Never Thought of It That Way Before...

 I had a routine appointment with my pulmonologist last week after a year.  He asked if I was vaccinated against COVID-19, and also if I'd had the virus.  I answered yes, I'm vaccinated and no, I didn't get the virus.  I complained that, for at least a year, no one came in my house, and I basically went nowhere, and that it was a lonely existence.  His next comment was, "You must have done something right because you never got the virus."  Hmmm.  I never thought of it that way.  I was too busy feeling sorry for myself to be thankful that my sacrifice wasn't in vain.

Perception is everything.  Doesn't even have to be true to be true for YOU.  What you believe is your reality, regardless of how twisted it may be.  When I was in divorce litigation with my ex, he was asking for "reasonable visitation, with prior notice" with our daughter (age 12 at the time).  To me, that meant he would see her whenever it was convenient for him.  That isn't anywhere close to parental visitation schedules according to Indiana's recommendations of every other weekend and every other holiday.  In my mind, I wanted to force him to be a real father by enforcing the Indiana recommendations, and I told that to my attorney.  My lawyer commented, "I thought you told me your daughter didn't have a good relationship with her father."  Yes, I did.  "Then why do you want to do that to her?  Well, duh.  I never thought of it that way before.  We went with his visitation provision, and the rest is history.  But that's another post altogether.

Once upon a time, I was in psych therapy--my choice.  I was learning so much about myself and learning about my enabling behaviors before "enabling" was even a term (1970s).  I was in a relationship with the man I would eventually marry, but complaining that he wasn't honest about his emotions.  He would exhibit behaviors like the silent treatment or resistance to sharing, but when I asked him what was wrong, he would say "Nothing", in spite of the fact that there was obviously SOMETHING.  I mean, I may be dumb, but one of my faults isn't insensitivity to emotional signals.  My therapist asked, "What do you do then?"  My response was that I kept asking, thinking he would eventually reveal what was irritating him.  The therapist cut me up short by saying, "Why do you do that?"  Huh?  Isn't that what I'm supposed to do?  "No.  You asked; he answered.  You have to take his answer at face value.  Otherwise, you are playing into a manipulative mind game."  Whoa!  I never thought of it that way before, yet it was obvious that she was right.  It still took YEARS for me to shake free of that, but I eventually did.  AFTER the divorce.

One other lightbulb moment came when I was challenged to see things from the perspective of others.  Usually, it's a gift.  Sometimes, it's a curse.  Most of the time, it allows me to forgive people for reasons even I don't understand because...well...they seem to not know any better.  They don't even ask for forgiveness because they don't know (or won't admit) that they ever did anything wrong.  When I looked at it that way--it's not their fault; they are just emotionally flawed--I realized I had never thought of it that way before.

Don't get me wrong: I have standards, some of which put me on the outs with certain family members, but I'm not willing to give in.  Right or wrong, I hold strong to my beliefs, but I am also willing to accept new thoughts that I might never have thought of before.  Not sure it matters to anyone other than me, but that's also an idea I never thought of before!

    

The Genealogy Rabbit Hole

 There are two television programs about genealogy that I watch whenever I find them.  One is called Who Do You Think You Are?  It usually focuses on adopted people in search of their bio parents and/or siblings.  That particular program somewhat bores me because the template for the show seems to be the same every time.  Child searches; relatives found; meeting set up; emotional reunion.  Heavy on forced drama, which really isn't needed.  These reunions have enough pathos of their own.

The other show is Finding Your Roots, which digs deeper into the lives of ancestors, telling the stories of their lives through found documents, etc., with expert genealogy researchers doing the legwork.  This one gets interesting because it is developed in a story line.  It's on PBS, but not regularly.  When I happen upon it, I'm sure to watch and sometimes record.  

The problem with seeking out the stories of your ancestors is that the more you know, the more questions you have...and the harder it is to find answers.  All of the principals of the stories have passed on, and all that is left is legal documents or newspaper articles that may or may not be accurate.  Memories fail or fade, and in some cases, are contrived.  

