the wrong doings of some people in this world simply urged others to do something about it.

As my husband signed his life away, our life away, my oldest daughter, a toddler then, told me she didn’t like the recruiter because “he had Dr. Phil shoes on.”.  He scared her and she had no idea why.  I held our youngest on my hip as we kind of just hung out/ hid in the background, listening to the conversation.  As a family, we were never asked if it would be okay, I was never asked if I thought I could or wanted to handle the duties of single parenting while my husband went off to do whatever he had to do.  The kids or I weren’t consulted at all if we thought it was a good idea, or if we agreed to it.
He signed as the recruiter came to find me and said, “Don’t worry, he’ll never see sand.  At least not for 2 years.”

I had a range of emotions those days.  I was scared and unsure.  We were by then already in war with Iraq and I didn’t know a single thing about the military or being a military wife.  It was a foreign entity to me, completely.  I didn’t grow up in the military, I had no desire to be in the military myself, and I thought my husband didn’t either.  

To be honest, I was a little pissed off.  Our lives were happily, I thought, on the path we were steering down together.  And I thought he liked the drive.  But now he just jacked the wheel from my hands and completely and totally derailed our trip, our plans, our life, with absolutely no regard to us, as a family.

I was proud.  Or I wanted to be.  Immediately after his enlistment, I remember wanting to be proud but not knowing how to be proud.  It was all just so new to me.  It felt like I myself was dropped off in a foreign land with my babies and had to learn how to speak the language, how to survive.  My family unit depended on it.

If I can be self appreciatve for a minute, I’d explain to you that I know full well the beauty of me is I can pull myself up by my bootstraps, mentally and emotionally, better than most.  So a few days into my husband’s enlistment, I knew this was indeed happening, and I better dive in and get used to it and make the best out of it.  And with that, I found myself surprisingly proud to be thrust into a military life, like it or not.

Those first days away my husband had, the whole reserve training “one weekend a month, 2 weeks a year” are now comical to me in hindsight.  His first weekend away, my God, I cried like a baby.  2 days.  2 frickin days!!  I could barely handle it.  He trained less than 150 miles away from our home.  The kids and I holed up in the house and I just could feel myself shrivel up inside myself, as if I was a cartoonish starving figure; cheeks and soul shrinking to a skeletal resemblence.  When he returned home that first Sunday evening, the kids ran to him out on the sidewalk, I ran to him; he was home!  I didn’t think I could handle it, but I bit my lip and raised my chin and dealt.  It was what I did now.

Time passed.  Training weekends passed.  His ‘2 weeks’ came and went.  Twice.

2 years had gone by, actually not quite; one year and 11 months passed, and he got a phone call to prepare and pack his bags.  He’d be deployed to Iraq within the month, leaving right after New Year’s.

Now, I had feelings I knew how to name.  I was pissed at that fucking recruiter.  He promised me 2 years of untouchableness.  He lied.  Not to say I wasn’t surprised.  I wasn’t at all.  I knew my husband would be deployed.  I wanted to be proved wrong though.
When I saw Mr. Recruiter Man at the ‘Family Farewell”  day at base, I had all I could do not to lash out.  As luck would have it, I didn’t have to.  He walked in the door and families surrounded him like it was a midnight lynching.  I obviously wasn’t the only one he made a ‘promise’ to.  I focused on sitting next to my husband.

I was terrified and still SO unsure.  I questioned the tangeable things that pertained to our daily lives.  How would I hear from him, if at all?  What if I need to reach him?  How long would he be gone?  How would the bills get paid?  Upon enlistment, I questioned, “how am I going to do this?”.  Now, upon deployment, I didn’t dare question anything of the like.  I didn’t have the energy or the mental strength to do so because if the answers were anything other than a story book answer, I didn’t think I’d survive that realization.

He deployed and off he went.  To encapsulate our feelings, how our daughters cried thousands of misunderstanding tears over the nights, to explain our days....it’s impossible.  I trudged on, day by day, finding recognizeable normalcy in routines, and because I did, my children did as well.  It didn’t take long before his family turned on us.  They never wrote to him.  They judged me.  They stuck noses in where they did not belong, and they offered help only with shady strings attached.  I had a moment of utter exhaustion with them, crying to the point of vomiting over the entire ‘why meeeee?’ feeling.  My kids saw that.  They heard his sister call me bad names and they couldn’t know why.  And then?  After that day?  I stopped.

