Taking it With Me ... Maybe

 

The preacher quite confidently stated:  “You can’t take It with you.  You will never see a U-haul following a hearse.”  That being stated … now you can understand why when I was driving by a local cemetery last week and I saw a moving van parked in the center of the cemetery, I laughed so hard I almost choked.  The irony of that mental picture gives you pause to reconsider:  perhaps I can take something “with me”?  and if so, what can I take with me?

Someone once told me that you spend the first 50 years of your life accumulating stuff, and the next however many trying to get rid of it.  I don’t know.  I’ve got a perfectly good TV in the guest bedroom attached to a VHS player and both of them still work.  I have had two “bites” online to buy it.  Yes, I was actually the person to post them for sale (I have no husband to blame for such generic offenses).  I just can’t bring myself to click the button that reads: “Yes this item is still available.”  Mentally, it is not yet 100% available.  What happens if my Roku tv craps-out on me?  And yet I remember that I lived for 20 or 30 years after college without a television.  Some people looked at me like I was Joan of Arc when I told them that.  Other people were horrified.  I had one man look at me and say in a very condescending tone:  “Well, I don’t think that’s right.”  I couldn’t figure out who I would have offended by not participating in the nightly national holy-hour broadcast of Wheel-of-Fortune and Jeopardy!  To this day, his response puzzles me.

I keep purging clothes out of my closet.  That is going to be a never-ending process for a few reasons.  Firstly, because I keep buying clothes.  So I get one, I give one.  That’s the mentality. Except the quantity never really evens out.   Secondly, because in my closets and in my Rubbermaid bins I have other people’s clothes too.  I have clothes from 30 years ago that I still like that haven’t fit me for, oh, 25 years.  We will call those the property of:  Young Adult Me.  My acronym name would be Yame. It’s pronounced like “amy” only with an excitement in front of it that only the letter “Y” can bring:  I was young, I was slimmer, I was alive.  Yay-Me.

Then there is the batch of clothes that belongs to:  Suck-Crunch-Zip-Me.  That acronym will be Suczi go with the Polish pronunciation of “soo-chee.”  These are clothes that I have to suck my stomach in, crunch my legs down and zip on the count of one-two-threeeeee.  Suczi.  Well it’s better than Sucky.  Those are the clothes that I hope to get back into next year.  Those are not the clothes I am thinking about when I say YES to the ice cream, YES to the brownie, YES to the mini chocolate bar.  Note to self:  You cannot say YES to the Dress and YES to the Desserts as well. 

Then there is a small cache of clothes that belong to Wistme.  Wistme is the Wistful part of myself that thinks I’d knock-em-dead in that adorable black, lace bottom dress.  Someday.  Or that impulse-buy Orange and black bathing suit I grabbed on the boardwalk about ten years ago.  It’d make me look like a Mae West spin off of Bay Watch.  Maybe.  At least wistful me thinks so.  But I need to adjust a few locations of the real estate before I can slide into that piece of spandex.  Yep.  Not happening this summer.

Although, kudos to the friend that just lost 20 pounds by cutting carbs.  In one month.  My gosh, I’d be on a respirator in the ICU if I went without carbs for a month.  No.  I mean it.  I look at the fruit we’ve been farming in to the stores this winter and spring, prior to our local crops coming in and, man alive, who can eat it?!  Sure, the bigger container of strawberries is only like $3, but half of them are WHITE.  I don’t want to buy strawberries that look like the Polish flag.  I want them to be ready to eat or utilize (jams), not sit on the counter all day to ripen and in the process gather more fruit flies than true believers at the annual Baptist convention in the Bible belt.

And speaking of food.  I tried to clean the pantry the other day.  My carbs are all sitting there waiting for me, should I need them.  And really I cannot figure out why I continue to go to grocery shop once or twice a week almost hypnotically when I could feed an entire troop of Boy Scouts for a weekend with my pantry.  I mean it.  I have cookies in there from 2 Christmases ago.  I have a box of chocolates that is a few years old too.  Were they gifts?  Did I pick them up in a moment of wanton devil-may-care fever the last time I went to Harry & David’s at the Outlet Mall in Waterloo?  Darn.  They should call that place Alamo, not Waterloo.  Because I can’t seem to forget it.  (Remember the Alamo?)  I like driving out there and wandering about like a lost soul on Halloween in the misty moors of England.  I’m so happy that’s where I found that special liquid you use to protect your cutting boards.  If I actually USED my cutting boards I may need that liquid.  But my favorite wood cutting board was a gift and it just sits propped against the wall looking majestic in my kitchen …. Because I like it that way.  

