Girl40's Blog

As I reflect on my life, where I have been, where I am now, and where I want to be in the future, I can’t help but observe the lives of those around me.  My husband and the lives of each of my three children.  How much of decisions I have made, am making now, and will make in the future, affect my family and their lives.

I read today in a “mother’s devotional,” [I don't usually pick these up because most of them seem a bit corny to me] about commitment.  It said, “commitment is giving yourself fully to something you believe in or love.”  It’s reference was in regards to modeling commitment for your children as well as being committed to raising them well.  I realized that when my children were young, my commitment to them was different.  Their very survival depended on my commitment.  Feeding, bathing, potty training, wouldn’t have happened if I [and my husband] wasn’t committed to them, they wouldn’t have done it themselves.  Then, there are the less tangible teaching them respect, generosity, “share your toys,” morality, faith, and ethics to name a few that only come from parents committed to raising children into healthy, functioning, respectable young adults [some would argue that it takes a village, but until I learn that the village will stand before God with me someday and answer for the children he entrusted to my husband and I to raise I do not believe that.  That takes another blog post to explore :]

Now that my children are in this season of increased independence, I look at my commitment to raising them as a choice I make daily.  If I were not here, they would respond to their hunger by feeding themselves, they would eventually [if not from peer pressure alone] bath.  We have done our best to instill values consistent with our family mission and worldview and proof of their ethical and social standards are shown as adults outside of our family comment and complement their personal conduct.

As a parent in this season with two teenagers and an eager “to-be-a-teen” pre-teen, I find myself trying to listen more than talk, to guide more than advise, and trying to find the discipline within myself to give them the freedom to discover and mold who THEY are and want to be.  My deepest desire is for them to find who they are, who they were created to be, to know and be able to articulate why, and then rise up and be it.  I have never wanted robots for children who are younger versions of my husband and I.  For example, my daughter and I had a long conversation about a month ago about faith.  She holds the same beliefs my husband and I do, but is struggling with some aspects of her faith.  That is a personal thing between her and God, one that I can’t fix.  I can only guide and give her the freedom to come to her own conclusions.  In the end I expect her to be able to articulate and stand behind what she decides even if we have to agree to disagree.  It is not easy. 

My oldest son and I went out to lunch recently to have some time to discuss some music choices he had made on his ipod that I had discovered when I borrowed it to workout.  I spoke to him from my heart telling him that I was confused with who he was since his choices were not consistent with who I believed him to be.  On the one hand, I will always hold up the standards that we have built this household on and ask that anything [including music] inconsistent with those standards be removed from the house.  On the other hand and even more important than that, I want him to set standards for himself.  What will he allow in his mind and heart, what will he take a stand for, what will he allow into his life, long after he is out from the shelter of this house?

My days are not filled with changing diapers and running after clumsy toddlers learning to walk.  I don’t fall in bed exhausted from the constant needs of an infant or small children.  Instead, I stay awake without being able to find peaceful slumber waiting for the team bus bringing my son back from a basketball game over snowy roads to get back safely.  I lay praying that my kids are making good decisions when they are spending time away from home, I open my house to many more loud, energetic, and hungry teenagers than my sometimes quiet loving soul would prefer so that my kids and their friends know that this house is a safe and welcoming place to be.

My commitment now comes by choice.  I choose to build a career I can manage from home so that I can be available for my teenage children.  I choose to love them unconditional even when it is hard, I choose to let them be individuals with their own thoughts and passions when I would desire to intervene and impose my own desires for their futures, I choose to stay and not give up when I feel that all I have tried to instill in them has gone for naught and I might as well give up and turn all my attention to myself.

Commitment: is giving yourself fully to something you believe in or love.

I chose to commit to my children because I know I will get to daily see the rewards of that commitment.  There is no end to the commitment while I am on this earth, and there will not be a day singled out as the day that I can say, “there is the reward for my commitment.”  I will choose instead to look for the reward in the daily choices they make, the hug I get after a difficult conversation, the hand they lend to a stranger without being asked, and because of that I will commit to another day.

