Posts Tagged ‘midlife issues’
Cindy on January 5th, 2010
When my son was growing up, I wrote pieces for parenting magazines, including Detroit’s own MetroParent. Now that I’m an empty nester, I’ve naturally moved on to other topics. But I was honored last year when the managing editor of MetroParent invited me to submit an essay on preparing for a new season of parenthood — the empty nest. It’s fun to revisit a magazine that I often used as a resource when I was a younger mom. My piece now appears in the January 2010 issue, and readers in southeast Michigan can find the magazine at bookstores, libraries, and newsstands. – CL
Cindy on October 31st, 2009
Children are a great comfort in old age, and they help you reach it much faster, too.” — Lionel M. Kaufman
Take it from a seasoned parent. There comes a time in every mother’s life when she realizes parts of her wardrobe shouldn’t be flaunted in front of teenage boys. And I’m not talking about thong underwear.
This hit me several years ago while the family and I were getting ready to visit my favorite art fair in Royal Oak — an annual summer event that typically draws crowds of creative types, including some neighbors we haven’t seen all winter. I wanted to dress for the occasion. Scouring my closet, I chose a nice black T-shirt and an ankle-length peasant skirt. It was a departure from my traditional blazer-with-jeans uniform, but still within the bounds of good taste.
Or so I thought. The silver bracelet is what got me in trouble. Rescued from a flea-market, the vintage cuff was two inches wide and etched with a subtle ethnic design. Not all that remarkable – unless, of course, you were looking at it through the discerning eyes of an adolescent boy.
“You’re not wearing that giant bracelet in public, are you?” asked Nate, glaring at my wrist.
“Why not?” I shot back.
“You look like a Babylonian… Or maybe a barbarian,” the kid said, choosing his words carefully. A week earlier he announced that my feet looked “Cro-Magnon” in sandals. Apparently I’d morphed into a badly dressed savage.
What could I do? When the same kid was a cranky infant, I couldn’t treat his diaper rash without consulting a stack of childcare guides. Soon enough, though, Doug and I were navigating the choppy waters of parenthood without much advice from Penelope Leach or T. Berry Brazelton, the most respected parenting experts of our era. Living by our wits, we maneuvered through mealtime face-offs and nerve-racking episodes with the neighborhood bully. We even managed to steer a fairly civilized carpool. But things changed when our little boy began slouching toward adolescence. We needed more help from the experts.
Just in time, Doug found a copy of Anthony Wolf’s aptly titled guide, Get Out of My Life, but First Could You Drive Me and Cheryl to the Mall? (Noonday Press). As the author notes, today’s youth “are vastly different” from kids forty years ago. Just for starters, their social and academic pressures are more complicated, more intense.
“Teenagers treat adults in their lives in a manner that is less automatically obedient, much more fearless, and definitely more outspoken than that of previous generations,” writes Wolf, who happens to be a parent as well as a clinical psychologist. Many adolescents, he says, feel trapped between the growing need for independence and the secret wish to cling to childhood – an agonizing conflict if ever there was one.
“The two main forces of adolescence are the onset of sexuality and the mandate that demands that teenagers turn away from childhood and parents,” Wolf writes. Not only do teenagers see their parents as grossly flawed, he adds, “they also find them outright embarrassing, especially if seen with them anywhere outside the home.”
This explains why your teenager will hug you in the kitchen when nobody is looking but never, ever, in the school parking lot. Or why he ridicules your impeccable fashion sense and mostly wishes you were invisible.
Let me assure you that this too shall pass. Even the mouthiest teens can grow up to be agreeable, well-adjusted human beings. In the meantime they need our patience, love, and a healthy dose of discipline. But patience can be the hardest part, especially for barbarians. – Cindy La Ferle
A slightly different version of this essay is reprinted in Writing Home.
Cindy on August 7th, 2009
Try to relax and enjoy the crisis. — Ashleigh Brilliant
Summer arrived with its boxing gloves on. Or, as John Lennon pointed out, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” Which is why I haven’t been filling this space with new material lately.
By mid-June, it was obvious that my father-in-law’s dementia was more than my mother-in-law could continue to handle at home. For several weeks my husband Doug made it his mission to help find the right nursing facility — a frustrating family story of trial-and-error that’s way too complex to rehash here. Thank goodness, Doug is semi-retired and has more time for his folks now. How do middle-aged couples handle these situations if they both work full time?
Well, we finally found the right nursing home for Dad in July, but within a week, his condition plunged to the point where he was suddenly confined to a wheelchair (he had walked into the facility) and couldn’t swallow his food. He now qualifies for hospice care. Friends have told us countless stories of how dementia patients get even worse after they’re put into nursing homes, which never fails to pile more guilt on over-burdened families. Through it all, my mother-in-law has been incredibly brave and strong. The rest of us are just plain sad.