My interest in genealogy piqued back in the early 1970s when my uncle showed me a Civil War diary that his great-grandfather kept while serving in the Union Army.  It only covered a few months, and much of it was written in pencil and fading.  He let me borrow it so I could find ways to have it preserved.  Over the years, I did a lot with it.  Scanned every page and transcribed it.  Researched things that were mentioned that I didn't understand.  Got hints about family.  Sent it to the US Army Archives to evaluate and return.  Sent countless letters and got countless return correspondence, all of which was done by what is now called "snail mail" because email wasn't a thing yet.  It took years to get a picture of what my g-g-grandfather was doing during the Civil War and after.  One hint led to another.  More places to search.  More fascination.  More questions.  And that becomes the rabbit hole.  It's like the vacuum of a whirlpool or a black hole in space.  It sucks me in.  I get lost in it.  Suddenly, hours are gone, and I have nothing to show for it except more questions and frustrations.  Ah, but the desire to know the stories of my people is overwhelming!  More!  More!  More!

The dawn of the Internet made every search so much easier, but all of the documents and pictures didn't get on it by magic.  Somewhere along the line, some very dedicated people posted all of them.  Posting genealogical information is always a work in progress.  Hats off to those who do all of that so that the rest of us can search and find!

Somewhere along the line, my daughter caught the genealogy bug.  For a short time, she worked from home for a site called genealogy.com when her children were quite little. She got really good at searching records for families, online, but the children were really too young to have Mom's attention at the computer all the time.  Still, I get to reap the rewards of her great skills!  She is as interested in finding the stories of family as I am!  (I guess I should say "families" because she works on both my family and her dad's.  My grandchildren's paternal grandma is also a genealogy nut, so Grandma Judy does the honors for that side of their descendants.)

Back when Megan and the children all lived with me, we would do cemetery adventures throughout Hendricks County and Putnam County to search for the graves of her father's relatives who came here and stayed here, usually on Memorial Day.  (Bless them, on at least one of those treks, the children were still in diapers.  Nothing like changing a diaper on the ground next to a tombstone!  I'm pretty sure whoever was buried there wouldn't mind.  We meant no disrespect.)  On one trip, I think we visited 11 cemeteries; on another, I think nine.  We took hydration and snacks.  I have already written about some of these trips, but here are some highlights:

*Megan had been searching for graves she hadn't been able to find.  We turned into a huge cemetery in Greencastle, IN, and I didn't think we had a chance among all of those graves, but I saw some older stones up the hill on the right.  I called out some names on tombstones when Meg gave out a shriek.  Just the graves she was looking for...first shot!

*One cemetery is in semi-remote Fillmore, IN, where Meg's McNary grandparents, and others, are buried.  Fillmore is a little burg with, as far as we could tell, no place with public restrooms, and I really had to go!  If we left Fillmore to find a potty, we would be going too far out of our way to return.  I decided to tough it out.  When we got to the cemetery, there was an open outhouse, complete with toilet paper!  The heavens opened and the angels sang!  Ahhhh...relief!  Thank you, Fillmore Cemetery!

*It was in this same cemetery that a butterfly fluttered around Megan and landed on her.  Of course, she wept, believing (as I do) that her buried grandparents were blessing her!

*Also in this cemetery, little Ryan, who was maybe 3 or so, was allowed to roam free as long as he stayed in sight.  When it was time to move on, we found him, on the ground, playing and talking at the outer fenced limits of the cemetery, at a child's grave.  There might have been a toy there, but who was he talking to?  He said he was playing with something furry.  I didn't know what to think.  They say children can connect with things we adults don't comprehend.  I'll always wonder....

*On one trip, we took a wrong turn for a known cemetery and ended up on a rutted road/path up a steep hill.  It went through woods, had a stream running over the path, and had no way to turn around.  We kept going and ended up at the top of the hill in a clearing with about six houses developed in a semi-circle.  It was called Sunrise Praise Point.  We'd long ago figured out we weren't on the road to the cemetery and were looking for a way out.  There was a young man walking alongside the "road".  We stopped and asked him directions to the exit.  With a huge grin on his face, he said the only way out was the way we had come in.  Ack!  I think he had answered this question before!

*One cemetery actually had a small playground at the entrance.  (Good thinking!)  Robin and Ryan went to play there while their mother and I scanned the gravestones looking for names.  Robin had on a brand new sundress that I'd bought for next to nothing, but it was really cute.  She came back with all kinds of gunk on the front.  I thought she had thrown up on herself, and she said she had...but her brother ratted her out.  She had found a bird's egg and managed to smash it on herself.

