Category Archives: Family Friendship

My Super Man

Posted on September 11, 2012 | 2 Comments

I have been wanting to dedicate a blog write-up to my husband, Bryan.  As I’ve written before, our relationship has been transformed in many ways, though I confess we’re not the type of couple that other people might envy. Our bond and history is rooted in a platonic friendship that developed into romance, so we have a way of ribbing on each other that can make friends feel awkward around us.  Superficially, we might not seem well-matched, given he’s a uncompromising professional wrestling fan, and polar opposite to me, thinks art museums are ridiculous.  He rolls his eyes when I discuss the finer points of my obsession with food and he (moderate) refuses to talk politics with me (die-hard liberal).  I acknowledge that I do bubble over with frustration when we recollect the debate we had about reupholstering his disintegrated leather couch (ew!), and his aversion to hemming his pants (gah!).  And just the other day, in response to my statement, “There’s really nothing like gluten”, I got a bewildered, slightly mocking look from him in return.

But I love this man with all of my heart, and this is why.

I love him because mid-conversation he’ll run out of the house to say hi to the neighborhood English bulldog, greeting him by name.

I love him because he unreservedly tells me how it makes him melt when I silly-speak to our son.

I love him because when I was recently laid up with a migraine, he not only did the reasonable caring for our baby, but unprompted checked in on me every 20 minutes, brought and refreshed ice packs, and texted sweet words from the den where he was watching a wrestling pay-per-view with friends.

I love him because he brought home a rose (purple, of course), arranged for his parents to babysit and took me out for Thai food when I was lamenting and weepy over a family problem.

I love him because he will unfailingly tell me that I’m pretty when I wear my hair down.

I love him because he always makes sure my iPhone is charged, with a portable charger next to me in bed, chargers in our cars, as well as in our home.

I love him because he is so very excited about having a “man-cave” in our finished basement, and wants  me to help him decorate it with a wrestling and Superman theme.

I love him because he’ll pause the TV or a phone conversation just to marvel at our son cooing or how adorably our dog is laying on her back.

My husband looks out for me in a way that is tender and unyielding, and I am keenly aware of how fortunate I am to have married and had a family with him.  There are infinite reasons for anyone to love him, and I’m the lucky one to have discovered new reasons for this each day.

Since he is a big fan of this blog, I know this will speak to his heart and for that I am grateful.

I love you, Bryan.

Tag-team champions in life. (Photo by Derek Goodwin)

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Family Friendship

Tagged , , ,

Transplanted to Suburbia

Posted on August 19, 2012 | Leave a comment

My husband and I have had quite divergent ideas about the appeal of the suburbs.  I grew up on Long Island and had zero desire to return.  In my experience, I’d been bullied by neighbors, teachers and classmates, neglected by my parents and most significantly, developed a cultural palate and culinary affinities not satisfied by suburban predilections.  I moved to Brooklyn sixteen years ago, and though life in NYC was not what I initially expected, after a few months there I fell head over heels and swore off any return to my traumatic roots with a hearty scoff.  I preferred walking over to a nearby cafe to driving to a nearby strip mall and the myriad of other options in front of me.  Bryan, on the other hand, loved the Island and made trips out from Brooklyn at least once a week.  He felt boxed in by the urban sprawl and felt freer among the manicured lawns of his hometown.  When we returned from our honeymoon, I went back to our apartment and he stayed out at his parents’ house for three nights so he could watch back-to-back wrestling special events with childhood friends.

