Dorie Morgan’s Rising Up
Navigating Twenty-Something Suburban Life
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Archive of "family life" Category
I really thought someone would have shot me
Preemptive apology for the disjointed nature of this post.
Last Thursday my grandfather fell at his nursing home and broke his hip. On Friday, he had surgery to replace that hip. On Sunday, he woke up seemed very confused by me. Yesterday (Tuesday), he finally woke up and knew who people were.
It has been a rough couple of days to say the least.
Partially because we weren’t sure he was going to make it. Partially because we were afraid he would make it. And so we sat in hospital chairs, murmuring back and forth that everything was going to be okay.
I did a lot of writing since Thursday, but all of it was intensely personal. I thought about posting it but I realized that if I got one negative comment on what I wrote, I would be devastated. And if I can’t handle the criticism for what I write, I shouldn’t be sharing.
But yesterday, my grandfather woke up. And this time he knew who I was.
It is really hard to see him like this. Because this is so different from the way he lived his life. And when the person you respect most in the world looks at you and says “I really thought someone would have shot me before I got to this point”, it can break your heart.
After I fed my grandfather dinner last night and left the hospital, I started wondering about how you measure lifelong success. Or if you can even measure it at all. In the twilight of life, what are the markers of success that really matter?
My grandfather wrote a list of things to be included in his eulogy in 1985 when he retired from his career. I was three years old at the time. He ended it with a statement about spending his retirement with his granddaughter and living happily ever after. Twenty three years later: Did he really live happily ever after?
If we look at the 1985 list of accomplishments and then ask the question “was this life successful”, I think it is easy to come to the conclusion, that yes it was. But when we move forward over twenty years and ask the same question, reaching the same conclusion becomes complicated.
The last twenty years have been stagnant.
And maybe that’s what he really wanted.
But it seems at conflict with the first sixty-five years of life. And I have a hard time believing someone worked so hard for 65 years just to let it all go so quickly.
Maybe the apathy is a symptom of a larger problem that I am just not seeing.
I think this is so disconcerting to me is because I see a lot of my grandfather in me. And I fear living my twilight years in the same condition that he has lived his.
I would hope that I would keep growing and changing well into retirement. I would hope that I would continue to do one thing that terrifies me each day until I die.
So now I’m left with questions. How do I live my life? Do I need to change the way I live now in order to ensure my own happiness sixty years from now? Will the decisions I make today impact my ability to die with dignity?
Politics at Home: Just don’t say a word
About a week before the Pennsylvania Primaries, there was a message on the answering machine from my husband’s grandmother. I was excited to know she called – most of Brian’s family lives in Florida and as a result, we don’t get to hear from them very often.
But when we listened to the message, we deleted it. She called to tell us how important it is for us to vote for Barack Obama.
It isn’t that we weren’t interested in hearing from his family. It’s just that Brian and I don’t talk about politics at home.
Why? Three reasons:
- By and large, Brian’s family is made up of very liberal, Democrat types. None of them are quite so bad as my neighbor down the street who built a shrine to Hilary Clinton on his front yard (and still has part of it up, apparently he never got the phone call about Barack Obama) but at the end of the day, they are Democrats.
- My husband is not a registered voter. He never has been. He never will be. I told him I found men that were not registered to vote sexually unattractive but he didn’t care. He refuses to take part in what he identifies as a corrupt system. He also tells me that it is because he does not like the idea of being controlled and therefore does not like the idea of selecting who is going to control him.
- I am a registered Republican. I registered as soon as the paperwork arrived in the mail and I have stayed true to my beliefs despite living in a township that is 98% Democrat.
Clearly, we don’t agree on politics in my household. And for a while, this was a source of stress and arguments. So we decided no more politics. It was better for us that way. We were tired of arguing, I was tired of being ganged up on by Brian’s friends and family and everyone was tired of me threatening to stop feeding them for attacking my belief system. At one point, it felt like a verbal political gang bang and I did not like being on the receiving end of that train.
Eventually we realized it wasn’t politics that we had a problem with discussing. We talked about abortion, gay marriage, separation of church and state, tax policy, polygamy, etc. on a regular basis. The problem came when we put the names on those things. When we left the “Democrat” or “Republican” words away from the conversation, we were able to really discuss what was at the heart of the issue and leave our charged emotions at the door. We were able to have a rational discussion and truly learn about where the other person was coming from.
