New Year: New Shoulds?

You've heard it before:  now that Christmas is over and we are looking at the New Year, I'm ready to re-committ to all of the things that I should do and toss (easily) aside all of the things that I shouldn't do.

One of the first things that I should start up again is regular blogging. To give up:  chocolate, which if you know me will be super easy because I don't even like chocolate....it's just found it's way into my home over the holidays via well meaning friends and actually, I have found that it is, aferall, quite satisfying in a rich sort of surgary way.

But I've been thinking about the whole should/shouldn't thing....what to do with that?  A wise friend (OK, she was my therapist) once told me that when a person uses the word should in a sentence, a red flag appears along with it.  As in "I can't seem to do any of the things that I should be doing." Well then, maybe you need to re-think what it is you are doing.

This was great news to me, as growing up in a strict Calvinist home and community in western Michigan, my world was full of unquestionable shoulds.  And first born that I am -- I adhered to most of them with a kind of temperment that was productive if not exactly gracious.  But I got a lot done, and I only napped on Sunday afternoons.

A definition for should:  must; ought (used to indicate duty, propriety, or expediency).  We don't like to think in terms of must or even the gentler ought, because it defines obligation put upon us by someone else...."I'll do it because I want to, not because I have to, not because you told me to, not because I ought to." Ought?  There's an old fashioned kind of tyranny that we resist, because no one, not anyone, likes to be bossed around.

My boys, who generally prefer to put things in question/answer format and who don't appear to have the anxiety of shoulds clouding up their personalities, put it this way: "Why should I?"

Which is a hard question for me to answer as the response is usually, "because" and "because I said so."  The long, drawn out, complicated explanations get lost in their uncomplicated thinking, so adding a simple "please" always seemed to me to be enough to get the job done.

So my kids got a break from many of the shoulds because it made life easier for everyone, mostly me.  One problem, though.  As it turns out, life is actually easier in the long run if you just listen to some of the shoulds in the world.  As Nike so simply put it:  "Just do it."

Just go to class, just organize your notes, just do the reading, the homework, the projects.  Just get on the treadmill, eat more vegetables, read more, love more - whatever it is  - do it, and reach for help if you need to.  Because that's how we all move along and especially move ahead.  That's how we accomplish.  That's why.  That's why we should.  We can drop the anxiety, maybe some of it, but not the focus or the effort.

So for the New Year 2011,  I am going to embrace my heritage anew, get my shoulds together, and intentionally work at my blogging.

What's your 2011 New Year's should?  Leave me a comment and let me know.  g

She's My Friend

For my birthday this summer a friend of mine gave me a little box.  She didn't know this about me, but I've always had a thing for little boxes. Boxes hold treasures and jewelry and presents.  My mother kept little boxes in her top dresser drawer and I loved to look through them.  She had a glove box, a hat box and a pink jewelry box.  The jewelry box was my favorite, full of earrings and long chain necklaces -- none of them expensive and many of them given to her by me.

The box that Josette gave me this past June is hand crafted of sturdy cardboard and is about four inches by three inches in size.  It is the color of a soft paper bag and on each side are glazed somewhat random definitions:  Frau-lein, fray fraz-zle, freak. . . heath, hea-then, har-vest.   Over the definitions are stenciled in black small birds (I think doves) and the words HOPE, dream and love. Josette told me that a friend of hers makes the boxes, and as boxes go (I have several in my top dresser drawer), this one is a keeper.

On the inside cover of the box there is more delicate stenciling of birds and musical notes along with the handwritten words: "There's nothing like light and chocolate to give (you). . . HOPE."

Finally, when I open the box, there is a small coupon inside - similar to the tickets we use for the 50/50 raffle at the football games.  Except that on this coupon is one final definition:

Friend (frend) n. 1. a person whom one knows well and is fond of. 2. an alley, supporter, or sympathizer. 3. loves you for who you are. 4. unconditionally accepts you.

I have often said and am not afraid to say that without my friends, I would be so much sound and fury. Two of the most significant features in my closest friends, be they from high school, college, my working-girl days, my mommy years or this emptying nest place where I find myself right now, are 3. and 4. above:  loves me for who I am (not perfect and inclined to make the same mistakes twice and thrice), and unconditionally accepts me (acknowledging my accomplishments, forgiving me when I come undone).  

A few months before my mother died last year, I was sitting with her in her assisted living home in Holland, Michigan, and a woman walked by -- I had seen her before, her mother was living down the hall from my mom.  

"Do you see her?" my mom asked.

"Yes," I said, "isn't her name Sue?"