But while we were dating, I had agreed that we would move back eventually.  The way I saw it, I could make peace with the past, and the best of suburban living with a garden and a larger kitchen, while he would not fare well with a prolonged residence in the city.  After I revealed to him that I could see myself moving to Long Island, our relationship smoothed out and progressed to cohabitation, engagement, marriage and the birth of our son over the span of a couple of years.  Though this plan was esoteric to me at first, it eventually became very real.  Earlier this year, and midway through my pregnancy, he started saying it was time to look at houses.  I agreed to this, but since this wasn’t something I needed, I allowed him to move that plan forward.  I didn’t fight it, but I certainly wasn’t going to make it happen.  Then the unthinkable really happened, his parents found a house for us in their neighborhood, an estate sale, priced to move.  I went to look at it and agreed it could work, and he went about making an offer.  At first I kept this to myself, while he was bubbling over with excitement.  At a friend’s birthday dinner in April, I returned from the bathroom to her sad face, as she clutched my arm and said she’d heard about the house.  I snapped at him, asking why he had said anything, since I wasn’t ready to talk about it.  On Mother’s Day we ran into a friend at a Long Island restaurant, and I mentioned that we were “talking about” moving out there.  My mother-in-law, noticing my state of denial, reminded me I was going to be moving out there.  I started savoring what I enjoyed about Brooklyn and lamenting what I’d be missing, the new favorite cafe within five minutes of our apartment and the new yoga studio I hadn’t yet tried out.  I looked at families in our Brooklyn Heights neighborhood and felt sad that my child wouldn’t grown up in the milieu of city worldliness.  I was about to break up with NYC yet couldn’t face the end of the relationship.

Bryan closed on the house a few days before I delivered our son, and we started making plans to move.  Slowly I came to realize that my life as a new mom made living near family and a easily accessible outdoor space very appealing.  I “came out” and openly admitted that I’d soon be a suburbanite, and got excited about the generous renovations that my mother-in-law initiated on the house to get it ready for us.  We spent a few weeks with my in-laws during my immediate postpartum period and I discovered that this made life much simpler than our fourth-floor walkup.  I allowed myself to enjoy being cared for and welcomed to another lifestyle, and was proud of myself that I was dealing with it so gracefully.  I also resigned from my job, readying myself to take on being a full-time mom for a period of time.  I realized that having my mother-in-law nearby made for some convenient babysitting and that my social life might be more conducive from the ‘burbs than from Brooklyn.  Surprisingly, Bryan started feeling out-of-sorts about leaving his home of eight years and told me he’d need some consoling.

And this past week we actually moved, new baby and all.  We hired movers to pack us, making that process much easier.  Now, a few days into life in the suburbs I’m facing a backlash of my readiness to be here.  On Friday morning, I woke up with a smiling and cooing baby, and I decided that we’d go to the store together so I could pick up a green juice and some food for the house.  I changed him, dressed him and got him in the stroller, headed for the car.  My husband returned from running errands, and pulled up in his car, green juice in hand for me.  He handed me the juice and offered me a hand to get the baby in the car and the stroller in the trunk.  Then I promptly dripped green juice down my shirt and my pants, and with that, felt myself starting to unravel.  I went back into the house to change, unable to decide what to wear and without many options since most of my things were still packed, and I have a general lack of clothing options with my post-pregnancy body.  I emerged from the house after some time and we proceeded to get the baby in the car, but the stroller frame would not fit in the trunk of my compact Mini Cooper.  We tried putting it in the front seat, and it didn’t quite fit there, so we put the seat down next to the baby’s carseat, but I wasn’t sure how safe that would be.  Meanwhile, our son sat in the car growing impatient, and his fussing soon grew into wails of despair.  Bryan turned to me and said, “You can’t go now”, and I had to agree.  I then lunged for the stroller frame, and with a surge of adrenalin that supreme frustration can afford, swung it around my body and with that momentum threw it on the lawn.  ”What did you do that for?” he screamed, and I cried, “Because I can’t take it!”  I then got our sweaty little infant out of the car and Bryan took him from me and walked back into the house, patting his back.  I followed and sat on the couch sobbing, when his mom, who was a quick phone call and a few minutes away, rushed in to soothe me.  It was then decided I should go to the store on my own, so I dried my tears, gave her a bottle of expressed breast milk, and drove to the nearby organic supermarket.  As I walked through the automatic doors, pushing my shopping cart, I thought to myself, Here I am, a suburban mom, going food shopping.  It was surreal.  I walked up and down the aisles, enjoying the cool temperatures, the span of the store, the lack of crowds.  I studied the layout, noting where my favorite vegan items were located, picking up a Daiya wedge and brown rice pasta as comfort measures.