And my tchotchke’s.  How I love my tchotchkes.  I love saying the word.  It is Yiddish.  But intriguingly it has roots in an obsolete Polish word:  czaczko, which means the same thing:  trinkets and collectibles.  Now WHY and WHO would declare that kind of a word obsolete ever? - Probably this 30’something generation that I have an ongoing locking-of-horns with.  My friend’s daughter came to my house when she was a teenager and when I opened my microwave to pull out a package of cookies, the kid laughed at me.  Hard laughing.  Really?!  I had to explain to her that we don’t “waste storage space” in my house.  That generation never lived through the Depression.  Well, to be fair, I didn’t either, but I am prepared:  I’ve got storage.  I have two of my grandmother’s cabinets for safe-keeping my tchotchkes.  I mean, who wouldn’t want a mini Santa in a bathing suit carrying a surfboard with a beach ball at his feet?  Or the ceramic cow that was given to me, unpainted, and I painted it, but it never got fired up to high gloss.  I can’t part with it.  Or my three little exotic birds that are actually stampers for envelopes.  Find one of those today anywhere: I dare you.  Or the soft bisque praying angel that has a broken leg under her flowing dress.  I will get around to fixing her someday.  No one needs to know that one leg is broken.  Is it not a deep, spiritual truth that those who pray often have brokenness that is not apparent to the rest of the world?  So why would I want to throw out or give away a great spiritual lesson like that? 

Then there is the Bik’s Memorial Dog & Pet Kennel collection.  I could probably evacuate the Bronx Zoo with all my animal carriers.  Probably.  2 Large Dog Kennels, one medium kennel, three or four carry-on’s in case I need to fly somewhere with my birds-in-tow. 

To my credit, I have not moved my residences and worldly possessions as often in Central New York as I did when I lived in Arizona.  In Arizona, I moved six times in four years.  The last time I moved, my friend the Immortal Tom Walsh, said to me:  “Arabik.  This is it.  This truck aint moving your crap to another apartment, not one more time.”  I guess he meant it, because the following year he moved himself to California.  He fit all of his worldly belongings in the back of his steed-white El Camino.  I’m not kidding.  If I had to move my earthly possessions to another state, it would take …. Um …. Probably a herd of El Camino’s or …. A U-Haul …. Like the one I saw in the cemetery last week.  I will leave it at that.

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Being the Gift Horse

 

I winced as I looked at her smiling, fat face.  Her cartoon resembled her and those like her.  As I flipped the newsletter over, I know it was intended for me to feel glad that “Amber found a home.”  (that is her real name, they didn’t change it.)  When I opened the newsletter, the non-cartoon, black and white photo of her new digs and her comrades also made me wince.  No smiling faces to the camera, just bare backsides … in a mud pen.

This is not an appeal from a charity in a Third World Country.  It is, believe it or not, a Pig Sanctuary.  How my name got on their mailing list I will never know.  They are on the west coast doing their pot-bellied pig rescue efforts and wanting my east coast money to shore them up.  Not happening.

My neighbor sometimes has trouble starting the wood pile fire in the back so he is counting on me to come over there weekly and bring a paper bag FULL of charity appeals that I get in the mail so we can start the “camp fire.”  Someone must have sold my name on the lists under the headings of “Religious” and “Animal Lovers.”  For your entertainment, I will tell you “who” is after me:  the Salesians, the Franciscans, the Oblates, the Native American charities, the charities that feed children, the charities that rescue dogs and cats on Long Island (where I do NOT live) and save animals indigenous to other continents, the people that train dogs for veterans, and all veterans and police charities, local helicopter services, fire departments, and various politicians.  It is not an exaggeration to say I get about 20 pieces of charity junk mail each week.

A Guilt Gift is sometimes enclosed.  The agenda there is that if the sender puts a gift in, you may somehow feel morally obliged to contribute back to their charity to offset their costs.  Honestly, that part of my moral consciousness died last year.  Finally.  All of this unwanted mail coming to my box like a trojan horse with Greek soldiers hidden inside has worn away at my moral veneer. The guilt gifts are predictable:  It may be a nickel taped to the letter urging you to return it.  It may be a fake two-dollar bill folded so you can see it in the window of the envelope.  Money is, after all, a great motivator.  holy water from a religious site, a medal with a saint on it, a religious symbol appropriate to whatever season is nearest (Christmas or Easter are common).  Sometimes They send me note pads, with or without my name, and often they are very cutely designed.  And have I got address labels.  I could wallpaper my bathroom with all the free address labels I’ve received.  Lastly, there are The Mass cards.