I’ve had my opinion changed on a few things as a result. Brian still has not registered to vote but I’m becoming increasingly okay with that. And I did tell him that if felt so inclined to register, I would not say a word if he registered as a Democrat.
Is blood thicker than water?
My mother gives me a lot of unsolicited advice when it comes to married life. I suppose it’s a natural and overwhelming urge for her to pass on these gems of wisdom. Nine times out of ten, I strongly disagree with what she believes to be true, which is making me wonder how I lived in the same house as this woman from birth until adulthood.
Lately, the advice has been relating to interacting with his family. Since I am an only child and an only grandchild (yes, I know I blogged about my cousin last week but she’s actually my step-cousin), I need all the advice I can get when it comes to interacting with siblings. While I spent the first 24 years of my life learning how to be quiet by myself, Brian learned how to survive having 3 older sisters.
When it comes to healthy family relationships, I am in over my head.
So my mom gives me advice to make up for the fact that reproduction is not my family’s strong point. She seems to think that if she passes on enough pieces of truth from her own life, it will make up for some of the confusion in my own life.
But really, her advice is just getting under my skin. “Blood is thicker than water” is her favorite phrase to utter over the phone during my commute home.
The way I catch myself interpreting her advice is that biological family ties will be the bonds that trump all other bonds. I’m not sure that is what she really means but it is what I keep hearing. And in my life, there are so many things wrong with that mentality.
For example: I don’t know who my birth father is. Despite the fact that he was married to my mother when I was both conceived and born, I have not seen him since I was six months old. In my house, we don’t talk about it. I don’t know what he looks like and no one will answer my questions. Which then leaves the question: If blood is truly thicker than water, is the blood flowing through my veins just really crappy? Is it less bonding than other blood?
Take another example: My step dad adopted me when I was thirteen. I’ve called him “Daddy” since the day he married my mother. He gave me away when I married Brian. But despite a slight resemblance, I share no genetic material with the man I identify as my father. There is no “blood” between us. If blood is truly thicker than water, does an adopted child only have a chance at a deep relationship when they grow up and have kids of their own?
But more troubling, my mom’s advice makes me think of baby boomers and the waves of divorce I have watched my friends survive. Even as adults, the experience of watching their parents divorce has shaken the world they live in. And the shared blood through their children still was not enough to make things work.
If blood truly is thicker than water, how does a marriage survive and thrive? Will sibling relationships always take the cake for closeness?
And then I wonder about my life and my marriage. And I wonder about the world of twenty somethings and their budding marriages. Will our ability to learn from our parents’ mistakes enable us to change the face of American marriage? Could we decide as a generation to make the difference between family and friends irrelevant?
How to buy a gift for my mother
I have a lunch date with my mother tomorrow at a nice little restaurant near my office. Its her mother’s day present. I know there probably should have been something sentimental and wrapped but it just was not going to happen.
I have no idea what to buy for my mother. She is the second most difficult person I have ever met when it comes to gift giving.
Who is the most difficult? My mother’s mother. Don’t laugh – she’ll never tell you what she wants for her birthday but she could publish a book on everything she doesn’t want.
I know I could probably go to Hallmark and find some sort of decoration that says “You’re not just my mother, your my friend” but I’d also be lying. My mom isn’t my friend – she’s my mom. I don’t need her to be my friend. I need my mom to be the adult in the relationship and be sober just in case Brian and I ever end up in jail. My friends are the people who help do the dumb things that get me in trouble.
The other downfall to the trinket idea is that it is just more stuff. Sometimes stuff is nice. Like when you get married or have a baby. But my parents are talking about downsizing and I already went through that process twice with my grandparents. The worst part of downsizing is that you discover that there is a house full of trinkets from Mother’s Day and anniversaries and just because gifts. Three rows of stuff in the basement are boxes and boxes of items that my grandparents didn’t want to see thrown out or given away. Now its sitting in the basement. And it isn’t helping anyone. Its just taking up space.
And really, all of that is stuff you don’t need. You can’t take it with you when you die. You also can’t take it all with you when you move into a retirement community. And what happens to all that stuff? It ends up in your kids’ basements until someone finally throws it out.
I’ve been trying to give my mom gifts that are experiences. And if I do go to the mall and purchase a gift, I take Brian with me. I need to make sure that he’ll want the gift back when my parents downsize.
How do you know when its time to move forward?