But wait, there’s more. My widowed mother, whose health is also fragile (and complicated by a stubborn case of anxiety) has needed me more than ever lately. In mid-July — two days after my father-in-law was driven to the local ER from his new nursing home — my mom called to announce that she had to get to the hospital – that very minute – due to a mysteriously bruised and swollen leg. Her call came while Doug and I were having dinner with our son Nate, who’d been visiting from Chicago for the weekend and was preparing to leave. So, I finished my dinner and said good-bye to Nate, who soon headed off to the airport with Doug while I drove Mom to William Beaumont Hospital’s emergency entrance. (I drive Mom to the ER often enough to call it a routine, and to know the doorman personally.) Regardless, that short weekend visit with our son brought a flash of sunshine to us, making up for the inevitable shadows cast by our visits to the hospital.
August is my birthday month, so it often inspires a few moments of retrospect, if not a twinge of melancholy or nostalgia. And from this vantage point, I can see that the decline of my mom’s health — combined with my father-in-law’s move to a nursing home — unearthed some tender strands of grief that I thought I’d buried after my beloved father died in the summer of 1992. Not to mention my only uncle’s slow death from pancreatic cancer two years ago in August. When loved ones have been gone awhile, everyone will remind you ever-so-gently that you really should be “over it.” And of course, you are over it, most of the time. But Lord knows, that doesn’t mean you just stop missing people.
Anyway, I hadn’t fully realized how numbed out I’d been this summer. Once again, gardening was my sanity saver, my best antidepressant, right up there with reading a fabulous novel and having birthday lunches in outdoor cafes with old friends. I dead-headed perennial blossoms and transplanted hosta and watered thirsty ferns every chance I could get until I felt whole again. And I spent more time with people who make me feel loved and supported, just for being me.
Meanwhile — and I won’t go on too long about this — my enthusiasm for my writing career seems to have wilted like impatiens in the August heat. The national crisis in print journalism has left several of my friends jobless, and seriously impacted the type of work I do. I’d love to resume column writing, but the only columns available to me now are in the form of online blogs that offer zero (or minimal) payment.
Like most professional writers who’ve been in this business for more than 25 years, I find it hard to feel “honored” when magazines or newspapers offer me non-paying assignments. I miss the days when a byline came with the heady scent of newsprint or shimmered on a glossy magazine page … and generated a decent paycheck. Blogging is something just about everyone can do quite well, and everyone is doing it. And so, with apologies and some reluctance, I have to admit that it’s a stretch for me to think of my blog posts as “published writing.” The magic just isn’t there for me.
Which is partly why I’ve taken some time off. I’ve needed to pull back and rethink what’s next for me. I will continue to post here weekly, but otherwise I’m waiting for a bolt of inspiration or a new streak of luck. Maybe there’s another book in me. Or maybe I’m just burned out and lazy. I dunno.
While trying to figure it out, I’ve been pouring my energies into helping Doug work on the Frank Lloyd Wright home we purchased last year in western Michigan. Designed by Wright in 1957 and completed in 1959, the house is one of Wright’s Usonian models and could function perfectly as a set for the popular Mad Men television series. (I can picture Don Draper in our living room, swilling a martini and chain-smoking.) It’s cool and modern and space-agey — so unlike our cozy but cluttered English Tudor here in Royal Oak. For that reason, I suppose, the novelty hasn’t worn off yet.
This summer, the Wright house also gave us an immediate goal, a deadline. The renowned architectural photographers, Balthazar and Christian Korab, had been contracted to photograph it on July 29. Prior to that date, Doug and I spent every free moment we had making the three-hour drive out to the place to get it ready for the big shoot. As soon as we arrived, we’d hit the ground running with our to-do lists. Wash windows. Scrub rust out of sinks and tubs. Steam carpets. Rearrange furniture. Fix leaky shower heads. Power-wash concrete. Weed and revive gardens….
Meeting the Korabs was another incredible summer highlight — second only to our son’s aforementioned visit. While Christian (Balthazar’s son) hauled his equipment around and set up shots of various rooms, Balthazar, now in his eighties, regaled Doug and me with stories of his native Hungary, his studies in Paris, and of course, the time Frank Lloyd Wright examined and commented on Korab’s extensive portfolio of architectural photography.
