tuesday i spent most of the morning going through some boxes of my stuff that have been stored here with my mom for the past 5+ years. it was a fun little trip down memory lane and i found a lot of the things i've been wondering about for some time. things like:
-the entire set (minus one) of the Empire Strikes Back collectors cards that i got piece by piece as a kid
-two bags of marbles i used to play/compete with in 4th grade on the playground in maine
-my high school yearbook
-notebooks from high school and college with many unfinished letters to lovers and women i was interested in
-lists of cassette mixes i used to make for friends (i used to make a LOT of mix tapes!)
-a print out of all the saved emails from when i first started emailing back in college, including a lot of correspondence with Chrissy, my girlfriend of 3 years back in school
-photos i took, printed and mounted in high school (most of them are *horrible*)
-tapes of old bands
-and a whole lotta junk!
i wish i had the time to read all the old short stories i used to write as there are tons of them, but that will have to wait for another day. i had forgotten how much creative writing i used to do. loads and loads of it ... notebooks filled with story ideas and brief synopsis' of stories yet to be written.
in the afternoon, i decided it was time to talk to mom some more about our relationship. i felt a lot of resistance getting into it and felt where i stood at the line between choosing to say something versus choosing to go sit behind a pile of stuff and ignore it all.
i choose to say something.
i'll start by saying that what i feel now (several hours later) is like the door has been cracked open and the ground feels very fragile. kind of like walking on hard-packed snow that collapses underneath you once in awhile and you never know when that is going to occur.
but i'd have to say it was a really good day. i aired a lot of the places where i feel like i haven't wanted to open up to her and some of the reasons behind all that. she resisted getting into it a lot at first, not wanting to expose her pain, not wanting to cry, but i kept asking questions and encouraging her to tell me how she felt and what she thought. sadness begat anger. anger begat softening. softening begat understanding.
i feel like we have a long way to go and i look forward to talking more about it tomorrow. for now, it feels good to be able to share with her, very honestly, the judgments i've had, the anger, the disappointment, the frustration ... and it's felt good to hear some of that from her.
we acknowledged that, since i began high school, we haven't really connected much and almost not at all since the divorce and my going off to college. i didn't mark the divorce as such a turning point in my life and it's hard to tell if that was more or less influential than me going off to school and living on my own for the first time. it's interesting to consider the reasons are for why our relationship is the way it is, and at the same time it doesn't really matter much - examining the past is interesting, but moving forward is what is important.
what matters is uncovering what feelings are there now and discovering where i want the relationship to be. i know that we are very different people and there have been a lot of things i have resented about her over the past 15 years. i also see where i have a lot of room to accept her for who she is, give myself the chance to get to know who she is, and not think that our relationship has to look or feel any particular way. i can see how a piece of my unconscious thought-pattern has been something like, "well, if you are not my mom who looks like a-b-c, then there's nothing there for me." perhaps that's too extreme, but something along those lines seems to land for me.
so, there's more to come and i'll write of it then. i feel a lot of mixed feelings about it all. on one hand i feel accepting of everything that has occurred and see it as what needed to happen at the time and then there is also seeing how that's not how i want to be anymore. with all of this comes the more full understanding of how much i've hurt her by being closed and unwilling to share my life with her ... co-creating the reality that she has been a mother without a son in some respects. and i can't even fully imagine what that feels like as a parent.
i still feel that some of my motivation is coming from a place of feeling like I "should" be doing this - that is, I should be open to her. i'm confused about that and it bothers me to some extent that i don't feel compelled to repair this relationship from a place of deep love. not that that is not the reason ... it may very well be, but i don't *feel* it right now. in all honesty, at this very moment, i am in this because i have some intangible belief that it will be good for me in some way .... and .... because i want to be good to my mother.
i'm not expecting any particular outcome. i see an opening and that feels great. i feel some mutual understanding and that feels great. and i still feel a lot of the disappointment, frustration and annoyances that i have felt for a long time. what is different right now is that i am not holding on to that stuff. it comes and it goes. the promise i have around this is to let go of the rigidity of how i've seen her and be more open to who she is ... all while expressing myself clearly and being honest with her about what i think and feel.