I stopped talking to them, stopped wishing I had them to depend on, and started depending on my family only.  When he finally called and had time to talk, the flood gates opened and I was able to share my difficulties and concerns finally with the man I married.  “Don’t worry ‘bout it.” 

That was it.  No overly concerned reaction, not one I would’ve like anyway.  No questions.  So, I chalked it up to not me overreacting, but him having bigger things to concentrate on.  He was the one who was deployed afterall.  I had no way of knowing his inner most fears and daily life.  I asked, but he stopped sharing.  So I started to slowly depend on no one, but me.  Oh hello, there you are, bootstraps.  I left anyone who wasn’t in my life as a support in the dust and forged on.  Talk about military life.  I had it all along.  I just wasn’t enlisted in it.

Nearly a year had gone by before he came home.  In that time, my mother, who I had a perfect relationship with, died in front of my eyes.  I developed a small addiction to Ambian.  I gained 40 lbs and kicked the pills to the curb.  Not only did I write several letters a week to him, ever week, I also learned the names of those in his unit and wrote to them.  I celebrated my 10th wedding anniversary alone.  I celebrated my birthday alone.  I threw myself into volunteering and made sure I was there when the kids needed a hug or a laugh.  I didn’t need, nor want anyone else responsible for any of it; it would be me who made sure they had it.  I threw birthday parties and summer parties and paid bills and watched the kids grow almost a foot each.

The high of a soldier returning home is uncomparable to another feeling that I know of.  Leading up to the final day of welcoming home, my life was abuzz.  Cleaning the house more than usual, planning for family downtime, prepping the kids....and fielding calls.  I hated the calls more than anything.  Friends and family calling to express how excited they were for us, I loved.  The calls from his family, some 10 months later, NOW offering to be there for us, I had absolutely no time for.  I refused any help they offered by this point, and trust me, it wasn’t often they offered anyway.  

The worst calls I took were ones from well meaning (?) Ombudsmen within his unit, the specific man or one of his office helpers who were there ‘to help me’.  This was the first time I had heard from them.  Ever.  They never reached out.  They never called before.  They never gave any kind of information they promised.  They did call days before he returned home to tell me, and I swear on this, not to upset him so he wouldn’t kill me.

“Don’t do anything, like, mow the lawn....let him be the man.  You’ve handled everything this past year, now don’t.  And hopefully he won’t, like, jump out and stab you in a flashback.”

Swear.  To.  God.

After the 4th or 5th call like this over the course of a few days, I stopped answering the phone.  I told them to stop calling me.  I was gaining fondness for my bootstraps by this time I guess you could say.

Things seemed normal when he came home.  He had seen death and carnage.  He had lost friends.  He was on some disabilty.  Slowly, a new personality did start to emerge.  He began to relish his time away from his family and really enjoyed his time with the military.  For me tho, that was still something to be proud of.  I thought things had transitioned well.

You can rationalize anything, when you want to.

Word came about a second deployment.  I had no doubt we could handle this one.  We’d be fine.  Nothing new.  I felt I was now, fully, a military wife, and I was perfectly okay with that.  Again, leaving around the next holiday season, the kids a little bit older, we sent him off amid the same prayers and hoped everything would return to normal when he came home. 

There was a significant change in our personalities; personally mine was one of renewed faith in myself, a “I can do it all” attitude, and I don’t think either one of us anticipated the full effect that tide would create within our relationship.  It was going to be simply not a year of riding the waves with this deployment, I knew I could steer the ship.  The more I swung out of being that woman who cried over the first weekend of training, to the woman who much more easily forged on, the more he tugged back trying to regain control.  I think he missed the woman crying, the woman huddled inside, the woman waiting for him to come back.  He was being taught day in and day out how to succumb to the military lifestyle, I was flat out told we did not come first anymore.  I was proud, yes, but my problem was, when I started to not be okay with that part of it.  If I was expected to compartmentalize for the sake of our lives, why wasn't he?

Mid deployment, this time to several countries as a humanatarian mission, the shift within our marriage became  a thing of continental drift porportion.  I didn’t need nor taking sleeping pills, because I slept well.  I taught the kids about their own tiny glittery boot straps.  He was in considerable less danger on this deployment.  I had to weather the storm of missing my husband, as a school or some bungalows were built up in Haiti with the corner stones of my marriage.  I still had ups and downs.  But they were lesser.  Or I made the mistake of believing they were of lesser importance.