*That same day, the only convenient way in and out of a cemetery for us was to step through a barbed wire fence.  We all managed, except Robin's sundress, already sullied by a scrambled egg, caught on a barb and snagged a tear.  Bye-bye dress.  Worn once!

*On one of our trips, little Ryan was walking among the tombstones.  He commented, "At least we aren't trapped."  I didn't understand.  I asked him to repeat what he said, and he did: "At least we aren't trapped."  It dawned on me that the dear child probably thought that the people whose graves we sought were trapped in those tombstones.  

*I didn't realize how steeped in the genealogical thing we were until I heard my young granddaughter declare to someone, "We are going to visit some relatives, and they're alive!"

The problem with our cemetery searches is that they only validate where someone ended up.  Although I have the locations of my Covill grandparents' graves, in different cemeteries and different towns, their graves are not marked.  I wish to God I had the money to buy them even a simple stone.  I never knew them, but everyone deserves to have their life and death marked.  

I'm always more interested in how and where my people lived.  That's the tricky part.  So many interesting stories....so many gaps to fill.  There are questions that will probably never be answered in my lifetime.  Almost for that reason alone, I hope there is some form of discovery after I pass on.  Or maybe I will know all things when I die...or maybe I'll just be worm food.  I will just hate to miss how everything ends.  Never did like being left out!  

     

 

Time for the Home?

 I'm feeling very much like the absent-minded professor these days.  Throughout the pandemic, I left the house only when absolutely necessary, and no one was allowed in.  I got used to my hermit existence.  When things began to loosen up just a bit, I began to try harder to get out.  

When I got my first COVID vaccine at the Hendricks County Fairgrounds--a place I know well--I exited the fairgrounds from a direction I wasn't used to.  Got confused when I understood that I was going the wrong way.  Scrambled my brain to get back on track, using the compass reading on my rearview car mirror.  Good grief!  For my second COVID shot at the same venue, I made sure I was on the right path to head home.  Guess what?  It doesn't take nearly as long to get home when you know where you're going!

Keeping track of my prescriptions, doctor appointments, and medical tests and screenings has become  an unpaid part-time job.  At one time, my prescriptions all expired at the same time.  Now, the schedule is all screwed up, so I have to keep checking the bottles to see when they expire and if a doctor's authorization is required.  Two of my doctors in my network are right here in Plainfield where I live.  The rest are in Avon at the IU West hospital.  To do the Plainfield visits, I only need 10 minutes' travel time.  The Avon ones require 45 minutes--20 to get there, and the rest to find handicapped parking and walking to the inside, including finding the offices.  I try to consolidate trips up there. 

My Primary Care Physician's office called this morning to tell me that an order had been placed for me to have a CT scan of my belly.  I am also overdue for a CT scan for my lungs.  Silly me, I called my pulmonologist's office to see if I could schedule both for the same time.  The gal informed me that the lung scan had already been scheduled for July 8th.  Well...darn!  I kinda thought I knew that, but couldn't remember when.  And then I looked at my weekly planner for July, and there it was!  Who knew to look at July??  It's gaslighting, I swear!  They are trying to make me think I'm crazy!

Last Wednesday, May 12th, was my son-in-law's birthday.  I've always been bumfuzzled about what to do for the young man, especially since he lives so far from me (Olympia, WA) and I never know how long things will take to get there.  I wrote a check to him on May 2nd, but didn't send it because...lazy, I guess.  So on the 12th, I scrambled to send him an online greeting and told my daughter that I was ashamed that the check wasn't in the mail yet.  When I signed off with her for the day, I told her to give the Birthday Boy a special hug from me.  She responded..."You do know that his birthday isn't until Monday, right?"  Whaaaat?  Why did I think his birthday was on the 12th when it was actually on the 17th??  And how stupid must I look to the young man for receiving an early online card, and the check STILL not in the mail?  <Groan>

A couple of weeks ago, I sent my daughter an email.  It got returned as undeliverable.  I had a typo in her email address.  Sheesh.  I sent my daughter another email with attachments for my Will and other end-of-life documents.  She never said a word about it.  Today, I asked her if she had any questions.  She didn't know what I was talking about.  It seems that I sent those documents to a very old AOL account, so they were delivered, but she likely would never have found them.  Ye gods!  

To be honest, I don't feel that I am at risk for the home yet, mentally.  I'm just not paying appropriate attention; however, it really does perturb me when I do stuff that makes it obvious that I'm not as sharp as I once was.  My heart is in the right place.  My brain isn't!

