Saturday on Facebook, I posted a sublime little message which read, "Love, acceptance, and joy: I need nothing because I have everything. This weekend marks my best birthday yet. Cocoon, catharsis, butterfly."
There is a lot to be said for recognizing satisfaction. I often complain that I don't have a real social life (Going out with friends? What's that?) and that my current job pays terribly and will not allow for greater professional growth. This weekend, I learned none of that matters as much as the ability to connect with family.
Celebrating my oldest step-daughter's college graduation, 18 of us flanked a set of tables at a seafood restaurant near the water in a town associated with happy memories for many of us. Included in our group were my husband and his two girls, my children, my in-laws, and my husband's former wife, her gentleman companion, and her parents. Watching all of this work together, I was moved to complete gratitude and joy. This is what other families strive to achieve: the occasional blissful merging of family post-divorce for the celebration of life that continues despite those familial break ups. And better yet, we were all genuinely pleased to see each other.
This moment was a mammoth blessing of grace for a second reason, which is that I realized my children really do have what I previously thought they were missing. I grew up surrounded by a clan of cousins on my father's side who were like brothers and sisters. We saw each other most Sundays and every holiday. Good news? We told family members first. Having a birthday? Share it with cousins, aunts, and uncles whose candles sport the same cake as yours. I have worried that my children would be permanently and negatively affected by the last several nomadic years and divorce. As it turns out, family has simply multiplied for them.
While I like to think I am a happy person, I am often very conflicted about work and motherhood and the merging of those two things. Having been forced to confront painful things about myself and the people I love (or once loved), the last few years have been quite a challenge. But here I feel an emergence from the cocoon I built to process all these things, and as part of the renewal process, something else was being created this past weekend: a warm, loving link to the woman that was once married to my husband.
I cannot begin to express how accepted I felt among this clan of people who are still largely new to my life. I am eternally grateful to my step-daughter's mother for the gift of her children. This birthday, my 39th, I celebrate love.
Showing posts with label birthday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label birthday. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Another Birthday, Another Co-Pay
I spoke too soon.
Yesterday afternoon, I told my mother that so far I had enjoyed quite a wonderful emergency-free day. For years, on or right around my birthday, I have been facing some kind of crisis: moving, learning my once-upon-a time-husband has been fired (again), the emergency room… just to name a few. My mother quickly counseled that the day was not over yet.
“It’s 5 PM,” I said, “What could possibly go wrong?”
Fast forward two and half-hours. We had company for birthday dinner, the table was loaded with plates and steaming platters, and my (current) husband stood over broken shards of pottery. There was blood seeping from two fingers. There were spots of blood on the floor. I followed him to the sink, grabbed a cotton towel, and announced the need for a visit to the emergency room.
He wasn’t having it. He wanted to eat his dinner first. He taped closed the cuts on his bloody fingers and sat down over steak. The bandaid was visibly saturated.
“Well,” I said, “I did say I preferred my meat a little bloody.”
Watching him cut his food with his sliced fingers made me queasy, and I was antsy to get his hand treated. When the meal was over, company agreed to stay with our little people so we could attend the local quick-clinic.
“Stay,” encouraged my spouse.
“Are you crazy? If I had cut my hand open you would not allow me to drive alone to the doctor. I’m going.”
“Really,” he said, “you don’t have to go.”
I cannot remember my exact words, but they involved the grand revelation that under no circumstances was a man who tried to cut his fingers off going alone to the doctor while I sat eating cake at home, and nothing he could say was going to change my mind. I was in the car, engine cranked, before he could even fumble for his wallet.
At the doctor’s, my husband sat on the patient bed (what does one call those things?) with his legs dangling over the sides. I thought of my children. He held his hand out to the physician’s assistant.
“Texas chainsaw massacre,” I said.
At one point, I turned to the PA and told her my husband needed a lollipop for being a good boy. She offered a sticker, but we weren’t done yet. He still had to prove himself. She soaked his hand in a solution of hydrogen peroxide, checked his wounds, taped them shut again, and we waited for the doctor.
