Where did all my new go?

I remember life as a youth as feeling magical. Everything just seemed more special fifteen years ago. And as I was driving today, listening to Taylor Swift sing her most recent hit on the radio about life as a fifteen year old, I thought about what it was like when everything was new.

Newness. That is what brings magic into youth. Everyday is filled with something new. Something previously undiscovered. A new experience. A new revelation. A new bit of knowledge. Something new is bound to cross your path when you are so new to this world.

And as I thought about the magic I felt as I experienced my first kiss, my first time driving a car, my first day in a new school, all of the firsts I've experienced, it makes me wonder if "new" is no longer a part of my life. Is this yet another curse that comes with becoming an adult? Loss of magic, loss of excitement, loss of new.

There are plenty of things I will experience for the first time going forward. But they all seem to be in relation to my children. I will someday (presumably) be a grandmother. That will be new. I will give my child(ren) away at their weddings. That will be new. I will accompany them through all of the firsts, all of the new, as they go through their lives. But I will only be experiencing new vicariously through them. It won't be my new. It will be their new. Thrilling of course. But not mine.

Where is my new? As an adult, how do we continue to experience new on a regular basis? Is it only through the accumulation of meaningless material possessions that new can remain in our lives? Perhaps that is why we continue to seek bigger, better, newer things. This is the only way we can bring the magic of new, the magic we experienced daily as children and teenagers, back into our adult lives.

Life now is so much more satisfying than it was as a teenager. I can honestly say that each day of my life is filled with more contentment and happiness than I ever experienced as a youth. The drama of the pre-teen and teenage years has not escaped my memory just yet. I don't miss those days at all. Maybe that is the trade-off. New disappears, but security and comfort are abundant.

Worth the trade, I suppose.

But I can't help bt mourn the loss of new.

Mom the Volcano

She always wants to help. But never with the things I actually want her to help me with.

She’s at my elbow, begging to help me do dishes. After saying no a couple of times, I finally give in. “Here, you can load them in the dishwasher after I rinse them. Don’t stack them too close together. Just like this.” I hand her a few dishes. When I turn back they are not quite right so I go back and re-do everything she’s just done. She is unperturbed, but it frustrates me. I yell at her to go away. She pleads that she just wants to help. At this I tell her, “you helping me doesn’t help!” I point her toward the living room, hollering that she needs to go pick up the toys I told her to pick up three hours ago. “THAT is how you can help me! Do the one thing I asked you to do three hours ago!”

Three deep breaths later and the guilt set in. Her walking away with her head hung low. The hurt in her eyes at hearing that her helping is more of a hindrance than anything else. How can I speak that way to someone who is trying to help? How can I speak that way to the most important and wonderful little girl I’ve ever known?

I have become my own mother in so many ways. In many ways that are positive. But in many ways that are negative as well. I remember as a child, older than my daughter is now, but not much, feeling like I had to walk on egg shells. I never knew what reaction I would get from my mother. She was incredibly volatile, a volcano ready to erupt at any moment. Her screaming terrified me, although she rarely ever struck me. I am almost positive that I had fewer spankings in my entire life than my daughter had between the ages of three and four. Yet I was terrified of my mother all the same.

The rules always changed, and that was the worst part. I never knew where the line was. Some days a mess on the floor would make her laugh, some days it would make her furious. The same was the case for jokes, various childish ways of acting goofy, pranks, etc. I remember the fear, the dread, that would fill my chest cavity when I knew I’d done something that may or may not wake the sleeping dragon.

As a teenager, I joked with my friends that something happens to a woman’s brain when she has children and she loses her mind. Loses her ability to contain her anger, her rage, her frustration. At the time it was a joke, but now I find it is true. No one frustrates me like my children. And I have found from week to week, something that would bring fire to my eyes one day may elicit only a shrug of apathy a few days later. I hate knowing that I am raising my children in such an uncertain atmosphere. I want to be consistent. I want to get mad on Tuesday about the same thing that makes me angry on Monday. But some days I just feel like I don’t even have the energy to get upset about things. I want something that makes me chuckle on Friday to make me chuckle on Saturday too. But I have found that some days, the endless list of things I have to pick up, clean up, take care of, outweighs any amount of cuteness that may otherwise make me smile.

