The Times they are a Changing

Come mothers and fathers

Throughout the land

And don't criticize

What you can't understand

Your sons and your daughters

Are beyond your command

Your old road is

Rapidly agin'.

Please get out of the new one

If you can't lend your hand

For the times they are a-changin'. B. Dylan

Just got back from a dream vacation in Italy with our family. Or shall I say, our Griswold European Vacation. Our oldest daughter Beth has been studying there for the past seven weeks and we went en masse to visit her for a few precious days in the Tuscany region.

 First stop Siena, where she was living. Siena is an unbelievably picturesque medieval village. Beth was waiting for us as we rolled into the hotel parking in our rented mini van, (seemed like a good idea on paper to get that thing and in retrospect it was but really all the van will be remembered for is giving the kids future ammo to mimic their father’s road rage trying to navigate a mini van on the tiny cobbled stone streets of a foreign land and me really helping matters by reminding Mark to ‘Just calm down’. That phrase rarely works the way you want it to yet it seems to be my “go to” in a pinch, always yielding the same result of having the opposite effect.)

We made it from the Florence Airport to our hotel (eventually) and it was great to feast our eyes on Beth. We missed her dearly; finally, I had all my little ducks in a row. I think every parent exhales that little bit of breath you don’t realize your holding in when all your family is together again after being apart and all is right with the world.

We spent the next several days exploring surrounding villages, eating amazing food and drinking great wine. We took things slow and our only agenda was to live la dolce vita, the sweet life, with our bambinos if just for a few days. Since moving to Florida a few years ago we had not been on a family vacation in quite some time, (our thought process is who needs a vacation when you live by the beach all year round. Another theory that really is just good on paper.) Something had changed in our family dynamic that I hadn’t noticed before this trip. Our children had grown up. I now know why Peter Pan was always my favorite story. I wanted my children to stay little forever. But just like Nana, I was being dragged out of the nursery.

Intellectually I knew that was the goal all along and we were passing milestones like graduations and birthdays to indicate that time was, in fact, going by. Get the little people, big and in one piece was our mantra over the years. Confident, kind, well rounded, independent people was what we were aiming for. Why was I so surprised when we finally got there? It wasn’t like it happened over night, it was of course gradual. Yet the rug was pulled out from under me as we sat in piattza’s eating fresh brushetta and drinking Chianti and I looked around at the kids my eyes did a double take still expecting doe eyed, chubby faced blond babies to be staring back at me. When MJ held her wine glass up and said ‘Mom, will you pour me a glass of wine’ I saw her four year old self with little pigtails and a sippy cup and had to blink a few times before the woman sitting in front of me holding up her wine glass came into focus. Now I am not implying that they are all grown up and they are out the door, we have got some time left. But there has been a shift. I have officially gone from manager to consultant for reals.

This next phase of life will be interesting for everyone if we all embrace the change. It’s scary to be facing the world as an adult for the first time. Just like when your three-year-old starts being what can only be described as a terrorist and you suddenly understand how people can actually let that kid go to “school” for a few hours everyday. When your kid is becoming an adult but still living under house rule they become a version of that terrorist again. Or rather, your perception of what they are “supposed” to be is shifting and brother you better go with it. Autonomy is a funny thing to a parent. My rational mind says, of course that is what we want! We have wanted you to be a responsible member of society since the day you were born. But then they start to self govern themselves and your parental instinct says, “Excuse me?” I remember when I used to work at Magic’s Pub as a waitress back in the day, Duke, the cook there would say, “I don’t call you son cuz you shine, I call you son cuz your mine.” But you realize that children are not your possessions. (YES THEY ARE, NO THERE NOT! My sister, my daughter.) The sacred contract is we get them through life with all the love and support they will hopefully ever need and when they are ready, they get to do it for someone else. The evolution of man continues.

Children growing up and out is scary for their parents as well. What am I if not the mother? Good God! Don’t go because then I’ll have to find out! Its sooo much easier giving baths and changing diapers than finding the meaning of your life. Hence the epidemic of adults who still act as though they are children. It’s not their fault! Their parents didn’t let them go when it was time and then all of the sudden your 28 year old “child” is still on your cell phone plan.

So I am learning to embrace the change. Some days my id will act up and I cling to what I already know so well, which is running the house like a tight ship giving orders and doling out punishments for minor infractions. (And loving them too.) But I’m learning to take a deep breath and let it go. Life as we know it is changing everyday for everyone no matter what we do. I have figured out that the world is still my oyster and everything is still possible. My son and my daughters are beyond my command and the times they are a changing, and  life is going to be just as is ought to be.

