The Comparison Game

I just spent the better part of an hour g-chatting with my cousin. She lives in England, had her first baby at the end of last year and is struggling to feel competent at breastfeeding. My heart aches for her because this is a vulnerable time for any new mom, least of all one who is an ocean away from her mama and other support systems. Her troubles seem to universal, but in her little three-person family, she's not feeling very normal.

Every chance I get I tell her this: "You are a good mom. This is all normal. You are doing all the right things. It is very, very hard." I tell her this because some very wise mamas told me the same thing when my babies were young and I sweated through public nursing, public bouts of tears (from both the baby and me) and public I-don't-know-what-the-hell-I'm-doings. Those words go a long, long way toward nurturing new mamas.

The truth is, we mamas can be sensitive and we need to hear those words. And not just when the babies are babies. We need to hear it when the toddler stares us down and does what we just demanded he not do. We need to hear it when the 9 year old walks away from us when we're talking. We need to hear it as we take another deep breath, counting to 10 (or 100) when the once sweet teen pops off some sass that makes us blush.

But the truth is, we don't hear it and we don't tell it to ourselves. Instead, many of us buy the lie that what's-her-face over there at play group has it all pulled together. After all, just look at her, with her impeccable mommy uniform of designer jeans, sweater set and expertly highlighted, swept-up ponytail. With her toddler who is perfectly behaved, reading already, in her designer get up that is always clean. Damn her, we say to ourselves. We hate her. We make a half-hearted attempt to push it aside, telling ourselves that she may look great, but she's probably not very smart.

And this is only the beginning. We moms face a life time of the comparison game. When is the kid reading, what school does he attend, what toys does he have. It moves on to comparing which extracurriculars and how many. Then it's grades, clothes, romantic interests, colleges, jobs...it's grotesquely unending.

I told my cousin today that if she sees another mom who has it all pulled together at the play group, that woman either is a very good actress or a liar. I want to tell her to admit to someone else, someone she respects, that she's struggling. After all, that's the only way to stop playing the game. To admit her days as a new mom sometimes kind of suck will liberate her from a lifetime of second guessing herself. She will find allies. She will discover she is, in fact, the epitome of normal. She will embrace her skills as a mom who knows her baby and she will in turn be able to give the same lessons to another new mom.

It took me far too long to learn this lesson. And it took many of those wise mamas' words to teach me to look deeper. They told me of their struggles and I realized that, in fact, they are not the ideal image of mother. Only then was I able to look beyond my own desire to keep my crap private that I learned we're all doing that. I learned to look past the perfect picture. What I saw was a bunch of moms, trying to make good choices, trying to keep it all together and trying to make it look like we know what we're doing.

I now know that there is a group of women I can call on for advice and expertise. I can ask for help. I can let myself be the mother I am, the mother my kids need, not the mother I think the world wants me to be.

Skies

My friend asked me to read the manuscript of her novel. The Oklahoma sky plays a major role in the book, and while it didn't really affect me at first read, the longer the book stews in my head, the more I'm reminded of the power of the sky.

Before you accuse me of having had too much coffee or cough syrup, let me 'splain.

I'm not from "here." I'm from there, where the sky is not an unbroken line of horizon, but a silhouette of mountains and skyscrapers. Where a deep breath fills my mind with memories of cold walks to school across frozen earth. The fight for forward progress recalls steel mills and coal. Where a sniff of summer grass hearkens back to softball games and cool summer rainstorms. Where the sense of home resonates even as it no longer exists for me as "home." There is not the wide open expanse but it does not feel crushed.

Here, in Oklahoma, the sky is a vast extremity, extending from earth to air without interruption. (Of course there are buildings and skyscrapers in Oklahoma. Just go with me, mkay?). Breathing in the Oklahoma air, my memories extend, but not as far back as childhood. This smell of home is of a fresh new marriage, birthing babies and thick summers.

Running last week, I paid particular attention to the grey clouds breaking apart, the sun fighting its way through. I thought of how the hills here would not be classified as such in Pennsylvania. It seems I have one leg firmly planted in the literal here and now of Oklahoma. And one reluctant to leave the past, literal and figurative home, of Pennsylvania.

Do others exist in such a divided mind? Do you live looking forward and backward simultaneously? Can my mind coexist in memories and hopes? Is there another way? Just wondering.

Bring It

Fifty-six days until I turn forty. Can I get a woot woot?

I am not dreading this turn of events. I mean, it is inevitable, after all, right? The never ending ticking tocking sliding of the clock, thrusting us forward on our own little patch of earth. In fact, I say, bring it. Forty is the new black.

I have a friend who plans to get her first, maybe her only, tattoo when she turns forty. She's planning forty days of adventure leading up to it, trying something new every day until her fortieth. Love this idea. It banishes the black balloons and fake tombstones. It says "talk to the hand" to the adult diaper givers. It denies the denture cream. It says, "Yeah? So?"