I like to tease my friend C that she actually a closet speed freak and no one else is on to it yet. She usually tells me that as a former addictions counselor, she realizes that her drugs of choice would be opiates. I’m only half kidding with her though – C fits more things into a day than most people do in a week. Somehow she rarely seems to burn out. She’s the type of girl who can change jobs, plan a wedding/get married and buy and decorate a new home in the span of 6 weeks. And still have time to hang out with friends while still looking fabulous.
Sometimes I hate her for that. Just Kidding, I hope.
C’s wedding was about 6 weeks ago and I think for about the first time in a year she has time to sit down and relax. So of course, she’s looking for some thing new to do. Which is also known as going back to school for a Ph.D. Even though, they don’t really have the money (a mortgage, student loans from her masters degree and 2 car payments can suck you dry pretty quick), she still wants to make it happen. But she’s also concerned about kids and what that timeline looks like. She’s pretty much made up her mind on where she wants to go but I can’t help but think she’s missing a few steps before she could make that decision.
Clearly, C needs feedback so I sent her the following email (details changed for privacy purposes):
C,
OOH OOH OOH! I have PLENTY of feedback! (This is me in “swift kick” mode fueled by love.)
What other schools have you been looking into? Why do you not feel as tempted by those institutions?
Regarding kids:
If you think you want to have kids in the next 1 to 3 years, I would strongly suggest that you wait on a doctoral program.
If you think you want to have kids in the next 3 to 6 years, go for the Ph.D. You won’t regret it.
If you aren’t sure when you want to have kids, go for the degree. Otherwise, you could be stuck in limbo forever.The cost issue works like this:
1. Do you and hubby both have life insurance policies out on each other (so that you would not lose the house should one of you die)? If the answer is no, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars.
2. Do you and hubby have six months worth of living expenses (including: tithe, food, clothes, mortgage, utilities, phone, health insurance, car payments, car maintenance, gasoline, taxes, car insurance, co-pays, home maintenance, student loans, etc.) set aside should one of you lose your job? If the answer is no, further education is on hold until this need is met?
3. Are you currently making contributions towards your retirement? If the answer is no, who do you think is going to pay for your old age? And will they pay for mine as well? Don’t tell me the government will or I won’t be able to contain my laughter at work.What does graduate school look like for hubby? Where is the priority here? Do you need a Ph.D. to continue advancing in your field immediately? Does hubby require a master’s degree to continue advancing in his field immediately? Who will benefit more from having their education needs met first?
I’m a big fan of taking continuing education credits before you are financially ready for a degree. And you can always take classes at a community college on Fridays to continue to increase your job skills.
Finally, how do you feel about the rest of your life? Is this antsy-ness coming from a stillness in your life that you are not used to? Are there projects/passions/ideas you want to explore both you move on to the next step in your life? You won’t have the freedom to explore those things right after you have kids. (Don’t get me wrong, you probably will later on but not in the same ways you do now). And C, I know you a very used to a crazy schedule but maybe this is a good time for you to be still and quiet and nurture your marriage with hubby. I hope you take time to enjoy the newness of marriage and explore each other and yourselves as married people. If it was me, I would wait until the one year mark before I began to address further education.
So I think I threw a lot at you. I hope I made it clear and I hope you see the motivation behind these questions/points. I’m not necessarily advocating one way or the other for right now (but I probably will later on).
Love ya,
DorieMy questions are these: Do I have it all covered or did I miss some key question along the way? What steps should you have in place in your life before you make a big decision? At what age does it stop being okay to pile on debt in the name of one’s education?
Ten things I learned during Easter
Brian and I babysat for his nieces and nephew from Thursday night to Monday morning. We had a great weekend but now I’m still too tired to think. I should have pictures up sometime this week, but for now, a brief list on what I learned during the weekend.
1. Baking cookies is an amazing response to the “I’m bored” statement.
2. Broccoli is mean and horrible and will be the downfall of children everywhere.
3. If one discovers that a certain little Monkey is having a meltdown, bath time can very quickly rescue the meltdown participants.
4. “The Lord of the Beans” is a cute movie the first time you see it. The twelfth time, not so much.
5. “Did you put the lid down? Did you wash your hands? Did you turn off the light?” is a perfectly acceptable to chant at small children coming out of the bathroom. It is not acceptable to chant at husbands however.
6. “Can I do that?” is a surprisingly unnerving question.
