A Love Letter to My Daughter or How to Lose at Childish Games

A Love Letter to My Daughter or How to Lose at Childish Games 

When is it okay to allow your daughters heart to break? I thought it would be a young man, natures adolescent crash course in crushes to cast the first blow but never her own daddy. When is it okay for me to lie and tell her things are not as they seem when we both know that they are exactly as she sees them and knows in her heart. I have braved on through my own divorce despair, wearing it like an old tattered dress I used to adore, until finally throwing it aside only to discover my daughter is wearing it now. This hideous dress is too big on her tiny frame and she is center stage holding up an indifferent mask that says, I don’t even care, or It doesn’t matter but I see underneath. The spotlight is glaring on her. I want to pull her off stage like an old vaudeville act where I snag her with the curl of my cane and we tap dance off waving and mugging. 

When is it okay to let your daughter think that she is disposable? To stop talking to her for weeks (the ultimate emotional abuse) or refuse to buy her a dress (something so simple to help her see how beautiful she is?) Its like slowly unplugging the red, yellow and green pegs of the Light Bright til all that is left are a million little holes. The picture is gone even if her light shines bright. She is the patient in Parker Brothers Operation. Her pieces are being carelessly pulled out, haphazardly hitting the sides and buzzing like a creepy clown with a chainsaw in a nightmare, but in this game, the player doesn’t follow any rules. He never has to pay up. He never has his turn skipped and he seems to roll double sixes over and over. It isnt enough to say someday it will be my turn. Someday he will land on my Boardwalk and Park Place with two hotels. Someday Ill sink his final Battleship. It  does no good to strategize victory over someone who resides in your childs heart. Its like bombing the enemy but also hitting a playground. Nobody can ever win here.

The emotion contained in this tangled knot is tight and complicated like a ball of twinkling Christmas tree lights. I cant find the end and Im not sure if its one solitary bad bulb or is it dramatically damaged. Is it irreparably broken? The counselor told me this is not mine to repair. Its her fathers job to repair it but it requires a bridge of trust teetering over a perilous precipice, her heart. The emotion is tight like a chilly morning cough when youre congested and groggy. How do you begin to loosen this?  Can I start by insisting he hasn’t chosen another woman over her? Can I repair the kink in the wire if I tell her to overlook his choices, pass over it like a fighter jet leaving an evaporating trail of smoke. My daughter is stuck in the pitch black of adult affairs when she is still in the midday sunrise of her childhood. My daughter is the bullseye. The rings surrounding her center say Deflecting the truth, Blaming the Innocent, Ravenous Jealousy and Cowardice and the target is most definitely her. She cried because she thinks he is hurting. Somehow she is the caretaker of broken Dads. 

God choses each path carefully and I cant begin to understand why this is her path but I accept it like I accept my own path. Ill take a machete and chop the hell out of the weeds and brambles in her way (that’s the Puerto Rican upbringing in me). Sometimes its harder when your children are this strong. You don’t know what to do if they don’t need you to kiss it and make it better and its not that kind of wound anyhow. You cant put a band aid on a tear in the heart. All I can say is sign me up to spend MORE time with her because she isnt going to his house. She needs a Homecoming dress? My hand shoots up like Donkey in Shrek. OOOOH OOOOH pick me! Ill buy it!  Ask me to chose between her and a lover? I choose her first and possesively like the first round pick of the jock in a dodgeball team lineup. It is my greatest honor to be in her delightful presence and hear about her day, her hair, her friends, her Instagram, her lunch table, her giggle, her pottery project, her cheerleading, her shopping, her coffee drink, her dreams. her plans, her jokes, her youtube, her chocolate craving, and her heartbreak over the loss of her dad. She is as breathtaking to me today as the first day I laid eyes on her in the delivery room. Its never okay to break your daughters heart because to do so would be to eclipse that very precious fleeting moment when we get to orbit the brilliance of our childrens glowing sun. I love you, daughter. Shine bright and know that no one can stay too far away from you for long especially the two humans who love you the most. Dont lose faith. You are infinitely lovable.

Why Im stuck in Limbo or Who the Hell is Steering this Jumbo Jet?

What do you do when your choices in life seem to suddenly be on autopilot?  

