Love at 16

It must be some sort of crazy coincidence that I never feel the urge to blog until I have a ton of homework to do.

I have clearly had the whole summer, even days where all the kids were gone and I was totally alone but did I blog? Ok maybe a little but this morning with Abnormal Psychology homework looming, I thought, hmm, I should blog.

I hated high school.
And everything about it, from the teachers to the cliques to the drama, the only thing I could say about high school is that I was soooo glad it was over and never looked back.

I got married 6 months after high school and while everyone was off going to college, drinking, partying, Hubby and I were in our first apartment living the newlywed life and loving every minute of it.

We found out we were pregnant in July 1986 as most of our friends were heading back to college for their sophomore year.

We were in such a different place(physically and mentally, we lived in Boston) than most people our age that we didnt really keep in touch with anyone from high school.We just had nothing in common. No one could understand why we wanted to be together instead of out running around playing the field.

Many many people criticized our choice and made sure we knew it was never going to last. They said we were young, didnt know what we wanted and when real life dealt us some blows we would see it would all fall to crap.

But instead we have built one of the most beautiful, pure, love relationships that I have ever seen even in the movies. We knew then that we loved each other and despite the failures of relationships like ours all around us we survived, not just survived, flourished.

Life has dealt us more than our share of blows. Things that could and normally would paralyze any couple until they just broke apart without any possibility of fixing it. but I have a theory and of course I know you are dying to hear my words of wisdom.

When you are 16, the age I was when I realized how much I loved Hubby and wanted to spend my life with him, people will say it isnt real and things change and you have to grow up first and I have to disagree based soley on my own exprerience but still...

When you are 16, life is just beginning. There is a whole possiblity of a future in whatever way you want it to go. You picture yourself either in a career, oh i want to be a doctor or finding the love of your life or whatever. The possiblities are endless and because of that you are free to pursue every feeling as it is, pure. You love, you hate, you get angry, you get sad, you laugh yourself into hysteria, they are real feelings.

Later as you get older you start hiding those things. Some emotions are socially unacceptable so you dont cry out or laugh too hard. You tear up or you stifle a laugh but you have already begun to hide yourself from the world therefore shielding yourself from the possibility of true, deep love.

When 16 year olds say I love you to each other as Hubby and I did when we were that age, we meant it with all of our hearts, we meant you make me feel so good about myself and I want that to continue. When we were 19 and found out I was pregnant and said I love you it was different but it meant we are a family now, we are growing our love. At 27 when Hubby had cancer and didnt know if he would survive and we said I love you, we meant I have loved you for a long time and I want to love you some more,please dont leave me.

And after all the years of I love you's, the rest of our beautiful childrens births and proud moments, our anniversaries, our illnesses, our pain and suffering through trauma after trauma, of course it means something different now. How could it not? After all the things we have experienced together, we know each other better than anyone else.

At 16 I couldnt have known that he would get me lobster at 2am if I needed it. I couldnt have forseen the look in his eyes when each daughter was born. I couldnt predict the pain we have gone through in the loss of some extremely special people in our lives. All I knew is that he made me feel special and I loved him for that.

I still believe that it doesnt matter how old you are when you find the true love of your life and they love you back you should go for it.

Hubby and I went to his 25th high school reunion a few weeks ago although it caused me to have an unbelievable panic attack right before we went in. Hubby was so excited to go, because unlike me, he loved high school and was anxious to see everyone after 25 years. I made some last minute pleas in the parking lot and he said we didnt have to go if I really didnt want to.

I knew how much he wanted to go though so I begrudgingly walked into what I thought would be a night of total hell. "who are you?" "No i dont remember you from high school" Brings me right back to senior year when hubby left for the navy and i had no friends.

Anyway...we actually had a great time and saw some people that were interesting and fun.

So it was with a little bit of anxiety that yesterday I agreed to meet the Girls of 84 for lunch. Of course you know I am way younger than them, I graduated in 85, but all my friends and various boyfriends were from the class of 84.