I’m realizing now that this adjustment will ebb and flow, that there is a chance I’ll keep on feeling like a suburban outsider, that the past might not all be resolved, and this is OK.  As I write this, I’m looking out onto a dark, quiet street while listening to the crickets, and can’t quite decide if that’s affirming or unsettling.   I do appreciate that I have an easy parking spot.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Family Friendship, Mothering, Suburbia

Tagged , , ,

Mothering a New Legacy

Posted on April 20, 2012 | 4 Comments

This Sunday will be the third anniversary of losing my mom, as I am about to become a mother myself.  Back on the first anniversary of when she died, I wrote about it in a note on Facebook, which I called The Year of Missing.  Part of that post…

Through misplaced praise and resentment, my headstrong, needy and impetuous mother fostered strong independence in me, so I never realized how much she was a part of me. Those incessant phone calls, the ups, the downs, the constant management of the relationship, it all shaped me. I look around my bedroom, with her artwork hanging above my bed, the little brightly-colored tin mirror in the shape of a mermaid that I bought with her guidance, the photographs I took myself with an artistic eye inherited from her, she’s everywhere.  And she’s gone.

At the time, some of the comments made in response to the note surprised me since they were in praise of my mom and how well I must have been raised.  I had never considered her as someone whose mothering deserved praise, but that’s what people saw in what I wrote.

The deeper story is that my mom was a complicated and troubled woman.  With the distance and healing that the past three years have afforded me, I have an enormous amount of compassion for the suffering she must have endured.  How much despair must a mom feel to break her 5 year old daughter’s dolls and stuff them back in her toy chest?  How consuming must her pain have been to tell her daughter at 9 years old that her thighs were fat?  How uncomfortable must she have been with her own identity to say to her daughter at 12 years old that her new feathered haircut made her nose look big?  How shattered must she have been to be more capable of brawling and broken dishes than of keeping food in the house and making sure the homework was done?  How desperately unhappy and enmeshed she must have been to be so threatened by her own child’s growing independence that each milestone was met with persecution.

I used to explain my relationship with my mom tersely as she did everything in her power to ruin my life.  I see that differently now.  Living out the legacy of her own abuse, my mom’s adult life was mostly in ruins and therefore her children were collaterally damaged.  On and off estrangements from her family.  Short-term friendships.  Pervasive paranoia about betrayals.  A failed marriage and a long line of romantic heartbreaks afterward.  Career aspirations that fell flat due to unstable behavior.  It was as if my mom’s emotional growth was stunted at about a pre-teen level, and shortly before she died I asked her if anything happened to her at that age.  She said she didn’t know.  So for much of her life, she simply didn’t have the skills to build happiness or see her own worth, and her mind was too chaotic to reflect upon and remedy that.  I don’t condone how my brother and I were raised, but I do bear the responsibility of creating a new family legacy.

I tried for many years to cut her out or distance myself from my mom, yet that never quite worked.  Sometimes I’d go months without speaking with her until it felt too unsteady and I’d call.  Balancing out my own life with the resentment I harbored while managing a relationship with her taxed my peace of mind.  Then several years ago, I decided to take on an active role in my relationship with her.  Instead of harboring and cultivating anger, I let it go.  I (mostly) stopped my bitchy ways.  I called her more.  I listened better.  I developed respect for her and what she had accomplished with her artwork and boundless creativity, and told her so.  I stopped blaming her for my problems.  And she responded with tenderness and appreciation.  A space was created where we could apologize to each other and be forgiven.  I felt myself loving her and saw the love she had for me, which had always been there.  That this dovetailed with the time I went vegan is not a coincidence.  To live compassionately is to have compassion and build compassion.

It is heartbreaking to me that my mom’s life was cut short only a few years after we got right with each other.  Though there were her typical complaints and emotional tirades, she started thriving and enjoying herself a bit.  Then a mysterious bout of liver failure took her life a week before her 65th birthday.  The woman who’d wanted to die for so much of her life passed away in my arms at the very point where she most wanted to live.  Though I am at peace with her being gone, I still cannot think about that without my throat clenching up.

Now that I’m on the cusp of becoming a mom myself I think a lot about what kind of parent I will be.  While the example given to me isn’t something to emulate, there are certainly aspects that I intend to keep.  As a child, creativity was celebrated.  I had irreverent, whimsical birthday parties.  I was surrounded by color.  Acceptance and commitment to social justice were emphasized.  I bore witness to the soothing powers of a bowl of popcorn and a cup of tea.  So I will decorate my child’s room with my mom’s artwork.  I will play the Rolling Stones.  I will cook excellent pasta sauce.  I will explain the symbolism in Botticelli’s La Primavera.