 There was a short period of time after I moved out of my beautiful home on Laurel Drive when my marriage ended and into an apartment with my children that I felt strangely, completely empowered. It was quite frankly stupid to move out of a house that required no mortgage payment because it was already in foreclosure. I had a finite but free amount of time to live there. I was granted a sizeable amount of support because I had been a stay at home Mom for many years and my son needed many hours of therapy and appointments and hospitalizations. I could have stayed in our doomed home and lived on support but I really wanted to someday  stand on that stage in my violet glittering gown in front of velvet curtains and say 'Mommy made it on her own' while raising my fist dramatically to the heavens.  I hope to never again be reintroduced to the deluded, dope of an illogical woman who made that decision  but at the time, I was making the honorable choice in my mind.  I picked this new place, paid the down payment and dolled it up in décor that reflected MY disposition and taste only. I made many strange decision during that time that clearly were based on emotion up to and including pawning my diamond for pennies to spite and giving back all the Wedding gifts to my ex because of the principal of it.  Our gift registry was at Pier One. I still miss my wooden Indonesian carving of a cat with gold leaf decoration and bamboo placemats. My new place was sunny and decidedly girly. It said that I was on my own, working full time and I was good. At that same time, I started dating via sites like Plenty of Fish and Match.com I met some really great guys and made decisions about who, what and where we would meet and what Iittle it mattered if it worked out or not. It was eye opening to realize life wasn’t over. I spent many free weekends when the kids were with their Dad, sweaty short skirt dancing with my other single and divorced girlfriends at clubs and going to movies and out to eat in a series of casual dates and basically having a blast. This was my time. There is a whole plethora of memories with those girlfriends that probably will never be redone any time soon because I worked that out of my system like a chitty chitty bang bang sputtering out murky oil.  I needed to know that I was strong. I could decide and that I was first string quarterback after sitting the bench throughout my marriage.  

This year, my choices are as complicated as the State Property and Casualty exam I took awhile ago to become an insurance agent. The questions on that wretchedly dry test would be asked in a manner that forced you to decipher the language of the question for quite some time before you could even narrow down the answers. Like the scene in the Princess Bride about the cup with poison and who was going to take what cup when and why and was it a trick or not, choices on a State exam are meant to weed out people who just study answers and spit them out verbatim.  Although I rarely went below As and Bs in high school and college, it was a challenge. I didn’t pass my insurance test (Inconceivable!) until I watched a youtube tutorial on how to understand the way they were asking the questions. I am sure to the average man this sounds a lot like when a woman asks you if she looks fat. You cannot answer truthfully or with haste or too much hesitation. You have to weed out the tangled foliage of her tender feminine self esteem garden and determine what is a wondrous peony and what is an angry poison oak. It is hard to make a choice when you are not sure what is being asked. It is even harder when the choices are only subtly differentiated like picking OPI nail polish in red at the salon. So... red, scarlet, crimson, carmine, cadmium, violet red, candy apple red, red with glitter, opaque red or a wispy translucent red that only appears when you turn your finger just so? Remember the Monty Python skit about cheese? I feel like choices are not simple in my life these days. Choosing your battles seems stoic advice but can I get a hint at what war we are in because if I go at The Vietnam War in the manner of The Civil War, people are going to be wearing wool in the rice paddies and Lincoln may forego the Gettysburg Address for the 'smell of napalm in the morning.'  

Currently, I spend so much time choosing when I can choose to vindicate myself or when to walk away. Convincing myself it is okay not to react, confront, blow 'em out of the water with my wit and obvious superior intellect, the ole Ill get you before you get me mental battle that in the end makes you miserable and confused. Trying to maintain self control is no easy task. It feels good to scratch a bug bite til it bleeds but a scar is a scar. I really want to tell some people off. I want to come out the victor, be the Santa kicking the Red Rider requester down the chute. I want to say IN YO FACE!!!! I want to be the deciderer with Dubya. Unfortunately, my choice is take the HIGH ROAD or pay the consequences. 

