Breaking News...

So, it’s the big “M.” Menopause. Suspected for months, confirmed today. Did you know there’s a blood test to verify that? A few weeks ago I called my doctor wanting her opinion on an over-the-counter product to help with symptoms, and she had a different idea. Finish the birth control pill pak I was on at the time, and don’t refill it. Stay off the pills for four weeks, then have a blood draw, to check out what my ovaries are doing. Well, apparently my ovaries have checked out completely and left no forwarding address, because my doctor said there is no-o-o doubt, based on my blood levels, that I’m in menopause.

Hmm.

Do I throw a party or go into mourning? A party sounds good, but the invitations might be tricky. And what about those party favors? Empty tampon boxes? Personal size fans? Does Party City even have an aisle for that? (Actually, a personal, portable fan would be perfect. NOW! Whew! Okay, I’m better.)

As for mourning, I miss my hair. I never understood why women this age cut their hair so short. Now I do. It’s not constant misery, but the heat index jumps up often enough and so unpredictably that short hair affords a modicum of comfort and manageability. I had to renew my driver’s license in the DMV this year, and when I got to the counter and handed over my current one, the clerk looked at it and said, “your hair was really cute then.” She looked up and said, a little sheepishly, “it’s cute now, but it was really cute then.” It was ten years ago, and it was much longer, maybe even with a little perm left in it. I said, “yeah, but that was before menopause.” She laughed so hard, other clerks started looking at her. I thought she was going to fall off her chair. So I trotted out my standard line about buying life insurance on my husband, in case he didn’t survive my change of life at least I would be able to pay off the house. That kept her going another few minutes.

The other thing here is a mixed blessing and could fall under either the party or mourning category. The loss of fertility, the inability to procreate, is an odd thing. Now, don’t get me wrong, I absolutely do not want to have any more children. I don’t feel I was particularly successful the first time around anyway, and I never tried for a number two. And at my age, it would just be foolish. But nurturing life within one’s body is an awesome thing and a beautiful responsibility. It was my choice to attempt a pregnancy twenty years ago, and my choice since then to exercise birth control and prevent a pregnancy. Now that choice has been taken away from me, and I think I’m grieving a little. I’m not feeling that “well done, good and faithful servant” thing yet.

Maybe that comes after the party.

Like a wheel turning...

OD and her SO came to my house for dinner on Easter. As they were leaving, with the extra ham I had cooked for them to have sandwiches in the coming week, and a ton of leftovers, I blew her a kiss and said, "Love you honey, drive safe and call me when you get home!" YD, who was standing behind me said, "Mom! That's the first time you've ever said that to one of your daughters!" Call me when you get home. Until two months ago, my home was her home.

The first of my babies has fledged the nest and is living in her own place. All those months she was mad at me were just her way of making the break without the pain of having to say goodbye. Time and a little distance have helped to give us both a new perspective - and respect for each other. The real test will come later. She and SO are planning a move to the middle of the country where jobs are more plentiful and the cost of living is lower. Life goes on...and on...and on.

Growing Up & Away

Well, she’s 26 ½ and OD is finally moving out. It’s not the way I dreamed it would be, her finding a little place, me helping her shop for appliances, dishes, towels, etc. She’s going out with a bang – or maybe not. You see, she hasn’t spoken to me, except in response to direct questions, since October. She comes and goes silently and when she’s here, she hides out in her room. She’s angry – at me, at the world, at life. But since she can’t take her anger out on “the world” she aims all of it at me and her sister. We are the lense through which she focuses her perceptions about what is wrong with her life.

Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but I just can’t summon up the emotions that seem to be warranted here. I’m not angry or sad. I love her and will miss having her around, but I’m coveting the master bedroom she’s had since we moved into this house 2 ½ years ago. In all the years of being a parent, I’ve never had the master bedroom, wanting my daughters to have the bigger rooms. I’ll finally be able to set up my craft tables and have a space to work on my sewing projects. When she takes her three cats and one 75-pound dog, my house will stay cleaner. And my pet food bill will drop to whatever it costs to feed my 10-pound Chihuahua.