There were about 13 of us, all from different groups and cliques. And we had a blast. Some of the people I didnt know too well in high school I was happy to talk to and get to know a little better. It was fun and funny and it was just what I needed to see that although I thought everyone was having a great time in high school that wasnt always the case.

Each of us has gone through something, be it death, sickness or divorce. High school wasnt the party everyone says its supposed to be for a lot of people.

As time goes on and you hear the stories you wonder why you didnt know back then that other people felt the same way as you, why you thought you were the only one.
High school is a moment in time. When you are 16 unfortunately it is your biggest moment in time and therefore you have no reason to believe that things will change.

But let me tell you, they will. Life will continue to change and you will make a decision to change with it or remain stagnant.

Hubby and I changed together, with each others support, with love and caring, we wanted that and we made it work.

Any idiot can sit and chair and talk about change and possibilities but unless you are working on that each and every day you are going to find yourself stuck in a moment, that you cant get out of.(ok so i stole that line from Bono, but it worked here)

You can be that person that goes to their high school reunion with the flock of seagulls haircut and the jordache jeans talking about the last football game of the 83-84 season or you can be you but a little more developed, a little more interesting and with a lot more I love you's under your belt.

Its your choice, make it however you want and run with it.

Shitting in a hole

As you can guess from this title, I am having cesspool problems again.

Like all other things that constantly fail in my life I have given up the expectation that they will work.

Sooo... I was not surprised yesterday when I heard a weird sound coming from the sink.

It was kind of a groaning, whining, clanging sound.

Apparently it was the sound of sewage backing up into my downstairs bathroom.

Who knew? I guess I am not a cesspool expert.

What I do know is that the genius who keeps coming here to fix it has a different idea everytime, but last night at 8pm when he was stepping in toilet paper and poop from what looked like 2 days he came up with a doozy.

"The cesspool is like a concrete coffin. It has different chambers that fill up with waste but the concrete dividers stop the solid waste from moving from chamber to chamber. The water moves back and forth but the solids they would need to be pumped out because... lalala blah blah blah...give us money and we will screw you again. 750 dollars wasnt enough."

So hubby, who always blindly believes the cesspool people because he is not a cesspool person and he does not play one on tv, tried to explain to me why this makes sense.

"The cesspool is a solid block of concrete because its old, the new ones have holes in them so waste can seep out, blah blah blah lalala."

So my question is this...
How barbaric is this ritual we have?
We bury a concrete coffin into our front yard... and we shit in it.
For real.

I can turn on my computer today and talk live to someone in China. I can get medical information from someone in Australia. We can reattach hands and feet, cure people with cancer, transfer millions of dollars instantly from a bank in Switzerland to a bank in Mt. Sinai, engineer bigger lobsters, juicier apples, genetic engineer little perfect babies with blue eyes, give birth to healthy octuplets, and buy retro toys from the 70's on ebay like Mrs. Beasley and the careers game.

Yet we cannot invent anything more advanced than a cesspool so we shit in a hole.

Yeah, we open a porcelain hole and we shit in it and flush it out to our front lawn.

Or in my case, we try to flush it out to the front lawn but it comes back into the house. Into the downstairs toilet, with everything we washed down the drain from dinner and anything from the dishwasher.

Is there no super powered technologically advanced way of getting rid of Waste?
Why have we settled for this?

I heard some rumors about sewers in the city that transport waste in a better way.. but what because we live in the suburbs free of cockroaches and noise at 7am we cant get this so called "better waste system"

I have insomnia and if you have ever seen Fight Club, insomnia can make you do some pretty weird things.

I have been reading old blogs and i found out a few things.

I was way funnier last year before cesspools and sick husbands and kids with pain in their knees and their hearts made me very unfunny.

I have already forgotten lots of what I wrote down already and I need to double time it with all my stories before the mad cow takes over.

and the brain shrinkage.

Insomnia, Fight Club, its all making sense.
Delusions.
Delusions of grandeur.