Last year, when the eye doctor ever so gently reminded me that I was holding on to my thirties by a thread (yes, he so did), I got a little snippety. C'mon, dude. Like I don't know how old I am. And then, over the holidays, my husband said something that completely shocked me. I KNOW how old my parents are, and I am fully aware of what the forward march of time does to us as we march forward with it. But he said, "They're almost 70," referring to my parents. My mouth gaped. I about fell out of my chair.

Thinking about a number in the mid sixties is entirely different from "almost 70" because 70 is, like, a really big number. It takes a lot of years to get to 70 (about 70 if you want to put a fine point on it). If my parents are almost 70, well, hell. That means I'm, like, an adult! (Because even talking about them, it's totally about me.) If I'm an adult, well then I guess I better get some stuff sorted out.

And I am. Forget new year's resolutions. I've got daily resolutions, just like my friend who's having an adventure a day to celebrate.

I will no longer attempt to fit into other people's ideas of who I am.
I will stop whispering jokes to my husband and let him say them out loud.
I just might get me that tattoo I've always wanted.
I'm running a half marathon, so there!
I will plan a trip that is just me and my besties. On a beach.
I will stand confident and proud of what is past and square my shoulders to what's coming.

So, forty, bring it. I'm an adult, after all. I can take what you throw at me.*

*This is in no way intended as a dare, forty. Please, still feel free to be kind and to not throw too much at me. Okay? Thanks.

Resolving to Rant

After being out of town for ten days, our cupboards were bare. I wrote out the mother of all grocery lists and trudged off to the store. I wandered about, picking and choosing and finally finished this hated chore. Then I shoved my laden cart to the check out whereupon I was confronted with skinny models with their gaunt faces and bony chests. Where I saw "normal" sized women heralding the good news of how they dropped hundreds of pounds, posing gleefully with their super-sized pants beside them. I read the headlines. They were all the same, just spread across ten or so different titles, a loud cacophony of disapproval and shame.

"Get Skinny Now" yelled one.

"Get Skinny Fast" chastised another.

"How to tone your Tummy in 4 days" or whatever, barked yet another. They blended together.

I stood there, flummoxed, mad and really, just tired of the crap.

For one fleeting moment the huge words bombarded my self-esteem. I muttered to myself, "Well, but, it was just Christmas. I ate okay, and I run, and I'm busy and and and...." Then my woman-roar rose up strong in me and I mustered the courage to roll my eyes, instead of throwing every single one of them into my cart. I might have grabbed a candy bar just to thumb my nose in their general direction, if my cart weren't already so full.

I'm not saying, you know, don't lose weight or whatever. Do what you want. But don't do it because the lastest starlet has a new "cleanse" to push at you. Don't do it because you have that wedding coming up, or that reunion, or that...whatever. Do it because you want to.

But more than that. Don't let some stranger in a cold cubicle photoshopping images of deathly skinny girls be the arbiter of health and beauty for you. Stand back and assess who you are. You are more than a number on the scale, more than the sum of calories you put in your face everyday. You are gorgeous and you are amazing and you are you.

A friend of mine is going on a cruise and she wanted to lose some weight before she left. She did lose some weight and she looks amazing. Thing is, she looked amazing already. She looked amazing because she is amazing. She does more in one day than most of us could ever hope to manage. Her kids are awesome, her husband loves her, she always looks hip and pulled together. Is there really any more to life than that?

I'm not a huge fan of resolutions for a lot of reasons, and I can tell you about that another time. I do, however, realize that many people try to adopt change in the new year. New and good habits are to be encouraged. I understand a new year can mean a new job or lifestyle or a clean slate upon which to scrawl and dance your vivid next chapter. Go for it. Go big and go strong and go bold. Just... do it because it's you. Not because some stupid magazine disapproves of you. Because you are awesome. Just the way you are.

Finding Success in Failure

Oh man, did my run this morning suck. I mean, it sucked.

Let me count the ways. I hurt my shoulder running last week (yes, I know you're supposed to hurt your leg or foot or ankle when running, but let's just leave that for now, shall we?). So, I'm already hurting. And when I run with the dog, I keep him on a leash on which he tugs. Which hurts my shoulder.

And it was cold, so my nose was running all over the place. When I attempted a "farmer" blow of my nose, snot smeared all down my face, which I promptly wiped on my sleeves.

And I had to switch to regular running shoes because the vibrams I LOVE don't keep my feet warm. And the running shoes hurt my knee.

And my pace was off because of my knee and the dog and the shoes.

And the gps on my phone got all jacked. It had me going 4 minute miles which would make me either a Kenyan or bionic and I'm neither of those things.

Yesterday one of my runner friends posted that her run was awful, and I fell over myself to encourage her to keep going, and to try again, and to find her success. But then I "failed."