I pray that some time apart will help her to refocus her life and give her the maturity to see that her problems aren’t my fault or YD’s. I’m certainly not a perfect parent, and there are many things I wish I’d done differently. But if love counts for anything, then I’ve loved my daughters with all my heart since the day I first knew they were growing inside me.

OD, I wish you the best that life has to offer and will be praying for you. If you need anything, you just have to ask. Love, Mom

Circle of Life

My special needs daughter is now almost twenty years old. By this time in my life, I had been driving for four years, I had a full-time job, I was living in my own apartment and just generally getting on with a pretty good life. My daughter, being a little behind the curve, still struggles with more basic details. I have learned to celebrate the small victories, like when she dyed her hair jet black in the women’s restroom at the mall, I rejoiced it wasn’t purple. Last summer, she went to the fair with some friends. I strongly recommended she give her debit card to me, in exchange for some cash. This was my attempt to limit the potential damage to her bank account. To my surprise, she agreed. Another small victory.

Later in the day, we exchanged some philosophical text messages about the dilemmas and difficult choices presented by such limited funds. At one point, I texted, “welcome to adulthood.” My daughter texted back the equivalent of a raspberry.

I flashed back to a moment in my teenaged years when I realized I was growing up, against my will. I had been a tomboy. My favorite toys were Hot Wheels and a pitch-back. I hung out with my dad, going fishing with him and his buddies, and yes, I baited my own hook and cast my own line. I puttered around the garage with him. When he decided to build a HeathKit television, I read ahead in the instructions and lined up the little circuits and transistors. (This was exquisite fun!) My favorite photo from childhood shows my dad holding a little horny toad he found in the backyard, and my three-year-old self is right in there checking this guy out while my (older) sister is cowering in the background.

We went fishing a lot. The moment I’m remembering must have been after I hit sixteen, because prior to that age I didn’t need a license. (I know I had one because I remember the bait and tackle shop clerk asking me my weight and I didn’t want to tell him.) This awful moment came one day when my dad asked me if I wanted to go fishing with him, and I said, “no.” I didn’t know why I didn’t want to go, but after he left I cried. I’m not sure I ever went fishing again. Looking back at that moment, I was afraid, knowing I was supposed to start letting go, but not understanding how that was going to be a good thing. It was soon to be “my turn,” and I wanted to pass, thank you very much.

There have been some bumps in the road as I’ve moved on, times I’ve reached for my folks, needing support of one kind or other. They had equipped me with a great toolkit, and sometimes their support was simply to remind me of that. I pray, but frequently doubt, that I am similarly preparing my daughter.

Raising a special needs child has been challenging. Occasionally I need a mini mental vacation, and I dream of spinning reels and pencil clams, dirty hands and horny toads. I wonder what memories will comfort my daughter as her life’s journey continues…

Blond Moments...

Welcome to another installment of “Blond Moments with Debbie”

When the care label on a garment says “wash with like colors” and the garment is pretty much equally black and white, what are you supposed to do?

Sign of the Times

Out of love and respect for Ed Burger, a giant of a man in many ways, the people of Gethsemane Lutheran dedicate this refurbished sign in his memory, welcoming the community to join us in the sometimes ambiguous journey of faith. Our thanks go out to Jeff Luther, a man who lives the gospel, without whose invaluable physical contributions this project would not have been possible.

Father’s Day 2009

Twenty years ago, I divorced my former husband, the father of YD and OD. In hindsight, I know that we should never have been married in the first place. He was my polar opposite. I was naïve, with a need to fix broken things, and I married an alcoholic. After twelve years, two kids, several breakups and beatups, I finally got wise. It was an epiphany. One day I was holding my newborn YD in my arms, and looking at my drunk husband who had passed out in his underwear on the floor in front of the TV. He had just told me what a fat, useless piece of crap I was for the hundredth (or thousandth) time. In that instant, a switch went off and I went from loving and wanting to “save” him, to hating the air that he breathed. Someone with a darker heart would have murdered him where he layed. Instead, I packed our belongings and took my babies to my mother’s house, where we lived for 18 months until I could afford my own apartment.

