fiction

Emotional Reader

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So … this was my 18th year at my husband’s family’s GIANT Thanksgiving … a full week, culminating in 40 people for the big meal. I love it. The last four years have included a book club, which is just fun. I’ve only read two of four books because they tend to choose books that have very, very sad things happen to the characters. This year it was an epistolary novel, which I love, written all in letters. I found out about it the night before the club (the email got written and saved in drafts but not sent!) and so I bought it and read it that night and the next morning. I was LOVING it. And then … blammo whammo, the main character assigned herself the blame for her middle child’s death, something that colored the rest of her whole life and reframed the entire book.

I could not … could not … stop sobbing. I went into my children’s rooms and talked to them (they are used to it and they are teenagers so they were kind while also rolling their eyes). I wasn’t going to talk about it at book club but my mother in law (beloved!) asked me to.

So I did. I started sobbing as I talked about it; I sobbed yesterday while talking to a friend who LOVED it.
My beautiful mother in law said I read books more deeply than others; my best friend of 30+ years said she is so non-emotive that she deeply appreciates deep feelings in a book. I am so .. emotive .. in my daily life that I just … cannot. I read serious (in quotes for sure) fiction my whole adult life until I had kids starting at age 34. Then it just … wasn’t good for me. I just … really really need/love the promised happy ending of romance novels. Which are well written and lovely besides!

I just … modern heartbreaking fiction … life, even as peaceful and relatively happy as mine if … already has so much heartbreak. So … what’s your note? Cry you a river or happy endings only, please?

Anxiety/College/Leadership

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Well, it’s that time — time for me to step out and back from leading in my children’s lives, aka college application time. Guess what? It’s making me INSANE. There are two college who took my child for a ‘Official Visit’ for his chosen (and beloved) sport. One said they liked him but would not offer him a guaranteed spot. The other said they would offer a guaranteed spot. He likes the one … who would not. The other one is ‘just like my [hyper competitive] high school, MOM.’

So what to do! He thinks you can only apply to one, because the coaches want to be your TOP choice. I think, and the other mom that knows this stuff (better than I do) agrees, that you have to AT LEAST apply for three because NONE OF THESE SCHOOLS are guarantees — he’s not in the top of the top where they kind of circumvent the process to let you in. The RECOMMEND you get in, but you have to add grades, and scores, and all of that crap, to it.

Mainly, of course, I’m trying to relive/relitigate MY CHILDHOOD decisions, where I applied to ONE fancy school, did NOT get in, and just went to whatever local college my mom chose. I was so heartbroken not to get in. And my son’s scores, grades and sports are TOTALLY different than mine, but when the first school declined to give him a letter WOE it sent me down a spiral to when I was 18 and heartbroken.

That is not his path! That is not the path he is on! And YET! I cannot let go of the obsession.

He will be fine; I know he will be fine, but as we sang when the kids were little, on long car trips, “I don’t want to get there, I just want to be there …”

When you like them least, they need you most

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I just got back (well, two weeks ago) from a really fun bike trip around Crater Lake, Bend and Sisters, Oregon with my 17 year old son. It’s a lie to say we ‘rode together’ — he was MILES and HOURS ahead of me — but we roomed together and ate breakfast and dinner together and generally had a really lovely time.

Just before we left, I took my 15 year old to therapy we had forced her (read: she wanted X, we said you can have X if you do Y, with Y being therapy) to attend. She DESPISED it, and honestly, the therapist despised her a bit. So on the way home from forced session, I started yelling at her (error #1,000 that I repeat pretty regularly). She … just got out. We were at a stop light, in a different town adjacent to our own, and I stopped the car and chased her, screaming (see error) for a few blocks. Then — I just left her. I just got back in the car and drove away.

I couldn’t catch her, I’m too slow, but I could have gotten in the car and found her. I had taken away her phone, so she had no phone and no iPad/etc. I had to catch a flight, but I didn’t need to leave RIGHT THEN. I had about 20 minutes before I needed to get home and go. So I really regret not staying/chasing. But. In other news. She made it home fine; it was about 8 miles — she walked a lot of it and then took the bus. Just as I was about to call the police, while I was at the airport, she walked in the front door.

There has been a lot of ramifications. She lost her phone for a week, her dad, myself and I talked extensively when I returned from my trip, she said it feels like we don’t love her, other heartbreaking things have occurred. And I went to lunch with a good friend who said the point at the top of this post — ‘teenagers — when you like them least is when they need you most./

And honestly, I have always liked this kid, and always found her to be really challenging, and I have struggled to draw firm boundaries and lines with her — to our and her detriment. So we are trying to do everything ‘right’ — and just trying to love her and show her how much we love her.

Oh my husband was FURIOUS I had left her. But he told her, not me, because I am hard to speak with about difficult things, so … I found out from her. But I would have been mad if he left her, too. Not sure what I was thinking; I have no excuses. My stepmother strongly and firmly said “you have raised her well, she will be home, don’t worry” and that was SO WELCOME and SO NEEDED at that point.