I guess I took it for granted that everyone knew what a Mass card was until my friend at work said, “what is that?”  I explained:  It is a card you get from a charity that you send to a friend or loved one and inside it is the inscription:  A Mass is being said for you on (insert religious holiday name here) at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Alps (I made that up).  So instead of you going to the grocery store or pharmacy to purchase a card for $5, you send $5, 10 or $20 to the charity itself as a donation to their ministry (feeding some people perhaps in a Third World Country or USA inner city).  Let me be clear:  You don’t have to request these cards.  Once you get on someone’s mailing list, they keep coming and coming and coming in packs of three or four.  Some of them are nice, some of them are too glitzy for my taste.  But “I hate to throw them out” so I have a few boxes of them, organized by category … because I don’t have anything better to do with my time(?).  Mass cards can be for birthdays, Mother’s/Father’s Day, Christmas, Easter, Thinking of You, or sympathy cards.  To be clear:  in order for me to use all the sympathy cards I got in the mail from the charities, Everyone I have ever known or met in my life would have to simultaneously drop dead, and I would STILL have at least 5 left over cards in my Mass card collection at home.

Money is important.  How we utilize it is also very important.  So how can we choose what charities to support financially?  First, I eliminate almost anyone whom I suppose already gets government funding.  As a former worker in a 501(c)3 charity, I want to support the underdog, the “little guy.”  Oftentimes the smaller charities are able to accomplish more with a dollar because they don’t get strangulated in red tape.  Although, there are a few donations I’ve made to illness-related charities in memory or honor of a friend who struggled with that illness.  Next, I look for the Better Business bureau symbol or the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability symbol - I want some indication that the charity actually exists and that someone holds them accountable for how money is used. Then I pick one for each month of the year and write the names on an index card to tuck into the back of my checkbook as a reminder when I’m writing out monthly bills to be faithful to those who need me.

It has been said that God cannot be outdone in generosity.  It is for that reason that even when times are tough and the take-home pay barely seems to take you home, we should remain generous.  We should remember those who have less than us:  people who will never own a vehicle or rent/own a home; children that were born into tragic circumstances; people who have put their lives on the line so that we may live in a free country; animals that rely on the compassion of humans to protect them from worse humans.  The need is endless.  But if each of us remains faithful to whatever need  touches our heart, then we will make the world a better place, one check at a time... even for pot-bellied pigs.  

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Accidental Speed Dating

 

It started with a sneeze.  And then there was about 8 minutes of relentless, one-way speed dating that I did not ask for which continued until I walked away.  As I told my father the other night on the phone, “It used to take me eight months to decide that I couldn’t tolerate someone’s nonsense.  Now it only takes eight minutes.” 

Last Saturday I went into Tractor Supply to look at blueberry bushes.  Their bushes were dried out; the flowerettes on them were crispy-dead and I can’t imagine who would be dumb enough to buy plants that looked THAT BAD.  So I went inside.  I heard chicks and ducklings in the tower-sized brooder calling so I went over.  I do not know why I don’t visit them every year:  they are so cool.  No matter what is happening in life, watching baby chicks just do what they do makes you feel better.  Whatever it is that they do.  And every now and then one sits in the corner with his eyes half-mast and you wonder if he is going to make it and then that wrecks the whole thing.  But I digress.

The next thing I heard was this FWAH-FWAH sound.  I wandered toward it, wondering if they were torturing goats in the back of the store.  Nope.  It turned out to be a kid about 8 to 10 years old that was playing with a dog toy.  Relentlessly.  It was a noise worse than nails on a chalkboard.  Almost worse than the Styrofoam cooler that used to squeak in the back of our station wagon when my parents took us to the beach.  That sound actually makes me nauseous.  I do not know why.  But when I saw this kid, deliberately, rhythmically, incessantly, tweaking that dog toy and his mother just blah-blah-blahing to her husband who had draped himself almost hopelessly over the handlebar of the shopping cart … I had to leave the area.  The school teacher in my soul was about to kick-in and it would have been loud and very few people would be left standing from the blast.

I was so very stressed from that relentless FWAH-FWAH sound that I could not complete my mission to inspect the protein level in a certain brand of dog food.  That, and the bag was over 20 pounds and up on a higher shelf so I could not move it.  I stood there feeling a bit defeated.  Eight feet away, a man sneezed.  I said, “Bless you.”  He retorted with the very p.c. response, “I’m not sick.”  And I turned to look at him and said, “And I’m not worried about that.”  He added, “You know. Pretty soon we are going to have to all carry vaccination cards.”  And, non-plussed, I said:  “I’m not worried about that either.”  Then he began.

He told me about his four-year-old dachshund that just had $7,000 surgery at the major animal hospital in New York that is famous for both their surgeries and their price-gouging.  He told me about his little garden that is troubled by rabbits and squirrels – the reason why his dachshund has burned-out it’s joints digging or whatever after critters.  He told me about his lymph node under his right armpit that he had to utilize the mammography machine to get it checked out.  He told me he drove truck for a delivery company and that it makes him nervous when people accept packages from him and are not wearing masks, so he just slides things across their deck/patio to them. 