"Yes, Sue," my mom said slowly and with confidence, "she's my friend."

She's my friend.  It's the ultimate compliment and for me a tremendous safety net.  Trite as it sounds, true friendship is a powerful treasure, because it latches on to us and presents itself when we need it the most and often when we least expect it.  And true friendship spans the miles and the years.  Not necessarily in the talk every day kind of way, but in the "I get you" kind of way.

I found out last week that a good friend of mine, Carolyn, was recently diagnosed with liver cancer.  She's in Chicago. Her husband, Tim, married Al and me.  She is in the hospital right now, undergoing a battery of tests and procedures, which at best are making her uncomfortable, at the very worst are making her sicker.  I have been thinking about Carolyn and holding on with her, Tim and their children and grandchildren.

This post is dedicated to Carolyn and to Tim - my friends (see definition, above).

The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend.

 --Abe Lincoln.

In Defense of Boys

I've been thinking about my boys a lot lately ("shhhhocker,"Jake would say). The end of the school year often finds me nostalgic for the year that has passed and, to be truthful, a wee bit terrified of the summer that lies ahead.

This morning I looked up a piece I wrote back when all three boys were at Crossfield Elementary School, so they must have been around 7, 10 and 11 years old.  I go back to this piece when I call into question my sanity at spending so much time with my kids.  I called it "In Defense of Boys," because at the time I was finding myself constantly having to explain away "rough" behavior to my neighbors who (as it so happened) were mothers of girls.  Needless to say, it turned into a love story.

 Here it is, if you haven't stopped reading yet:


I am the mother of three boys. I am many other things as well: tall, brunette, a runner, a sister, daughter, wife – the list goes on. But it’s the boys in my life - the boy stuff, the boy energy, that boy halo that hovers and sparkles above me that defines me right now.

My manicurist shakes her head, “You should have had girls,” she chides me in her broken English. “Boys not take good care of mothers. You should have had girls.”

“I know,” I say to her in apology, “I wanted girls, but I only got boys.”

“You should have had girls,” she reminds me again, “girls much better than boys.”


The day that I gave birth to my third, precious little ten pound bundle of testosterone in a Connecticut hospital was the day that I gave up any illusions of living in a girl world. Ripped from me that day were visions of Laura Ashley dresses, a complete Fisher Price kitchen set and a shopping companion for life. No dolls, no fine printed floral wallpaper, no hand-painted furniture or sheer lace curtains would find their way up my stairway.

After my third son was born, a friend told me: “If you’d only had a girl, I would have bought her a darling little outfit.” No darling little outfits for me, mother of boys.

My visions led me that August morning, not down a lane of dance lessons and wedding gowns but rather down a rockier road: through hallways filled with soccer shoes and baseball gloves, tennis rackets, basketballs and football helmets. I saw my laundry baskets overflowing with blue jeans and T-shirts and mismatched socks in varying degrees of white. I saw my family room stocked with Legos, train sets, action figures and Matchbox cars.

I heard my evening meals, loud and sparkling, filled with burping and laughing, inane joke telling, chairs tipping and outrageous stories retold from cartoon shows and video games. I could hear myself saying things like “Don’t wipe your hands on the tablecloth,” and the boy mom classic: “Do not stuff more than one roll into that mouth at a time.”

I saw my dinner table: linen napkins skillfully dunked into crystal water goblets, vegetables and rice strewn about in attempts to forage only red meat, and me standing above the fray in white apron and sensible shoes demanding civility and good manners in the face of that great and ultimately unsurpassable odd: boys at mealtime.

I saw friendships bringing even more boys into my home, entertaining wild energies on summer afternoons, after school playmates on rainy days and sleepovers with smelly sleeping bags tossed about my best carpets. I could hear the door slam back into it’s frame as three boys returned from a Boy Scout meeting. I saw a succession of prom nights, cars screeching out of my driveway, bouquets to order, tuxedoes and broken hearts to mend.

I’m actually surprised that as I raise my children from babies to boys and towards manhood that the visions of my life were so accurate. I’m equally surprised that the front door is still standing. My boys are loud and they resist showers and teeth brushing. Their lives are full of football and basketball and  friends and video games and pizza. 
t
But even more surprising to me is that it is all good. The boy stuff – the door slamming, the smelly socks, the horrific table manners, the unkept rooms - it is what it is.  Sometimes I need to dig very, very deep to see their tenderness, their sense of humor and their loveliness.  But, because I'm their mother and have spent many, many, many hours with them, I know that some day, when I am not looking, they will take their elbows off of the table.