Anger and Grief

"Grief is perhaps the emotion we fear the most."
- Brene Brown, Rising Strong: The Reckoning. The Rumble. The Revolution.

It's so much easier to get angry than it is to grieve. Much easier to over-function and plan than to break down, especially when surrounded by children and the needs of a busy household. I've been wrestling with grief over the past weeks, trying not to feel the sorrow of my father's diagnosis, not to feel the loss of what I thought would be a life-long friendship, not to fully swallow the pain of a child who has been routinely excluded.

My MO for grief is usually to brew anger in my gut (no wonder I have so many gut issues) and then let it fly like the steam of a teakettle late in the evening when the kids are in bed. Rob usually gets a contact burn from being a beta listener, and he patiently steps back and waits for the pressure to die down before offering a few words of support. Rarely do I substitute tears for the anger, but when I do it's more cleansing for me and easier for Rob to offer support. The tears are more rare because it hurts too much to go there, and I don't know how to "do" grief.

In a wonderful article called "The Geography of Sorrow" by Tim McKee (The Sun , October 2015, http://thesunmagazine.org/), psychologist Francis Weller talks about how modern society has lost the grief rituals that sustained our ancestors in a tribal culture: "When modern people engage in grief rituals, the often say it feels familiar, as if they've done this before. Yes, we have, for more than two hundred thousand years. And then, within the past few hundred years, it practically disappeared. That's a profound loss."  We now grieve alone, not wanting to inflict our discomfort on other people, not wanting to disappoint.  We've certainly lost the practice of thanking the one who grieves, as Weller notes in the same article:  "During the grief ritual you go off by yourself to weep, and when you return, the group welcomes you back and thanks you for helping to empty the communal cup of sorrow. How many of us have ever been thanked for our grief before?"

I was fortunate to read McKee's article and Brene' Brown's book at the same time I was suppressing my grief. With a double whammy of insight and instruction, I was able to give myself space and permission to feel sorrow and to let the steam of my anger settle back down into tears. I still want to function, to not overstate my grief or let it overwhelm me, but a wise, wise friend told me that my compassion and my grief (shared in many cases) can prove a valuable undercurrent to pragmatics and planning. To sit compassionately with one who suffers, to listen and not try to fix, would certainly be a gift.

Lord of the Flies

It's definitely lord of the flies around here. On the cusp of cool weather our house suddenly fills with horrendously large, buzzing flies that come from nowhere and bump against window screens and light fixtures until they fall dead on the floor in appalling fuzzy clumps.The annual event never becomes less disgusting, though this year's horror is alleviated somewhat by the humor of watching Rex the cat in his perpetual hunt of the ugly insects. Rex stalks, leaps, bats, sometimes connects, and then immediately loses interest when the flies fall motionless to the floor. We think he ate one or two and became disgusted with the whole process, but at least he was exhausted for a few days.

The craziness of the flies has expanded to my mental state as the round of children's events, practices, and appointments increases with each passing day. From track meets to band concerts to swim initiations (where you apparently spend hundreds of dollars on swag before even making the team), to practices we drive with white-knuckle intent. To add insult to injury, we also had four trips to the orthodontist and dentist this week, accumulating rubber bands and ibuprofen tablets as fast as flies.

The dentist / ortho combination really chaps my hide. For two appointments I tried desperately to get the kids into the ortho to remove the wire before they had their teeth cleaned, only to run late at the dentist and barely get back to the ortho in time to have the wire put back on. I gave up the attempt to do things in the requested order and yesterday managed to reverse the process, so that William had to go to the dentist before his braces appointment. The hygienist was mad at him for not getting the wire removed (as if he has control of the car keys, the appointment calendar, and the credit card??), and then the ortho tech muttered about fluoride's stickiness and how they are more than happy to take wires off before the appointment.

I'm frustrated that anyone would complain to my twelve-year-old child instead of to me, and happy to explain that our schedule is so ridiculous that the kids are lucky to be in braces and get to the dentist at all. I guess the takeaway is relief that I am not trapped on an island with a group of dental and ortho assistants, schedulers, and technicians, or my lord-of-the-flies demeanor would get all of us in trouble.

Holding on to Normal

We spent the weekend in Albuquerque watching water polo games. Aden, Rob and I cheered on William and Daniel and their U12 and U10 teams. Aden was a really good sport; it was difficult for her to spectate in an arena where she has most recently been a competitor. Her support for her brothers and past teammates was one of the bright spots for me in a very bright weekend.

My favorite moments were watching Daniel and William pass together in the warm up pool or clown around with their friends when they were supposed to be passing. I joked with a friend that all it took was six hours in the pool and three physical games for the boys to be able to hang together. She called it the "get along or drown" method of parenting.

Other great moments were stopping in Santa Fe with Rob, Aden and Daniel for lunch and for a quick tour of the Georgie O'Keeffe Museum. O'Keeffe is one of my favorite artists, and Aden has done two projects relating to her art, so we were both excited to see the pieces on exhibit. The scenery up in Santa Fe is beautiful, too.