And all the while he is going on about this, I have this strange, but usual to me, train of thought going on in my head:

                He is kind of handsome.  Well-kept.  Nice eyes ... above his mask.

                He’s not skinny and that doesn’t bother me.  Apparently me being “not skinny” doesn’t bother him.

                I wonder where we could meet for coffee around here if I wanted to continue this conversation.

And then ….

                He’s got a mouth like he licked a potty.  I’ve heard every swear word I know, including the F-word come out of him.  Scratch the coffee.

And just like that, the impromptu speed date was done.  He got some practice in, and I turfed another man in short order.  Here’s why.  It’s not that I don’t use a few cow pasture words myself.  It’s that when a person is supposed to be on their GOOD behavior to impress you, if they talk like that so naturally, you are a FOOL if you think they are going to talk nicer to you later.  A DARNED FOOL.  I imagined him saying the F-word in front of my parents.  That aint’ gonna fly.  I imagined how he would talk to a girlfriend or wife when he got angry – which happens inevitably in every relationship.  I just couldn’t believe in his ability to change.

One of my friends said to me this week, “well people can change.”  I told her I wasn’t so sure anymore.  I know that I tried to give up the BULL SH*T word and I couldn’t do it.  I could NOT do it.  It just described powerfully so many situations that I needed it in my repertoire.  Why is it that I want a man who is genteel, who is educated but fun, who is more likely to excuse my own idiosyncrasies than to blurt back at me:  THAT is UTTER BULLSH*T!  It’s because of one simple thing:  I want to marry UP. 

It is unlikely that I will be raising children with someone when I get married, IF I get married.  I am old enough to presume that ship has sailed.  So I don’t need to evaluate a man as “father” material as I assess him for what he brings to the table.  I just have to ask:  Can I enjoy talking with this person?  Will he like watching re-runs with me?  Does he love dogs and will he help me with my dog business?  Will he want to walk with me by the ocean after eating spaghetti somewhere great?  I used to think I would be in youth ministry forever in some shape, manner, or form, so it would be so great to have a man who IS good with kids … almost fatherly to an orphaned generation … I might go back to youth ministry … okay, so I take it back.  Father-material is still on the table.  Plus the other thing ….

If I was to date THAT guy, he would always say:  “You know, you talk a lot.  The longest you let ME TALK was the day I met you at Tractor Supply.  From there on out, I can’t get a word in edgewise.”  And maybe that is all there is to it.

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Goal: No Pain, No Pain. My needs are simple.

 

So I bit the bullet, so to speak, and got a COVID vaccination.  Just one so far.  You know, the one that is supposed to have negligible side effects. 

They said to move my arm a lot so that it would hurt less.  I am committed to Less Pain, More Gain, so I went home and 2 hours later pulled up all the snow fencing stakes in my front yard and rolled the unsightly orange plastic and stashed it away for next November.  It felt good and I felt good.  The next day, I worked from home, then went into the office for a while.  Still feeling good.  I went home and visited a neighbor to show off my new 8 pound puppy that I cradled in my arms.  She slept quietly for about an hour as I rocked her.  I went inside and the arm pain began to escalate.  And how. 

By 10 pm at night I thought I should take another pain reliever.  I was reading the fine print that said to take the minimum quantity needed.  I took one, but I was eye-balling the clock for the next time to take it.  I knew that that little pill was going to do Not Much for me.  I woke up at 3 in the morning to take another one.  By the time morning came, I was writing anti-advertising lines for this product.

My new side-career in advertising & marketing:

Generic product for pain control:  “Eyes-wide-Open”

The Logo will be an owl.  He needs to look like someone stepped on his foot or punched him in the kidney.

The slogan:  “So much less pain control than the baby aspirin your mother cuts in half.”

The directions:  “When you want less gain and more pain, use EyesWideOpen.”

Building resilience through agony:  “No gain; yes pain.” 

Additional instructions:  When in bed for the night, be sure to lay on that side so that the pressure can evenly disperse the pain across your whole arm before you pass out.  It will somehow feel better.

Institutional goal:  “Keeping the SUB in ‘Sub-standard pain control’.”

Unlike traditional medicine, where you are told, “Take 2 tablets and call me in the morning,” you only need to take one tablet every 4 hours.  You won’t be waking up to call anyone.  You will be dead from relentless pain.

I am wondering if I should sign myself up for an oxycodone abusers support group NOW, before I even take one so that I am ready for Life after the Second Vaccine.  The product I took the first time was crap.  And if I, who am pretty tough meat and usually don’t take pain relievers, say a product is CRAP, you can take that to the Bank.

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Accidental Self-Knowledge

 

Eventually, I will leave.  I will pack up, make a new start, and move somewhere in the pursuit of that ever-elusive happiness: a sunshine-laden beach, and the success I dream of.  But for now, I am employed (gratefully), working mostly remotely (mega-gratefully), and enjoying the company of the dogs, birds and cat (on most days).  As I said a year ago, this has been the longest LENT in the history of Catholicism.  Don’t ask me what I am “giving up” – I think “SANITY” was an optional sacrifice at one or two junctures of the pandemic. 

