I Left High School But It Never Left Me
High school when you are poor and overweight is not fun. High school when you are poor, overweight and painfully shy? Torture.
It’s always been hard for me to be in social situations with people I’m not familiar. Especially after having spent so many years of the company of people I did know who were less than subtle about keeping their distance from me. Heaven forbid one of the popular kids be seen walking down the hall with me. Or talking to me. Or sitting next to me at lunch. I wasn’t one of those kids. I didn’t fit in with the rebel crowd either. The ones who cut class, acted out, got in trouble. I was too much of a chicken. I’d try to make friends, only to be ditched when someone more popular would befriend them.
It was a little better my senior year, when I became close friends with a girl. She was on the fringe of the popular kids. She was accepted by them. She was pretty, could sing, made good grades. Her family wasn’t rich, but they lived in a nice house, had nice things. They tolerated me hanging around because I was with her. But accepted? Welcomed? No. Never. I’d hear the whispers. See the glances. I knew they wondered why she was friends with me. Sometimes? So did I.
Yesterday brought about those same old feelings of anxiety and insecurity. Darin has recently reconnected with a childhood friend, who, as it turns out, has a daughter two months older than Ava. They are wonderful, warm, outgoing people. We have had them over to our house on several occasions, we’ve had a play date at the park for the girls. It’s been wonderful having someone close to Ava’ s age for her to interact with. It’s great seeing Darin and Mark bonding again, the commonality of fatherhood bringing them closer together. Sheila and I have swapped stories of being working moms and compared notes on our girls. It’s fun having someone to talk with who is experiencing the same toddler joys and woes.
Yesterday we had the pleasure of being at their home to celebrate their daughter’s second birthday. I was looking forward to seeing Sheila and Mark again. I was excited for Ava to have some children to play with. I was terribly anxious for myself. I knew that I was going to encounter a room of strangers. I don’t do well in those situations. It takes me back to being in high school. Things started off ok. We went out back and tried to get Ava, who is going through a shy stage, to let go of our hands and go play. There was a slide, a toy house, and even a trampoline. I helped her attempt the slide, and encouraged her to play in the little house. Darin took her to the trampoline and let her bounce around a bit. We had been introduced to everyone and of course there were the obligatory “hi, nice to meet you” murmurs. One of the women looked familiar to me, and I to her but we never did figure out if we knew each other.
As is bound to happen, eventually the men end up standing outside together, talking about who knows what, while the women are in the house, chasing kids and fussing over the kitchen. One woman there must have been a really close friend of Sheila’s. She took over in the kitchen, cleaning and organizing. She kept giving me the stink eye for some reason. Maybe I was supposed to help too? I tried engaging in conversation. I would start a sentence, only to be cut off and spoken over. Every single time.
Eventually, I retreated to a corner. Found a nice cozy chair and settled back in to keep an eye on Ava and myself out of the way. From that moment on, I kept my head down and my mouth shut.
I know those women don ‘t know me. They have no idea how difficult it was for me to speak up in the first place. How my heart pounded. How my palms were sweaty. How I kept looking for my husband so I could have someone familiar close to me for comfort. I don’t know if I ended up coming off as aloof, or bitchy. I’m not any of those things. Well, I mean, I can be bitchy, but hey…
It just would have been nice to have a conversation. To have give and take. Share stories. Jokes. Not be brushed aside like I didn’t matter because I was a stranger.
I know that’s not the last time I’m going to encounter it. Ava will go to many more parties. There will always be a group of moms that I don’t belong to. I need to find a way to make it not matter so much. In 20 years, I don’t want Ava to be writing a new version of this post. I don’t want her to be 37 years old, and still carrying around 20 year old insecurities.
High school may have been 20 years ago, but the scars are still there. Right now, one of them is bleeding again.
One Is a Lonely Number
I knew it would happen. I thought I was ready for it. I was wrong.
