Sightings in the Wild

One of my friends from Ohio delights me with her messages.
When she sees my boys out on the street or at a soccer game, she'll take a picture and send it to me.
The most recent one was Tucker on a bike ride. He stopped for a photo and to greet Leah.

Keeping good social distancing

Of course, I text with my sons throughout each week and we Facetime every few weeks, but there's something thrilling about getting a glimpse of their lives while I'm so far away.
Spencer and his girlfriend Kaitlin have moved in together. Leah documented them on a walk with their Starbucks cups.

Spotted on a walk

Sometimes she sees our old house and takes a picture of it. 

It's nice to know that you're thinking of us Leah! And we do miss our friends and family in Grandview Heights. 

Before Coronavirus, Leah was likely to run into Tucker at a Columbus Crew game.

Digging those sunglasses, Leah. 

On a chillier day with Tucker on the right side of the picture and his friend Tyler

So if you see my boys in the "wilds" of Columbus, snap a picture and send it. Or, starting next month, if you spot Grace and Jack in the depths of Dublin, send it. 

The hardest thing about moving to France is leaving family behind, and the pictures make it a wee bit easier. 

Skin in the Game

My best friend has a rocky marriage. No, it's not the marriage. It's the guy.
Her husband is a narcissist. I firmly suggested she not marry this guy when her first marriage dissolved. But she was on the rebound and knew she was marrying someone who would treat her well. Nine years later, not so much. Truthfully, in the first year he showed his true colors.
I'd like to say that I've been supportive of her marriage, encouraging her to keep trying, but I was saying "Dump the guy" before she reached her first anniversary. That year, growing large with pregnancy, her father dying of cancer, her husband scheduled corrective eye surgery. He couldn't afford it before, but the end of my friend's first marriage came with a settlement that her new husband felt free to spend. As she drove him home from the eye procedure, fighting a sinus infection that seemed to have taken root with the pregnancy, tears leaking from her eyes as she imagined her father fighting for each remaining breath, her husband told her that he had been dreaming of this corrective eye surgery for two years and now she "was ruining it for him."
Dump him, I advised.
She's been to years of marriage counseling with him, now as their son reaches his 8th year. They've had some happy times -- blips of moments that can't be pieced together to form weeks of happiness, much less months. They fight over her kids from the previous marriage who regard him with disdain. They fight over his free spending habits, his bi-monthly massages and $600 ski equipment. His refusal to help pay for her daughter's college so she has to hide the fact that she's covering the tuition costs. She works long hours, makes more money than him, puts the little guy to bed every night, cooks the dinners, goes to the sports events for the older kids. She's doing it all alone. Oh, wait. He does yard work, but lets her know what a drain it is on him.
Her husband is a little OCD. For instance, one day, she went out to the garage to change the bunny cage, washed her hands afterward, and continued with the rest of her day. That night when she made dinner, her husband refused to eat it because she hadn't worn gloves to clean the bunny cage. One of the biggest fights they have is about keeping the house clean, which isn't easy for most people, but even harder for my friend with the three teenagers, the 8-year-old and the unhelpful husband.
A few weeks ago, she told me the saddest story. She was chopping up jalapenos for dinner while her 8-year-old ate a snack in the kitchen. The cutting board tipped, sending the jalapeno pieces onto the floor. The 8-year-old hopped out of his chair and ran for the back door.
"I'll keep Dad outside until you get those picked up," he said. He knew that his father would blow a gasket if he saw the jalapeno pieces on the floor and then later in his dinner, even if my friend washed them and cooked them.
And that's her son's reality. Keep Dad from getting mad. Keep Dad from throwing a hissy fit.
So, my friend is inching her way toward a divorce. She gives ultimatums. She searches the internet for cute puppies she might get when doesn't have a husband any more. And the other day she upped the stakes.
"If I get a divorce, I'll pay for us to fly to France. You find us a place to stay," she said.
"Deal," I replied. Then I told her she might regret giving me skin in the game since I now had something to gain from seeing her divorce.
I texted her yesterday about great prices on flights to Europe, in case she needs incentive to hurry along her divorce.
She tells me, "I'm the only one in the room who has been through an awful divorce. I'm the only one who knows how hard it is."
Which is true.
But I haven't said to her, "You're the only one in the room who is living with a man who treats you with total disregard, who puts you last but expects you to put him first, in front of yourself, in front of your kids."
The trip to France was not the only skin I have in the game. She's my best friend. Every time he treats her badly, it scrapes away at my skin, wearing it raw as I see my best friend worn down into a numb person, moving through life like a race as if the finish line will provide her relief.
My stake in this game is the love of my friend -- and a trip to France.

Odd French Combination

My morning began with coffee
French mustard

And a silky blue scarf from a vintage store in Paris.

It sounds like one of those food games where you have to open your refrigerator and make something out of the contents. Coffee and French mustard may very well be in my cabinets and refrigerator, but if I put the blue scarf in the refrigerator, it may be there as a flag of surrender because I'm out of red wine.
Instead, that's how my morning started when I met my friend Sheila for coffee and she brought me goodies from Paris.
Thanks, Sheila. You can visit Paris without me anytime as long as I reap the benefits!