The final example of my cognitive dissonance is this very post.  You may notice that the fonts are all messed up.  I don't know what I did to cause it.  I tried and tried to fix it, all for naught, so what you see is what you get.  If lack of computer knowledge is a symptom of time for the "home", I'm done for!

"Give Me a Simple Life"

 There were rules in our household when I was growing up.  Some of them were unspoken, but most of them were rooted in what young ladies and young gentleman should and shouldn't do, with the greatest emphasis on the young ladies' behavior since there were two of us in the family, and only one boy--the baby.  Specific milestones of femininity had an age limit, and 8th grade graduation seemed to be the line of demarcation.  Prior to that, we were not permitted to shave our legs, wear nylons and high heels, or wear makeup.  Brassieres were provided on an as-need basis.  No sooner.  As far as my mother was concerned, so-called training bras were only needed if one had something to train.  I played and swam outdoors, topless, for years until 2nd grade, when Mom decided that I was getting too old to run around the neighborhood, topless.  I had to wear a shirt after that.  When the time came, I was given a camisole to wear as an undershirt.  Finally, Mom had to hog-tie me to take me out for a bra.  I remembered how she and my sister would tussle over the need for a bra, so I decided I wasn't going to ask!  And so it went.  We weren't encouraged to grow up too fast.

As Navy kids, we moved too often to become slaves to fashion trends or brand names.  I would look around in each new school to see what the other kids were wearing or doing, and try to fit in.  When I was 10--mature for my age--my dad was put on inactive duty.  We were sent back to the States from Japan as new civilians.  He was still in the Navy, but inactive duty meant that he would have to find a job and a place for us all to live.  We ended up in the western suburb of Chicago--Oak Park.  Dad taught Industrial Arts and coached football in a nearby suburb.  I was plunked in school in what was then an "old money" community, where Ernest Hemingway grew up and went to school. This was 1958.  

In October of that first school year, I was invited to a birthday party for a girl in my 6th grade class.  Her father was the Vice President of the Gillette Company in Chicago, a fact that I didn't know then and wouldn't have impressed me at the time.  At that Saturday party, I was introduced to pizza for the very first time, having never heard of it before.  Then the whole party walked to the high school stadium to cheer for the high school team.  The Birthday Girl's family paid for the whole lot of us.  Wow!  (I should note here that suburban Chicago games were always played on Saturday afternoons instead of Friday nights.  I'm guessing that it was just to keep things peaceful.)

I remember that party because I stuck out like a sore thumb.  I wore an aqua long-sleeved corduroy shirt and black pants--the same outfit Mom bought for me, along with a parka, while in San Francisco waiting for Dad's ship to take us to Japan a year or more before.  (It was August in the rest of the country, but chilly in San Francisco!  Our experience in California was in San Diego/Coronado.  We weren't prepared for cold, having just driven through the dessert to get there!)  Mom had done my already-curly hair in pin curls for the party.  No one else had curls...or boy-clothes.  I came home in awe of the fun I had, yet knowing that my entire life had not prepared me for mixing it up with the other side of life.  

(Side note:  that Birthday Girl and I became fast friends.  We had so many adventures together!  My mother felt threatened, I think, because she once told me, "We can't compete with what they have to offer."  Kathy and I didn't care.  I was accepted as family in her luxurious house, and she was accepted in our rented home.  My dad always called her "Stumpy" because she was only 4'11" tall.   She loved it.  A few times, if she was going one way and he was going the other in the same hallway at my house, he would just keep walking and back her down.  He was so big and strong, and she was so little!  If I invited her to stay for dinner on any occasion, her first question was always a suspicious, "What are you having?"  It the answer was liver and onions, she was OUT.)  

The same year as Kathy's birthday party, I was invited to another.  It was all female and everyone dressed up.  Most of the girls were wearing nylons and short heels, with shaved legs.  I mentioned it to my mother.  On her own, Mom decided that she didn't want me to be the only one sticking out.  Thereafter, I was allowed to shave my legs--sending my elder sister in to help me shave for the first time--and bought me a garter belt and nylons.  (Pantyhose weren't invented until I was in college and mini-skirts became popular.)  