People who know me, people who followed our demise with tubs of extra buttered popcorn like it was the billion dollar blockbuster of the week, know our story.  They know my side.  They know my opinion of what went down (and I say opinion only because if you were to ask him, he’d surely tell you something different.  At least, he used to.)  The cheating that came, the abuse, the secret nature that our relationship turned into....it’s not even blog worthy, more like novel worthy.  I could literally fill a book.  

Funny how you rationalize.  Maybe it’s a woman thing.  Maybe it’s a mother thing, or a wife thing.  I think it’s a human thing.  I rationalized everything for awhile.  He had been through so much after all.  We both had.  Divorce never crossed my mind.  Until, one day, it did.

I felt our marriage was beyond fixing, something truly against my Catholic upbrining and beliefs, against my faith!, deal breakers came in the form of many lies and much mud slung.  I could rationalize the intense feelings of mistrust that cropped up.  I could, for a while at least, rationalize the lashing out at the ones we’re closest to in form of name calling and accusations, no matter how off the wall they seemed to be at the moment.  I rationalized living in a parallel universe, but I was certain it would come to pass.

It became difficult to accept reason for no apologies however.  How does one say something terrible, knowing it’s terrible, to someone they love, and then NOT apologize?!  Even, eventually?  Not just no apologies for harm and pain intentionally caused, but the entire attitude of, ‘this is how we are going to be from now on....deal, because I’m a soldier.’

Um.  Hell no.  I all of a sudden had bootstraps pulling me almost against my will, along a path I never imagined.  By the time I found out computers were hacked and people planted in my life to ‘watch’ me, to report on me, or when I found the military-esque files filled out in detail with copies of letters I’d written, phone calls I’d had, places I went tracked, and discovered my cell phone was bugged to duplicate everything it did, well, what can I say? 

I felt I knew exactly who the enemy was.

For a while after my divorce I felt, at best, jaded.  It makes me nervous to admit that.  Since 9/11, the heroic, and well deserved spin that has been placed upon the shoulders of soldiers across the country has become the most acceptable lemming reaction.  Having the slightest doubt in my heart about that, scares me to admit.  Can you imagine the backlash?  No one admits they’d want to roll their eyes when they heard the National Anthem.  I didn’t feel quilty when I took the flag down from the side of my house, as I was moving out.  I went from being a known military supporter in my community, writing letters, sending care packages and participating in local parades, to being a woman who felt so scorned by what the military did to my husband, my life, my children, to me.  I just stayed quiet, off to the sidelines because I didn’t have a whole lot of anything nice to say anymore. 

If I had been proud of his service, I now found myself questioning why, as a spouse, my service to this country wasn’t recognized as a casuality itself.  This threw me into unfamiliar territory.  I’m not one with a “me,me,me” attiitude.  My mentality drifted into historical figures of women-folk waiting on the homefront, not valued, not recognized, and God dang!  That irked the shit out of me.  A family member here or there not appreciating me was one thing, and I wasn’t out brow beating people looking for appreciation.  But I’d be damned if I was going to be made to feel scorned as an a unsupportive wife of my military man.

This took me a few good years to come to terms with.  There wasn’t really a lightbulb moment that I can recall where it all clicked back to the warm and fuzzy feelings.  9/11 has been a hard day for me, for different reasons than most, I’d say.  Far, far away from tall buildings, or hijacked planes, I still felt because of it, I’d lost my husband.  I stopped attending local memorial services, but rather watched the national ones from my television, if at all.  I’d see the duplicated Facebook pictures and videos over and over posted from friends.  I’d hear my priest pray for the safety and protection of soldiers.  And I guess, secretly through it all, I’d grieve even longer over loss, so many degrees of loss.

This year was the first year in awhile I’ve been comfortable enough to feel the depth of gratitude in my heart for what service members provide for me.  The pendulum swings, and I’ve learned to rationalize, again.  I thought I was rationalizing that the actions of one couple in history, even when it’s me, has nothing to do with the big picture. 

And then I realized, it’s just the opposite.  That makes my gratitude run deeper yet.