I have several clients that had babies around the same time I had Ava. We chat from time to time about how our kids are doing, share stories of all being first time moms. I knew eventually one of them was going to tell me she was pregnant again. Yesterday it finally happened.
I’m truly happy for her and her husband. They’re darling people and I wish them all the happiness in the world. I truly do.
But hearing the news was like a physical blow to the stomach for me. I’m not having another baby this year. Or next year. Maybe not the year after. Maybe not ever. I’m 37 years old. By the time we are in a place that we can give what is needed to another baby, the simple fact is that I may be too old. But it can’t be helped.
Ava is going into preschool next year. That is going to take a huge chunk of money from our budget. So daycare for a second child? Not possible. We’ve been over the budget a million times and there just isn’t wiggle room. Not even if we cancel cable, never eat out again, and keep our cars once they are paid for. All the not eating McDonald’s for lunch in the world won’t equal up to full time day care costs and preschool for Ava.
My mother in law has provided care for Ava since I went back to work 4 weeks after she was born. Ava, that is, not my MIL. She’s done it free of charge. She’s done a wonderful job with her and I could never repay her for that. It’s been a huge burden lifted to have good, trusting care for my girl and not have the expense of daycare. But she doesn’t want to take full time care of another baby. I don’t blame her for that. She wants her time free, for herself, and at this stage in her life she’s earned it.
Unfortunately, that means Ava may never have a sibling, something I swore she would have. And it scares me. No. It breaks my heart. When my mother passes away, with her goes my only family. I don’t want that for Ava. I never have. I want her to have a sister to mentor, or a brother to tease. I want her to have a co-conspirator for a late night raid on the kitchen or someone to cover for her when she sneaks out at night.
It’s lonely not having siblings to talk to and share with. I’m fortunate enough to have two best friends who I’ve adopted as family, but as amazing, loving and caring as they are, we don’t share a past. We don’t have the common background of growing up together as children.
I hope by the time Darin and I are gone, Ava has a spouse and a family of her own. I hope that if we aren’t able to give her a brother or sister she has someone to help her deal with our care as we get old and need help. I hope she has someone to hold her hand while she grieves over us. I desperately hope she is never alone.
All in the Details – For Layla Grace
My circle of friends on twitter is in pain today. For months we’ve all been watching, waiting and praying that a little girl with cancer would beat the odds. For about the last month, we knew she was going to lose her battle. Today, a sweet little girl, not much older than my Ava has flown away to be with angels.
I chose not to follow updates from her parents. Too fresh on the heels of Maddie’s passing and dealing with Ava’s own issues, I felt it was too much for me to handle. I come off as a real asshole a lot of the time, but since having a child, I’m a big old softie when it comes to kids. I still tear up thinking about Maddie. I don’t know if that will ever change.
Many of my friends do follow Layla Grace. Through their updates, I was seeing the down hill progression anyway. Some days I would close Twitter altogether, shut down Facebook and log off. Too much. Too much pain.
Today in the course of discussing our shared grief, my friend Becky asked this question:
I started thinking about that. Why did I have to excuse myself to the restroom and lay my head on the cool wall while I cried and sobbed after hearing Layla had passed away? Why did Maddie’s passing hit me so hard? It’s not just that as a mother, I can empathize with the fear and heartache. But with blogs and Twitter, we are afforded a glimpse into the daily lives of people in a way that we’ve never experienced before. We see the big things, jobs, houses, marriages, divorces, birth, and death. But we see all the little things in between. Things that normally we would only know about someone if we knew them in real life.
We hear about how a day is spent. We read about likes and dislikes of minute things. We learn about favorite colors, hated foods. What makes someone smile. The kind of music enjoyed. The details. The details that make us all unique. The details that, when all put together, form a picture of a person that allows us to be drawn in. The details that make us feel the person we are reading about is familiar. We begin to care. We even begin to love.
So truly, is it any wonder then, that as a community we grieve so hard for people we never actually laid eyes on, never touched, never spoken to. We don’t need those things to form a bond or develop emotions.
