American Dream

I was at the US Federal Courthouse in Milwaukee last week.  My first impression (while standing in the security line with my shoes in hand) was of great detail and beauty.  The building reminded me of a state capitol buildling, albeit with skylights instead of a dome.

As I walked through the atrium and found my way to my destination, I was struck my the old-ness of the building.  Modern buildings are all metal and fabric and simplicity, with restrooms in places that are easy to find and designs that are based on cost-savings.  The Federal Courthous is clearly not modern.  It is all marble and wood and detail, with restrooms that are behind wooden doors that look no different from all the other doors in the hallway.  The building was built for beauty and permanence.

At the time I was there, two main activities were taking place: third floor, Naturalization Ceremony, 4th floor, bankruptcy hearings.  Two faces of the American dream, one floor apart.  Standing in the security line, I could see the faces--the exuberant faces of families and children tehre to celebrate a decision, an accomplishment, an opportunity.  And I saw the subdued faces and bowed shoulders of those there with the burdens of financial failure.  It was a stark contrast, to be sure.

As my business concluded, I was able to take my time in meandering my way out of the building.  I saw many other pieces of the American dream--a senator's office, people working  to earn money for their families and contribute to the grandness of the building, and even a display on crime in Wisconsin.  As I looked through the display materials on identify theft and rape, it occurred to me that part of the American dream was about many opportunities--the opportunity to succeed financially, the opportunity to publicly and legally acknowledge one's self as an American, the opportunity to pursue justice, and the opportunity to try again.

Going into the US Federal Courthouse, I saw two faces of the American dream.  Leaving, I saw the beautiful old building as a symbol of endurance and strength.   Just one American dream after all, as strong and enduring and beautiful as ever.

what women do

For some time, I have been thinking about the way women connect with each other.  Several episodes come to mind, and I wish I could find a perfect metaphor for these connections.

becoming a woman

When my daughter was in fifth or sixth grade, her friend's dad died after a painful battle against cancer.  This wasn't a particularly close friend at the time, but my daughter had lost an aunt to cancer and felt a connection of support.  All the girls in the girl scout troop went to the funeral, girls in one row and most of the moms together in the row behind them.  We watched our daughters be women that day.  During the service, the girls cried at the appropriate times while their mothers cried behind them and patted their shoulders.

After the service, when it was time for everyone to walk by and hug the family members, I watched an amazing thing happen.  The girls would surround Friend BT, giving individual hugs to her and to each other and then engaging in a group hug and crying together.  Then, the girls would all wander off to the ladies' room, talking about why they cried while hugging and crying again, and then they'd head back to Friend BT to do it all over again.


They were all caught up in this shared experience, but these pre-teen girls were doing what women do--supporting, hugging, crying, and sharing each other's sorrow.


women supporting women

My time on www.hystersisters.com has shown me a great deal of what women do so well--share their experiences to provide support and encouragement for each other.  In my time as a hostess, I've seen this work even more deeply.  I am often logged into AIM in order to be able to stay in touch with my sister hostesses.  The conversations I've had with these wonderful women have taught me so much about relationships.  There are several women I chat with on a regular basis.  Most of the time, we are conducting some business--Could you check out this thread? Did I explain myself clearly?  How should we promote this feature?  How should I handle this situation?  Yet, as women do, in the midst of the "getting things done" is the "getting to know you better."  I have chatted about faith, religion, abortion, husbands, sex toys, lubricants, children, and more--and while we are chatting about these very personal things, we are circling back to the work of the website.  We know each other because we have a shared work-"place," and our work becomes more enjoyable and more meaningful because we know each other as sisters, not just as colleagues.


When I moved offices this year, I found that the most difficult change was not that I was losing my window or having to change my patterns (such as having to park in a different lot and using a different bathroom).  It was that I ceased to be part of the daily lives of my colleagues.  It used to be that every day included brief moments of sharing the joys and frustrations of our lives--the kids, the spouses, the commute, the price of milk or gas, or the student who came late to class every day.  Now, instead of the rich texture that this daily sharing wove together, when I see these colleagues and friends, we have time only for the highlights, and our relationships seem much more tenuous somehow.  Whereas I used to see one woman three mornings a week and could find out quickly which kid had been sick the night before, now I see her once a month, and not in the comfortable way of stopping in each other's offices on the way to the bathroom or the way back from class.