Gilda Radnor has a great quote,

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.

Delicious Ambiguity."

The Beginning.

Keeping It Real

We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.

I loves me a ceremony. A ritual for a formal occasion is the description in the dictionary. You are one person one minute, you go through a ceremony or ritual and suddenly you are someone else entirely. One day a cadet, the next a soldier.  A woman becomes a wife, a man a husband. A high school student gets a piece of paper turning them into a college student, a college student gets a piece of paper saying you are now ready to go out into the world and prosper. (If you are lucky.) A baptism starts your life with religion and hopefully spirituality. A funeral gives your loved ones closure to celebrate life and move on. All of these ceremonies are important to us and represent very real and meaningful times in all of our lives. They also make us immediately conjure up images in our minds of what they are supposed to look like. What life ‘should’ be after we go through with these rituals.

A few weeks ago I was given the privilege to attend my friend’s son’s wedding.

Who doesn’t love a wedding? Glowing happy people who are on the threshold of life together. They entered that church two separate people from two separate families and left united together as one. It was a beautiful day filled with loving sentiments from the priest who was a family friend to the toasts and speeches from their loved ones who were getting an opportunity to tell them what they really mean to them. (Which was the world.)

A week later we were at my son’s graduation. I sat there listening to the amazing keynote speaker they had, an alum who went on to be a Hollywood producer and screenwriter. He was down to earth and funny and he had a very important thing in common with all of the people there. Yes, he was a graduate of the school and since he was youngish some of the same faculty were still there when he attended. But he was a storyteller by trade and he narrated his story well. He related to all of us, not just the students but also everyone there by being his honest and authentic, REAL self while he told his tale. And I realized the reason why I love a ceremony is not because we get to dress up and drink champagne, (Bonus!) but because I am fascinated by the human experience. I love to hear a personal story. I even actually enjoy a funeral because I can’t wait to hear the eulogy. I love to laugh when I am sad and cry when I am happy. It’s all about the REAL story.

The only thing we have to watch out for is the ‘shoulds’. So many people say, “Well, now I graduated. I ‘should’ have it all figured out by now.” Or, “Now that we are married this is what I thought my spouse ‘should’ be like, or how I ‘should’ be in this role.” “The funeral was months ago, I ‘should’ be over it by now.”

The “when I have’s” and the “should’s” are risky business. We all have an archetype in our head of what it looks like when you go through a ritual and are standing on the other side a completely different person. What a gift we would give ourselves if we just threw the old images away and lived life presently and enjoyed/accepted what was.

So many people become co-dependant out of fear. Your happiness (and unless you are a special needs person, your very survival) cannot be dependant on what someone else is or is not doing.

When my daughter left for her trip abroad I gave her a journal that said on the cover, “He said he would give her the world, and she said thank you but she had her own.”  I love that! I am all for being independent. Do your own thing, find your passion and follow your own dreams and don’t mold them into fitting what you think it should be. But enjoy what it actually is. (I am learning this as I go myself, fly by the seat of my pants kind of thing.)

 That being said, at some point we are going to want to share our lives with other human beings. It’s just the way our souls roll. Now what can we do to find balance between being co-dependant and being independent? Maybe the new archetype we can train the future generations to have in their heads is one of inter-dependance. A true relationship where you are authentically you. Then when you are your REAL self and you allow someone else to be his or her REAL selves you are living in your truth.  So many of us are programmed to listen to the ‘shoulds’ that we don’t even know who or what our real self is or what it wants. Get quiet and listen. The whispers are telling you. I have often said on this blog and to my children, ‘Jiminy Cricket!’ They know from years of Disney, (Talk about creating false archetypes, thanks for the Princess fairy tale, not to mention making the very word stepmother sound

ee-ville Walt.) But from those two words my kids know when I say that it means, “Always let your conscience be your guide.”  Jiminy tried to tell Pinocchio. Listen to the voice in your head. That is your soul talking. Your soul is who you REALLY are. All this other stuff is smoke and mirrors. Life is ever evolving. A ceremony or a ritual is a wonderful way of celebrating hard work, life, marriage and even death. Don’t let a ceremony give you the ‘shoulds’. Live your life presently, be true to yourself and the people you love, live honestly and be REAL.