My life is at a stage of obligations and the most important part of that is that I oblige willingly and lovingly. Id really like to be married, again. Id love to have someone at the end of the night to be exhausted on the couch with. Id love to snuggle like pandas on a Tuesday night instead of every other Saturday, not being able to get close enough as we dreamily drift off together after the late show but still be annoyed by his snoring at 1:15am. I want to argue about the toilet paper roll and bake salmon together in such an elaborate ritual of shopping, spices and tin foil arrangement you would  think we were building an atomic bomb. Is this going to happen? Probably not and it’s a disappointment I share with several other of what I consider scintillating and sexy single Mommies in long term relationships. Do we get the choice? Not really. Our choice is...stay and endure or break up. Not much of a choice. Even that choice has nuances that branch off like the roots of a weeping willow. How much more alimony am I entitled to? Where would we live? Would the children blend like the Brady Bunch or clash like the Titans? Will we fall into the same patterns that destroyed our former marriages? Have we been single too long? I mean, I like having all the pillows and my own closet and leaving the dishes in the sink too long, sometimes. I don’t always clean out the car. I leave all my eyeliners and perfumes and bobby pins laying on the bathroom counter like  fun-time scavenger hunt clues? Did she get ready leisurely while sipping coffee and laughing along with Matt Lauer or run out the door in a blaze of glory, backpacks, socks and lunches flying? Even so, there still isnt much of a choice if the partner you unilaterally planned this with is going off to join a mission in two years or has committed to being a bachelor to save money or they are just as scared as you are about failing(not falling) in love...again. Its hard to date at 40 something (and things are droopy like eyelids and boobies). Its even harder to be in a relationship at 40 something because it’s a lot of work. It requires attention, intention and intricate juggling of schedules and friendships and work requirements and custody arrangements and battered self esteems. Divorce takes its toll. It holds its ghastly hand out waiting for payment and then slaps you in the face when you give it your last three cents. To quote Annie in Bull Durham from memory, "Does anybody ever really get to choose? Its all a matter of quantum physics and timing." Well, I never took physics but I guess Mr Naticcia was right in eigth grade math. I will need this someday. It seemed unfair then and is definitely unfair now but much like eighth grade, no matter how awkward, ugly and uncomfortable, I will get through it.  

 My natural inclination of choices never includes A. Let it be vs B. Do something. Its usually A. Do something immediately vs B. Tell yourself not to do anything then immediately do something rash. I have a hard time letting things go as it is. My  familys goodbye rituals involve twenty to thirty minutes of cheek kisses, hugs and looking longingly at each  other as you drive slowly away all the while waving til you are completely out of vision range. Its ridiculous but comforting so its hard for me to just let things be and see how it turns out. Choice right now equals doing nothing or doing a really wrong thing that will drive away what you were trying to accomplish.Im working on it. Maybe its okay to be on autopilot in life for a short stint. Im going to try and sit back and take in the scenery because the best view with the most freedom is in the passenger seat. 

  

How Only Children Float or Why I Learned to Drown in Chaos

How Only Children Float or Why I Learned to Drown in Chaos 

When I was growing up, it was a household of three: my Mom, my Dad and myself. My imagination had a fertile and nurtured ground to wander. I made up elaborate scenarios with seashells and barbies and notebooks filled with drawings. Boy, was it ever quiet. It was delightfully quiet. My mom was a hairdresser and had a shop in our basement so I would sit under her professional dryer and pull the alien mind zapping cone over my head and doze because that white noise can only be compared in my current life to a peanut butter dark fudge and caramel hot chocolate with whipped cream floating on top in heaps. Sometimes I would luxuriate languidly in the bathtub and lull myself to sleep with my head  underwater, ears  completely submerged and I could hear the faint hum of my parents talking over coffee in the kitchen downstairs or just hear my heart beating. I loved when my Mom would vacuum on a Saturday and 'sky rockets in flight...afternoon delight' would be rolling out over the stereo. I only recently realized that song is about having sex midday. That’s okay. It still follows my theme of relaxed, easy going, feeling good because you can hear yourself think type of groove. In my youth I associated noises with security, tranquility and slumber. 