Delusions that cesspools will work, knees will heal, cockroaches will die under Little Women and women will raise good boys that dont break hearts to be selfish.

Or should I just build an outhouse?

Letting Go...and Letting In.

I am not sure when I started noticing the chapters of my life going so quickly.

So many years went by when time seemed to stand still and now so much of it is gone.

My four girls are 8 years apart. So the first 10 years of my marriage we were getting pregnant, giving birth, breast feeding, and in a whirlwind of diapers, doctors visits, and potty training. We dealt with cancer and debt and it was life and we lived it.

When I was married for 10 years my girls were 8,7,2 and 10 months old.

The next 5 years were filled with lots of laundry and food shopping and girl scouts and school functions and it was so busy all the time, I barely had time to stop and breathe, must less shower or think of the future.

I went back to work when D4 was 5 and I worked and cared for a family of 6 without ever thinking anything of it. Life was moving along and it seemed like our world of chaos and giggling and fun would go on forever.

The point is that I never thought that time would end. There were moments when I would have killed, literally killed for a hot bath and a manicure. And now when I have the time for a man/pedi, I want someone to go with me.

I am desperately holding on to the time I have left because after all these years, the time is coming to an end.

In the book Insomnia by Stephen King, there is a death timer that the guy can hear that clicks away, ticking off the last moments of life. That is how I feel now.

Each moment, each event is one day closer to the day when I will have to let go of them all and let them go their own way.

I had a very hard time leaving D1 at college and then the next year I had a really hard time leaving D2 at college.

But we got used to it. We went from a large table of 6 to a small table of 4.

We went from laundry piling up all over the place to a few loads a week. We ate less, spent less at the Outback and enjoyed our new life as a small family.

And things were good for awhile.

The older girls came home now and then. We refinished the bedrooms and made one room a "guest room" where they could stay when they are "visiting". D1 came home last summer for awhile and for awhile this summer while she searched for a job after college.

And today... we moved her into a new apartment.

And she is gone. Gone from a long chapter in our life, on to the beginning of her new life. With so much hope and so much promise. Life for her begins today. She has set out on a journey of Newness.(not a word right? whatever.)

A new world. A new day. No day but today.

And although we will miss her in our own part of the world, I am pleasantly settled in my feelings of her starting her life. I am confident in her ability to adjust and settle in and I am grateful that she has found the most awesome roommate/friend/apartment finder in the world and that they will be sharing this experience together.

Letting go is hard. I helped her move in, we cleaned and shopped and hauled 22 years of stuff up 3 flights of stairs. And then it was time to go. I could have stayed forever.

I wanted to clean more so everything would be spotless, to cook something so they wouldnt starve and to lecture for hours on the dangers of two young girls loose in the city.

But it was time for me to go.

Figuritively and Literally.

Time to go, to let go.

And next year when D2 begins her new life I will let go again. And when D3 leaves for college in one year, more letting go.

And then in just 8 years I will be letting go for the last time. Letting go of my last daughter, letting go of motherhood and all the things that go with it.

I have spent quite some time complaining about my life. Complaining about my kids, my husband, my house, my homework, never my job, i love that.

But I loved it all. Every minute of this crazy ride.

There were many times I didnt think I could make it through and there are rare times when I didnt even want to.

Letting go is part of the ride. Part of the ride I always dreaded. Part of the ride I thought would never come.

But it is here.

And as my time as a mother is starting to end. letting go of one life I loved, trading it for the possibility of another life.

I cant imagine loving anything more than being a mother but until I became a mother I could never imagine life with my children.

The possibility of a new life is one I have to let in. The future is as uncertain to me today as it is to D1 on her first night in her new apartment.

But we are strong determined women and we will make it.

Life has changed and I have to change with it.

I am letting go today and letting in.

But I'm gonna miss this.

Reality TV

How about this for a new reality series?

A woman is driven to the brink of insanity by little things that go wrong for weeks like computers and tvs breaking and cesspools backing up and family issues and teenage worries and then just when you think she is going to explode her daughter needs knee surgery.