There is one thing I noticed, though:  I collect things.  When my two favorite magazines that come in the mail have the word “Collection” right in their title, you understand my bent.  I actually read these magazines as I have dinner.  Mostly I have dinner with Marie once a week, because she is such a good cook, but she tends to go too generous on the salt so we can’t do it every night (Marie Callendar).  Too much salt, and lax patterns of activity and hydration create rotund secretaries.  But back to the Collections topic ….  Because I am home, almost incessantly, I started to notice the environment that I have built up around me.

My college friend Margaret said to me once when we were talking about decorating that she finds small groupings of things visually pleasing.  Here we are over 30 years later, and I realize that I somehow find Large Groupings of things visually pleasing …. Until they are NOT – and then they are overwhelming.  It never bothers people when they see a home that has a few groupings of house plants.  But, we are not talking about house plants here.  Yes, I have those, but oh so much more!

It was the bird houses at first.  Little colorful bird houses I had painted, a nightlight shaped like a bird house I bought in Lancaster a few years ago, a plant holder shaped like a bird house, a cookie jar shaped like a …. You guessed it:  bird house. 

Then you will notice the candles.  Yankee candles.  Walmart candles.  Little candles.  Big candles.  Soy candles that burn nicely; regular candles that burn dirty (is there such a thing really as a “clean burn”?).  Tall, unscented, Catholic candles with the Lord’s picture on them; Short, little candles with a decorative label on them telling me what scent I should anticipate.  In a certain sense, you could probably write a Dr. Seuss rhyme about all my candles:  You can find them on a shelf; you can find them by an elf.  You will see one in the hall; and there is one on the wall.  They come in white or blue; and we have red and pink ones too…. You get the idea.

My VHS tape bins are labeled, and now no one uses VHS tapes anymore.  So all my organization is good for … what?  I have quite the collection of DVD’s because as we all know, there is only really “trash” on television … until you have ROKU and can get pretty much anything for free or at a minimal price.  It’s crazy.  One could actually stop living their actual real life and just get soaked up in the re-runs of Commish (whom I love, having just discovered him last year) and armywives (my new friends) and McLeod’s daughters (who knew series could run for so long?  God bless those Australians!).

And then there are The Angels.  Years ago I attended a wedding in San Antonio.  My college friends and I were received very graciously there by a young woman who literally gave us her house for the weekend.  We noticed that she collected Angels.  Just angels.  Not plants, books, bird houses, candles, etc., like some people you know & love.  We walked from room to room counting angels.  There were like 80 of them.  But see that’s the thing:  because she collected just ONE thing, it wasn’t overwhelming.  And when she goes to pack up that house to move somewhere else, she won’t be tearing her hair out trying to pack a million boxes.  She won’t be making multiple yard sales or trips to the Rescue Mission or Salvation Army drop-off points.  She will simply pack, and move.  Unlike me.

One hundred years from now, when They come to find out why the mailbox filled up and spilled over (more than it does now, thanks to 101 charities I don’t support) They will find my house all boxed up and a skeleton of, well, ME with bubble wrap in my hand still packing bird houses, candles, dvd’s, video tapes, and all the plastic knives I kept from when I buy my weekly bagel and Dunkin’.  That’s what They will find.

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Sleeping Beauty .... or Not

 

1:17, 4:44, 5:38 and then 06:45.  You would think they were a tip on lottery numbers.  Actually, they are the times I woke up last night after trying 2 nights prior of Melatonin.  You know, the Melatonin that’s supposed to make you sleep better.  I have an ongoing daytime health complaint that the doctor thought might be sleep-related.  I told her, “Nope.  I sleep fine.  I drop like a rock and sleep until the first time a dog needs to go out, and then fall asleep immediately thereafter until the alarm goes off or a dog steps on my collarbone.”  (Does that SOUND like I have trouble sleeping?)  She smiled, and told me to take Melatonin that it might help with sleeping.  No.  That’s not a cut & paste sentence error.  She heard exactly what I quoted to you that I said to her.  And, she reiterated a conclusion that was incorrect.  But in the spirit of good patient etiquette, I decided to give Melatonin a try, you know, to help with the problem I wasn’t having.

I took one Melatonin on Sunday night an hour before bed.  I woke up Monday and I felt like I was in Gloucester, the sea port:  Just feeling foggy and a bit disoriented.  Like a compliant (albeit foolish) patient, I took one again on Monday night.  Tuesday, same thing.  And very weird dreams.  Tons of dreaming.  You could wake up very tired from all the running around super-heroing I was doing in my dreams.  And I did.  So last night I said to myself, in so many words, “Melatonin?  Not doing it.” 