We tried to reconcile once, just as my babies and I were moving into our apartment, but the only thing that kept us together for another two years was the fact that he was in the U.S. Navy and was gone for 18 of those 24 months. When he finally came back for good, I knew that it was better to be alone than to be married to someone who made me feel so bad about myself. So I set about creating a life for my daughters and me, and it’s always been just the three of us. Their father moved away immediately after the divorce.

I wish I could tell you stories about what a great mom I was, but the truth is that motherhood was a mantle I wore reluctantly. I love my daughters, with the fierce and protective love of a mama bear. So I made a conscious decision to raise my daughters alone rather than bring a series of “father candidates” into their lives. But sometimes I wondered what it would be like to just walk away from my responsibilities, leave my kids with someone and be “free.” Then one of them would do something silly or funny or girly, and life would go on – seemingly slow motion – but looking back I realize that time was moving way too fast for me to cherish every moment.

Fast forward twenty plus years. Their father lives in Illinois with his wife and “new” daughter who is 18 years old. She’s the apple of her father’s eye. The wife, who is from the Philippines where they met when he was still in the military, is a loyal and loving wife. He’s been sober for ten years. And he doesn’t understand why our daughters have no respect or love for him.

I know he believes that I’ve had a hand in alienating him from his older daughters, but I’ve never spoken badly about him to the girls. I’ve always felt that they’d make up their own minds about him, and even told him that once. I had called him to beg for money because he hadn’t sent child support in several years and we literally had no food. His response was that I should find someone new who could help support the girls – or I should send them to live with him. He finally agreed to send a couple hundred dollars a month, which is all he said he could afford. After all, he had bought a new home and had a new family to support, so I shouldn’t expect any more. My girls were nine and eleven at the time, and he faithfully sent that $200 a month until YD turned 18. Then it shut off like a faucet and he considered his responsibilities fulfilled.

OD put herself through college with scholarships and loans, and the little bit that I could help her with. Her father was busy remodeling his home and couldn’t afford to help. Then a week before her college graduation, he informed her that he was attending her graduation. He hadn’t been invited, but as her “father” it was his “right” to be there. He stayed a week with us, sleeping on an air mattress in the living room. I was very welcoming and played the role of a good hostess for the sake of my children. They hadn’t seen their father in over 15 years, and for what it was worth, I was going to give them this time with dad. They went to the zoo and an amusement park and to dinner. Then he got on the plane and went back to his “family.”

In the four years since then, his relationship with our daughters has consisted of occasional phone calls from them requesting money. He always makes a big deal about the fact that they never call him except when they need money. He will frequently ask to speak with me, and I listen patiently while he goes through the litany of his latest illnesses and woes. There is no anger or hatred in my heart for him anymore. Only a kind of amused acceptance and awe at what a blind fool I was to have thought this man was the center of my world.

This week, knowing that neither of my girls had given a thought to Father’s Day, I sent him a card and signed their names. He called to acknowledge it and tell me that he knew the card was really from me. He resents their lack of gratitude and respect. I never confront him with the truth – it’s a lesson he’ll need to learn on his own – if he ever does. He made himself believe that someday they’d want to know their father and there would be some kind of happy, made-for-TV reunion.

The truth is, he burned that bridge years ago with the choices he made. In their minds, he left them behind like an old pair of shoes. To rebuild the bridge would require him to have a contrite heart, to acknowledge his mistakes and ask for forgiveness. He was never the kind of man who apologized, but I'm praying on this Father's Day that the past 20 years has given him the experience and maturity to understand that "owning" your mistakes is the first step to forgiveness.