Bottom line:  I was never a trend-setter.  I didn't have proper respect for expensive brands of clothing or household items.  We were just an average American family, and I wasn't the kind of kid to demand more or better.  I was a Tom Boy.  I loved being outside, playing with wayward snails, barefoot, and picking up what I always called "pretty rocks".  Vegetable gardening attracted me.  Music, of course.  Musicals, of course.  Fashion?  Nope.  Name brands?  Nope.  And my appearance shows it!  Do I care?  Nope, as long as I don't embarrass my family.  My income and energy levels are limited.  I do the best I can!

I grew up with a "good enough" mentality.  I learned to make do with what I had on hand.  Some people say I have a knack for making things work with the mish-mash of my belongings.  What I am discovering in my old age is that none of that matters.  If it makes me happy, good enough.  

This morning, my housekeeper/friend came over to give me a lamp.  It matches another lamp that she gave me over a year ago when her sister was moving and consolidating belongings.  I gratefully accepted it, then asked, "Is that a Stiffle Lamp?"  It is!  I now own TWO authentic Stiffle lamps that I would not have purchased for myself due to expense.  I have other Stiffle wannabes, but these are the real thing!  Do I care?  No...but isn't it nice to have something to brag about that I didn't  have to pay for?  You betcha!

This was a long narrative to explain a simple thing.  Sorry.  I'm not ashamed of my Bag Lady image.  As my father always said, "I'm not trying to wow anybody."  I have my priorities.  I couldn't care less about fancy name brands or a glitzy image.  Whatever admiration I get is not due to what I have, but how I live.  Am I bragging now?  Maybe!  What I have isn't fancy, but it's mine.  Life keeps me humble!   

     

English Teacher in the Quest for Perfection

Once in awhile, I review my previous blog posts and get shocked at my typos and/or omissions.  I go back and fix them, but (obviously) my followers have already seen them by the time I do.  How embarrassing!

Truth be known, I'm a Grammar Nazi.  I DO believe that presenting something written for public view creates an impression.  When I write my blog posts, I'm usually feeling vulnerable, which makes my mistakes even more glaring to me.  Trust me when I say that I seek your forgiveness for my blunders.  I do proofread...but true to most proofreading situations, the brain skips over the mistakes by way of expectation.  If you know what you meant, your brain doesn't get it.  

Be happy.  I'm trying to! 

What "Nice Old Ladies" Don't Talk About

 I was raised in the Old School configuration of manners.  Children should be seen and not heard.  Never correct your elders in public.  No elbows or singing at the table.  You know the drill!  Sometimes, manners took precedence over common sense, but we did what we did because it was accepted in polite company, and our parents demanded that we conform.

Well, "polite company" has changed quite a bit since those days; yet, some of us older geezers still carry with us the remnants of the way we were raised, sensible or not.  All my life, I haven't talked publicly about body functions, and never used what my family deemed "crass" terms.  We didn't pee; we piddled.  We didn't have asses; we had bottoms.  We didn't fart; we tooted.  (Actually, any reference to passing gas didn't happen at all.  Nice people didn't pass gas in public--or refer to it.  It wasn't a big funny deal in our family.)  

I am 100% certain that every other aging woman on the planet--and maybe some men--can understand why we don't talk about the indignities of growing old.  It happens to all of us females, eventually, if we are lucky enough to live that long. 

1.  Old ladies give up wearing a bra.  It isn't so much that the "girls" are out of control, but that we can't find the right foundation that is comfortable.  When you are old and everything hurts, why do you need something else to make you hurt??  If we are honest, even young women will confess that the first thing they do when they get home after a long day is remove the brassiere.  Those of us with some long years behind us just give up that step by not wearing one in the first place.

2.  The hair on your head thins out, sometimes embarrassingly.  You can do everything in your power to cover the bald spots, but the reality is there.  This is a point of vanity.  I wouldn't mind having stark white hair if I just had enough of it.  My hair is extremely fine, which makes it even more difficult to have female combovers.  I finally decided to give up and wear a wig.  Then, of course, I had to decide how to deal with that in public.  Honesty is the best policy.  I introduced my wig to people I know as "Jeannie" (which is the actual model name of the wig), and openly admitted to everyone, if it came up, that Jeannie was only my hair because it had been purchased for me.  I don't even try to pretend that Jeannie is my own hair, but I don't bring it up in polite conversation.    

3.  The hair on your legs grows in spite of the fact that you can no longer reach it.  Shaving--at least shaving in the tub or shower--goes bye-bye.  Ugh!  This, and spider veins, is the reason most nice old ladies wear slacks.