Girl40

Treasure,

I am writing to you because I was overwhelmed thinking about you this morning.  You are my neice, you are the daughter of a woman I just met and spent an hour hearing your story from in the grocery store the other day, you are the girl that I have taught and whose story I never heard, but suspected when I looked in your sad, vacant eyes.  You are the young girl who is so desperate you ran away from what you where susposed to be able to call home, a place of safety, but it never was.  You are the young woman who is untrusting, suspcious of those who wish to be close to you, and has trouble staying in a relationship.

I can’t tell you I understand how you feel.  I can’t tell you it will be alright.  But I want to, Treasure.  I want to make it alright for you.  I do know something, you will have to find the strength within you to choose to go on.  No one, no matter how well trained or intentioned can fix you for you.  You have to be a fighter, Treasure.  You have been robbed of your innocence.  Your trust has been stolen, your body has been bruised, your heart scarred, your insides ripped out.  Fight today, not for those who you know you are hurting as you see them hurt by your pain, but fight for yourself today. 

I will find I have become the most dazzling precious treasure, I am treasured over all the earth.  Just look at what he has done for me-

Flyleaf from the song “Treasure”

You are loved beyond measure, your value is more than silver or gold.  The one who created you can take all that is broken and piece by piece restore you.

I will write again soon.

Statistics say that one in four girls will be sexually abused before they reach 18-

31% percent of the women currently  in  US prisons were sexually abused as children-

30% percent of those who were abused become abusers-

60% of those in drug treatment centers report being abused as children.

Don’t turn an ear or an eye on abuse, report it.  Protect our Treasures.

Girl40

A little over a week ago I got my first and most likely only, tattoo.  It is something I have wanted to do for a long time now and I suspect that if I had done it last year when I was 39 instead of now at 40 people would not have asked what I have been asked now, “Is it a symptom that you are having a mid-life crisis?”  Uh, no.  It is a symptom and really more a result of finally knowing who I am and what I want out of life.  I realize that is a lot to put on one little spot of ink, but let me explain.  Years ago I wouldn’t have thought about putting ink permanently on my body let alone of being caught dead in a tattoo shop.  I would have been stuck on what people might think of me or assume about me.  In truth, it would probably have been the same misconceptions I had about tattoos and people who sported them.

Two years back, I woke up in the morning after spending  half the night packing six suitcases for our family to take on vacation to find the diamond in the middle of my wedding ring missing.  Prongs empty, no diamond in sight.  We had no time to unpack all of the suitcases to locate it since we had a plane to catch.  I never did find the missing stone and I never put the ring back on my finger.  Diamonds weren’t at the top of the “need to get” list, so I made do with cheap rings that I would replace as soon as they started to turn my finger green.  Cleaning out horse stalls, vaccinating pigs, and working with young child [all in the same day sometimes] can be hard on rings so I gave up wearing them.  At some point, I started playing with the idea of a “permanent ring” in the form of a tattoo on my ring finger.  I came up with a design that went from my middle knuckle to my last knuckle on my left ring finger.  I designed it with everything that is important to me that symbolizes my marriage and family.  The top has a heart with a cross in it, symbolizing that Christ is the center of our marriage.  Below that, I have both of our initials, and flowing out from that, three lines representing our three children. 

A new friend of mine had been wanting to get another tattoo [she has two] and when I told her about my ring idea, she decided to get one on her ring finger as well.  We did our research on the best place to go in our area, decided on a date, and walked into the shop.  I am sure everyone there wondered what two middle age moms were doing in there and to be truthful, for a moment so did I.  We met and showed our designs to “Spyder” our tattoo artist and I took the chair first.  It hurt, but not bad.  There was something freeing about the loud driving music playing, the pain, and doing something  that people wouldn’t expect me to do.  Is that weird?

Spyder did a wonderful job, copied my design to the tee.  He apologized for the music playing at one point when the “language” got a little heavy, told us about his son, his life, and gave us hugs on our way out.  My friend and I celebrated by stopping on the way home for a beer.

My husband was touched that I would put something so meaningful to our relationship permanently on my body, the kids think I am cool, and most of all I couldn’t be happier with my decision.  As a bonus, I am having conversations that I never would have had like the young man pumping my gas at the gas station who asked me what my tattoo ment and then showed me three of his.