We will all remember and grieve in our own ways. For me, writing is what I do. I examine, I process, I think.
Today I am thinking about Layla Grace and her family. I wish for peace and comfort. I pray that this is the last time I have to wish for that.
Soar high and free, Layla. Your pain and suffering on this earth are at an end. May the sun always shine on your face and you feel nothing but love and joy in the next life.
Afraid of Happiness
I am afraid to be happy.
There. I’ve said it. I’ve written it. It’s true.
I have come to realize several things about myself in recent weeks. Some are small things. Some are not. I am not entirely sure what to do with these self revelations yet. Right now they are slowly unwinding, like thread from a spool. What I do know is that I seem to have an inability to relax. A need to constantly hold my breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for some unknown, horrific event that will once again shatter my world. There have been a lot of them.
I spent most of my childhood waiting. Waiting for the next time I’d be yelled at for not living up to my parent’s expectations. Waiting for the next time I’d make a remark that would result in a spoon to the face. Waiting for the next time a classmate would shun me, because I was overweight, because we didn’t have money.
Once my dad passed away, I pieced a life together. I was definitely not the same, but eventually I stopped holding my breath. Then two years later my aunt died. The aunt who was more of a mother to me than my mother. The aunt I ran to when I couldn’t talk to my mother. The aunt I sought solace with when yet again, I was berated for not doing things “The right way.” Once again, I stood in the cold rain of the cemetery, the same one that we had buried my dad in a scant two years prior, and watched as someone I loved was eulogized and buried. One by one, I began a slow death march back to that cemetery, almost every year for five years. Great aunts, great uncles, my only “real” uncle. I began to look around me and wonder who would be next.
During that time, I met, through my significant other at the time, a darling woman. A good ten years older than me, a good 100 pounds lighter, born in a different country, but my twin in every other way. Her name was Beth. We became inseparable. At the time she and her husband were living in Chicago. We spoke on the phone daily. Then, one day, discovered she was pregnant after almost 10 years of trying. Deciding they wanted to raise their child in a more laid back environment, Beth and her husband decided to move to Mississippi. They bought a house not 30 minutes from my house. I was over the moon. We shopped together, decorated their new house together. Her husband watched us with great amusement, grateful he wasn’t the one being drug from furniture store to furniture store. I was there when her girls were born. All 3 of them. Triplets. After ten years of waiting, she had an instant family. I was godmother. I was part time nanny. I lived with them for three months helping out. I was there a scant 9 months later when her son was born. I was there for so much. We were there for each other. She helped me through marriage. Through a divorce. She never judged. She was open. Honest.
Then Columbine happened, and the school shooting in Springfield, OR. Beth was afraid to send her children through school in the US. She and her husband decided to move back to her native country, to England. So a few months before I made my move across country, I helped her pack for a new life, a life that would lead to a great distance between us. I hugged her tight the day she left. She held my face in her hands and said, “this is not goodbye”. It was the last time I ever saw her. Two years after moving, Beth and her husband were hit head on by another car on a small country road.
At some point after this the walls I built around me got even taller. More impenetrable. I stopped letting people in. Too afraid of getting hurt. Too afraid of those goodbyes. I watched my daughter fly through the air on a swing yesterday for the first time ever. Her hair fluttering in the breeze, an excited smile on her face. Part of me smiled and laughed. Part of me cringed inwardly. I wanted to relax and simply enjoy the day. But that part of me that keeps waiting for the bad to come will not let me. I am afraid that if I let my guard down and revel in the good times it will be an even bigger shock when the bad one comes. Like somehow, if I’m on guard, watching I can prevent it. If I see it coming it won’t hurt so much.
Which of course is silly. The logical part of my brain knows that bad things happen and I can neither prevent them nor ease their impact by being vigilant. The emotional part of my brain is stuck in that cold, wet cemetery.
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