The Lucky One

I sometimes forget just how lucky I am.

This past weekend, I spent some time with The Boy, and I was reminded.

As one who has lived most of my adult life as a self-employed single mother, it has too often been all too easy to count the ways my life was lacking.

For starters, there was that whole “single” business.  Which often felt more like, “destined to die sad, horny and alone.”  Blech.  No fun.

Then there was the living situation.  My son and I lived in a series of rentals.  The place we stayed the longest - seven years - was a one-bedroom apartment.  The Boy thought it was normal for Mom to sleep in the living room.

Money?  Don’t get me started.  Paying the bills was a juggling act.  Car repairs or unexpected medical expenses were a disaster.  I hid in the bathroom and wept every time The Boy found a new interest requiring lesson fees or equipment.

Material gains I made in recent years - building my business, saving, owning a home, investing with a man I loved in a future together - were largely lost in my divorce.  The Boy is in college and those tuition bills are rolling in.  I am back to living in a rental, back to working every spare minute to make ends meet. 

Whiny and bleak with a side of poor-me, anyone?

Of course, that’s not the whole story.

Singlehood?  Sure, I’d have preferred a long-term love story, but I’ve had some really great guys in my life - so there’s that.  Even the most difficult of my relationships has helped me learn and grow.  And damn, I’ve had a whole lot of fun, too.

Those rentals?  The early ones were chosen to place us near schools where The Boy could get the best possible start in education, first at Montessori Children’s House in Providence, RI, then at Friends Academy in Dartmouth, MA.  For several years, fully half my income went to private school tuition - and it was worth every penny.

The seven years spent sleeping in the living room?  I’ll get far less pity when I tell you our small apartment was in a multimillion-dollar house on the water.  The Boy grew up able to fish for crabs from the dock in his back yard, paddle around the marshes in a kayak, make snow angels in the stillness that envelops a salt pond on a winter night.

Money?  Maybe the bills would have been easier to pay if I hadn’t been hell-bent on seeing to it that The Boy didn’t suffer for my failings.  We could have stayed home, could have socked away a little more in the rainy-day fund, but having a child felt to me like having a fresh pair of eyes with which to explore the world.  So we explored.  Hiking ruins in Mexico, skiing in northern New England, snorkeling in the Florida Keys, road trips to DC and Boston and New York.  If you want to know how to travel well on a seriously-shoestring budget, I’m your girl.

And now?  I’ve found another tiny rental with a million-dollar view. The Boy has earned scholarships that defray the tuition bills.  Business is booming.  And while, ultimately, I suppose we all die alone, sad and horny feels like less of a given these days.  

This past weekend, I drove on winding back roads with fall leaves swirling in the sunshine overhead.  The Boy and I sang along with the radio for a while, then I left him at his dormitory and continued on my own.  I felt my heart - that thing I feared mere months ago was broken beyond repair - open wide.

In that moment, I remembered:

                                  just how lucky I am.

Home

When I was growing up, my parents moved house often.  They were young when I was born, still building their careers and their life together, so I suppose it made sense.  It was an apartment here, a house there.  Home as a brick-and-mortar place eluded me.  To me, home was my mother doing housekeeping to her record albums: Boston or Alice Cooper.  Home was my father coming through the door with his briefcase and a guessing game: which hand held candy behind his back?

More than anything, though, home was books.

Wherever we lived, my first sense of belonging came from a trip to the library.  I prided myself on taking out as many books as I was allowed, always finishing and returning them with impressive speed.  I tore through the Nancy Drew series so quickly, I was forced to read the The Hardy Boys just to satisfy my appetite for mystery.

I felt I’d struck gold when, at about age ten, I found myself living in Rehoboth Village, Massachusetts.  Our house was the sort of rambling place I imagined Nancy herself would have enjoyed.  It sat beside a pond with a vine-covered garden shed on an island at its center, and the stone ruins of an old barn were nestled into a hill.  Best of all, the local library was a short bike ride away, housed in a gothic building I found simultaneously creepy and inviting.