7. I yawn more during a bed time story than the kids do.
8. I have an amazing/terrifying ability to channel my mother as needed. (Example: You can have cereal or you can have toast but you must have breakfast or I am going to count to five and you are not going to like it when I reach five.)
9. Adults are really the ones who over complicate things. As my niece Julie told me, “It is simple, really…”
10. Yes, blowing out eggs to dye for Easter really is difficult. Yes, it does taste really bad. And no, you cannot do it.
Why you are actually reading about my husband
I blog about a lot of things.
I blog about work. I blog about my health. I blog about current events. I blog about my relationship with God. I blog about everything.
But really, this blog is about my marriage.
Even when I don’t write about it, it all comes back to my marriage.
Why?
My relationship with my husband is the single most important relationship in my life. It influences every decision I make. When I make a decision about what career path to follow, I am thinking about my husband. When I am seeking medical treatment, I think about how my treatment will affect my husband. When I look at CNN in the morning before work, I am thinking about, that’s right, my husband.
Brian is my priority.
And I don’t anticipate this changing. Even when we have kids, my husband will continue to be my highest priority. Why? Because we can always make more kids. I cannot recreate my husband.
Brian is the family I picked. I looked at him and decided that not only did I want to be in his tribe but I wanted to make our own little tribe with him. I wanted to create a life together.
Jobs will come and go. Friends will move on. Parents will (hopefully) die before I do. Politics will change. Current events will become history. Fads will fade and pop culture will be forgotten.
Brian will be the man I grow old next to. My wrinkly old hand will someday be patting my husband’s wrinkly old butt. And that’s the way I want it.
My commitment to Brian and Brian’s commitment to me is the most influencing factor in our lives. Everything will always come back to my marriage.
Why Penelope is the swift kick in the ass you need
Penelope Trunk’s Steps to figuring out your next career move should be giving your career the swift kick in the ass your twenty-something career needs. How do I know this is what you need? With the opening paragraph closing with the line “The ones who are complaining the most right now, after reading just this far, are the people who are most in denial of what adult life is about”, you can’t help but realize that what you’ll read next is everything you didn’t want to hear but you had to anyway.
Penelope also gives you the kick your life needs. Afterall, your job or your career is merely a symptom of what the rest of your life looks like. If your home life is in shambles, it is merely a matter of time until your work life is too. If work is falling apart, your marriage or family life will feel the strain. The exercise Penelope provides can really be applied to any aspect of your life. Its really all about making choices and cutting the excess.
I’ve taken the list Penelope provided and I tried to apply it to my personal life. Below you’ll see her list in bold and my comments in italics.
1. Eliminate stuff. I hate to admit but Brian and I have a stuff problem. Both in the activities we take on and the things we possess. This is great advice where ever you are in life. When I was looking at my own list of my life, I noticed that I have this tendency to stay involved in organizations that I don’t believe in just because I don’t want to quit. By giving up volunteer work for organizations I no longer believe and cutting back on Township meetings I don’t really need to be at, I made more time for the things I actually need or want to do. Next step: clearing out the spare bedroom that only makes Brian and I feel swamped and overwhelmed.
2. Look at what’s left. What’s left is still a pretty expansive list. It is so easy to forget about the many rolls we have in our own lives. Wife. Daughter. Clerical Assistant. Member of the Well. Aunt. Granddaughter. Writer. Painter. Reader. Volunteer. Family Organizer. Cook. The list really could go on for days. This is then your cue to go back to item one and see what other stuff you can eliminate.
3. Check in with yourself. I try to convince myself that I love doing things to make my husband’s life easier. But sometimes I don’t and I don’t want to admit. You have to check in with yourself to see what you still value. If you don’t know what you value personally, how will you know what you value professionally? If you need help with this task, try taking the Franklin Covey FOCUS seminar. I assure you, it will be money well spent.
4. Be honest about what you love. Penelope suggests using sex as a litmus test. Which may or may not work depending on the type of person you are. For me, it works. For my friend Kim, that litmus test would not work at all. A better test for her would be daytime TIVOed TV. Whatever it is you love, its okay. Just make sure you know what it is.
5. Admit if you lack a clear passion. Not to bust on Kim but she has no clear passion. That’s why she is a paralegal in a Philadelphia law office. She makes steady money, her needs are met and she has a reasonable work week leaving her time to watch tv in the evenings. That’s the life she wanted. My friend Jeannie, on the other hand, has always been passionate about psychology. She isn’t making great money but she loves what she does. She knows where her passion is. The important thing here is that both of my friends know what they are and are not passionate about and they plan their lives accordingly.
