How This Christmas will Look

Walking from my bedroom to the kitchen the other day I noticed a strange emotion bubbling forth. It was joy. Christmas songs playing, my oven warm from baking and suddenly I began to cry.

It has been well over 20 years since the Christmas season has elicited joy in my heart. Poisoned darts of sugar plums and smiling Santas ripe with tainted children’s tears. I have filled our stockings and wrapped our gifts followed by defeated puffs of contempt and misery. Yep, that is what over 20 years of Christmases have looked like at our house.

It is a sad reality that parents only realize the damage they have done to their children once it has already been done and the only thing left to wrap up with shiny new paper and glittering bows are apologies. Rubbed off the edge with the side of an old penny found at the bottom of my washing machine, I believe I discovered an expiration date from a decade too far gone to remember on that last “I’m sorry” from last year’s cards I threw away.

My go-to excuse has been my chronic, life-long depression. It’s true, I do have chronic depression and it does wreak havoc and does cause anger and sadness and words that should never be said. But we are all born with the same ability to make decisions and choose a path and take a breath and put a clean piece of gauze on a gaping, bleeding wound.

But this year, in the midst of my havoc and anger I have found a new outlook in the unlikeliest of places – cycling class.

The first week of class I thought I would die. But then something happened. A.J., on my right, started saying “no quit, no quit.” Soon Jenny, on my left, was following suit and quietly under my breath I said it too.

On my way home that night, sweat-soaked and red-faced I developed a love-hate relationship with this class on the second floor of a bicycle shop off College Ave. And I went back the next night, because Jenny was expecting me and said I would and I don’t like to be a quitter. And it cost money.

Soon one week moved into the next. Mike teaching one class and then Craig or Pete and finally Mary and Conor two nights a week. At first I liked one class over another but by week three every class was the same small community of regular cyclers. And they encouraged me. And they repeated words that kept my legs moving and they counted down the time left in the red zone and they cheered me on and before I could let my negativity flood the plain of this last month of the year I learned something… because we are always learning something and even when we think we know it all and it will never change, it does.

This year I am reminded, once again, that it is a community of people that keep me going. Oftentimes it ends up being people that have no obligation to do so. But they do. Because that’s what people do.

 There are many different versions of the definition of “community” but they all involve people who share a common goal and in doing so each person becomes better. I have become better this year because I stayed in the red zone longer than I ever thought possible and now I am in better shape.

But the most important thing I learned is that if I repeat the words I need the most, when I need them most, I have the real ability to overcome, and change my brain, and change my focus.

For some people those words are a prayer to God in heaven and sometimes they are simply “keep moving, keep moving.”  I know it works because this year I tried it. And now not only have I kept moving, I am moving forward.

Crash Course in Parenting my Adult Children

Recently I found myself longing to put a cranky toddler to bed; longing to make the choices for my child of sweat pants or blue jeans, water or milk, swim class or soccer. For the last 10 years of my life my youngest son has been encouraging me to get out of my box, now everything I read tells me to stay in my box. It’s called the “parent of an adult child” box and recently I just taped it closed with a thick layer of strapping tape.

After losing my temper with said child, I logged onto my computer and searched for ways to cope while inch by precious inch I attempted to let go of the life that is not mine to make choices for any longer. It’s not that I don’t already know this, but saying it when my son was making choices I liked and saying it while watching matchbox cars crash a remote controlled speedway in my mind are different.

I would love to give credit for the following quotes but I cannot remember anymore where I found them since I have read so many columns, from so many sites, over so many days. But here is some of the wisdom I found:

“Parent the child you have, not the child you wish you had”; “Accept the reality that there is a good chance your child may throw away opportunities despite all of your good influence”; “Don’t define your relationship around the problem.”

What?! Where does this stuff come from? The wisdom of a thousand parents cutting holes in the sides of cardboard moving boxes from U-Haul?

I know a thing or two about parenting, people, because in spite of what my boys might imply when I turn every decision worth more than two cents over to their dad, I am a parent. And in order for me to continue on my new adventure of parent to adults and not to toddlers or teenagers, I have created my own list for the people who don’t like the typical mumbo jumbo. Even if I was not a parent, I was a child and I have parents, and when I think of how awesome I would have turned out had my parents followed this advice, you’ll want to follow it too.

1. If you don’t parent the child you wish you had, then you are failing to see the potential that lies under every decision you dislike and simply accepting them for who they are: a person without enough experience to live life yet, and determined to make mistakes you can tell them not to make.

2. Do not accept the reality that there is a good chance that your child may throw away opportunities despite all of your good influence. For starters, don’t kid yourself that you had any good influence on your children. My children have become the adults they are because I have parented them as the children I have wished they would become (see above): great kids in spite of a mom who overslept, 

overspent and over-lost-her-temper times two. I would suggest that that is the reality of many homes.

3. Not defining your relationship around the problem is like ignoring an elephant in your kitchen. Alleged parent: “So what did you do today?” Adult child: “Ummm….I spent time doing that thing you don’t want me to do.” Alleged parent: “What are your plans for the week?” Adult child: “I’m going to spend more time doing that thing you don’t want me to do.” Alleged parent: “Well, O.K., honey, have fun, I love you no matter what choice you make, no matter what I wish, and no matter how many years I spent not parenting you.”