I again, am able to sing along with the Anthem, mentally salute and thank a vet, and more importantly, mean it.

Boy Crazy

I have two children.
Two daughters.
One teen, 14, one almost-ish preteen, 10.

Both boy crazy.  Both headstrong in their own convictions.  

One, I’m trying to teach not to be so apologetic in life.  The other I find myself telling her it wouldn’t kill her to apologize more often.

Both make me proud.  Both make me laugh.  Both are a blessing.

That being said...

Holy teenage crab-ass hormones, Batman.  I hang on for the ride and when her aloofness flares, I bow out.  She comes around, feeling bad and I feel like I won one battle in the war of The Wonder Years.

The Bi Polarism of teenage angst is not a concept lost on me.  I could’ve been it’s poster child, if I would’ve come out of my room long enough to get my picture taken for the poster that is.  My bedroom is where I lived, wrote poetry, did homework, ate, listened to music, stretched the curly cord of my purple phone across my water bed to talk to girls or boys or to girls about boys.  

So I get it.  I really do.  I get it!

Now that the tables are turned, and I’m the mother; yeah.....Not so getable anymore.

Recently was high school freshman orientation.  An assembly to meet and greet for 20 minutes and then get assigned lockers (and their ‘combos’ as we called them back in the day but now when I say it, the child looks at me and snarls.  Obviously, I am not cool).  Class schedules, and kids with their parents were off, for the next 2 hours to have a mini day, complete with bells ringing, meet the teachers, a mock lunch.

First of all, I could feel the short breaths of hyperventilation on the cusp of our night when I watched my soon to be high schooler open her locker.  Of course, she did it with ease and on the first try her locker just *popped* open.  There she stood looking as bored and empty as the locker itself.  Her mission was accomplished, and I wanted to already start the “when I was your age” speech and let her know how many days I dreaded locker opening.  Seriously.  I never had a working locker in all 4 years of high school.  The few days when it seemed to open with only slight kicks and jiggles, I never remembered my combination.  The secretaries in the office knew me well and it had nothing to do with tardiness.

I have to say, the 4 minutes between classes they give the kids to rush from class to class.....hahahaha!  I’m not even going to TRY to hide the fact that I am so damn glad I’m not in high school anymore.  Good luck! God Speed!  And if he doesn’t, you better, because you’re down to 1:45 and you gotta get way the hell over on the other side of the complex.  My biggest fear was being tardy for a class back then, and now, as an adult, I’d like to think I would’ve staged a coup for the unjust time expectations placed upon the youth of ‘Merica.  My daughter tho?  Her and her long legs went through the halls and left me trailing behind (IT’S 1990 ALL OVER AGAIN!) as she loped her way to each class, not breaking a sweat.

In high school, about her age, was when I met her father.  The thought bubble of her meeting, and possibly marrying, a sweetheart from these exact upcoming days, are not foreign to me.  That’s terrifying to think about!  Her father and I had, what I felt, was very good dating years.  We had good college years.  We had good starting years as a husband and wife.  Bought a house young.  Had kids.  It was all okay at first.  It was the nearly 20+ year mark that we tripped and faltered.  Through counseling and resolutions, it was the military aftermath of deployments that finally did us in.  I am blaming no one but ourselves, but it does make me think back to the smiley freshman I once was.  

How life changed for that girl.  It makes me wonder what is in store for my beautiful child.

Will she meet her husband here?  Will it be a boy I’ve known all my life living here in Small Town USA, or will it be some one who whizzes new into town someday?  Will he be her age or will she set her eyes on an older boy with a car? (Dear God, please don’t let him drive a rusted blue pick up truck he nicknames The Heavy Chevy.)

Maybe she won’t meet him here at all.  Maybe, instead, she’ll dawdle here and there in the dating scene and flourish in college, liking being a smaller fish in a bigger pond.  I’ve told her she can’t get married until she is 35 anyway, so we all know where the boundary lines are.

I think back to those days in high school, when I was so in love, a few times, with boys.  There was the older man who I ‘dated’ (I use that term loosely because our relationship boiled down to some slurping and him buying me beer once.)  God, I hope she doesn’t run with that kind of crowd.  I was pure lucky my 14 year old self wasn’t taking it further with that man, who was at least a decade older than me.  There’s a reason that shit’s illegal.  I pray for her safety in those situations, that she is smarter than I ever pretended to be.