Birthday Celebrations

I learned long ago that, unless you're a kid, birthdays are what you make of them. That's why I carefully orchestrate my own birthday for maximum celebration. Even with careful planning, sometimes teenagers throw in a few twists that take the air from your helium balloon.
I started celebrating the night before after a basketball game when friends came over for wine.
We got to our house about 10 and I pulled the stopper from a bottle of Riesling. "To birthdays and friends, to the end of basketball season" (the boys lost their tournament game).
Spencer stumbled in from the long bus ride home, kissed me goodnight and went to bed. We continued to drink, eat pretzels and cheese puffs until after midnight, although I had expected them to leave after one glass of wine. At 11:58, they glanced at the clock, watching the minutes tick by until it struck midnight and Tisha was the first to wish me a happy birthday. Carrie and Ross followed with birthday wishes before everyone filed out the door on their wobbly way home. Thank goodness we live in a walking community.
The next morning, Earl uncharacteristically got up early, showered and went to run errands.
He returned after the boys had left for school with flowers and pastries. He visited Pistacia Vera in German Village -- Yummm -- and carefully laid out the chocolate croissant and cheese Danish with fresh raspberries. We split both in half to share. I forgot to take a photo of the pastries before we ate them and I suggested that perhaps he should replicate the patries simply for the picture. He didn't.
He gave me a very sweet birthday card that talked about all the places in the world and how he wanted to be with me. I shook the envelope upside down but no plane tickets fell out.
That's okay, though, because I didn't have time to travel the world anyway. I was meeting Sheila at Caribou Coffee. Caribou gives a free coffee for birthdays. Doesn't Sheila look gorgeous with her hennaed hair? She doesn't look like a worried woman whose 17-year-old daughter is gallivanting around Milan alone. Well, Bethany was alone until 8 this morning when Sheila sent an email that she was flying to Milan at 1 p.m. today. What? The tickets in my envelope must have gone to Sheila.
So pastries, flowers, coffee, friends -- more than enough to celebrate a birthday. Then Earl pulled out the chocolate bombe for my birthday cake. I texted the boys at school and asked them if they wanted to come home for lunch so we could all celebrate together. Earl works at 3:30 so we couldn't be together then.
Spencer said sure. Tucker said, "No thanks, but happy birthday."
Then I sent him a picture of the cake and Spencer had to turn around to pick him up. The cake had a chocolate shell and gooey chocolate mousse inside. It was so rich that I couldn't finish my piece.
Here's a picture of me with my bald boys. So strange to see them hairless, but hopefully it will grow quickly. Spencer hurried back to school and I took Tucker to the eye doctor. Why would I schedule an eye doctor appointment for him on my birthday? It was his second attempt to ease contacts into his eyes. He claims there's something wrong with his eyes that they won't open far enough. He finally mastered it after about an hour. He blinked at me and said, "Happy Birthday!" as if his accomplishment was in my honor. I think he looks like a Marine bald and without his glasses.

That afternoon, I paid for my good mothering. A good mom always wants her children to be able to confide in her. And one of my children did. That's when the helium hissed out of the balloon and the rest of my birthday thank yous sounded hollow, as my brother called and friends emailed.
Some things, mothers would rather not have to deal with.
Everyone's safe and healthy and the news just forced me to shift my mothering paradigm.
No, I'm not going to tell you. As a matter of fact, when you ask, I may be humming softly to myself, like Scarlet O'Hara: "I'll think about it tomorrow."
And that was my happy birthday.

Making Friends

It's funny that as a kid making friends is so important. Being friends with the right people becomes even more important as we edge toward our teen years. Now that I'm an adult, I spend very little effort trying to make new friends. And I'm feeling it now.
I have a few close friends, but I lost most of my daily friends in one fell swoop when we stopped homeschooling more than two years ago. I would see the homeschool moms nearly every weekday when we homeschooled. Now, I rarely see most of them.
Recently, I had an epiphany about friends though. I was leaving the high school where we had been schlepping the boxes full of costumes in the prop room. The mother in charge decided that even though it isn't time to plan costumes for the spring musical, we will organize all the costumes. So we emptied all of the closets and pulled all the crates off the high shelves where they are stacked four deep. Since then we've been methodically separating. We started with hats, which was fun because we tried them on and acted silly. The woman in charge, Jennie, brought along her 7th grade son who was sweet and polite and funny. He tried on hats too.

A gathering of homeschool friends.
The following week we separated the pants by color and fabric and put them in the proper bins. Then this week, Grace came along and we did skirts. We fill the hall with eight bins full of skirts and separated them according to color. Then we decided we needed to divide them according to skirt length.
We meet each week to work on the prop room and have for quite awhile since the fall play. During the fall play, I was full of complaints. We worked twice a week and I had other things I needed to do!
Then last week was my epiphany. I am making friends with Jennie. This is how it happens. You work together on something, even if you complain about it (which I did, but she didn't). You start sharing stories about your children, your work, your husband, your life. And, before you know it, you have a new friend.
This week, I had a question about Grace's scheduling conflict with swimming and choir. Since Jennie's daughter is in both, I called her and asked what her daughter planned to do. This was another step in the friendship ladder (and ladders have been an important part of our friendship so far since we keep climbing up them in the prop room). Maybe someday we'll reach the point where I can call her just to see how her day is going. Maybe she and her husband will come over to have drinks.
I had two other invitations to meet mothers of high school students for drinks. So Sunday night and Monday night, I spent chatting over drinks.
Suddenly, my dearth of friends is turning into a deluge. And just in time.