By then, I was reading C.S. Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, and Tolkien.  I was obsessed with time travel and other worlds, and it wasn’t long before I decided that a particular garden path was the equivalent of the Wardrobe in The Chronicles of Narnia, and that it was necessary that I be brave and make the journey for an assortment of reasons: to rescue my parents, to prevent my brother from being turned to stone (though there were days, of course, when it was absolutely required that he be sacrificed), to save all of humankind from certain doom.  You know.  The usual ten-year-old stuff.

When I wasn’t busy saving individuals or entire civilizations, I pedaled back and forth to the library.  In my travels, I met a few of my peers: one girl who shared my love of Star Wars; a pair of girls who seemed to feel my fascination with books made me an excellent target for teasing; and a boy who didn’t want to read the books I’d read, but was happy to have me narrate the stories for him.

So I did.

I spent that summer sharing my love of fiction with a boy who didn’t want to crack the spine of a book, but who accepted that the worlds I described might be real if we just went three steps down a certain path, turned in a semicircle, said some magic words, and continued on our way.  He, in turn, showed me the great village secret, a turn-of-the-century pet cemetery, complete with words wrought in a massive iron archway, chillingly: How Do The Beasts Groan.  We had a picnic there once, fleeing with the remains of our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when a snake emerged from one of the grave sites.

Not long ago, I learned that that boy became a man who is now in prison, accused of incomprehensibly violent crimes.  I saw his picture in the news and I tried to find him, the boy I remember, but my memory failed.  Too much time had passed.  I wondered, though: does he remember Narnia, the pet cemetery?  Does he, as an adult facing grave mistakes made, wish for time travel even more fervently I did at age ten?  And what does “home” mean when one is behind bars?

Today I realized that I am still trying to define what “home” means for me, but if I go with my gut, it is always within the pages of a book.  I’ve moved myself at least as many times as my parents moved me in my early years, and the one thing I always keep with me is my collection of books.  My taste in literature may have changed, but the truth is, as long as I am surrounded by stories, I am home.

www.kcwilder50ways.com

Change in the Weather

Good news: this old dog can, in fact, learn new tricks.

Time for an Asshat update.

If you’re new to Girl on a Wire and wonder what the hell I’m talking about, check out my earlier post and the uber-relevant links to Shannon Bradley Colleary’s Asshat Recovery Program.  It’s funny, practical, and - I’m going to go out on a limb here - it works.

The scoop?  I gave online dating a whirl recently.  I figured it was worth a shot - after all, that was how I met The Ex nearly eight years ago, and while, yes, we are divorced now, there was much about our time together that truly didn’t suck.  There were lessons learned, laughter and fun times had, positive change, that sort of thing.  Good stuff.  And lately, I have been feeling ready to welcome more good stuff into my life.

Because I am tragically Type A, before each online-dating-site date, I reviewed my list of traits I am looking for in a man.  (It’s two pages. Typed. Single-spaced. Yeah — Type A and irrepressibly optimistic.)  I also re-read the Asshat Recovery posts so they’d be fresh in my mind.  And let me tell you, folks - at this point, I could spot an Asshat from a mile away.  I passed on a few of them swiftly and without regret.  And since the flip side of knowing what I don’t want is knowing what I do want, well, I recognized that when I found it, too.

Enter the guy I’m going to call The Weatherman.

(And no, he’s not an actual meteorologist, so quit checking out Rhode Island’s weather-dudes trying to figure out who he is.  He needed a name, this works for a variety of reasons, and the coolest boyfriend title in the blogosphere, The Boyfran, was already claimed by Aussa Lorens.  And she could totally kick my ass.)

As I realize it is possible at this point that I am a tragic victim of oxytocin poisoning (see Ms. Bradley-Colleary’s post on the subject), I did what any good Type A chicky would do to get clear.  I made a list of things I know about The Weatherman.