But I have to "out" myself - it was hard to stay grounded in the "normal child" philosophy that I so vigorously supported just last week. After William had a particularly good game, we had kind friends and other parents come up to us and compliment his play. They also asked if he had signed up for Olympic Development Camps, future seasons, other tournaments, etc. Instantly my mind went to Stanford, picturing seats at poolside for a PAC 10 game some eight years down the road.

I did firmly grip my wandering mind and rein it back to the present, but it was an exhausting tug-of-war. I'm dismayed by how convinced I can be in one moment, only to topple in a relatively light wind of praise or recognition. I guess I'm just wired to "Zing" to that type of reinforcement, and it will be the project of the lifetime to take such comments in stride and move forward with my normal, wonderful life.

Normal Children

"All day, every day, we are flooded with the truly extraordinary. The best of the best. The worst of the worst .. . This flood of extreme information has conditioned us to believe that "exceptional" is the new normal. And since all of us are rarely exceptional, we all feel pretty damn insecure and desperate to feel "exceptional" all the time."
- Mark Manson, author, on markmanson.net

Manson's sentiments struck a chord with me. Since I was six, I felt that I had to be exceptional to be worthy. Normal was a bad word; only the top 1% would do (this was long before the phrase "top one percent" became a negative.)  In the last ten years I finally realized that this pressure was making me miserable. Striving for exceptional caused an artificial separation from other people, and sent the wrong message to my children: that they too, had to strive for the unattainable.

When I saw the thought process passed from parent to child I felt sick. I don't want that pressure, that loneliness for my kids, but it's tough to turn off the message that we receive from society. In this age of uber-parenting, parents are told that our kids need to be "more, better, best." Jeffery Kluger notes in his TIME Magazine article, "In Praise of the Ordinary Child," (link)  that the reason we push our kids might have economic underpinnings:

"The stock market swings of the 1980s were followed by the tech boom of the ’90s, which led to the tech collapse of the aughts, which was followed, finally, by the great, tectonic crash of 2008. Through all that, the American middle class grew smaller and smaller while the rungs on the economic ladder grew ever farther apart. If their kids were going to get ahead, many parents felt, they would have to be bred to be failure-proof."

And so we push towards the exceptional in school, test scores and sports. We fear the normal, even though the odds of Ivy Leagues or Big Leagues are infinitesimal. We sometimes - God forgive us - fail to see the unique miracles perpetrated by our children every day, and we forget that allowing children to fail and teaching them how to get up, are some of the most important lessons in life.

Thinking of my kids as 'normal' was a mind-bender at first. The children aren't ordinary to me or their father. What of Aden's budding artistic ability, her amazing pictures of flowers in the sun, her kindness toward strangers? Or William's sun-bright smile, his singing voice accompanying a favorite song on the radio, his loyal friendships? And Daniel's passion for reading comics, his joy in sharing funny lines announced with "now hear this!" and his Space Invader stacks of books? These traits can't be measured by grades or test scores but they are intrinsically valuable.

Our children might be normal in the eyes of the world, and that's just fine, but they should know that they are unique. No winning result could make them more special or loved. They should also know that success requires hard work and healthy striving; it also requires the ability to fall and get back up. They should know that no matter how "normal" their class rank, their band seat number, their place on the team, they will find a way to build a healthy and productive life, surrounded by friends and family who know that life is not built out of exceptional moments, but by the common ones in between.

Forty-five Years

What does the number 45 mean to you? It's just over my age, scarily close to half a century, a number that goes with 'Colt' or "RPM.'  It also the number of years that my both my parents and my in-laws have been married. (Actually, Mom and Dad just celebrated their 46th).  Together, they give our family a legacy of ninety years of partnership, hard work, prayer, love - and did I mention hard work?

My folks were here for a visit over the last week, checking in with a few docs at the UC Hospital, and blessing our family with their presence along the way. Mom reminded Aden how to crochet, and they baked and ran errands together before sitting down together at the kitchen table to knit scarves and washclothes.  Dad and Mom teamed up to make a formidable solitaire team and played with me and the boys several close games (solitaire being a game that has been mastered by Connie Dravenstott, and occasionally by Bill, too!).

Sometime over the weekend Mom told me a sweet, sweet story. On the morning of their forty-sixth anniversary, they exchanged cards, and Dad opened hers with a smile. After reading the card with its two hearts on the front, Mom opened . . . the same card.  Hearts and minds attuned, for sure.

Mom takes great care of Dad as he works through some health issues; her hand in his, her arm at his elbow, her care for his drinks and meals starts tears flowing. If there is an evolution in the state of marriages, theirs is highly evolved, for sure. Another example of this: one of Dad's doctors recommended that they turn into snowbirds, and find a warm and brighter climate for the winter. Though it's hard to change plans and routines, difficult to venture out on that limb, I could see both of them nudging forward along the thought process, willing to do whatever it took to keep each other safe, secure, and happy. I only wish Denver was warm and sunny all winter long, but promise to come visit whichever snowbird nest they choose.