so for now ... that's where i am ... looking forward to what's next.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
01:02:03 04/05/06
one surefire way to get away from your heart break (for a little while anyway) is to go to a friend’s jewish wedding, eat amazing food, drink a lot, and dance with said friend’s young, hot jewish (and non-jewish) friends. i need to marry a jewish woman. not just because i tend to be very attracted to them, but because they have the most fun weddings i’ve ever been to. this one makes three and the amount of life they give to their celebrations is inspiring ... at least in my experience.
seattle was great. i got to spend some time with some old friends from SF, reconnect with some friends i met in belize, and met some awesome new peeps ta boot. new photos are up on my site for those of you who know where to look for them.
yesterday was a lot of traveling, but i didn't mind so much. i do so love my time alone. one reason i love southwest airlines ... they don't take anything too seriously. my flight into chicago was very choppy. in the last 20 minutes it felt like the plane was fishtailing the whole way in. in the seconds leading up to and during the landing, one of the flight attendants starting singing this tune over the loud speaker (to the tune of gilligan's island):
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
a tale of a fateful trip.
That started out of sea-at-tle,
aboard this tiny airship.
The weather started getting rough,
the tiny ship was tossed.
If not for the courage of the fearless crew,
your cookies would be tossed, your cookies would be tossed.
And then he sang to some made-up melody:
I love you and you love me
You'll thank me for my hospitality
If you marry me, you can fly for free!
And then, when I was landing in Albany, i realized that i hadn't put any conscious thought into what it was going to be like to see my mother for the first time in almost 4 years. i was on the plane as we taxied to the gate and i just realized that i had no idea what to expect and knew that i was ready to start breaking down some big walls that have been up for a long, long time.
i remember walking toward the baggage claim where i was going to meet her feeling closed and dreading the next two days - all i could feel was how much i didn't want to be here. and then i stopped. and took a moment. and reflected back on some reading i've been doing lately in the book "The Art of Possibility". in that moment i realized i wasn't giving my mother any room to be anything other than what i had created her to be in my head over the years and decided to push that aside.
the first several moments were fine. as expected - talking about travel, the weather, food. but within what seemed like moments on the drive home, we started talking about her and my father's divorce, the specifics about the night they told my sister and i, the events leading up to that, what she was feeling about the decision before and after, how she feels about my father now .... i learned some things i never knew about the situation. i learned that she thought that i blamed her and that's why i've been so distant all these years (it makes me cry just to write that).
i asked about my reaction the night they told us. i don't remember much aside from sitting on the couch and other details like where they sat, where my sister sat and her reaction. i just remember going out and walking into the fields behind my house afterwards and sitting outside under the sky, tearless. my mother said that, in the moment, i was furious. i wouldn't let them speak. i didn't want to hear it. i recoiled into the corner of the couch telling them to shut up. and then i got up and left.
i don't remember crying about it or feeling anything about it for a couple years. one day in college it struck me that i hadn't ever felt it and i cried for a few minutes and that was it. i asked my mom what i was like after i walked out that night and she said i never said anything about it or showed any emotion ... nothing. i internalized it all and dealt with it that way.
then she asked me about ami. she didn't know what's been going on this past month. last she heard, i was madly in love and high as a kite. it was hard to visit all that and yet, not at all. i'm usually so guarded with my mom. last night i just let it all out - gave her the whole story, talked about everything i've been going through and what i've been learning, what i feel good about, what hurts like hell, what i want. and yet, i still see where i could offer more of myself in relating all that and plan to go there over these next few days.
i told her i feel like we have a lot to talk about and i don't readily know what any of that is. but i want to find out.
when we finally got home (to the house where my grandparents used to live and where i spent enough time as a child that it feels like a home i know) it was very surreal. i haven't been here in 5-6-7 years and last time i was here my grandfather was still alive. this place reminds me more of him than my grandmother, but i have so many memories of the both of them and our family in this house.
what struck me right away was that it smells exactly the same. smell is such a powerful sense. it evokes so many memories in such a unique way. the second thing i noticed is how small the place feels. almost like a doll house.
i'm staying in my grandparent's bedroom. it's weird. i pretty much never went into their room when they were alive except to wake them up from a nap or something. it's such an indescribable feeling for that to be my room for this visit and to just be *in* that space for extended periods of time.
today ... well, today is another long post to write about and i'll probably write about it later. it's late ... i just celebrated the "once in a thousand years" occurance of it being 01:02:03 o'clock on 04/05/06. i love stupid shit like that.