The Weatherman:

• Is punctual.  Like, set-your-watch-by-him punctual.  And yeah, punctuality gets me all hot and bothered.
• Is thoughtful.  Brings flowers, but also goes beyond that standard wooing fare to come up with personal, meaningful gifts.
• Is genuinely interested in and appreciative of my work.  You know - in spite of the fact that I am a chick lit author and he is a straight guy.
• Willingly accompanied me to a family event.  Didn’t flee when he got a glimpse of my gene pool.
• Retired from one successful career and moved on to another.  Enjoys his work and is all grown-up-y like that.
• Owns a home that does not look like a scene out of Old School.
• Knows where his kitchen is and how to do stuff with food there. Seems unlikely to starve to death just because there isn’t a woman in the house.
• Is also capable of slow-dancing in said kitchen.  While singing.  On-key.
• Runs at my pace.  (Not a character marker, I know, but it makes me glad.)
• Seems very interested in offering me not what he thinks I want, but what I know I need.

Since I know The Weatherman reads my blog, I’ll leave it at that for now.  I don’t want the poor guy’s head to swell to the point where he can’t get out the door. 

And in case you’re single and are now jealous of my find, I’ll leave you with the link to this hilarious and informative Asshat Recovery Program post from The Woman Formerly Known as Beautiful, 5 Asshat Moves I Ignored Thanks to Lust.  Don’t be catnip for Asshats any more.  Click here to sign up for the Asshat Recovery Program Newsletter.  You’re welcome.

Now go have a lovely Asshat-free day.

www.kcwilder50ways.com  

Book Blog is Back!

My loyal readers may recall I used to post twice weekly: my typical Girl on a Wire brain droppings on Tuesdays and a book review, author interview, or other literary-related bit on Thursdays.  Through the miracle of Google analytics, I learned that pretty much no one was reading my book blog posts.  So I gave myself permission to take the summer off.  I mean, if nobody's reading the posts anyway, why the heck not, right?  I did lots of reading, a little bit of writing, and rethought my approach to book blog.   

I am a natural storyteller.  I find the thread of narrative in just about everything in life.  And one of the beautiful things that's happened in my life thanks to social media is that I have been able to connect and share with other storytellers, including the authors of books I've really enjoyed.  So I'm bringing the book blog back with a twist - I'm inviting authors whose work I've enjoyed to share a story about the books that had a significant impact on their lives.  (I'll also post book blog on Sundays instead of Thursdays, because who the hell has time to read anything on a Thursday?)

Kicking things off today is Karen E. Martin, author of the hilarious, sexy novel Modogamous.

Here she is, in her own words:

A book that had a major impact on my life…wow, that’s a tough one. This is probably going to sound absolutely geeky, but the book that has probably had the most useful effect on my life is “What Color is Your Parachute?” and its companion workbook—both of which are still on my display bookshelf, a collection of fewer than 200 go-to titles that I keep on hand to loan out and for guests to browse.

So yeah. Why this book? Well, we didn’t have much in the way of career counseling at my high school, so when I got to college, I just picked a major that I thought I’d like—journalism. I ended up hating it. Sure, it was writing (which I love), but it grated on me to write about topics that I was assigned, rather than about what really interested me. I switched over to a double-major that I loved, English Literature and International Studies, hoping that with two such broad fields that I would eventually find some kind of employment that made sense and that I would enjoy.

That’s where WCIYP entered into the picture. Not only did it explain the world of work to me, but the workbook helped me pinpoint and prioritize both my skills and my true desires—not the things I thought I was supposed to want, but the things I actually wanted from life.

I discovered that the thing I most yearned for in my career (at that time) was not the job itself, but the setting:  I wanted to be overseas. I’m sure I knew that deep-down all along.  I’d spent a lifetime reading about other countries and daydreaming about joining the Peace Corps and jetting off to a little village in Africa somewhere, but seeing it on paper made me realize that I would never be happy unless I made it a reality. WCIYP forced me to take a cold, hard look at my dreams and decide whether I was going to commit to them (to hell with the naysayers!), or whether I was going to meekly give those dreams up and half-heartedly do what all the “normal people” were doing with their lives. The answer was right there on paper. In my own hand.

