Running Up That Hill

I’ve had a series of bothersome dreams lately.  I am talking with my dad and in mid-conversation I realize that he’s not alive anymore.  I say to him, “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”  And then I wake up, disappointed. 

A couple of days ago my son, who’s going through a phase now of asking for things over and over again, asked me fifty times in a row if we could go to grandma’s house.  He followed me into the bathroom and said, “I want to go to grandma’s house.”  After a long process of first ignoring him, then explaining to him that grandma was at the doctor’s office, and then promising him that we’ll go see her tomorrow, I finally had enough and turned around and said as a matter of fact, “Yeah, well, get used to disappointment.”  I shamed myself for teaching my son the word for when he doesn’t get his way, the feeling which is responsible for the fits of crying and the begging.  Now he knows what to call it; disappointment.  He didn’t understand what I meant and of course kept asking to go to grandma’s, but I thought, wow, so far that is the most cynical thing I’ve ever said to my son.  I said that.  Me...who is supposed to be an optimist.

So bear with me.

A friend of mine asked me recently when my next blog entry will be and I had to admit to him and now to all of you that I’ve hit a wall, creatively speaking.  I like to keep my topics somewhat light, unless I’m obviously working through some inner demons and therefore devote entire entries to sad or profound subjects such as family members dying or Chinese mothers.  Lately, well, there just isn’t a lot of “funny stuff” going on in my life.  I like the funny stuff.   I know you do too.  We all know I like to laugh at myself.  I like to confess the most embarrassing things about my life because I’m naïve enough to picture another mom out there nodding her head in agreement and laughing at herself too, right before her own kid comes into her room covered in lipstick or missing a huge chunk of hair because she found the cuticle scissors in the dresser drawer.  There’s something universal in laughter.  When we all laugh at ourselves, we are united.  We are harmoniously telling the universe that this is our response to the seemingly random ups and downs that life has to offer.  No matter what happens or how much crap we have to endure, our senses of humor will remain in tact, if only to make it through one more day.  I like to think of it the way Matthew Wilder did, “Aint’ nothin’ gonna break my stride, nobody’s gonna hold me down.  Oh no, I’ve got to keep on movin’.”  Only instead of “movin,” I’ve got to keep on laughing. 

I don’t have to tell you that life isn’t always like an upbeat ‘80’s tune.  If these are my true confessions, then I have to tell you something that you probably already knew but that I’m too stupid to admit.  Lately, I’ve been a little sad and disappointed.  Isn’t that awful, that I can’t just come out and say that?  I am disappointed.  I’ve hit a wall not just creatively, but in my efforts to help and financially stabilize my mother.  For a year and a half now I have been working towards one goal, to put my mother into a new house and to sell her old one.  For a year and a half we've been spending money, working with lawyers, worked our fingers to the bone, juggled the responsibilities of two households, family members have died and one had a stroke…and the night before we were supposed to close on the house and find some peace and resolution in this project, our realtor calls and tells me that it’s not going to happen. I’m not going to waste anymore space describing the details of how the selling of my mom’s house in Maplewood has almost altogether been sabotaged by her next door neighbor, but I will tell you that something has come up that was unexpected and has to do with about three feet of shared driveway space and that I myself am powerless over the situation.

I hate that feeling and that god-awful word, powerless.  When you feel like your fate rests solely in someone else’s hands and that all of your hard work was in vain if all it takes is one person to ruin everything.  They have power.  You have none.  Lately, this “not so funny stuff” is affecting my every day life.  It's why I haven't written in a few weeks.  I feel like a fake.  I talk about joy and laughter and try so hard to be optimistic, but when I’m alone, I’m scared and unsure.  I am full of doubt.  I am disappointed so often now that it is filtering into my dreams and even my parenting.  And then again the dreaded pressure, which I try in vain to elude, creeps in.  I feel like when I’m around people that I should try to laugh and tell funny stories.  I feel like if I have nothing encouraging to say, then I have nothing at all.  I also take it upon myself to be the optimistic and upbeat one in any given circle of friends.  I don’t want to be so encumbered with my own business that I can’t take on the problems of my friends and listen to their stories.  This is all in my head of course.  I’ve admitted so many of my failures and insecurities as a parent on this blog, why am I scared to admit my fears, as a person?  I’m still a person, in spite of being a parent, right?  I’m still an optimist in spite of being disappointed.  Right?

Watching and reading the news lately hasn’t helped much with my feeling of disappointment.  But it is keeping me grounded.  My problems are so small.  I read an article on the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami and now, the nuclear threat in Japan.  A woman and her five year old son waited in an evacuation center as her husband was working to try to avert a nuclear disaster nearby.  She said, “I cannot imagine the future at this moment.”  My heart went out to the woman who stood next to her boy, her precious baby, as the world around her broke, drowned, and burned.  Mothers have to be so strong.  Being a mother has made me weaker and stronger.  Weaker in that now I have something huge at stake that relies on me to protect it and holds me accountable for everything I say and do.  Stronger for the same reason.   This poor woman had lost so much and was at risk of losing so much more.   I felt her loss.  Then I was disappointed in myself.  I have everything.  My problems are nothing compared to the suffering this woman is going through. 

I'd like to think that if I lost everything tomorrow, I'd still remain hopeful in Someone that is much bigger and greater than me and my circumstances.  At least I'd try to remain hopeful.  Sometimes I feel like it would be easier to not believe in God.  Then I wouldn’t feel the misguided need to hold Him accountable when things go wrong just because I give Him the credit when things go right.  It might be easier to not believe in Him, but for me, it just isn’t possible.

So how do you overcome disappointment?  I’m trying, you guys, I really am.  I’m trying to listen for whispers of encouragement and keep my eyes open for signs.  I’m trying to believe that the suffering on the other side of the world isn’t the result of a cruel or uncaring God, no matter what the cynics say.  I’m trying not to ask the same questions as they do.  I’m trying to believe that there’s a good reason that my father in law had a stroke after taking such good care of himself, and that there is more good that will come out of it.  I’m trying to believe that my good intentions to change my mother’s life will not fail after all of this hard work.  I’m trying to convince myself that when I wake up from those dreams saddened that my dad is no longer alive, at least I can take comfort in my belief that he is somewhere.  At least, I’m trying.  At the most, I’m...trying.