In my house of the single child there was never any I HATE YOU, YOU ARE SO ANNOYING, tit for tat ratting each other out, or like the disturbing dueling banjos my two teen daughters do this really weird thing where they try to out-hum each other while sitting in the living room then act oblivious that they both are humming different songs but humming with a ferocity that should be saved for rap battles or acapella groups at the National Championships. It is like saying the ballerina was tiptoeing as hard as she could. You should never be trying to out-hum another person unless it’s a new Jimmy Fallon Late Night game a celebrity has to play like Water War or Telephone Booth. My very devilish oldest daughter has a propensity to repeat a sound that she finds charming over and over. Once she discovered how much this bugs me, she does it to see exactly how long until I blow up then drowns in a sea of hilarity. Remember when you had to take public speaking in high school and were required to do an impromptu speech in front of your amused peers for an ETERNITY or 5 whole real time minutes? Well to me, her repeating a sound like the mewing of a cat or a high pitched 'ping' sound for a mere 20 seconds IS exactly the same as when you thought you talked for an excrutiating 8 and an half minutes in public speaking but it was a actually a  jaunty minute forty five. With her PINGS, it feels like I have been holding out yelling SHUT UP for at least thirteen minutes, when in fact I waited about 14 seconds. 

My 8 year old son Ryan was recently diagnosed with complete hearing loss in one ear. Although he has Down Syndrome and everyone loves the stereotype that ALL CHILDREN WITH DOWN SYNDROME ARE HAPPY...I mean, that’s about as ridiculous as stereotypes like...I cannot even say because I would be labelled a bigot...that’s how ridiculous it is to give one characteristic to an entire group of human beings! So Ryan has complete hearing loss in one ear and probably mediocre hearing in the other and that’s why he has a complete BUY in the game of listening to his sisters bicker and yell. Aside from being slightly psychic and picking up on every nuance of feeling you have like an old, fat retired man waving a wand over the sand to find buried rings that fell off in the surf or coins that fell out of mesh beach bags, he probably doesn’t hear half the things that my super sonic mantaray hearing discovers in our household and for that he probably is very, very happy...down syndrome or not. Aside from his hearing loss, he does his fair share of stimming. For those who do not know, stimming is a repetitive action to self comfort. The one type of stimming he does that makes the most ruckus is very elaborate. In fact, he cannot even do this without my assistance so that explains my stance on parenting at times. If stimming equals I get a break, then stimming it is. I validate this by comparing stimming to my daughters playing Candy Crush or looking at what Kim Kardashian is doing on Instagram. It literally may be the same barely functioning level of brain activity. So in this elaborate stim that Ryan enjoys that I shamefully help him set up, I tie two helium balloons to a shoe, he places this contraption by a door at a very precise distance that only he understands (there is probably a blueprint in crayon somewhere under his bed) and he opens and slams the door at exact intervals while making a weird AHHHHHH sound the entire time. The point is that when he slams the door his balloon sways in the breeze. Did I mention the consistent slamming of the door sound and the AHHHHHH sound? There are many noises in homes with little boys with disabilities that are not in homes of only children. 

People think only children are spoiled rotten and never learn to share. I cannot vouch for whether or not I was affected by those qualities, but I do know that aside from getting angry when people make any audible chewing sound anywhere in the sonar of my hearing canal, I think I am fairly well adjusted. If karma is real, I share every dang thing I own and every free moment nowadays. I do need a respite from the noise at times in my household simply because I don’t understand how chaos equals normal growing up in such an orderly, quiet home, but there is a distinct sound that joy makes as well and that visits my hectic four person home here with as much frequency as it visited my placid childhood place in Penns Drive. The presence of joy in our home is blind to disabilities and missing masculine influences or big paychecks.  It is numb to whether there is a HD 40 inch deluxe flat screen television with full cable hook up in our living room or just a 20 something inch with rabbit ears cable. It doesn’t sense that my son sleeps in his little race car set up in my room because there are only three bedrooms in our rented apartment instead of the nice four bedroom house we used to own. It does HEAR a family that laughs their heads off together over youtube videos about guffawing goats, or hides behind doorways and scream bloody murder to scare one another then burst out laughing. It does hear giggling when we play spoons and someone rips a spoon out of someone else's hand at the last minute or we trip and make fun of ourselves endlessly about it. It HEARS a very noisy group of girls who talk in a crazy high affect to their little brother to let him know how excited they are when he repeats a word or does the 50 meter dash in Special Olympics.  

Even though this is not what I expected growing up "peacefully" as an only child, this chaotic house with myself and my three children is full of unexpected bolts of noise because love is the catalyst to sharp sparks of energy that set off a family's fireworks. The ruckus is raccous and colorful and oh so worth the spectacle!