The physical acts of polishing and scrubbing, of purging our Wright house of its old demons (including the crap left by previous owners), was a saving grace for Doug and me. Earlier this summer, I was watering a new crop of day lilies when I noticed Doug on the roof, repairing a leak in the scorching July sun. Of course, I worried about him passing out in the heat or losing his balance and tumbling headfirst to the pavement below (no more trips to the hospital, please!). But then I saw the look of pure satisfaction and happiness on his tanned face — a look I hadn’t seen in quite a while — and I calmed down immediately. I wanted to wrap my arms around that whole house and the late Frank Lloyd Wright himself, and thank them both for giving my architect-husband something incredible to believe in and look forward to. Something other than sick parents and nursing homes and long good-byes. — Cindy La Ferle
– The middle photo shows one of the gardens in front of our Wright house. Bottom photo is of Balthazar Korab and my husband Doug, taken on the day of our photo shoot. –
Cindy on June 28th, 2009
“Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.” — Raymond Lindquist
Earlier this month, I was invited to be a guest on Allen Cardoza’s Answers for the Family. The program will be aired live, June 29 (Monday) on LA Talk Radio at 10:55 a.m. Pacific time. Allen has asked me to join him in a discussion on “letting go of our kids” — which can be difficult in this era of helicopter parenting. Adding to the angst, many moms face emotional and physical changes (including menopause) at the same time their teen-aged kids are facing challenges of their own. We’ll cover important ways moms can learn to deal with both sides of the equation. –CL
Cindy on May 17th, 2009
I’m probably just as good a mother as the next repressed, obsessive-compulsive paranoiac.” — Anne Lamott, Operating Instructions
If you could go back and relive your early years of motherhood, what would you do differently? Do you wish you’d used cloth diapers instead of disposables? Made your own baby food? Or stayed home from work a year or two longer? If I had to do it over again, I’d wipe out the myth of The Perfect Mom.
Like June Cleaver’s apron strings, the myth of The Perfect Mom won’t unravel easily. But as a woman with more than two decades of maternal experience, I’m here to tell you that we need to stuff this exhausted fairy tale in the place where all the dirty disposal diapers go.
I only wish I’d realized it sooner.
My husband and I were married five years when my ob-gyn’s office called with the happy news: I was pregnant with our first and only child. While I knew from the getgo that I wasn’t perfect-mom material, I wanted to get everything right. Which is another way of saying I worried too much.
I worried about my Lamaze breathing techniques. I worried about the quality of my prenatal vitamins. And while waiting in my ob-gyn’s office, I’d manage to find every magazine article listing the awful things that could happen to your unborn baby if, say, you accidentally swallowed your eye shadow, consumed bacon fat, or picked up a weird rash at the community pool.
Of course, the pursuit of mommy perfection got even more intense after my son was born. And so did the worrying. Was my baby sleeping too much or too little? Was his relentless wiggling a symptom of hyperactivity or something more sinister? Had I stopped breastfeeding too soon? Worse yet, by the time the kid was in kindergarten, I’d already started berating myself for providing store-bought cupcakes in lieu of homemade treats.
Seriously, I did loosen up by the time my son was in Cub Scouts, and realized my parenting skills were no worse (or better) than the other moms I’d met. Regardless, it shouldn’t have taken a vast library of childcare guides to get me through the early years — but there you have it. What I needed more than anything was a permission slip to be human.
I also wish Anne Lamott had written her memoir, Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year, eight years sooner. Her candid recollections of early parenthood have relieved thousands of nervous first-time mothers.
“One of the worst things about being a parent, for me,” Lamott wrote, “is the self-discovery, the being face to face with one’s secret insanity and brokenness.” Finishing Lamott’s book, I sobbed with the realization that I hadn’t been alone in my fear of being an imperfect mom – or being a mom, period.
Even today, the cultural pressures on women never seem to let up. Whether we stay home with our kids or work in an office across town, we’re expected to perform flawless balancing acts in the circus of family living.
Instead we ought to be reminded that there is no foolproof, one-size-fits-all method of parenting. Motherhood is something we learn as we go along, and we’re bound to fall short from time to time. Meanwhile, I wish we’d all stop comparing ourselves to other moms, including the fictional Donna Reed “role models” embedded in our collective psyche. Parenthood is no place for card-carrying perfectionists.
Ever since the first family set up housekeeping in a fire-lit cave, moms have been devising ways to protect their kids from real or imaginary monsters. That’s not such a bad thing. Still, it helps to temper our worries with common sense — and a little humor. We need to lighten up on ourselves.
Things have a way of working out, after all. My son, the once-wiggly toddler, graduated college and moved into his own place last year. Despite my inevitable parenting slips, he grew up to be a sturdy, independent guy who loves his imperfect mom — and often reminds her not to worry so much.