4.  The hair on your face becomes empowered.  Even though you can't get it to grow on your head, it will grow on your lip and chin.  Stiff and dark.  Even worse are the white ones you can't really see.  You can pluck and pluck and pluck, and then use a razor to smooth the rest, but it doesn't matter.  Skin wrinkles hide whiskers.  The ones left behind will show up in the light of day.  Society isn't nice to ladies with whiskers, but I am here to tell you: if you are female, you too will be bewhiskered in your older years.  Your mama just didn't tell you about that because nice old ladies don't talk about those indignities.  

5.  Laugh, sneeze, or cough, and you are subject to urinary dribbling.  It happens to every female.  Nuff sed.  I haven't looked at the research.  Maybe it only happens to women who have borne children, but I doubt it.  It's only funny if you it hasn't happened to you, yet.

6.  Thingies begin to appear all over your body.  Skin tags, moles of every kind...things that just take away your femininity.  Naturally, many of them appear in places that are visible to others.  Keep a close relationship with your dermatologist! 

7.  Intestinal gas is a fact of life.  Yes, women toot.  They won't talk about it or brag about it the way men do, but it happens.  My fondest memory of the "cloud" my father left behind in a chair is when my grandmother sat in it directly after he left it.  She said, "OH, FLOYD!!"  No other words were needed...

8.  Wrinkles can be "helped" with cosmetic surgeries, expensive creams, etc., but how can they be fixed over one's whole body?  I now wear long-sleeved shirts all year round because the skin on my arms is so horribly crepey that it is embarrassing.  Every time I have to uncover my arm to get a blood test--which is often these days--I grieve my lost skin tone.  There isn't enough money in the world to fix it.  I'm not a rich person, and I have greater priorities...but still...

9. Keeping clean is a major problem for some, if not all, of us senior citizens.  I was always a bath person.  I would soak in a tub laced with bath oil.  The bath would warm up my cold feet, keep my "nether regions" clean, and moisturize my skin.  And then the day came that I dared not attempt baths any more.  I could get in but not out.  Or I couldn't get in or out without major risks to myself.  (Having a person help was unacceptable.  I don't even like seeing myself naked.  Having someone else see that?  No...the world isn't ready to see my naked body!)  I had to start resorting to showers only, which meant putting a shower seat in my little tub, and holding the shower head in my hand, giving me only one hand to do the rest of the work.  When I'm done, I'm clean, but my skin has been stripped of what little oil it had left in it and becomes dry, flaky, and...well...more wrinkly and crepey than ever.  Getting in and out of the tub, even for only a shower, is still a major undertaking.  Long story short: keeping clean is such an exhausting production that it is often easier just to put it off.  I would kill for a bath now.  Calgon, take me away!

10.  As I age, I understand that keeping me comfortable is more and more of an issue.  That makes me not a very good guest...or a very good hostess.  I have always changed me to adjust to every new situation in my life, but no one really prepared me for old age, except (as my mother would say) getting old is hell.  I might have done my life differently had I known.  (Yeah...but don't count on it.)  Do I have regrets?  Of course.  Do I wish things were different now?  Of course.  Can I change course?  Maybe a little, and I'm gonna try.  We need to plan for old age when we are young, but nobody ever thinks things will happen to them.  Guess again!

Guess I'm not a nice old lady because I just talked about things that nice old ladies don't talk about.  Maybe nice old men also have things they don't talk about.  I don't know.  All I DO know is that we can live to be 100 without talking about reality.  God bless our old people.  (Wait!  I'm an "old person".  When did this happen to me????)  Don't blink, folks.  Don't blink...   

When Trust Is Broken

 Robert Frost said, "Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in."  I have loved Robert Frost's poetry for its bluntness and symbolism, and the fact that he was still alive in my lifetime.  

Not sure I agree with him on this one.  In modern terms, it's enabling the wayward.  Screw up.  Do bad things.  But when you go home, they will take you in with open arms? 

I watch Dr. Phil daily, who also deals with people who have made it easy for the wayward to come home and do nothing.  I get it.  Mostly parents don't want to kick their kids out into the cold, cruel world with nowhere to go, but when does the caring stop?  What are the boundaries?