I woke up at 1:17 am.  Man, was I hot.  Well, the house was cranking 71 degrees inside, I had two dogs on either side of me and fleece sheets.  At least the electric blanket was OFF.  I think.  That’s not really “trouble sleeping” – that’s an environmental problem.

I woke up at 4:44 am.  That was a potty run for the dogs at a regularly scheduled time (T-1) minus one hour since I had been up at 1:17 am and didn’t waste the opportunity as far as they were concerned.  Do you know what it’s like to live with an intact male dog?  When they whine like they need to go outside, you take them outside …. Or, they go to the side of your couch …. Um, yeah.  Insert Remix of an old song here:  “It’s his potty and I’ll cry if I want to.”  I have tried so many different cleaning products on that side of the couch that I’ve created an environmentally hazardous smell.  It least it doesn’t smell like …

At 5:38 am I woke up because my stupid cell phone carrier decided it was an ideal time to “update” my phone and they (wrongly) thought that I needed a “doink” noise to let me know they were On The Job.  When my cell phone “doinks” at night, I do, in fact, get up and check it to make sure that all is well with my friends and relatives.  But if you send me a FB update after 11 pm, note to yourself:  I will be cranky with you next day. 

Yesterday I looked at the potential side effects of Melatonin on webmd. ARE YA KIDDING ME???!!!

“However, it can cause some side effects including headache, short-term feelings of depression, daytime sleepiness, dizziness, stomach cramps, and irritability. Do not drive or use machinery for four to five hours after taking melatonin.”

And

“Seizure disorders: Using melatonin might increase the risk of having a seizure.”

So what is my point?  To the younger generation that feels free to argue anywhere, anytime, with anybody, I guess I have no point.  To the older generation that listens to everything their doctor says or interprets as if it was Moses coming down from Mount Sinai (“take 2 tablets and call me in the morning.”), be your OWN best advocate.  Be honest with your physician.  Communicate – obviously politely – tell them what you think.  Yes, LISTEN.  And Listen Carefully.  But also know what is right for you.  I think a wine and a nap might be right for me. 

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Surviving Married Life - post Valentine's Day advice

 

Roll your eyes, if you must.  Just don’t get caught.  That’s one thing I learned from teenagers.  There is something therapeutic about being able to dissent from ridiculousness without your own mouth getting you in trouble.  I’ve watched a lot of marriages from my safe distance.  I have learned a lot and in the spirit of Valentine’s Day I would like to share my thoughts. 

Last year, my brother said to me: “Don’t cry to me that you aren’t married:  you’ve had your chances.”  This put me in the somewhat awkward or humorous position of having to explain to him that while, as one friend put it “Chris, you’ve dated more than all of us combined,” I still escaped the snare on purpose.  I’ve always wanted to be happily married.  The reason I am not is that I KNEW I could not be happily married to any of the people I dated.  I have guy friends that I wondered, “How come this never became romantic?” and then years down the road I watched how they managed the relationships they were in, and I was thankful it wasn’t me.  There were one or two who “got away” but that is because I didn’t feel any sort of motivation in their direction.  Maybe I will catch them on the next round when they are widowers?  But my answer to my brother that day was: “Those weren’t chances with good odds.  When you have only been dating three months and you are BORED, then something is wrong.  You certainly don’t sign up for the 60-year-plan when you feel that way at 3 months.”  And, for me, it is really as simple as that.

So now that we have established why I am not married … I want to talk about situations where people didn’t STAY married.  Oh, the relational car crashes I have watched.  In one case, two friends of mine married after less than a year of long-distance dating.  They had completely different personalities.  Well, actually he didn’t have a personality…. And she had a lot of emotion.  It was a match that was crazy.  When they got married, I said to him, “And you’re moving to WHERE?  A state where you have:  no friends, no relatives, no support for this brand-new marriage?”  He said he was getting a job there.  So what?  There aren’t places to work in the three or four other states where you actually KNOW people?  My fear came true.  They didn’t have solid resources when they hit the rocks.  He asked me to share testimony towards getting an annulment.  Frankly, I did it more for her to have the “get-out-of-jail-free card,” than I did for him.  It was sad to be a part of the people who could stand up and say:  “This shouldn’t have happened.”  Our Catholic thought that annulment says, “This marriage was not a sacrament, was not a sign of Christ’s presence,” is missing something.  That marriage was a sign of Christ’s presence, namely:  Him (Jesus) hanging on the cross suffering from misunderstanding and being the target of the vitriol of broken humanity.  It was also a sign that the marriage-prep process is mostly broken, or a bad or delusional joke.

