The Chicken and the Egg

Los Angeles, California

I had dinner this week with one of my fristers, known here as LOL. It was my first meal in sixteen days in company, so I looked forward to it fervently, though it was at the end of my work week and I was mightily tired.

During the course of the dinner we engaged in a discussion about which was more important in a family: the marriage or the children. My friend insisted that the marriage was secondary, having come from a family where this was clearly established. My family, on the other hand, was the exact opposite. My parents relationship was the foundation of the family, and I knew that from the beginning of family consciousness. As a child, and as an adolescent, I was always aware of, and at times childlishly peeved at, this fact. But as I grew to adulthood, and entered into my own marriage, the relationship that I had with this still-in-love couple that I had witnessed while growing up as a unified front, was gratifying. My parents still held hands, they still were interested in each other, but they continued to be interested in me -- and supported my husband and me, in the way that parents should, as we launched our marriage.

I came home from the dinner in a disturbed quandary, even wondering if my misconception could have been a causal effect in the failure of my own marriage. Perhaps this concept that marriage should be primary had been too hard, too inflexible, for my partner. I was completely unambivilent in my feeling about marriage when I entered into it. It wasn't just my parents; there was also Leonard and Edna. My uncle Leonard was my mother's brother, and the childfree marriage he and my Aunt Edna shared was, in every way, enviable. They were partners, friends, helpmates, travel companions -- everything that I wanted in marriage and looked for in a partner.

Over the days after our dinner I began to research this concept starting with the simple google: Which is more important, marriage or children? I fully expected it to come back supporting the children, but from Psychology Today to The British Journal of Medicine, with a myriad of articles in between, it was unequivocally stated that the marriage should be key. In fact, most articles cited research that children were actually healthier in families where it is understood that the marriage comes first. Further, children in those families are more successful in their own marriages and families. And the ever-increasing divorce rate was surmised to be a result of this shift away from what is taught and supported, as found in the book of Genesis and throughout the old testament, by most major religions and civilizations.

But I came from a family like that, and my marriage had failed. I didn't have to look beyond my husband's family to realize the obvious: he had not come from a family like that. In fact, in his large family neither the marriage nor the children came first. It was more or less everyone fending for themselves. And clearly, this was not a recipe for raising children who would become healthy adults.

Several of the articles touched on the shift in childrearing after the baby boomer generation became parents. And a shift it was. In recent decades everything has become child-oriented, and family life is centered around their activities. While my sister and I were involved in both school and extra-curricular activities: Girl Scouts; Job's Daughters; figure skating and piano lessons and Ponytail League Softball; when my father took summer vacation time away from his job as an aerospace engineer, my mother packed us into the back seat or onto a flight and those activites were left behind while we traveled together as a family. My parents deserved a vacation, and they usually took us along. We explored Hopi burial grounds because my father was interested in cultural anthropology. We wandered around Civil War battlefields after Mom read A Stillness at Appomattox.

During the rest of the year, we were dropped at my grandparents' home every Friday night while my parents went out to dinner. And they got away for a weekend on their own at least two or three times a year. Once my sister was in her late teens, they left us alone at home together. We felt quite independent, deciding what we wanted to eat for dinner, or choosing a restaurant where we would go out to eat. Sometimes we went to the theater or a movie, just the two of us. It was an important part of our growing separation and independence.

I wonder if during this shift, when children became all-important and parents drove around with their Student of the Month stickers, we didn't cultivate the portion of the population who pass on the shoulder of the freeway because they feel entitled not to creep along in traffic with the rest of us. After all, they're special! And, did this being the perpetual center of attention not lead to the current trend of loud talkers who seem to feel that we all want to hear everything they have to say -- whether during their cell phone conversations in line at the bank or sitting behind us at the movies or a sporting event? Yes, older people do this too, but it does suspiciously seem to be predominantly those of a certain generation. The examples go on and on. We were not raised to do these things. We were taught that children were to be seen, but not heard. As my dad, and probably Dr. Spock said: the tail doesn't wag the dog. Or to paraphrase Garrison Keillor, we were children and we weren't important, and weren't going to be important until we grew up and became adults. And, after all, that is the way our parents were raised; those who grew up to become what is purported to be the greatest generation, fighting pervasive evil in World War II.

So, in the days after that dinner, I came solidly back around to my way of thinking. I was lucky to have parents who modeled what today seems so difficult: a strong, united, and loving marriage which was primary in our family. And, I don't think I was wrong to want this. I just wasn't mature or wise enough to know that in order for any relationship to be important, you need to both feel the same about the value of that relationship.

My mom was not a great mother. She probably should not have had children. And most likely the success of my parents' marriage wasn't achieved through their fifty-fifty endeavor. But, I was fortunate to see my parents toast each other during the party at my home celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. I will never have that for myself. But I am so grateful that I was a part of their life and marriage, and that I grew to adulthood with a clear understanding of the gift and importance of it. They had it right. And now I'm sure of that. 