When I left the school where I began my career, my heart ached that I wouldn't be able to see what became of my colleagues' lives and families.  What did Sean (or Shawn--I can't even remember) end up doing after high school?  Did Tina become a grandmother?  Is Jan still alive?  Did Barb and Wayne get married?  To this day, that is still what I treasure hearing about.  The women who supported me as I finished my master's thesis, got married, had children, earned tenure, spent 3 1/2 months on bedrest, and juggled three little ones under the age of three are still part of my heart even though not part of my life.


drop and run

On Christmas Day, my daughter received a phone call shortly before we were about to sit down to Christmas dinner.  It was her friend, ET, who was having a difficult day with her relatives, who were teasing her about her piercing choices.  My daughter dropped everything to run--literally, to ET's grandma's house a block away.  She stayed long enough to listen, give hugs, get ET to laugh, and then she headed back home.


Several weeks ago, I got a message from one of my life-long friends that she was worried about her marriage.  So, I met her on Facebook chat to "listen" to her concerns about her husband, her job, her marriage, and her life.  We were online together for well over an hour.  It reminded me of the way we used to talk on the phone for more than an hour in high school.  We could have just seen each other an hour before, but we had to connect--to make sure the other one was completely up-to-the-minute on our other conversations, our mean parents who made us do an unpleasant chore, our feelings about something.  It wasn't so much that we set aside what was going on in life as much as that we recognized how much this relationship WAS our life (or at least an important part of it).


To see my daughter drop everything and run to her friend's side was heart-warming.  It reminded me that this is what women do, and the fact that she was the one who was called said so much about the depth of the young woman she is.  Just last week, she was texting after midnight with BT, on the anniversary of her father's death.  Together, they marked the anniversary of a sad, sad time in BT's life.  To me, it was the anniversary of the moment my daughter became a woman.



 

time passages

My son is a high school senior, thinking about college and the future.  I can't help but think about how I felt about my life when I was that age--so grown up, with the whole world ahead of me, wanting to make my own life and home.  How is it possible that my baby, this little creature who so totally transformed my life and made me a mommy, is at that same point?  I blinked, and now he's about to leave my nest.  I wonder if I captured enough moments in my mind and heart to keep a piece of him with me always.  I worry that I didn't create enough such moments for him to carry with him as he moves forward.  And I see his brother and sister, three years behind him on the same path, and I just can't believe we're already here, where we are in this life.

My life hasn't at all turned out the way I wanted it to.  By the time I was 30, I thought it had.  I had my master's degree, I had a husband who made me laugh, I had tenure at a job I loved, and I had my three little babies.  My life looked like it was going to be just what I wanted.  But then, well, life happened.  For the sake of my husband's career, we left a community we loved and I left my job to move to where we are.  The move was so challenging that I'm still not sure we've completed the transition.  As it turned out, the job that brought us here didn't last very long.  In order to stay with his organization, we would've had to uproot our family every three to four years.  We wouldn't be able to bear that, so my husband completely switched fields.

Then began the changing years.  We faced health challenges, money problems, unemployment, our kids' early teens, my gynecological problems, my husband's weight and heart problems.  Somehow we had started a downward spiral that completely changed the path we were on.  I'm not sure what to call this place where we are now.  The excitement of our future got buried in arguments, anxiety, depression, and I feel like I'm just now starting to wake up.  I don't recognize this place or my own reflection most days.  The kids are wonderful human beings, and I have no idea how they got to be that way.

I wonder about trying to get back to who I am, but I'm not sure if that person is there anymore.  I worry about becoming bitter and too cynical.  Outwardly, I'm amazed by how well I present myself to the world.  But inside, I'm not that person most of the time.  This life has been really, really hard.  The financial challenges we've faced during the past few years and especially the past few months were exacerbated by my husband's most recent unemployment (11 months already--what is with this?) have been overwhelming.  I have experienced constant daily stress.  I have worried about losing everything, including my mind.  We have had to make some difficult choices, and our ability to put our wonderful children through college has completely evaporated.  This is not the life I wanted for myself, and it certainly isn't the life I wanted to provide for my children.