I have said to the young people in my family:  If you are going to prepare for marriage and the priest offers you a short-cut for marriage prep, go somewhere else.  The only short-cut in marriage itself is divorce.  If you are doing something THIS important, do the preparation well and with sobriety.  One priest once said to me:  “I know MORE about marriage than most married people do!”  If it wasn’t for the arrogant, offensive, and bitter tone in his voice, I may have believed him a little more quickly.  The fact is, all of us have seen the “for better and for worse” of other people’s choices.  A Christian speaker once said:  “Marriage is like flies on both sides of a screen door.  Some of them can’t wait to get in; others can’t wait to get out.”  I will say that not only is the preparation important, but the ongoing work is important as well.  Even after you are married, if you have a chance to take a class or retreat together, do it.  The success of one marriage has a tremendous ripple effect on all the lives around them …. As does the failure of just one marriage.

“I’d go for counseling, but (s)he won’t go.”  Then go for yourself.  You’re not perfect and you’re not whole.  Fix you up better.  Go for your kids.  They deserve to not live in a war zone.  They deserve to see people who love and respect each other.  How dare you criticize the government, the church, the school systems around you that are broken when you don’t try to fix your own self?  As the song “Let there be peace on Earth” says:  “and let it begin …. with me!”  You don’t have to get a medal for doing the right thing.  Making a better you, becoming a more insightful and compassionate being is a gift you give …. To yourself.  If another person shares the joy of that healing and growth, then so much the better.  If they do not, then you are just helping yourself and preparing for a more wholesome future.  Be humble, begin in your own heart.

And so here I give you Bik’s Basic tips (from the sidelines) for Relationships:

Ø  R*E*S*P*E*C*T.  Everyone wants it.  You cannot/should not STOP giving it just because you don’t feel you get it. Be the Bigger Person.  I remember a sweet old man who sat at the bed of his feeble and disabled wife saying to me, “Oh, what a beautiful life we had together!” and he went on to itemize their service to the community as circus clowns (yes, really) for a major children’s charity.  Every time he said the word “She” there was so much love and gentleness in his voice I get tears in my eyes thinking of it.  At the point where I met them, she was completely incapable of giving him anything back – words, touch, feedback.  He was just loving her into Infinity.  When I find a man like that, I won’t sit on the sidelines anymore.

Ø  Courtesy.  If you consider the other person’s needs first, you are following a Biblical injunction for how to interface successfully in all relationships.  St. Paul talks about the “pouring out of Christ” – think of that – how Christ died for the godless, while they were still full of hate and sin – He had no guarantee who would receive Him, and who would not.  He just poured it out.  (Philippians 2).  If it doesn’t hurt a little to pour yourself out, you’re not doing it right.  The Ego dies hard. 

Ø  Reverence.  Think of your spouse at his/her most vulnerable moment.  Would you reach into the sink strainer and pull out that yuck and fling it at him/her?  (say: “No, of course not. How horrible.”)  And yet what language do we throw at that person in our anger? YES we get frustrated.  YES we don’t think we can take two more minutes of the pointless arguing.  THEN we need other tools.  Cussing someone out blows off steam in the moment but does not heal the root cause of poor communication.  In fact, the more you assault another person’s self-esteem, the more you chip away at the foundation of any remaining relationship.  If the person has no proverbial emotional leg to stand on, how can you move forward?  Do not destroy anyone’s sense of self for any reason. 

Ø  You know all that “active listening” training we all go through for work?  Use it.  Let the person really know that you “hear” their heart.  Pick a day to try it out where you really just put all your own concerns back-burner and ask, “so how are you doing, really?”  If your child falls off his/her bike, you get down to their level and say, “how can I make it better?”  Why not do this for your spouse?  And you know how it seems when you talk to men they think you want them to “fix it”?  When you need to just be heard, say that in plain English.  Ie) “I’ve got something that is bugging me, and I need to talk it through.  Can you just listen to eight minutes of me saying it – don’t try to fix it -don’t try to give advice – just let me say it out loud and I might feel better.”  He is going to feel helpless, so just kiss him on the cheek and move on.  I am not sure that most men perceive that “listening” actually IS doing something in a woman’s perspective.  Perhaps they can be taught, though.  Sometimes.  In some cases. 

Ø  Put as much work into your marriage relative to the level of greatness that you want out of it.  There is a law of sowing & reaping that says, “what you put into something is what you will get out of it.”  My Uncle John used to grow incredible tomato plants.  He could take them from a seed, to toothpick skinny, and make them grow to produce tomatoes the size of a professional boxer’s fist.  It took time, patience, attention, practice and strong will.  Some years may have been better than others.  But overall, he was a giant when it came to raising tomatoes.  In relationships, on days when you want to just forget it and skip the weeding or watering process, you do it anyways.  When the fruit comes it will be amazing.  People will marvel and no one needs to know what went on in the background to get you to greatness.  Pay the price.  It’s worth it.