There was a boyfriend I had for 3 months (in freshman terms; eternity) that I thought I was in love with, even though I knew he was gay.  I think he’s gay anyway.  I still do.  But, he’s happily married with kids now, and I long ago gave up knowing or caring what goes on behind his closed doors, so I’m left with nothing but memories of a young relationship that at the time I simply over romanticized.  I remember him fessing up to practicing before he kissed me, assaulting his own forearm.  That was my first real kiss; maybe that’s why I thought I was falling.  Young teenage wonder!  Open hearts and open minds!  I know that my daughter will be naive.  I pray that she navigates her naivety better than I.  I pray that if finds herself at an underage party stuck in the middle of a fight with two drunk boys, one hetro, one possibly homosexual, fighting for her attention, she’ll listen to her heart and leave them both there and come home.

I remember the Foreign Exchange student.  Ahhhhh, yes!  The memory really can’t be ignored, folks.  He was the taker of my young innocence.  Neither one of us knew what we were doing that night in the small spare bedroom of his host family.  He spoke fluent English, but he didn’t talk much.  I imagine he was just as nervous and scared as I was.  We went solely on how we thought grown ups acted.  In the dark.  Silent.  Careful not to wake anyone else.  Our friendship lasted well into the final days of summer that year, until he moved back home, far far away.  Eventually there was nothing more to say in the pretense of keeping a friendship open; it was nothing more than the first hookup I was to have.  Nothing more, nothing less. 
I know my child will probably be faced with these moments in the upcoming 4 years, whether or not it actually happens for her, and whether or not I ever find out about it, will be her decision alone.  Maybe as she ages, I find myself letting go a little.  I am secure in my role as parent that I have done, and continue to do, everything I can to inform her of safety and smarts.  I can now only pray she’s been listening, and that God protects her.

I think of the boy who I knew I was in love with.  I spent days driving through his neighborhood, hoping to see him.  He was the first one I imagined life with.  I wondered about it, wrote my first name with his last name in doodles across my journals.  He was my secret.  He was my heavy heart love.  He was the first face who truly caught my eye and made me do a double take.  He stopped my time.  I also knew he was bad news for me.  I knew we had little in common, coming from completely different walks of life. It didn’t matter; I knew I was lost in love.

And then he died.  

Killed in a stupid accident one busy holiday weekend.  Because no one really knew my feelings, I couldn’t, and didn’t, react to his passing.  I simply didn’t.
I pray my daughter never knows that kind of hurt.  But I know she will.  Eventually.

I met her father about this time in my young life.  We were truly friends for some time, group movie outings, bonfires on the weekends with friends, midnight swims at local lakes, we dated around our circle and eventually ending up with each other.  My parents were leery, but grew to respect him.  My mother herself passed before things turned sour for he and I, so I wonder what she would’ve thought about the last breaths into our marriage; the fights, the lawyers and courtroom battles.  It’s almost more sad to me to recall the late nights of two decades worth of family card games with so many laughs, summer bbq’s,  the joys of the births of our daughters, the everyday life we always seemed to celebrate with each other than it is to more recently recall the shittiness of it all going south.

It is bittersweet to think of these memories with the boy who became my husband, making me what I thought happy was.  Into my second marriage now, older and I hope smarter, I dare say I know better what it is to be happy.  I am never disrespected or chastised in public (or private) for my being myself in this relationship.  There are no longer accusations slung across the room out of despair in an attempt to hold onto something that never was his to hold down.  Of course, as that first wife, I belonged to him in some sense of the term but when he began to treat me as I was worth nothing more than his possession, something he was obligated to control, was when I left him.  He could live in denial all he wanted, but I’d be damned if I were to reside there with him.  That boy from my high school years was a man I ended up marrying, true, but in the end, he was nothing resembling a man at all when he refused to support the children he gave me.  

Bittersweet to be sure.  

And truly humbling.

I want my child protected.  I want my daughters, both of them, to be prepared and sheltered from pain, heartbreak, loss.  I know this is not feasible, so I pray our daughter goes into this next phase of growing up being disrespected just enough to fire her up and make her realize she was meant to be no one’s obligation.  Ever. 

I know from experience, out of all the memories and stories, out of all the lessons learned, that is the one that sticks the strongest to our shell as a woman.