By the way…

…in case you aren’t aware, it’s Good Friday.    The history of the day still stands, even if you don’t believe in the Resurrection.  Me personally, well… gotta get ready to head out for church.   Have a blessed weekend, everyone!

SPOTW: Tina

One afternoon in 1997 I came home on just another day.  I poured a glass of juice and flipped through the pile of mail laying on the dining table.  As I browsed the junk and coupons, I glanced down and noticed the message light on the answering machine blinking.  I hit the button and was greeted by Tina’s voice.  It was calm.  Seemingly normal.  But, thirteen years of friendship behind us, I knew something was off.  Despite a lack of panic and outright distress,  the Tina on the machine was not the Tina I knew.  I immediately dialed her number and someone else answered the phone.  I asked for her and they hesitated, a long, silent, pregnant pause that made every hair on the back of my neck stand up.    I quickly identified myself and had to sit down as it suddenly became no longer  just another day.

Earlier that morning, Tina was at home alone with her two year old daughter while her husband  of five years was out  for a guy’s day on the Rio Grande River.  In the course of of her normal mothering and wifely duties, she had found time to take a pregnancy test.  As she suspected she was indeed pregnant with their second child.   She went about her routine, a bit floaty and giddy, anxiously waiting to deliver the news.  She never had the chance.   While taking full advantage of the glorious New Mexico day, her husband had been caught in a strong undercurrent and pulled underwater and washed down river.   Tina was suddenly a single, expecting mother.    Everyone who knew them was just in shock. To this day, two things stand out in my mind from his funeral:   their daughter, blissfully too young to understand the world shattering meaning of that day, dressed in her black velvet dress and patten leather Mary Janes, spinning in circles under the shade of a giant cottonwood tree ,  and Tina sitting down next to me after the services and, with a profound lack of emotion, matter of factly making the observation that,  I guess, I’m the widow ***** now.  

I never saw her crack.  I know she must have.  On the inside she must have been screaming in pain, anger, disbelief.  But on the outside she took deep breaths and simply stated that she trusted God had a plan for her.   Never in all of my life have I been so grateful for another person’s deep, unwavering, fully devoted Christian faith.  The kind of Christian I wish I was able to be, it was her hope and belief in God’s word and promises that carried her through the long days and weeks, the loneliness of a baby shower that should have been shared, the bittersweet birth of her son eight months later, and beyond into an uncertain future.   She focused on God.  She focused on her children.  She just kept going, one step, one breath at a time, one prayer at a time. 

Another hard to stomach, tragic story of one woman’s descent into single parenting, another happy ending.  In 2002 I had the honor of attending Tina’s second wedding.  Hope yet again for all single moms that there are good men out there who will accept us as we are, where we are, and embrace our fractured families as their own, when the time is right.   She may no longer be a single parent, but I continue to be in awe of what a strong, amazing mother she is to her children.    How she carried them through that difficult time, set the examples she firmly believed they deserved with so much grace and dignity.  The solid values she continues to instill.  As can happen in a long life, we have had periods of time where our paths separated, but Tina is one of those unconditional friends who you can lose touch with without ever losing a day.  The open arms will always be there no matter what.   Twenty-Five years after the day we met (HOW am I old enough to have had a friend this long?), the first day of high school marching band practice, I am still proud to know her and say she is my friend, still blessed to have her as a shining example of the kind of single mother I can only hope that I am able to be to the N-Man.

For you Tina, this week’s inspirational single parent of the week.

Fake it ’til you make it

I got out of work today after eight straight, excruciating hours of court, most of it just sitting around waiting and waiting and waiting and thought, Well so much for the peaceful, relaxing start to my day.  I knew it was too good to have lasted too long.  I managed to catch X by phone before he left his house with the N-man to head to mine and told him I’d be driving right by there anyway so I would just pick him up.  The 8 mile drive took me 50 tormenting minutes.  Half way through the drive I made the executive decision, knowing the worst part of the drive lay on the other side of X’s house, to stop and go out for dinner and wait out the traffic.    It was far beyond my capacity for patience and acceptance to withstand an additional hour behind the wheel on a fizzling diet of  only Earl Grey tea and diet coke.  I picked up the N-man and for some unknown reason asked X if he wanted to come with us.  ?????  Don’t ask me where that came from.   I’m thinking mostly I didn’t feel like dealing with a toddler alone in my delirium and needed some back up there just in case.  Regardless, for some unknown reason, he said sure and off we went to a place we frequented back when we were married.  As we approached the door he said to me, I wonder if that old lady is still the hostess here.  (His words, not mine, so calm down now.)  He opened the door and held it for me and we were greeted by none other than the old lady herself.  Guess that answers that question.  Having not seen us in well over a year, she gasped at the sight of the N-man and gushed with a huge grandmotherly smile,  It’s just been so wonderful watching how your family has grown after all this time!   X and I just nodded and smiled uncomfortably and looked away from each other.  

So what’s my point?  Do I ever have one?  I guess what I’m getting at is that you can  never tell.  Really it was just kind of ironic that I pulled off such a charade  by days end because this morning I was listening to this song as I was driving into work. I was kind of internalizing it,  looking at all the people walking around downtown and thinking about their secret lives, wondering what was really there, the things that no one would ever know by just looking at them.  Years of growing up, sitting in airports alone, going between mom and dad made me love to people watch.  I would sit for hours wondering who they all were and then silently answer my own questions.  But things are rarely as they appear to be on the surface.   I’m sure I was wrong at least 90% of the time and those were only my concious assumptions.  We usually only see what we choose to see, or what someone chooses to show us, not the truth.  We script our own scenarios about the world in our minds and live our lives accordingly.    But what if we really did know what was going on under there?  Would you want to know or are you just more comfortable with your script?  Would it change the way you operate?  Would you become more compassionate or do you think you’d just go about your day status quo?   I’m not really asking for answers from anyone.  I’m just thinking  and wondering out loud.   Anyway, going into the holiday season, it’s just a little food for thought.