Ø  Remember the early days when love was blind.  Now realize that taking that approach may help you now.  When your partner makes a screwed-up choice, don’t rub their face in it.  We all make the wrong decisions, sometimes even with the best intentions or reasons.  Forgive as you would have forgiveness come back to you.  My head still swims with remorse for things I did ten, fifteen and twenty years ago.  I feel the humiliation as if the people who were there originally were still responding to my idiocy.  And yet, they have most assuredly moved on with their lives.  It is me that keeps returning to the garbage pile and picking through it.  If I had one person to put my face in my past mistakes, there are days I feel like it would crack me.  BUT … if I had one person to be my cheerleader to tell me I can be better and I can do better, I would be so empowered! 

I watched the movie “Fireproof” years ago and was struck by the beauty and power and rawness of it.  It shows how when a relationship has a breakage in communication, other forces can come in and try to pull the parties apart.  (And, somehow, we think the next situation will be better than what we are leaving?)  Shortly after the movie came out, yet another one of my friends was watching his marriage erode.  He kept saying that there were no grounds for annulment.  I kept telling him that THAT was not the issue at hand.  While she lived under his roof he had “home court advantage,” and needed to re-court his wife… “woo-her,” if you will.  And my gosh he fought that notion in its utter simplicity six ways to Sunday.  I wanted to drive out there and crack him on the head myself.  (but I don’t want to be impeached for saying that.) 

I gave him a first step from the Fireproof movie:  buy her one single rose.  He actually FOUGHT ME on the idea – that he didn’t have enough spare change to be buying roses, etc.  I told him in my endearingly heartless tough-love way:  “Skip a cheeseburger, you jerk.  One single rose is a lot cheaper than alimony.”  Just put it in her room, and when she stares at you and says, “What’s this for?”  Just say, “Because you’re my wife.”  Then:  put your hand over your mouth and leave the room.  Do not say one more word or you will screw it up.  What you are trying to accomplish is to put some initiative back into the process.  He called me a week later.  He tried it.  She did snarl at him and he followed my directions - or so he said – to a tee.  And she looked at him and said: “Don’t think you’re getting lucky.”  So right there he gets the barometer on how much wooing he’d actually have to do to get her to not be so angry.  And what did he then do?  From everything he led me to know, nothing.  He let the process die there and so did his marriage.  Secret:  women want to be re-courted periodically.  We just need to know that we still got it… Other secret:  I think men need to know they still got it too … so a little flirtation never hurt anyone.  That’s all I want to say about that.  Well, other than if you are not willing to re-court your partner, don’t be surprised if they are accidentally ensnared by someone who does want to court.  Look at courtship as a fence you build around valuable property.  It provides the protection and care to keep what belongs inside, happily inside, and what belongs outside, outside.

What are the most important words in Relationship-land?  I am not going to say that it is, “I love you.”  If you want that, watch the Hallmark channel.  I suspect that it is actually, “I am sorry, please forgive me.”  The church down the road has a sign that says: “Forgiveness is a new beginning.”  I like that.  It doesn’t make forgiveness easy to do.  In fact, I believe it is the hardest thing to do.  But the alternative is ongoing bitterness – and keeping that bubbling inside you is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to get sick:  You’re the one it hurts.  If you want to tell me how the other person did you wrong – in quantity and quality – I don’t want to hear it.  I KNOW.  I am aware that there are wounds that really feel quite unforgivable. But it is important to say that while we must forgive, that does not mean we are to EXCUSE bad behavior.  Nope.  I have always been a fan of calling things as they are and holding people accountable.  One of my dearest friends, on the other hand, was so lenient that if he had a horse thief in his family, he’d say this: “Well, he’s basically a great guy.  He just has a little problem when he gets around horses.”  I have no room for that kind of excusing in my brain.  I know Forgiveness does not mean that.  Forgiveness must then be something else, perhaps like:  “every time I see that guy I am going to try to not remember that he stole a horse.  And yet, I will not let him take my horse and say it’s not a problem.”  It’s a fine line to walk and I am sure I don’t have it figured out yet.  It is truly a decision, an act of the will, to move your brain into forgiveness mode. I just know this, when a person humbles themselves and says, “I am sorry, I truly am.  Please forgive me,” well, that does a lot to begin the healing.

So, if you are reading this blog and you think I wrote it for you, I didn’t.  I wrote it for the Lord.  If He wanted you to read it, He has His own reasons.  Maybe I said something that will save you heartache.  Maybe I said something that will save me heartache.  I think over the years I have seen enough and figured a few things out.  And Mr. Right, if you are out there, practice saying “I’m sorry, please forgive me.”  You’re a man, and you’re going to need it.  XO XO XO ….

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 p.s. I forgot to add HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR AND LEVITY to the list.  Maybe next time.