I think I will answer “yes” next time I am asked if the tattoo was a result of a mid-life crisis.  The definition of the word crisis is, “a crucial or decisive point or situation, a turning point.”   This decision was a turning point in knowing who I am and the confidence at forty to be that person.

Lovin the ink,

Girl40

Years ago I heard an interview on TV with actress Terry Hatcher of Desperate Housewives fame.  I must admit  I have never watched that show and Ms. Hatcher is not normally the type of person I would look to for advice on life, but something she said in that interview I thought profound and have tried to live by since.  She was explaining that she no longer eats burnt toast.  Much more a philosophical realization than a dietary rule that she explained.  As a mother, she realized that for a long time she would sacrifice herself for the sake of putting her children first.  Toast was an example, when she made it for her family if one of the pieces was burnt instead of making one of her children eat it she would eat it herself.  Upon looking at her life in general, she found that she often put herself  and her needs last behind that of her family.  At one point in her life she decided that she would treat herself with the same standards as she did her family.  If it wasn’t fit for them to eat, she wouldn’t either. 

Now, I know as a mother of three that there are times that out of necessity I put off getting something I need or doing something I want to do because a need for one of the kids is more pressing and I am not talking about that.  I am talking about being a martyr.  When my children who are all only eighteen months apart were younger, I was often at home alone with them for weeks at a time as my husband travelled a lot for work.  At the time, we lived at the end of a road that dead ended into a state park in the forest so we were relativity isolated.  My life revolved around the keeping the house up, bills paid, septic system unclogged [still remember many times laying in the dirt with my arm holding a wire hanger shoved up the septic pipe trying to unclog it while my husband was out-of-town with three small children asking what I was doing] children schooled, and life rolling in general.  A wonderful girlfriend of mine would often call from “town” just 30 miles away and invite me to join her and some friends for dinner or a girl’s night out to which I often politely declined.  Another time she called and offered to watch kids so that my husband and I could go on a date.  I assured her that he and I found plenty of time to spend together talking by the fire or walking down by the river, and that we didn’t need to leave the house and spend a lot of money on some “date.”  Instead of the response I am sure I was hoping to hear of, “How do you do it all?”  or “I wish I could be the unselfish wife and mother you are,” I got something I wasn’t ready for.  “you’re a martyr, and you need to stop it.”  What did she say, a martyr?  I couldn’t believe she was being so harsh with me.  Being the gentle but accountable friend that she was, she went on to explain that I was wrong.  She assured me that even the best of moms need some time away from their children to regroup and come back even better.  She enticed me with the idea of stimulating my mind with adult conversation.  She even predicted that things might spice up a bit with my husband if he saw me in high heels dressed up to go out with him for the night instead of those dirty hiking boots ready for a walk in the woods.  She was right, on all accounts.

It’s so difficult in this economy and when things are tight to not fall back into eating that burnt toast!  Of course I need new running shoes, but both boys are about to start track so maybe I should get their shoes first and put mine on hold.  I do have two inches of  new growth on my hair and the grey hairs are shining through, but I can just buy another eight dollar box of color from the drugstore and call it good, after all my daughter is starting to look like “Cousin It” from the Munsters and I should get her hair done first…

My husband walked in the kitchen earlier this week when I was debating about spending the money to go to the doctor for the knee I have injured and spoke with love and resolve three little words that centered my world, “No burnt toast!”  He is right, my friend was right, and even Ms. Hatcher was right.  I do myself no favors when I move myself to the bottom of the list.  If I become bitter and resentful to those I love because I haven’t taken care of myself and have yet again become the martyr, I do them no favors.  So to all wives and mothers out there changing diapers, running kids to activities, working all day outside of the home and trying to keep it together in the home, finding time to be romantic with your husband, and making time for your friends, don’t forget to take care of you.