In minutes, the doctor came, pulled the curtain closed behind him and stared seriously at us through his little gold rimmed glasses. His last name was mostly consonants. I think he had called the Russians before entering our room. News may have traveled that a man in his fifties wanted a sticker, and he was here to investigate. I sat with my husband as we cracked joke after joke and barely got a curl out of one side of the doctor’s mouth. When he left, I told my husband that I certainly thought his bravery had earned him a sticker, not that his doctor would think so at all, and to look on the bright side… we just had a date without having to pay a sitter.
My husband survived my birthday night with cut fingers, a tetanus shot, but no stitches. He was warned to do nothing with his hand for a few days—no water, no real activity of any kind (baby, what else might that hinder?) and I escorted my lovable patient back out to the car and opened his door for him.
On the way home, he leaned to me and said, “I am so glad I could make your birthday complete.”
Yes, you did, sweetheart. It will long live in memory.
Yesterday afternoon, I told my mother that so far I had enjoyed quite a wonderful emergency-free day. For years, on or right around my birthday, I have been facing some kind of crisis: moving, learning my once-upon-a time-husband has been fired (again), the emergency room… just to name a few. My mother quickly counseled that the day was not over yet.
“It’s 5 PM,” I said, “What could possibly go wrong?”
Fast forward two and half-hours. We had company for birthday dinner, the table was loaded with plates and steaming platters, and my (current) husband stood over broken shards of pottery. There was blood seeping from two fingers. There were spots of blood on the floor. I followed him to the sink, grabbed a cotton towel, and announced the need for a visit to the emergency room.
He wasn’t having it. He wanted to eat his dinner first. He taped closed the cuts on his bloody fingers and sat down over steak. The bandaid was visibly saturated.
“Well,” I said, “I did say I preferred my meat a little bloody.”
Watching him cut his food with his sliced fingers made me queasy, and I was antsy to get his hand treated. When the meal was over, company agreed to stay with our little people so we could attend the local quick-clinic.
“Stay,” encouraged my spouse.
“Are you crazy? If I had cut my hand open you would not allow me to drive alone to the doctor. I’m going.”
“Really,” he said, “you don’t have to go.”
I cannot remember my exact words, but they involved the grand revelation that under no circumstances was a man who tried to cut his fingers off going alone to the doctor while I sat eating cake at home, and nothing he could say was going to change my mind. I was in the car, engine cranked, before he could even fumble for his wallet.
At the doctor’s, my husband sat on the patient bed (what does one call those things?) with his legs dangling over the sides. I thought of my children. He held his hand out to the physician’s assistant.
“Texas chainsaw massacre,” I said.
At one point, I turned to the PA and told her my husband needed a lollipop for being a good boy. She offered a sticker, but we weren’t done yet. He still had to prove himself. She soaked his hand in a solution of hydrogen peroxide, checked his wounds, taped them shut again, and we waited for the doctor.
In minutes, the doctor came, pulled the curtain closed behind him and stared seriously at us through his little gold rimmed glasses. His last name was mostly consonants. I think he had called the Russians before entering our room. News may have traveled that a man in his fifties wanted a sticker, and he was here to investigate. I sat with my husband as we cracked joke after joke and barely got a curl out of one side of the doctor’s mouth. When he left, I told my husband that I certainly thought his bravery had earned him a sticker, not that his doctor would think so at all, and to look on the bright side… we just had a date without having to pay a sitter.
My husband survived my birthday night with cut fingers, a tetanus shot, but no stitches. He was warned to do nothing with his hand for a few days—no water, no real activity of any kind (baby, what else might that hinder?) and I escorted my lovable patient back out to the car and opened his door for him.
On the way home, he leaned to me and said, “I am so glad I could make your birthday complete.”
Yes, you did, sweetheart. It will long live in memory.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)