it's a bummer to miss my leadership training tonight and i welcome the mini-break from life back in SF.
seattle was great. i got to spend some time with some old friends from SF, reconnect with some friends i met in belize, and met some awesome new peeps ta boot. new photos are up on my site for those of you who know where to look for them.
yesterday was a lot of traveling, but i didn't mind so much. i do so love my time alone. one reason i love southwest airlines ... they don't take anything too seriously. my flight into chicago was very choppy. in the last 20 minutes it felt like the plane was fishtailing the whole way in. in the seconds leading up to and during the landing, one of the flight attendants starting singing this tune over the loud speaker (to the tune of gilligan's island):
Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale,
a tale of a fateful trip.
That started out of sea-at-tle,
aboard this tiny airship.
The weather started getting rough,
the tiny ship was tossed.
If not for the courage of the fearless crew,
your cookies would be tossed, your cookies would be tossed.
And then he sang to some made-up melody:
I love you and you love me
You'll thank me for my hospitality
If you marry me, you can fly for free!
And then, when I was landing in Albany, i realized that i hadn't put any conscious thought into what it was going to be like to see my mother for the first time in almost 4 years. i was on the plane as we taxied to the gate and i just realized that i had no idea what to expect and knew that i was ready to start breaking down some big walls that have been up for a long, long time.
i remember walking toward the baggage claim where i was going to meet her feeling closed and dreading the next two days - all i could feel was how much i didn't want to be here. and then i stopped. and took a moment. and reflected back on some reading i've been doing lately in the book "The Art of Possibility". in that moment i realized i wasn't giving my mother any room to be anything other than what i had created her to be in my head over the years and decided to push that aside.
the first several moments were fine. as expected - talking about travel, the weather, food. but within what seemed like moments on the drive home, we started talking about her and my father's divorce, the specifics about the night they told my sister and i, the events leading up to that, what she was feeling about the decision before and after, how she feels about my father now .... i learned some things i never knew about the situation. i learned that she thought that i blamed her and that's why i've been so distant all these years (it makes me cry just to write that).
i asked about my reaction the night they told us. i don't remember much aside from sitting on the couch and other details like where they sat, where my sister sat and her reaction. i just remember going out and walking into the fields behind my house afterwards and sitting outside under the sky, tearless. my mother said that, in the moment, i was furious. i wouldn't let them speak. i didn't want to hear it. i recoiled into the corner of the couch telling them to shut up. and then i got up and left.
i don't remember crying about it or feeling anything about it for a couple years. one day in college it struck me that i hadn't ever felt it and i cried for a few minutes and that was it. i asked my mom what i was like after i walked out that night and she said i never said anything about it or showed any emotion ... nothing. i internalized it all and dealt with it that way.
then she asked me about ami. she didn't know what's been going on this past month. last she heard, i was madly in love and high as a kite. it was hard to visit all that and yet, not at all. i'm usually so guarded with my mom. last night i just let it all out - gave her the whole story, talked about everything i've been going through and what i've been learning, what i feel good about, what hurts like hell, what i want. and yet, i still see where i could offer more of myself in relating all that and plan to go there over these next few days.
i told her i feel like we have a lot to talk about and i don't readily know what any of that is. but i want to find out.
when we finally got home (to the house where my grandparents used to live and where i spent enough time as a child that it feels like a home i know) it was very surreal. i haven't been here in 5-6-7 years and last time i was here my grandfather was still alive. this place reminds me more of him than my grandmother, but i have so many memories of the both of them and our family in this house.
what struck me right away was that it smells exactly the same. smell is such a powerful sense. it evokes so many memories in such a unique way. the second thing i noticed is how small the place feels. almost like a doll house.
i'm staying in my grandparent's bedroom. it's weird. i pretty much never went into their room when they were alive except to wake them up from a nap or something. it's such an indescribable feeling for that to be my room for this visit and to just be *in* that space for extended periods of time.
today ... well, today is another long post to write about and i'll probably write about it later. it's late ... i just celebrated the "once in a thousand years" occurance of it being 01:02:03 o'clock on 04/05/06. i love stupid shit like that.
it's a bummer to miss my leadership training tonight and i welcome the mini-break from life back in SF.
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