And I couldn’t turn my back on myself.

Luckily, following my gut on majors had been the right choice, as my college education was tailor-made for becoming an English teacher overseas. My first trip overseas was to study abroad in Bath, England, and eventually, I did go on to become that African Peace Corps volunteer, living in a tiny oasis town on the edge of the Sahara desert. That was just the beginning.

As my career continued to bloom, I found myself returning to WCIYP whenever I wasn’t sure what step to take next. I would rework the prioritizing charts, and often found that new interests and skills were now taking precedence in my life. The book always helped me to refocus and let go of old ideas, making way for growth and change—even giving me a needed boost of courage when I was ready to embark on a new path. In fact, I still return to the book every few years to reread notes from “the old Karen” to see whether I’m still the same person, and whether I need to make a few changes to my current world of work. WCIYP has seen me through a myriad of career changes: teacher, trainer, school director, desk editor at a publishing house, and now, as a freelance writer. And I still find it relevant and useful.

After more than 20 years of using the book, that’s probably about the highest praise I can give.

You can connect with Karen E. Martin via Facebook, Twitter, GoodReads, or on her blog about writing, publishing, and literature.

Or just check out Modogamous - a funny, sexy read:

Kate Adams has a steady job, a home she loves in the big city, and good friends who always keep her laughing. Everything is going great—until the night she crosses the line with her best friend Mitch, and the boundaries between friendship and love begin to blur. Things get even more complicated when hunky JP enters the scene. Add to the mix a spunky little pug, and things start to get crazy!

Posting Positivity

I was in fifth grade, and I wanted to kill myself.

It wasn’t much of a concrete thought.  I had no real plan to do myself in, no idea of the mechanism I might employ.  I hadn’t weighed the repercussions of such an act, hadn’t considered what it might do to my parents and siblings.  I simply wanted to cease to exist.  If a sinkhole could have opened up and swallowed me on my way to the school bus stop, I’d have been grateful.

Why?

I was attending a new school in a new town, something that wasn’t all that unusual in my childhood.  This time, though, a clique of girls had singled me out for unwanted, relentless attention.  I’d refused to participate as they bullied another girl, so guess what?  I was the new target.

Ignore them, my mother said.

Ha!

Advice as practical as: Ignore that swarm of angry wasps around your head.

There was no ignoring these girls, no escaping them.

The school bus, cafeteria, gym locker room.  Any place that lacked adequate adult supervision was their playground.

You’re fat, they told me.

Seriously?  I was a human stick figure.

You’re stupid.

That didn’t make sense.  Honors classes were my one respite from their company.

You’re ugly.

Well, there were those buck teeth…

Over time, their words and snickers and pranks wore me down.  They wore me down until I was nauseous every school morning.  Until I couldn’t sleep every school night.  Until I began to believe their words, and I wished to disappear.

Recently, Canadian teen Caitlin Prater-Haacke was the victim of bullying.  Someone broke into her locker and used her iPad to post messages to her Facebook page, saying she should kill herself.

Instead of taking the bully’s words to heart, Caitlin did the most amazing thing.  She decided to respond to an act of cruelty with a tidal wave of kindness.  Borrowing an idea she’d seen on Pinterest, she wrote positive and encouraging messages on 800 Post-It notes and stuck them on every single locker door in her high school.

School officials dropped the ball rather impressively in their initial response to Caitlin’s kindness campaign: they reprimanded her for littering.  Ultimately, though, the school and community rallied around Caitlin, participating in a Positive Post-It Day that left everyone smiling.

I reached out to Caitlin because I was impressed that she, at age 16, knew something it took me much longer to realize.  Bullying doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with the target.  It means there’s something wrong with the bully.  And any time there’s something wrong, love is a far better fix than hate.