Family is everything to me.  I have spent 100% of my life involved with those I love.  I have my quirks, and so do they, but we've managed, somehow.  I have loved ones who have lied to me, stolen from me, manipulated others, and made life miserable.  There is a point at which, eventually, I can no longer trust these people.  I fear it makes me appear as a negative  person, but that's not true.  I feel that everyone deserves a second chance, but when chances go into three, four, five, and more, the time has come to realize that there can be no trust in the other person.  That doesn't mean that they should be excluded from one's life; only that they cannot be trusted.   Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.    

 The "normal" order of things is:

1.  Person does wrong.

2.  Person regrets doing wrong.

3.  Person makes amends...apologizes to the victim of his/her actions, and finds ways to make up for the offense.  

4.  Person takes action to make certain he/she never does the offending action again.

Sounds great on paper, but by the end of the whole process, years have passed.  Maybe MANY years, and in the course of those years, other injuries have happened.  Nothing is ever fixed.  An apology--even a pseudo-apology--carries with it the expectation that the offending behavior will never happen again.  When it does happen again, it becomes part of a pattern that is indicative that the offender has no intention of changing his/her behavior.  I could write a book about the nuances of that.

Once upon a time, I reasoned that a person who was hurting me maybe didn't know that what he/she was doing was hurtful; so I told the person as calmly as I could, "That really hurts my feelings."            Know what?  The hurtful behavior didn't stop.  What did I learn from that?  The message was clear that my feelings didn't matter.  I either had to tolerate bad treatment or get out of the relationship--easier to do when the person isn't family, but so much harder when it is.    

Trust isn't a fragile thing until it is broken, many times over.  If you feel hurt, betrayed, insulted, or helpless in the face of the way you are being treated in a relationship, you need to find the door.  No one in a dedicated relationship deserves that, and no one should have to suffer from it.  Once you get out, stay out.  We can still care for people without letting them mess us up by being charitable toward that. Having a backbone can be difficult when others are exerting emotional extortion on us.  No one wants to put their kids on the street or kick out a spouse, but what other options are there in order to maintain any kind of self-respect? 

Trust means that you give someone else permission to care about you.  Trust means that the someone else will take care of your heart, even when knowing the "real you".  If that situation changes, a trustworthy person will tell you in order to keep things honest.  When trust in someone else fails, you come to understand that your security and happiness can only come from you, no matter what else happens, and you have to surround yourself with positivity.  Forgiveness can give up the anger but not the reality.  Disrespect is never acceptable.  Mistreatment is never acceptable.  Betrayal of trust is never acceptable.  I decided long ago that I didn't want to die with regrets for the way I treated anyone.  And once upon a time, I figured out that I didn't want to die being mistreated, either.

Being strong doesn't mean lashing out.  It means accepting whatever other people want for themselves but rejecting the same things for me.  Robert Frost got it wrong on this one!   

May Day!

 The first day of May is considered "May Day", that is celebrated all over the world.  I suspect that's because it really marks the end of cold weather (depending on location, of course).

I will note that the voice signal for distress has also been anglicized into "May Day!  May Day!  Send help immediately!"  The term actually comes from the French "M'aidez" (pronounced "may day") which literally translates into "help me".  (On a side note, I didn't realize until I became an amateur radio operator that, although "may day" and "SOS" are both signals of distress, SOS is only used for water vessels.  It means Save Our Ship...and interestingly can be expressed with one of the simplest Morse Code signals ever: ... --- ...            Dih dih dit, dah dah dah, dih dih dit.  Kinda musical!  But I digress.)

Back to the day/date.  When I was a child, I somehow got wind of a vanishing tradition of secretly leaving May Baskets at the doors of neighbors.  My mother had to have been the one to tell me about it.  We moved around so much that we never really had neighbors for long, but I was such a starry-eyed child, I liked the creative angle of making May Baskets.  (Apparently, my sister was part of this process, too.)  We made baskets out of paper and put anything we could scrounge into them.  Flowers, goodies, little messages...  I was always a little embarrassed at the sparse things I put in mine, largely because we didn't exactly have a lot of stuff stashed around the house to use, but I was gung ho.  (I suspect there were a lot of dandelions in my baskets.  It was the thought that counted!)  Kept us busy.  Kept us mindful of others.  And so, we did what we did.  I'd like to see the old tradition come back.

I am reminded of the song from Camelot, "The Lusty Month of May".  Listen here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg4YrOlAkds

Happy May Day, everyone!