This journey has had great value for me.  Having gone from surviving to thriving, I have such resilience and strength that nothing can take me down.  So in this new legacy, I am living as the possibility of compassion, devotion and stability for my child and myself.

Though it’s sad she’s gone, I am fortunate to be able to miss my mom every day.  I know she would have loved being a grandmother to this baby.

→ 4 Comments

Posted in Family Friendship, Mothering, Tales of Transformation

Tagged , , ,

Thank Goodness for Guacamole

Posted on September 20, 2011 | 4 Comments

I have a brother who’s 2 years younger than me and since we were teens it’s been a rocky relationship.  Both of us had our issues and personality quirks, and when we crossed paths it was usually either a tense conversation, or an outright profanity-laden clash of words.  We seemed best off just avoiding each other and getting updates through our mom.  He was so far removed from my life that friends often didn’t know I had a sibling.

Then for 2 days in April of ’09, we were thrust together in a hospital room, watching a machine breathe for our mom as the life slipped away from her, holding her hand and making hard decisions.  Shortly after she took her last breath, my brother said in a cracked voice, “She’s gone”.

And the next day, we screamed and threw punches at each other on the way to the funeral home.

After the week of multistate funerals we returned to our lives.  I took over the process of managing the estate and getting our mom’s house ready to put up for sale.  Raw from grief, we sparred furiously with email finger-jabs and character assassinations.  Then after he’d just had enough of it, he decided he wanted nothing more to do with me and told me to get away from him and his family.

Yes, his family – at the time, his girlfriend was expecting his baby.  So this little child, his daughter, my niece and my mom’s granddaughter would not know me.  I despaired over this. I called him when I heard his girlfriend was in labor, thinking maybe the baby’s imminent arrival would soften him,  only to have a text snarl back at me, “I don’t want you. I don’t need you.”  I was in a taxi heading home with my freshly pressed wedding gown overflowing my lap, and I burst into tears, completely bewildering the cab driver.

My aunt emailed me one of the first pictures of my niece, swaddled and sleeping with my brother’s finger pointing at her – nearly the length of her little arm.  I stared at the photo and fell in love instantly, choking to myself that I wouldn’t hold her. I started looking into a college fund for her and asked family for updates.

I settled uncomfortably into this distance, fantasizing that maybe his girlfriend would allow me to see the baby some day, or family would intervene heroically on my behalf.  Staring at forwarded pictures as her blonde hair grew full and her blue eyes lit up with a toothless grin.  I heaped it onto my I’m-so-stressed-my-life-is-so-hard pile, and moped around on the brink of tears for many months.

Then, one afternoon (credit: The Landmark Forum), I had a breathtaking realization.  The way for me to have a relationship with my niece was for me to get right with my brother, and in a wave of the proverbial owning my part, I realized what a total shit I’d been to him through the years and since our mom died. By treating him like a family outsider. By rolling my eyes at him.  By commandeering the funeral arrangements with what I wanted. By not filling him in on what was going on with the estate.  By cutting him out of sorting through the house.  By treating him like some antisocial buffoon who couldn’t get his life together, I’d alienated my only brother and he was justifiably livid as Hell at me.

It was time to step up.

So I called him that weekend, and left a message that went something like, “I’ve been a shitty sister, call me back”.  On and on I called, leaving messages.  I finally got a response akin to fuck off, and I responded, nope, not gonna happen.  Over the course of a couple of months I called, texted and when he texted back saying to leave him alone, I said no, I’m not going away.  I made plans with my dad to go out and visit.  That was the weekend of the hurricane, so my dad and I rescheduled.  Last week, before our plans, my dad emailed me to reschedule again, and I said this is too tenuous, I’ll go on my own.

All along, I’d been keeping my brother updated on the plan to come visit.  I texted him that I was coming out this past Saturday, and he wrote back “Nope”.  I wrote, “I want to make amends” to which he replied “There is no amends. Piss off.”

Then my resolve began to waver and the cautious and pitying looks I’d been getting from friends and family when I shared this intention of reuniting with my brother came to mind.  I didn’t want to make almost a 2-hour trip to Long Island for nothing.  I wasn’t positive he would be home, or let me in the door.  I kept it on my calendar but started to let other plans intervene.