Coffee and a slice of humble pie

I wish a lot of wishes, but none of them as sincerely as when I say I wish I was a morning person.  I love early morning.  Hands down my favorite part of the day.  The smell of left over wet.  The deafening silence. The frost still hanging in the air.  It’s breathtaking.    But 9 out of ten days…. scratch that…. 59 out of 60 days, I sleep right through it.  My internal clock just simply will not set to an early morning schedule.  I’ve tried, again and again and again.   But unless there’s a reason I have to be somewhere that early, it doesn’t happen.   Today, however, was that one 1 of 60.  Knowing the hoofed one had a long day ahead of him, combined with the pressure I put on myself, I was up and out, Venti Pumpkin Spice Latte in hand, and on the road just in time to watch the sky bleed from black, to purple, to lavender, to pastel pink and oragne and see the first glimpse of the sun poking it’s head over the eastern plains to ease the chill.  I had to pull over to the side of the road and catch my breath, let the rest of my body catch up with my heartbeat. 

Considering how much I have to do by myself in the mornings you would think that I could drag myself out of bed, at least early enough to get in a shower before the N-man wakes up.   I can’t comprehend how much easier it would make my day.  But can  I make myself do it?  Can I somehow fool my internal ticker?   It’s going to be painful, but I think it’s more than worth the effort.  So my goal, as of tomorrow, is to set my alarm for 5 am and be up and out of the shower by 5:30 and to do it every workday for… no wait…. every day, PERIOD, for the next week.  Hopefully it will give me that boost I need to not start my days off in an aggrivated panic.  Anyone have a recommendation for a good coffee maker?

And now a big fat slice of humble pie. (Accompanied by some choice language which, while I am trying to cut out, I will non the less excuse since I am deservedly directing it at me.)  Again, I had updates on how the hoofed one did at his show today.  But having read MsSingleMama’s economic hardship post, I can’t.  Seriously.  There is not a single mother out there in single mother blog land that gives a rat’s stinky ass about my freaking horse show.  Our economy is in the shitter and the way it’s smacking so many single moms upside the head is just down right frightening and heart wrenching.  So screw my “problems” and petty  anxieties.  I feel like an ass for even getting stressed about something so stupid when so many other single moms are looking for roommates, moving into studio apartments, and getting laid off when they can’t even get their baby-daddy’s to fork up some child support.  WTF LilCyndiLuWho??  What? The? Fuck?  I’m am blessed.  B.L.E.S.S.E.D. BLESSED!  I try to remind myself of that daily, but it appears I’ve gotten caught up in the noise and stupidity of my life.  Boo-hoo, I’m a single mom. Boo-hoo, X is an idiot.  Boo-hoo!  Boo-hoo!  BOO-freaking-HOO!!  Whatever.  I have a stable career.  I have an X who, while he’s never going to win man of the year, at least helps me out and loves the N-man.  I’m not on the financial brink by any means.  Tonight I feel unworthy to claim to be a part of this community.  Tonight I have lost sight of what is important.  Tonight I need to sit down, shut up, eat my bitter dessert and go back for seconds… possibly thirds.  My hat is off to the REAL single moms out there.  The ones who are scrapping to make ends meet.  The ones who do it with no help ever from a dad.  The ones who wear the crown and carry the title with far more dignity and grace.  You are my heroes and I grovel for your forgivness.  Please pass the whipped cream to help me down this.

Time to break out the Sligh, fall to my knees, and do some serious meditation….

Hello Love? More like hello restraining order!

 I am officially obsessed, and I mean OBSESSED, with this man!!! 

The copy of his Hello Love  album that I ordered last week just arrived in my mailbox.  Rave rave RAVE!!  Not since the days of The Outsiders and Footloose have I been this school girl ga-ga and giddy in such a Tiger Beat-esque manner.   (Well there was that one time in 2005 when I finally met Marcelo Balboa and could do little more than giggle like a freak.)   I’m pretty sure I’m considerably too old to have a crush, or whatever you call it when you get to be this age, on a celeb but really, who cares?  And on a serious note… How can a man this beautiful inside, outside, in every possible sense of the word still be single at the age of 36?  Ummmm….pssst, Chris.  Just sayin’, y’all.  And there’s a sick, dark, extraordinarily twisted irony in the fact that his deep, complete and total faith and devotion to his music & ministry makes him that much sizzling, smokin’ hotter.  I mean rather naughty, naughty thoughts sizzling hot.   Seriously, I’m hoppin’ the express bus to hell for the things that run through my mind with this one. Ordinarily, naughty thoughts wouldn’t be a problem but  it’s kind of like lusting over the Pope.  Well, if the Pope was in his 30’s, didn’t wear a dress, and his hair was just a tad more metro.  Annnnd now I’m going to hell for that one too. (Note to self, buy sunscreen.)  It’s a good thing I was unable to get seats closer than the twelth row for his show or you’d be reading about me the next mornig in the Denver Post and it would not be good news.