Trashing the toast,

Girl40

I was a fan of the Oakland A’s baseball team back in the days when they were worthy of having fans [to be fair, I haven't followed them for years], in the late 80′s and early 90′s when guys like thridbaseman Carney Lansford and outfielder Jose Canseco made you want to run back to Oakland Coliseum every week for more great baseball.  My then boyfriend and now husband and I would join friends and take the BART train up to Oakland for a day of fun in the sun, great baseball, and ballpark food.  I can still smell that undeniable ballpark smell of popcorn, polishdogs, and cheap beer mixed in with the smell of sunscreen.  Always in the mood to celebrate another A’s win, we would then head into San Francisco to our favorite Irish pub.  I personally looked forward to my favorite drink, the Blue Whale.  I am not even sure what was in it other than Blue Curacao, but that didn’t matter.  It came served with a plastic blue whale perched on the rim of the glass and I was always looking forward to adding to my dashboard collection.  It was on one such visit to the city that I met “her.”

I never got her name, but she had an impact on my life.  We met as my party and I were walking down the street toward the pub.  She had suddenly appeared in front blocking me from going any further and separating me from my friends.  She had looked me straight in the face with large, round, imploring eyes and asked for money to feed her kids that she referenced with a quick nod to the side.  Looking over, I saw three small children probably between the ages of three and eight all looking back at me with the same imploring eyes.  They sat huddled together in the shadows of the neon lights against a door.  My heart immediately went out to this woman and I dug into my purse and pulled out a five dollar bill and gave it to her without a second thought.  She thanked me and I caught up with my friends and ordered my Blue Whale.

Work combined with some family vacation time brought me back to the city I had since moved so far away from, about ten years later now in my early thirties and this time with my own three kids and a husband in tow.  A different street in the same city introduced me to a new friend, but he had a name Milton.  Since we had taken up residence at the San Francisco Hilton hotel for our six-day stay, Milton became affectionately named by my children, “Milton from the Hilton.”  Everyday as my children and I waited for my husband to return with the car from the parking garage across the street from the hotel [a process that took 20 minutes] we had ample time to get to chat with Milton as he tried to coax money from the hotel patrons pockets.  We learned [because he had many stories to tell and freely told them without being asked] that Milton had found his way to San Fransisco from Los Angeles.  He was successfully hiding from the police that were after him for some undisclosed reason.  One day, my friend Dan was standing with us as he waited for his car to be brought to him.  Milton never having seen my husband with the children and I, assumed Dan was my husband and asked him for some money.  Dan gave him a one dollar bill.  Milton thanked him looked down at my youngest child who was just five at the time, and started to walk down the street.  He had only gotten a couple of yards from us when he turned on his heel and walked back over to us.  Getting down on one knee so that he could get eye to eye with my son Milton said this to him, “You take this dollar and you spend it wisely, you hear me?  You don’t use it to by candy or other junk.  You save it so you don’t end up like Milton, you hear me?”  My astonished wide-eyed five-year old nodded back in agreement.  A day later as we checked out of the hotel and got into our car, my son waved goodbye to Milton who sat swinging his legs in one of the broad window ledges of the hotel. He waved back with a great smile across his weathered face.  My son now almost 12 years old, still has Dan’s dollar bill that Milton gave him and he still on occasion will say a prayer for him.

Two weekends ago my daughter and I found ourselves out on the town in another great west coast city Portland, Oregon.  Three of my girlfriends where up visiting and we decided to celebrate one of their birthdays a bit early in the city.  The restaurant we had our heart set on had much too long of a wait so we gathered around the iPhone out in the evening drizzle to try to find another place for our celebration.  As we stood there, we where approached by a man with a long beard, probably in his late 40′s or early 50′s holding a piece of paper covered in plastic.  His story was that he was trying to get into a workprogram and needed money to get there.  I found myself wanting to know more about this man.  What circumstances brought him to were he was today?  Were was he living right now?  He answered all of my questions as my friends waited patiently in the rain, no doubt wondering why I took such an interest in this man.  He told me the cross streets of the bridge he was living under, said it was almost like camping and camping wasn’t so bad after all he said.  He had a divorce, sold the tools that he used to earn a living, and had spent some time in jail because of some bad decisions he had made.  He also said that a lot of people were only a paycheck or two away from standing right were he was.  At that tears came to the brim of my eyes, of course he couldn’t know that my family was one of those families that he spoke of.  Of course  we have something that obviously he doesn’t have, family that would never allow that to happen to us.  Taking a five out of my wallet, I handed it to him making him promise me would not waste it.  He promised, and we went our separate ways.