Then a text arrived, “Bring guacamole.”  Followed shortly afterward by, “And Coronas”.  So I jumped at it; I went to the supermarket for the fixins for guac, a six-pack of Coronas, and limes (of course).  I stopped at my favorite novelty store for a baby gift, went home to pull it all together and hit the road.

When I arrived, tote bags in hand, there was no answer when I knocked.  And knocked.  The motion sensor light went out and I stood there in the dark.  I could hear the TV and a baby crying.  I tried the doorknob and it was open.  I had a stab of panic, do I just walk in?  What if this is trespassing?  But I pushed it open, stepped into the unlit foyer and knocked on the inner door.  I could tell they heard me then, and a female voice said, “Answer the door!”  It opened and there was my brother.  Smirking.  “I told you I was coming”, I said, to which he replied, “I know, come on in.”.

I then walked into the apartment, immediately got down on the floor and said hi to my niece.  After a little while he said, “She looks like you when you were a baby.”

I stayed there until after 1am, chatting with his friends and girlfriend, respecting his political views, smiling at wisecracks about my liberal disposition, snapping pictures, playing with my niece, laughing at Saturday Night Live.  At one point I asked, “How’s the guacamole?”  And he said, “It’s all right.”

I think the highlight was when he beat my ass in Mortal Kombat.

When I left I said, “I’ll see you next month”, offered to bring our baby pictures and our dad, and gave him a hug.  He hugged me back.

What an awesome night.

If I had continued to wrap myself in that shroud of self-pity and consider my brother to be so damn wrong, I would not be standing here with a world of possibility for a new relationship with him based on love and respect.  Will it be easy to work through this?  Yes, because it’s a whole lot harder to sit in front of a computer screen than it is to simply play with my niece and hug my brother.  But I know it will take time, and I’m OK with that, because the guacamole is going to get made no matter if I share it with my brother or not.

→ 4 Comments

Posted in Family Friendship

Tagged , ,

Mourning Glory

Posted on September 11, 2011 | 2 Comments

I feel inexplicably sad and drained today, which is uncanny since I’m usually able to explain away my dark moods, a talent bolstered by the many years I spent whining to my therapist.  It’s the tenth anniversary of 9/11 today, but I don’t feel a direct sadness when I think about it.  Maybe I just miss my mom as I tend to do when “big” days are on the calendar.  My mom and I spent that morning of September 11, 2001 on the phone, first with her checking that I was OK, and then just bursts of conversation to talk about the day’s events as they unfolded.

Earlier today while I shared a commemorative moment of silence with my husband (and our dog licked my leg), I thought of all the changes in my life over the years.  Wondering what my then-self would say if she could see me now, ten years past, sitting with my husband and my dog, remembering that day.  And in cinematic flashes, there was a rush of images…

Said husband, knowing I’m in a weepy mood, is interrupting my train of thought with worried looks and an occasional butt rub.  I suppose I should anticipate this, since after all he did declare to me in his personal wedding vows to rub my tushie when I’m feeling low…

So, in a rush of images over that moment, I observed the profound shifts in my life over the past decade…

Some more patting and concerned looks…ok, back to writing…where was I?

Evidently he was intuitively conspiring to knock me off an overwritten, gooey blogging path.  Now all I’m recalling is a jumble of memories, but the salient things that popped up as I sat for that moment is how I’m so glad that went vegan, and how I lost my mom.

You know how your junk mail and catalogs follow you around from address to address?  That continues after you die, and I know this since I’ve become the recipient of credit card offers and non-profit solicitations addressed to my mother.  Yesterday, an envelope arrived for her with the return address of “League For Animal Protection of Huntington” (the Long Island township I grew up in) .  I had no idea she gave to that charity, or even how they protect animals, which is probably just two species, but I don’t want to open the envelope.  I like holding it in my hand, observing its shade of bright white, staring at her name in caps, touching the ridge of the adhesive address label, feeling the weight of it in my hand, conjecturing on what the envelope inside must say.  And it is as if my mom is continuing to live on as an animal lover, in a league of animal protectors.

And, I guess she does, since she’s doing it through me.