How can I get up and do the best I can every day when I'm worried that I've damaged our lives beyond repair by not figuring out how to cope with the crap years ago?  With all of it right now, I'm facing daily decisions.  Every single day, I have to decide to sit down and deal with finances, pick up some things around the  house, get off the computer, live a real life.  But every day, I do.

As I've been connecting with more high school classmates on Facebook, I find myself drawn to their pictures.  I graduated more than 25 years ago.  My classmates and I have all built lives of our own.  I think back to the conversations we had back then about our futures, and I wonder how many of us are where we thought we would be when we were this age.  Their pictures tell stories of smiling happy lives, beautiful homes, fun and relaxing vacations, cute pets who never shed or pee on the carpet or yack up hairballs.  Part of me wants to call "do-over" so I can make the right decisions, the ones that won't lead to where I am at this very moment.

But then I also see behind their smiles and know that life can hurt us all, just as it can heal us.  The pictures we choose to put on Facebook are the ones where we are smiling.  We don't take pictures of the tears, we clean up the part that is the backdrop of the photo, we keep the scars and bruises of life's journey outside the frame of the picture.  And I yearn to reconnect with these people.  They are the ones who knew me when I most felt like me, when I had not yet experienced the joys and burdens of my life.  I want to tell them that I got over being so shy all the time, that my life does too revolve around writing (just not in the way that I thought), that I've somehow grown up.  I doubt that any of us knew that we would be where we are in life right now, but part of my identity is caught up in those conversations waiting for the school doors to open and wearing those dumb blue striped zip-up gym suits and working on the school paper and getting ready for musical performances.  I know that so many of these people are part of my heart, and I want to know that I am part of theirs as well.


And there goes my son, off to build his life.  I watch him, and I suddenly feel so old.  And so young again.

the times, they are a-changin'

Is there really a point to daylight savings time anymore?  Okay, I know it has something to do with energy consumption and providing more daylight so people use less energy to light their homes.  Seriously?  If it's such a great idea, why aren't we doing it year-round?  I remember doing that once as a kid and walking to school in the dark.

Twice a year, I go through nearly a week of feeling jet-lagged as I try to shift my rhythms.  In addition to feeling a bit disoriented throughout the day, my eating habits change and I just feel yucky all day.  At the very least, no one should have to go to school or work on the day after the time change.

Man, am I whiny today. 

the marriage ref?

Please--a show with celebrities making marriage decisions for others?  And they're deciding whether a couple should get a stripper pole in the bedroom?  I'm wondering--if a couple agrees to be on the show, are they obligated to follow the celebrity vote?  

I really don't get most of the reality shows.  I only like the ones where there is time for people to develop relationships and have a chance to grow and develop in some way. 

feeling better

Somehow, I'm feeling better than I did the other day.  Maybe I'm just relieved that 2009 is almost over.  And tomorrow, my babies turn 15!

when loved ones have money troubles...

With the economy the way it is, there are a lot of folks struggling with money troubles right now.  Whether it's from unemployment, pay cut, mandatory furlough, or simply the increase price of a gallon of milk, it's hard to be hard up.  And although I am immersed in the life of someone with money trouble, I can also recognize that it's hard to be doing okay yourself while watching someone you care about struggle with money.


So what can you do to provide support?  What should you do?


Here are my recommendations, completely based on my own experience.

1. Withhold judgment.  It's tempting to say to yourself, "I can sympathize with Friend X because he's always lived within his means in the past and this isn't his fault.  I don't feel bad for Friend Z because she's always lived beyond her means.  If she'd saved more/shopped less/invested better, she wouldn't be in this situation now."  Yeah, go ahead, feel how you feel.  But do please try to understand.  Having money trouble is bad no matter how or why it's happening.  If someone is used to smooth financial sailing, this new life may feel like stormy and dangerous waters and navigating this life can be extremely unsettling.  If someone has made poor choices in the past, he or she may be more comfortable with the various feelings and processes involved (which helps right now) but also has to deal with feelings of guilt and failure.  Whether or not someone could have made (or could still make) different lifestyle choices, the stress and worry and very real.
   