6. Get busy. Doing anything. And on that note….Why my husband’s low point is really a marriage high point
Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of seeing my husband in the bad-drunk category. It started off cute enough – he told me how beautiful and wonderful and smart and sexy I am and how much he loves me. Then he passed out. Then he woke up. Then he leaned over and puked all over me. Then he smashed his head on the wall and knocked himself out for about five minutes. Then he woke up, puked some more and sat in bed for a while.
In hindsight, I probably should have taken him right to the hospital to have his stomach pumped but I was concerned about the cost. At this point in our careers, we don’t have the income for hospital visits in non life or death situations. But in the five minutes where Brian was knocked out, I questioned whether or not I would be able to save his life if he began to choke on his own vomit. Thankfully, I never had to find out.
The point of this is not that my husband is a drunk – he’s not and when he tells me this was the first time he got sick from alcohol, I believe him. The point of this is that in marriage, you end up in a lot of places you never thought you would be.
I never thought I would spend twenty hours cleaning up vomit. But from two in the morning on Sunday until ten o’clock that night, cleaning it up was what I did. Brian probably never thought his wife would be coaching him through a shower and forcing him to drink water. But we did it. He also probably never thought that I would be waking him up at eight on a Sunday morning because I was mad at him for being drunk, but I did. Because if I had to suffer, he did too.
It is only during the unpleasant moments of marriage that we truly realize how much we love our mates and how much we actually are capable of doing. In college, I was notorious for what I called a “death fear of vomit”. I made girls in my sorority house who were sick (whether it be from booze or a stomach bug) go to the basement bathroom to throw up because the mere knowledge that vomit was happening near me was enough to push me over the edge. Yet somehow in the early hours on Sunday, I learned that I could survive. My urge to care for my husband was stronger than my own urge to throw up everywhere, although not by much (once a sympathy puker, always a sympathy puker).
Marriage is not always pleasant, although Disney would have you believe otherwise. Prince Charming does some dumb-ass things from time to time. The true test of the strength of a marriage is not whether or not the poor decisions happen but the way you cope with those decisions the next day.
Besides, it is only a matter of time until I do something dumb too.
PS – Taco Hell, I mean Bell and cheap Canadian whiskey are always a bad idea.
My Not So Secret Affair with the Written Word
Brian has yet to learn that I should never be taken into an establishment that sells books so I frequently find myself in positions where I am trying to convince myself to only buy five books instead of five hundred while Brian looks confused that he can’t just walk in, buy what he needs and leave. Which is what happened Sunday afternoon as we were trying to finish up our Christmas shopping. Brian had finally thought of the perfect gift for his father’s girlfriend which helped us to finish our holiday shopping in a bookstore. As he hunted through Borders as a man on a mission, I browsed the beautiful aisles filled with books I have yet to read. Each unread book was a friend I had yet to meet.
I read the way some people eat or play video games. I live for a good book. I can ignore my husband for hours on end if the content is compelling and it is not unusual to find me hiding in a strange location with a book. I rarely bring books to my job because I don’t trust myself to not sneak off and hide in the building with my latest page turner in tow.
I purchased four books on Sunday afternoon. Brian had reached the “enough” point with my roaming and since we had taken separate cars, he moved on to the next errand. I still needed to ponder what “excessive” really meant in a bookstore. All of my purchases were impulse buys but that was to be expected. I was able to rationalize by telling myself that since the writers are all striking in Hollywood, there really isn’t anything good on TV except Law and Order: SVU reruns and I’m not sure Brian will be tolerating that for much longer.
Which brings me to my big question: if I didn’t really watch TV anymore, would my book purchases still be excessive? What if Brian and I read at night instead of tuning into a million different TV shows? Would our lives improve for the better? Or would we find that Saturday mornings were used to catch up on TV? What if Brian read instead of internet surfed?
I’m not sure if I’m quite at a point where I’m interested in unplugging my TV but I think I need to cut it back at this point. Brian and I regularly watch over 3 hours of television a day. Considering I watched less than one half hour of television a day at the time Brian and I were engaged, it raises flags about the change in my behavior. I think maybe the most I can commit to is trying to cut back to an hour of TV a day. It is, at least, a start.
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