This is how I spend much of my morning of September 11, 2011…looking at this envelope and missing my mom.

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Family Friendship, Tales of Transformation

Tagged , , ,

How I Saved My Marriage in Three Easy Steps

Posted on September 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

I’m a newlywed, having just been married to a incredible man this past January.  But  few months into it, we were stressed, tense and unhappy.  He cringed when I walked through the door and I perused Craigslist for a new apartment.  Then I

made a few changes and voilà, it’s a new marriage.  A happy marriage.

What did I do?  I’ll say first that having a happy relationship is not hard.  Yes, that’s right, not hard.  The little voice in your head objects…But how can you say that?  Or…Oh, she’s a newlywed, we’ll see how she feels after 5+ years!  The conventional wisdom is that romantic relationships are WORK, they aren’t meant to be easy, they require compromise and commitment, which doesn’t come easily to the average homo sapien.

Blah, blah, blah.  Conventional wisdom is conventional crap.

My Step One: I did what I said I was going to do.

When we adopted our dog, Jessy, I agreed to walk her in the evenings that I was home.  Then when those times came, many times I made excuses, “I’m tired”…”My back hurts”…”I don’t feel well”.  So he walked the dog and I sat on the couch and felt even worse.  It’s pretty exhausting to invent an excuse, state it aloud, fool myself into believing I’m believable, believe it myself, wash, rinse, repeat.  It’s quite simple for me to just pick up the leash, get my lazy ass off the

couch, and enjoy a walk with my (very cute) dog.

My Step 2:  I am my own example.

My husband has a variety of interests.  He LOVES watching wrestling with his friends, performing in shows, seeing friends and family, vegging on the couch, going to the movies.  He LOVES going out to Long Island, where he grew up, to do much of this.  This bothered me.  I felt that we weren’t a connected couple, I

moaned that he was immature and silly.  That he wasn’t a husband.  (For the record, those are pretty horrible things to say.)  And what was I doing?  I made my own plans, I pursued my own interests.  Once, I refused to go to a steak house with him and his fellow cast members after a performance (tell me, how did that stance help animals?)  Our marriage became transformed when I simply

participated in his life.  It was much harder to bear my teeth, slam doors when wrestling was on, and bitch incessantly, than it it was to simply join him.  Sit and watch a pay-per-view wrestling event, and ask him questions about the story lines.  Be an involved, smiling, and supportive wife.  When we got married, I promised to honor his individuality.  And by keeping that promise and living how I want our marriage to be, I have an involved, smiling, and supportive husband.  Someone who feels pain when I’m pained and ecstatic when I’m

overjoyed.  Someone who’s happy to see me when I walk through the door.  And I can unabashedly say, watching wrestling is not so bad.  I enjoy it a little.

Bryan & Robyn Blade: World Tag Team Champions

My Step 3:  I realized I’m not “right” and he’s not “wrong”.

When my husband wants to stay out on Long Island a few nights in a particular week, he’s not wrong.  It’s just what he wants to do, which has nothing to do with me.  We argued about that for many months, which was hard.  It’s much easier for me to be at peace with it and say, “Have fun, honey!” And guess what?  He looks forward to seeing me and doesn’t need to get away from me anymore.  HMPH!

Not keeping my commitments, being hypocritical, and complaining/nagging erodes my relationship with my husband, no matter how small it is.  It also makes me a sucky, unhappy and exhausted person.  Am I perfect?  No.  But now when something comes up and I feel myself reverting to my old ways, I sit myself down and have an inner conversation that goes something like this:

Me: OK, so why does this bother you?
Inner voice: Well, he’s wrong!
Me: He’s not wrong, that’s just the way he feels.
Inner voice: But, but, that’s so wrong!
Me: How about you let it go, that would make you feel better…
Inner voice: Okaaaay…

If necessary, I then apologize to my husband for making him wrong and treating him unjustly.  Then I take a deep breath and feel awash with happiness and love for him.  Easy-peasy.

Maybe if there are folks out there reading this with a loved one they wish they were closer with, they could make a few similar changes and have a transformed relationship as well as live with themselves better.

After all, it’s not very hard.

P.S. This blog post is husband-approved.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Family Friendship, Tales of Transformation

Tagged , , ,