You may recall my earlier post about dealing with mean people, in which I shared some of the wisdom of Christine Carter, Ph.D, Happiness Expert at UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center (I still think she has the coolest job title ever).  Dr. Carter explained that it helps to “see mean people for what they really are - wounded and tiny and probably threatened.”  She advised to take care of your own pain first, because there’s a difference between being nice and being a doormat.  Then, she said, “fight fire with water by sending loving thoughts to the people who hurt you.”

Caitlin understood that.  She told me, “I decided to commit an act of kindness because so many kids do feel badly about themselves when they are bullied.  They think they have done wrong, or that there is something wrong with them.  This is not true, and I wanted everyone to know that someone believes they are beautiful, awesome, funny - and that they are not alone.”

(This is so much better than what I did when dealing with my bullies, which was to pray for either that sinkhole, or the sort of powers Stephen King’s Carrie possessed.)

Caitlin said the response to her Post-It campaign has left her, “overwhelmed, honored and proud.”  Her message to anyone being bullied is this:

"You’re not alone, someone does care, and please come forward - and keep coming forward until something is done."

Sage advice.  At 40 years old, with a lifetime of wonderful and amazing experiences under my belt and many more still ahead, I am damn glad my fifth-grade self didn’t do me in.  Like Caitlin, I’ve got important stuff to do on this planet.  Including spreading a little love, one positive Post-It and random act of kindness at a time.

www.kcwilder50ways.com

If you are being bullied, pleasepleaseplease seek help, and don’t take “ignore it” for an answer.  You’ve got important stuff to do on this planet, too.  You can’t get it done if you’re worrying about bullies instead of enjoying the awesomeness that is you.

Problem

"If you’re having girl problems, I feel bad for you, son.  I got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one."  - Jay Z, 99 Problems

Beyonce is one of the most powerful, successful women in the world.  She could arguably wear the pants in any household.  Except for one problem.

She hasn’t got any.

Seriously.  Who took Beyonce’s pants?  Her hubby Jay Z, maybe?

A couple of months ago, I saw this video, in which a thoughtful young woman named Madiha Bhatti calls out Jay Z and others in the music industry for their dehumanization of women.

Sure, the objectification of women in the entertainment industry is certainly nothing new, but I couldn’t help but think recently that it seems to be getting worse - and some female artists seem compelled to participate in their own degradation.  Queen Bey and her ever-missing pants is actually a mild example.  And though Miley Cyrus seems to have taken a wrecking ball to her life (you see what I did there?  clever, huh?), I kinda feel grateful for the awesome Steve Kardynal parody that resulted.  But then there was the recent video for the song Booty, featuring Jennifer Lopez and Iggy Azalea.  They abandon all pretense of being serious artists and simply grind, slap, twerk and rub up against each other like porn stars.  (No, I won’t link to it here.  I still want to bleach my eyeballs.)

Look, I’m no prude.  You may recall my recent defense of nude pics.  I think sex is one of the coolest things about life on this planet, and I understand sexual expression invariably gets messy.  But there’s nothing sexy about objectifying or degrading women.

And lest it seem this is a racial, cultural or genre issue, check out this video by country music duo Maddie & Tae.  It seems these country girls grew tired of Daisy Dukes, bare feet and bikini tops.  A little bit of role reversal goes a long way toward making a point, hilariously.

I’m not condemning anyone.  I like Beyonce.  (Really - who doesn't like Beyonce?)  I myself have been known, on occasion, to be foul-mouthed, sexually inappropriate, and lacking pants.  My own son jokes that my novels are porn.  I’m sure I’ve rubbed a person or two the wrong way - if you’ll pardon the pun.  But as women gain more power and prominence in society, I’d like to see more discussion about the backlash.  And that’s exactly what I think is going on in some corners of the music industry.  It’s not about sex.  It’s about taking women down a peg.

That’s not OK.

We all begin forming our opinion about gender and our place in the world from Day One.  I wonder how Jay Z and Beyonce would like their daughter to see the world and understand her place in it.  I wonder if they would like to see Blue Ivy with a man who raps, “I’ve got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one?”

www.kcwilder50ways.com