We have a tendency to oversell our failures, don't you think? What I mean is that I had kind of a bad run. Does a bad run equal failure? Um...no. It equals one bad run in a mass of days and runs.

My friend, Dr. Julie Bell, makes her living teaching people to define their successes in ways that work, to find What's Important Now. (W.I.N). I like this approach for a lot of reasons. First, it allows each person to find the things that are important to them and to pursue them. This may sound basic, but how many of us pursue things or ideas that other people foist on us? Second, it shifts our focus from what went wrong to what went right. Finally, this idea is not exclusive to runners or athletes. It applies to anyone.

Here's what was right on my run today. Let me count the ways.

I got out of bed and put on my running clothes. That right there is success.
I ran.
I figured out that I reallyreallyreallyreallyreally dislike running with the dog.
I realized I need new shoes.
I learned that I want to download some new music.
I liked running in the cold.
I kept going even though everything felt wrong.
I will run again.

The title of this post is misleading because there was no failure today. I wanted to use the word in the title, though, because the word is jarring in its harshness. It has an ugly edge to it and using it brings into relief how silly it is for me to perceive a "bad" run in such dramatic light.

What's going on with you? How are you defining your actions, your successes, your failures. What do you do when you're beating yourself up mentally?

OMG! Are You Your Mother?

Someone handed me a picture of myself. Well, of me standing with one of my delightful offspring. Are you like me? When someone shows you photos, does your laser-gaze hone in on your 2D simulacrum with excruciating perception? "Oh!" You groan. "My eyes are all wonky. And has my nose always been that crooked? What in the world am I looking at? What am I eating?"

(There exists, in my family, a modern day Ansel Adams whose life work seems to be capturing his family eating on film for posterity. If one were to find his cache of photos in 100 years, it will seem to that anthropologist that we are always eating. And...maybe we are....Anyway...)

Someone gave me a picture. And I honed in on that film version of myself. I did not, for once, gasp in horror about my weight or my weird nose. No. This time, I gasped because staring at that camera was not me but...my mother!

Can you hear the Hitchcockian scream emanating from the earth? That's me, recognizing, not for the first time, that I am, slowly and surely, becoming my mother. Hands on hips, feet splayed, eyebrows cocked in coming disapproval or something.

I'm fairly sure every woman has this moment of maternal cloning horror. All the things that drove us crazy about our mothers have somehow seeped into our DNA, turning us from the hip, intellectual young women we once were (because we were, okay?) into the woman who nagged us to clean our rooms, who pondered our outfit choices with, um, let's call it diplomacy, who reprimanded, scolded and chided.

But.

There's always a but.

That's not all my mother was, and I'd make a bet that yours wasn't either. Sure, we had our moments, when my teen self, rife with hormones and the glittering brilliance of youth and she, the wise and thoughtful woman, argued about curfew and boys and phone calls. But, my mom also was my biggest fan. She still is. My mom told me I could do anything I wanted. She said to try everything I get a chance to do. She let me stumble and she let me fall. Hard. She also picked me up and dusted me off. She put the armor of security on my shoulders and locked it tight. My mom has a knack for saying what I need to hear, not just what I want to hear. And? She was right about almost everything. There are days when I hate that still, but mostly it makes me laugh.

When a word my mother used to say slips out of mouth, when I find myself in a familiar posture or using a certain idiom, I no longer grimace. I give thanks.

What kind of life did you have with your mom? Do you rue the days you know you are turning into her or do you welcome them because she was more kick-ass than your teen self realized?

This I Know

You know how you go through your day and think things you wish you could share with someone and then you forget until the next time you're thinking it and you're all alone and you wish you could share it with someone? Well, that's me on my morning runs. This little list is purely for entertainment purposes only. A lighthearted Friday post, just because.

This I Know:
(Or: I know I think this)

It is always hard to get out the door
The minute I put on my headphones dumbdog is ready to go
He will always pee on the bush at the playground
The cars will never stop for me in the crosswalk
The squirrels in the park have a death wish
They are kamikaze squirrels
Every day, the dog awakes with hope that this is the day he will catch one
He will never catch one
I do not like the smell of freshly baking donuts (are they baked?)
They smell like sweetened fat
That does not mean I will not ingest said sweetened fat. Just smells bad when I'm running
I do not know what Latino Tires are, but I know where you can get some
My barefoot shoes do not abide acorns
The older man who runs and walks on my route is kind
I like to pass him
This makes me a bad person with a cruel heart
When I get to the David Bowie part of the mix, I like to sing and bob my head
I know how this makes me look
I tell myself I am amazing when I am running
I laugh when I say this
The dog does not have near my endurance
I do not have his speed.
Then again, I don't run on four legs.
I sometimes say things out loud. To myself. On a run.
I know how this makes me look.

I love my runs. I love these thoughts shaking loose in my brain. I love sharing them with you. I hope they make you smile. Do something nice for yourself today.