I have had many more encounters with homeless people in my life as I am sure you have, but these three encounters over three very different decades in my life were the ones that profoundly affected me.  The first lady from San Francisco back when I was in my early 20′s made me cynical.  The rest of the story from that night was that when I came out of the pub that night, I was grabbed on the arm by the same woman.  Those once imploring eyes now glazed over, bitter foul alcohol breath being blown in my face as she again asked for money.  This time no kids in sight.  I felt taken advantage of.  My heart so wanted to believe that she was asking out of true need and an ignorant belief from me that I would actually be helping her.  What would five dollars do to change her life?  To be fair, at that point in my life I was more anxious to through money I didn’t think twice about spending at her than to think about her past what it did for me.  In my 20 something mind, it was a good night.  I had helped a poor homeless woman and had my drink, both made me feel good to some degree.

A decade later I was still somewhat cynical towards the plight of the homeless, but ready to listen and learn when we met Milton.  I was able to look past his circumstance and look at the man.  Now being 40 and my own circumstances at the moment gave me an entirely new outlook and even hunger to understand the man I met just weeks ago in Portland.

This is not ment to be an essay on “the plight of the homeless in major west coast cities,” or a social commentary on homelessness, and I am by no means telling you how you should respond to them.  It is just introspection on looking at age and how our experiences affect the filter through which we view life and respond to it.  I think the conclusion I come to for myself is that because I have been given much grace in my life, I am able to give more of it to others.  Because people have listened to my story, I want to hear theirs.  Most of all, I don’t want to miss or take for granted one single experience, person, or opportunity that I can learn from by being too cynical, in a hurry, or self focused.  Wonder what the 50′s will bring?

What about you?  How have your views, the way you react to life changed over the years that you have lived so far?

Looking forward to meeting the next Milton,

Girl40

Why Girl40?  Simple, I am a girl and I am forty.  I suppose at the age of forty “woman 40″  would be more appropriate, but that just doesn’t have the same ring to it.  It occurred to me today [the day before Valentine's Day] that my expectations for celebrating Valentine’s Day are  different from they were even five years ago when I was midway through my thirties.  That got me thinking, what other expectations did I have that have changed?  How have my views changed on life, love, politics, friends, clothes [now clothes may seem a little out-of-place stuck between the more important friends and family, but they are at least as important as politics], family?  What expectations do I have for the next 40 years of my life?  Even something much less philosophical than all that, why am I fighting at this moment the double injustice of having to deal with both grey hairs on my head and a Mt. St. Helen’s size blemish breakout on my chin?  So many questions sparked by such an innocent little holiday.

So that brings me here, to this blog.   It is cheaper than therapy for sure and I thought maybe as I process my thoughts on being a 40-year-old woman in 2010, that it might just stimulate other girl40s to process too and share their thoughts as well.  So let’s talk about it all, the magnificent and the mundane, the sunshine and the rain!  Hey, if those “real” Housewives of Orange County can blog we can too right? [Yes, I watch that ridiculous show.  Don't judge me.]

Back to Valentine’s Day, all this came to mind as my husband and two of my three children and I were driving down the highway along the river on our way to go for a hike.  I know typical Valentine’s Day celebrations include candy, flowers, and a way over priced card that sings a line from a sappy love song when you open it up, but our celebrations have never looked typical and today was no exception.  We did have a wonderful hike on trails we had never taken through thick mossy forests growing alder and maple, by Ruckel Creek flowing much to full for February, and even a walk on an old historic highway long ago closed.

In retrospect, we couldn’t have chosen a more appropriate celebration for our love this Valentine’s Day.  Like that trail we walked our love over these past years has had its curves and bumps in the road.  I believe it has developed a strong root system like those maples we walked under and we have even grown some “mossy” habits in our marriage.  Our love does run just as strong as that creek flows.

Today, celebrating my first Valentine’s Day of my 40′s I can say I don’t want the candy because I would only have to walk longer to keep it off of my hips.  I don’t need the flowers, because I would rather have a forest, and save a tree and don’t buy that expensive card.  I have discovered that the yellow sticky left on the freshly filled coffee pot that says, “I love you,” means even more on February 15th than it would on the  14th.

With no expectations, but plenty of anticipation,

Girl40