She brought a couple of stuffed bears downstairs from her bedroom today. I looked down and poked at the purple Care Bear’s face. “What is this brown stuff on your bear?” I could feel my blood pressure rise as the frustration at her carelessness with her toys resurfaced yet again. “Oh, it’s just chocolate pudding” she responded with a shrug. Her nonchalance made me laugh. As though it was perfectly normal for a stuffed animal to have chocolate pudding all over its face. So in that moment, I decided to let it go. Not ask where the chocolate pudding came from, how long had the bear been in this state, where is the chocolate pudding cup now…all of these questions no longer mattered, because she made me laugh. She made me laugh by exhibiting an attitude that in all honesty, on a different day would have made me even more furious. But today it didn’t. Today I let it go, and the purple Care Bear will go into the washing machine with the next load. I guess today we got lucky.

That Man Deserves a Spot in Heaven

A male co-worker recently tried to get me to declare that all men are dogs. At the time, he was trying to engage in what he thought was some deep conversation. His intent was to get me to say that all men were dogs. He would then progress to the statement that all dogs go to heaven.

I declined to agree with his initial premise, which caused him quite a bit of frustration. Initially I said that my husband is a wonderful man. I definitely would not classify him as a dog, and he indeed is a man.

My co-worker then moved on to discuss the doginess of all other men. But I still could not agree with the statement. Men in general are not dogs.

What struck me most about this conversation was the fact that there is a sentiment among the population that men in general are dogs. I'm not even sure what that means. Yet this is a statement that typically would not be met with a lot of opposition. Why is that?

When I was a teenager, it's likely that I would have agreed that men are dogs. And I would venture to guess that the initial idea of men being dogs originated with women. But as I think about it, it seems to me that rather than men being dogs, women just cannot tolerate people who think and behave differently than them.

I thought about the kind of a woman that would vocalize this thought. "All men are dogs." This would come from a woman who'd been burned. A woman who perhaps had been cheated on. Or maybe a woman who yearned for a man who did not return the feelings. A woman who had expectations of romance, flowers, gifts, expensive dinners, and being showered with attention but did not receive all of those things. If a man does not live up to these expectations, does that make him a dog? Is a man a dog because he does not fall in love with every woman who develops a crush on him?

And what of the man who is promiscuous? Can you fault someone for their genetic engineering? Through urges brought on naturally by evolution, many, if not most men will try to copulate with as many women as they can. I would never try to justify the actions of a man who commits adultery. A vow is a vow, and as conscious beings, humans have the ability to over ride their carnal urges. But promiscuity in and of itself should not earn a man the title of "dog."

Men and women are different, physically, emotionally, biologically. But men are not inferior to women because of these differences any more than women are inferior because of their differences. It saddens me to think of this message being communicated to girls of all ages. Men are portrayed as being less than human. In fact, I remember thinking of boys and men as being an emotionless, sub-human species.

As an adult, as a married woman, as a mother, as someone no longer emotionally vulnerable to the disparities between the sexes, I see men in a different light than I did as a young girl. My husband is a great man, capable of enormous amounts of love and affection. He is hard-working and caring and funny and very much a human, not a dog. He can be hurt. He feels pride. He feels anger. He experiences betrayal, disappointment, and successes. But his reaction and expression of each of these things is very different from my own as a woman. Not better or worse, no less real, just different.

Holding a position now which puts me in close proximity to quite a few males on a fairly regular basis has also made me realize just how similar men and women really are. The boys I'm around have crushes, and they feel what girls feel when they have a crush. They flush when a pretty girl is around. They get excited to receive texts from that special girl. They talk about a recent date that went well and laugh with each other. They encourage their friends to make the next move. Yes, they want to have sex. But they also want companionship.

Did men earn this title of "dog" because of sex? Is that were it came from? The so-called "hit it and quit it" mentality?

Can we be honest about that? There are men who use women for sex. There are women who use men for sex. It is unfortunate when a woman is taken advantage of, is intimate with a man, and then finds that he has no interest in seeing her again. But isn't it pretty easy to spot that guy? Isn't it fairly easy to avoid him? I'm just gonna come out and say it: Ladies, if you are worried about being used for sex, stop sleeping with guys the first night you meet them.

Men are not dogs. Some men may act like dogs. But women seem to be allowing it to happen. Maybe it is women who need some behavior modification. I can assure you that the men in my life definitely deserve a spot in heaven, even if they aren't dogs.