Once the surgery is over and the operation is successful the family is quietly sitting at dinner when the husband has a heart attack??

Too much right?

When you watched it you'd be like "Oh my god this would never happen in real life"
"This is ridiculous do they expect us to believe that someone could endure all this crap and then just leisurely eat brownies and play scrabble with her children"
"Please give us something more realistic like pretty little unicorns fly over a city and use their horns to cure cancer, not that is something i might believe"

SOOO....I wish I could say that this was a fantasy, but unfortunately NO, this stuff really happens(happened)in my life all the time.

Sometimes its comical, like when we looked up Hubbys symptoms and learned that it is entirely possible to scare someone to death.(Ok D3, no more jumping out and scaring daddy as he comes out of the bathroom)

And when we looked at the dinner table while they were taking hubby out in a stretcher and the ambulance crew said "Do you eat like this regularly?" Just because there was 5 lbs of buttery creamy mashed potatoes and 4 lbs of mooing steak and corn drenched in butter sauce.

My friend said I should have said, "No the rest of the people are on their way now"

Granted for years I have been laughing about sticks of butter in my food, cream in every cup of coffee I drink and my famous 3000 calorie pasta primavera, sorry Maria, cant make that again when you visit.

My family reacted to this latest Dooley:For Real episode in true dooley family fashion...we whipped into action, calling 911, D1 catching hubby as he collapsed and attempted to fall off the chair and giving me vital sign updates while i was on the phone with 911, no hes not breathing,calling his name and ignoring him when he insisted that she get his shoes so he could go outside, what are you Clover? that is what we do when she has a seizure, go outside little doggie... lalala taking care of business.

But then, when the ambulance crew gets there, that is when the comedy routine begins, "Nice try dad, trying to get out of doing the dishes" "oh the sticks of butter finally did you in" And Hubby when they take his blood pressure "Ha its only 118/70" Well congratulations on having a heart attack and winning the lowest blood pressure award.

By far though the funniest moment had to be when D1 was describing how Hubby wasnt breathing to the cop and ambulance crew and D3 goes yeah he sounded like this and snorts.

It is our way. We dont know how to do this any other way. We cannot make it without our laughter. We have been through tragedy unmatched to other families yet as time goes on our humor gets more perfected, funnier, more inappropriate, "Holy crap, imagine dad beat synovial sarcoma which has a .17 survival rate just to get some other rare heart disease, isnt that funny?"

Maybe the word isnt funny...I dont think any of this is funny... I just know that if I am laughing, I am not crying, and as long as I am not crying I can do anything, and I can do it effeciently and well. As long as I am laughing, I can listen to doctors and get information and make decisions, when the laughter fades, so does my world, I cant do it without laughter.

I told the kids to tone it down in front of the ambulance crew, because apparently they take everything so seriously, they didnt find our brand of humor particularly amusing..

And even when I got to the hospital and I asked if this could have been caused by living with 5 women, they looked at me strange like "Are you making a JOKE about this?"

Umm yeah and I find myself highly amusing.

Well i am glad someone does...

Laughing, crying its all the same thing, tears from your eyes or spit from your mouth...I prefer laughing, it doesnt smear my blue mascara.

Destructive Habits

In real life, every day you might come to a new conclusion about yourself and about the reasoning behind your behavior, and you can tell yourself that this knowledge will make all the difference. But in all likelihood, you’re going to keep doing the same old things. You’ll still be the same person. You’ll still cling to your destructive, debilitating habits because your emotional tie to them is so strong—so much stronger than any dime-store insight you might come up with—that the stupid things you do are really the only things you’ve got that keep you centered and connected.
— Elizabeth Wurtzel, Now, More, Again

Death

It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down, through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.

From Martian Child, one of my favorite movies

He probably thinks he’s going to float away because he’s very smart and he sees that he’s living in a world where things and people do disappear.
— Howard Hesseman, Martian Child