Still becoming

January 5, 2014 by Karen, posted in Adult children, Angels, family, good grief, Midlife Crisis, movies, no fear, relationships

When my mother was 51, she was busy getting ready to die, but she didn’t know this yet. Well, maybe she did know it on some level, but she never talked about it with me pre-diagnosis so I really can’t be sure. Certainly none of us, her children, her husband, knew it yet.

I’m 51. At 51, I feel like I am still becoming who I am. At 51, her life was drawing to a close.

Seeing The Secret Life of Walter Mitty has me thinking about things like this today. Walter Mitty is about many things. It’s about living your life, but also it’s about how you live it. You can spend it offsides, thinking about what you wish you were doing or imagining all that you’d like to (someday) do. Or, you can, at any time, decide to actually do the thing(s) that you thought you could not ever do.

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”

― Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life

In the movie, it was a fine line. Walter Mitty crossed it. I don’t think that my mother ever crossed it. I am wondering if I have crossed it.

Interwoven throughout Mitty are images of his past that are meaningful to him. They are there to let him know that a) he is on the right track and that b) both of his parents, his dad who had died when he was 17, and his mother who was still alive and baking clementine cakes for him, were there supporting him every step of the way.

For me, the real message of this movie is this: No matter what, we are always our parents’ child.

50: The year I got old

March 30, 2013 by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, Adult children, family, fitness, health, Midlife Crisis, no fear, Turning 50

I was thinking about how I have been in a funk these past several weeks, when I realized, no, it’s actually been several months now that I’ve been feeling this way. I realized what is partly affecting my mood and my decisions is this: I feel old.

My skin looks old.
All of my joints hurt all the time so I don’t want to exercise.
If I do exercise, all my muscles hurt the next day.
My bowel pattern is a constant concern.
No matter what time I go to bed, or how late I sleep in the morning, I’m still tired all the time.
I don’t want to do any work anymore.
I don’t want to eat “healthy” anymore. I want cappuccino whoopie pies and DQ blizzards and apple crisps and Peanut M+M’s every frikkin’ day.
I don’t even want to read anymore because my expensively, progressively, trifocally, Transitions vision sucks.

How’s that for pathetic? After I read my list it dawned on me: I’m depressed. SAD probably, since this is the longest, coldest, snowiest winter in the last, what, million years.

My daughter was reading this over my shoulder without my knowledge as I was writing it. A little while later she said,

She: “Mom, it’s not true.”

Me: “What’s not true?”

She: “That stuff you were writing; it’s not true.”

My daughter: yep, think I’ll keep her.

Ode to snow, part 2

December 31, 2012December 31, 2012 by Karen, posted in Adult children, family, fitness, health, Marriage, Midlife Crisis, teens, Turning 50

http://wintercenter.homestead.com/files/1978vt.jpg

My thoughts wandered, fueled by cold and the discomfort of muscles that are rarely used screaming their displeasure at being exploited in the manner required by shoveling.

I remember being handed a shovel and instructions to go “do the front steps” of our house. We had a house with 14 concrete steps at that time. “Do the steps” was an hour at least of back breaking work. Should I mention that we lived in that house during the blizzard of ’78?

I had to go outside and shovel with my scaled-to-my-size shovel gifted to me for Christmas by mom and dad when I was four years old. Even though my midlife memory leaves something to be desired (reference I remember nothing by Nora Ephron), I swear, it’s true! I have a picture around here somewhere….

My parents stayed inside and smiled and waved at us kids while we kids were outside shoveling.

As it should be.

The 50 year old mom shouldn’t be outside shoveling while the 13 year old daughter is inside glued to her itouch.

Then I had another thought. When my mother was 50 years old, she couldn’t shovel. She was busy being diagnosed with a stage IV pelvic cancer of an uncertain type. She couldn’t shovel. She was busy dying.

Suddenly, I was very happy to be a 50 year old woman outside shoveling. A woman with 2 happy, healthy kids, married to the love of my life. A woman with a strong, healthy body for whom shoveling was not only possible, but beneficial cardiovascularly speaking. A woman with a house and yard that needed shoveling.

Wayne Dyer was right: “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”