2. Provide financial assistance if you are so inclined.  Okay, this may be controversial, and certainly don't provide any financial support that you can't afford or that makes you uncomfortable.  You can read all the articles you want that tell you whether you should or should not help your friends and family with money.  You need to go with your heart and your comfort level.  Some people are not comfortable helping someone out with regular bills, although they will help with one-time or short-term needs.  Some examples of this might include car repairs, professional carpet cleaning before the house goes on the market, a storage unit for extra items if your loved ones need to downsize temporarily, paying the fee for your loved ones to talk with a financial advisor or to help their high school senior apply to college.  When my friend had to take a leave of absence to help her son with some legal and medical problems, her parents stepped in to pay her mortgage for six months.  It was short-term financial support, and it allowed her to do what she needed to for her son without worrying about losing her house over it.
   
3. Consider giving gift cards.  When my husband was laid off for the third time in two years seven months ago, one of the sweetest things done for us was that a group of my co-workers each kicked in about five dollars each to get us a $75 gift card for the grocery store.  I hung on to that card for months, knowing that if things got really bad, we could still feed our kids.  And we used it during a spell when I had an annual dry spell in my own pay schedule.  It was hard to give up that safety net, but as I was using it to get groceries, I felt my friends' love and concern all over again.  Gift cards for essentials can be lifelines, but you can also provide gift cards for inexpensive beauty shops and movie theatres.  It's nice to be able to do some things that feel like pampering when stress levels are skyrocketing.  Even a $5 gift card can provide a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread or enough gas in the tank to get to and from a job interview.
4. Recognize that your loved ones may feel like they're falling apart.  I'm very worried.  I don't know what will happen with the house, the car, credit card debts, and so on.  I don't know how the job market is.  I don't know when my husband will find a job or if it will pay enough for us to feel like life can ever be normal again.  I don't know what we're going to do.  I wake up every day wondering if this will be the day we get a foreclosure notice or a lawsuit or even just a bill I wasn't expecting.  I dread the mail.  I start hyperventilating every time the phone rings.  If I see an unfamiliar car in front of the house, I wonder if it's someone with bad news for us.  I go to bed every night glad to have until the morning to have no phone calls from creditors and relieved that I haven't fallen off the deep end.  Don't get me wrong.  I have joyful moments most days--but there's an undercurrent of stress that never leaves me.  Even for a moment.  Every single day.  So if I seem distracted, depressed, or cynical, please don't tell me to cheer up or pull myself together.  I'm doing what I can, every single day.
   
5. Express your concern--but please don't add your stress to ours.  I know my mother loses sleep worrying about us.  But I already feel bad enough.  I don't need guilt about that on top of everything else.  One of the most difficult days was when I was in the copy room at work one day, trapped in the middle of making a thousand copies that needed to be collated into different folders for a workshop I was running.  One of my co-workers asked me how things were going and if my husband had a job yet.  It was nice of her to say, "I'm so sorry.  I hope something comes along soon."  But then she took half an hour of my life telling me all the things I must be worried about.  Most of them were already on my list, but she ended up adding some things, too.  I'm sure she just didn't know what to say, but STOP!  Take a cue from me.  If I want to talk about it, I will.  But it means more than people know when we can at least have a pretense at normalcy for a short while.  Find someone else to talk to about your own fears and concerns about our finances.  And if we don't give you all the details, don't take it personally.  We may be simply trying to protect you from having even more to worry about.
   
6. Help us remember that life does not stop just because we're having money trouble.  While I'd appreciate not having to hear about your annual trip to Disneyworld or how your new jeans cost only $75, I deeply appreciate it when people still talk to me about normal things--kids, spouses, the weather, the annoying administrator at work, etc.  Don't cut off all communication just because you don't know what to say about our financial situation.  We really need our family and friends right now.  This is really, really hard.  But we still need to maintain relationships and know that we are more than just the relatives or friends with money troubles.  One of the things I appreciate the most is that my sister-in-law kept playing online scrabble with me, just like before my husband lost his job.  It helps me feel a sense of normal in a very healing way.  My sister, who called me every week when I was having medical problems, hasn't called at all since my husband lost his job.
   
7. Spend time with us.  We have good friends who have money.  They have taken us to a couple movies and outdoor festivals, and that has been wonderful.  Even better, though, have been the times they've invited us to their home to play dominos and drink mojitos.  This has been the best support.  When we're with them, we laugh and we step outside our reality for just a few minutes.  That gives us strength to return to our reality and get through another day.