Time Flies...Whether You Are Having fun, or Not...

Los Angeles, California

It is said that loss and death, like plane crashes, often arrive in triplicate. And so it was for me in 2014. At the end of 2015, celebrating New Year's Eve with Joel, Connie, and Curt, I raised my champagne glass for a toast: I made it all the way through the year without anyone dying. Connie looked horrified. No, that's a good thing, I said. And it was. A whole year with no death. 

Another eight months passed and more changes. A goodbye to the business and support I had on Main Street. Goodbye Chilitos and Richard. Goodbye Cafe K and David at M Street. Hello house. Hello empty yet messy, filled-to-the-gills house. Getting organized. This project started virtually before the last one has ended. So little to do and so much time, as Willy Wonka stated, backwards. How does one strike that and reverse it, as Willy says afterwards? You got me.

While not tempted by self-help books (really doesn't that strike you as funny? If you could help yourself, why would you buy the book?), I seem to drift to memoirs lately and find some solace. Maybe this came as a result of the thought of writing my own. When that seems ponderable I think of structure. And, I think of the story. It's not pretty, so why do I want to tell it? And that, as Hamlet said, is the question.

So what about having fun? After all, time flies... as the title of this post declares. All of what was once fun for me has ground to a halt: salsa dancing; travel; cooking; even writing this blog (although I have written many posts over the past twenty-one months that I have not "published" here). People keep telling me I should go away; get away when the business closes escrow later this month. But I keep responding that I don't have the energy to think or plan a trip, much less pack for it. I want to sit for two weeks and stare into space. I want to spend time decompressing. Meanwhile, as my transition schedule at the business is not daily, I am catching up, cleaning up, playing the piano (yes, I know you didn't know this about me), and beginning a daily practice of meditation (again, + good luck with that). My official friend (we call each other that because we transitioned from dentist/patient after her retirement), Lynnette, has, with her vast generosity of spirit, invited me to join her and her family for two (TWO!) cruises. And I am very much thinking about one of them but it is not until next May. Lots of time to do what needs to be done before then.

So, loose ends to be tied. Or, fit to be tied? No matter which, time does fly. And whether you fly with it or let it blow on by; the days, the hours, the minutes are all we have to fill it and measure it by. My next post, already written, entitled Moving On addresses this in an entirely different way. So, stay tuned. I'll be back...

Moving On

Santa Monica, California

No one comes from nothing; we are haunted by our past every day. Months ago, while dancing with Joel at our local salsa dive/club I caught sight of a man out of the corner of my eye. He was wearing my husband's shirt. Surely, it was not his shirt; the shirt from Banana Republic he is wearing in a photo of us taken at a Christmas Eve dinner in Monterey, back almost four years ago. But I was still near stopped in my steps, as I had given that shirt away to a local charity thrift store just before seeing this man, this salsero, the one dancing away in my dead husband's shirt.

In the beginning it happened a lot. I would see him driving on the 405 freeway, or hear him around the house. But he is gone. Gone from my life after three and a half decades. And as days pass he is even more so. Still, I sit at his desk, at my business, with much of him around me; his handwriting on files and file boxes; his Cholula sauce still in the refrigerator; the reading glasses at the bottom of a desk drawer. And yet. And yet, he is gone.

Sandra passed away two and a half years ago, and my mom, just two. Eighteen months since he has been gone. I live alone. And I am different. "Funny," he had said to me. "You used to be afraid to be alone." And sometimes still. But I come home late, after meeting a friend, or dropping J off at his home in Agoura Hills. Mostly, I have remembered to leave lights on. I don't always remember to close the gate. But I do my best as days, months, and now more than a year has dropped off. And I am leaving the business. Retiring.

My therapist speaks to me about moving on. My pilates trainer and friend talks about being mindful and present. You can get stuck, so you try not to. You try to build new memories on top of the ones that will always be there. You try to wipe what was bad, or, at the very least, let it go. Drop. In the beginning it was navigating a moguled course. There wasn't a flat space to catch my breath nor look around. You're strong so many people repeated. I didn't feel strong. I don't feel strong. Joel tells me that I don't have to feel strong; that people tell me that because I get up every day and keep going. I run the business, I administrate my mom's trust, and I do my best to keep up a house that is too much of everything.

Moving on means making decisions, not just getting up every day and going, strong or weak. I will try to make decisions before the end of the year: to stop being sad; to be more thoughtful to the people who mean a lot to me, especially Joel; to try to get on the road. I will try to sleep, laugh, and dance more and more. I do understand that moving on means deciding to live, and trying to really live each day. I am ready to move on. Or, as I have been told to think, I choose to move on. Are readiness and choice different? Must they come conjoined in this process? Regardless, I fear both are wishful thinking at this point in time while there are still the dancing ghosts who are wearing his shirts...