And finally, since none of this will likely ever work, because I’m not good at accepting reality, or realistic articles on being a real parent, here is really my best advice: Alexandra Fuller writes in her book Leaving before the Rains Come, “Perhaps most of us never stop needing a person from whom we can fledge and return repeatedly, continually trying out our independence in the knowledge that there is somewhere and someone to which and to whom we can return.”

Little fledglings finding wings, I am your somewhere and someone to which and to whom you can always return. Now go, fly.

My First Post

While I figure out how to start a blog, here is my first blog posting:

A couple of weeks ago on Facebook I posted a picture of myself with my beloved German shepherd, Otto.

In 2010 we picked him up from an airport in Chicago, transported to us from the Czech. Republic, to Germany and into our arms. Otto was not my first difficult German shepherd; I suspect he will not be my last. Though I always hope that from one pet German shepherd to the next I learn and learn and learn and mistakes become successes that turn to wins the next time around.

I have found that I am doing amazingly well since that afternoon in the vet’s office where I held Otto in my arms where he took his last breath. Otto was not sick and I did not put him down to save him from suffering. I put him down to save myself suffering.

The week before he died I was brushing Otto. He was in the midst of a wicked shedding cycle and we are in the midst of selling our house. The two didn’t go together well. While I was running the brush down his belly I must have caused him some pain. Otto did not warn me with a whine or a bark or a snap – he bit me. Of course I was shocked and at first I looked at him and quietly whispered, “Otto, you bit me.” 

I only felt a slight scratch to my neck but thought I better go inside and look in the mirror to assess if there was any damage. What I saw in the mirror made me gasp. Otto had bitten off half of my right earlobe. Gone. It was gone. It wasn’t dangling there, half-bitten off. It was gone. I began to sob as the blood poured from my head. 

My boys at college, my husband working and living 100 miles away, I called my surrogate daughter, Maria, and as she answered the phone I blurted to her, “Otto bit me.” 

This was not the first time Otto had bitten. We had already dodged three bite bullets and had only been reported to the police once. For every bite I told myself it would never happen again. I loved Otto and had invested hundreds of hours training him and trialing with him and loving him. I believed he loved me too.

After lying to the people who patched me and stitched me and referred me to a plastic surgeon I went home and forgave my big black dog. With so many changes going on in my life I never, not for one second in the first few days, pondered ending his life. 

That Sunday I sent an email to the woman who invested as many hours helping me train Otto as I invested training him. Deb said she could not tell me what to do but that I deserved better than Otto and if he would bite me, the person who loved him most, then who might he bite next? She suggested I put him down with love and respect knowing I had loved him as best as I could.

I began to sob, knowing she was right. Who would he bite next? My children, grandchildren? Me? Would the next person lose a finger or an eye or be marred beyond repair?

On Monday I brought him to the vet. I did not tell them why I was putting him down and they did not ask. A dog is considered property and its’ owner can choose whether it live or die.

My friend Denise accompanied me and we sobbed in each other’s arms. She is also a German shepherd owner who had trained alongside me many, many hours. The difference is her dog, Fritz, was brought home as a young puppy. A formidable dog who many joked would do better with a saddle than a leash, he is not a biter.

Otto lived a life in fear. Since I didn’t welcome him into my home until he was 14 months old I do not know how is first months were spent. But I can guess. They were likely spent alone in a kennel with other barking dogs. Someone took him out to work him and judge his capabilities for obtaining excellence in the Schutzhund world. He was labeled subpar and ignored. No one played with him, groomed him, or loved him.

And now we are back to a one-dog family. Our little Yorkie-poo Cisco an only dog again. I am still outside playing with him every day, as I did with Otto when he was alive. I pour my heart and soul into my dogs and when I am outside I look to my left, where there are two large dogs living and I look to my left, where there are also two dogs living, one large and one small. Never, ever have I seen anyone outside playing with bouncing balls to happy fetching dogs in those yards. 

Do we bring dogs into our lives to make us happy or to make the dogs happy? Why do people buy and adopt dogs only to have them sit in their house 24 hours a day, let outside only to pee and poop? Am I a worse person because I bled for my dog but wiped it up with his life? I don’t know. 

But here is what I have learned as contemplate three surgeries to repair my damaged ear: I will have other dogs and I will love them deeply. I will not continue crying for Otto because he lived a life of fear and Deb is right: if he would bite the one who loved him most then what must his very existence have felt like?

If someday my life is so filled with fear that I can only react with unrepairable damage to those I love most then I hope I too can die in the arms of someone who loves me most. If I had waited until he damaged someone beyond repair, then Otto’s life would likely have ended alone in a cold cell at the pound. I am choosing to believe I made the hard choice, but also the right choice.

And all of this, as I stop to wonder why I am not crying more or suffering more or missing the dog who was always at my side more, is what is called resilience. We suffer and bleed, we cry and question, and then we make a choice to move on. We have to.