“Life’s like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

August 4th, 2010

And since the last post I had no idea what I was going to get. I have since been a student on a crash course in duplicity. The great writer that I am (hah), I had to look it up when told that’s what we’re dealing with. It is a word I would prefer not to know and it is a course I would rather not be taking … but then I should have thought about that before dipping into the box of chocolates. Abstinence, like ignorance, can sometimes be bliss.

But just like everything in this wonderful life, there is a great flip side. I run. I run like Mr Gump. And nothing can stop me. And it’s made me remember the first time we took our baby to the paediatrician for his very first check-up. The first thing she did after checking the circumference of our brand new baby’s head was check my husband’s blood pressure. “Now is the time to get healthy,” she said. “You have a responsibility to look after your health now that you have a baby. You have to be sure you are there for him until he is old enough to go his way.”

I remember thinking what a great thing to say and how kind she was to look out for the family unit. We all need to remember those words when we become parents since that is what we need to live by when there is another human being at risk if we leave this earth too soon.

So watch this space for the launch of the Forrest Gump School of Fitness for flabby fathers and mothers. Just don’t expect any chocolates.

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Pandy’s box?

July 28th, 2010

I have taken the below passage out of my latest book club read, Mitch Albom’s, tuesdays with Morrie:

“I’ve learned this much about marriage,” he said now. “You get tested. You find out who you are, who the other person is, and how to accommodate or don’t.”
Is there some kind of rule to know if a marriage is going t work?
Morrie smiled. “Things are not that simple, Mitch.”
I know.
“Still,” he said, “there are a few rules I know to be true about love and marriage: If you don’t respect the other person, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you don’t know how to compromise, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. If you can’t talk openly about what goes on between you, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. And if you don’t have a common set of values in life, you’re gonna have a lot of trouble. Your values must be alike.
“And the biggest one of those values, Mitch?”
Yes?
“Your belief in the importance of your marriage.”

There has been a minor Facebook war over my going public about my relationship, which, incidentally, has been neutralised. It had to do with balance and blame. But the above passage gave me a kick up the arse. The above passage showed me what I should have seen years ago. It isn’t so much about a lack of belief in the importance of our marriage so much as a total lack of importance. Importance comes from communication and my husband hasn’t spoken to me about anything in months and about very little in years. And that is the truth.

But people find it hard to hear the truth about things they have already formulated an opinion on and especially on something that makes them shine a light on issues in their own relationships. I continue to shine my torch under the carpet revealing what others believe should remain there. (see also: http://www.bhalababy.com/2010/06/28/my-life-as-an-open-book) I want people to see that there is no shame in sharing a very human failing. I won’t be silenced because people find what I say uncomfortable and the only thing I am sorry for is how vague I was previously.

Morrie used an analogy I think is appropriate to share: we are not all individual waves crashing on the shore but part of the same ocean.

I am a work in progress. But I have the courage to recognise my flaws, and the inner strength to erect the scaffolding and do the work. My husband, however, is a derelict building site … absolutely fine if it wasn’t for the fact that he thinks he is a palace.

I was asked recently by a lovely young man to be his life coach. He was sweet, I was flattered … tempted even … until I realised that I have done all the coaching I care to do for a while and the next man I am with will climb the scaffolding with me, chat to me while I work and add value to the renovations. He won’t be afraid of the change.

For almost two decades I have loved a man so much I thought I would die without him so I can tell you all that you can love someone with all the stars in the sky but unless he loves you back with the moon, he has the ability to snuff out every one of those lights. He loves me ‘in his way’ he says … but then so do wife beaters and adulterers have a ’way’ of loving. Love needs to shine for the sole benefit of the person it shines upon.

Love is a gamble – sometimes you put everything you have on the table and all you end up with is change for the car guard.

I am not a victim, just a student on one of life’s very cruel courses on love.

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Fizzling friendships

July 26th, 2010

I was caught up in a cheesy email chain letter (try and say that fast) recently. It was about friendships, relationships and those people who drift through our lives passing on a little wisdom, or gathering some, before moving out of our lives again. Being close to those midlife crisis years (allegedly) has given me cause to seriously reflect on the words in the email even though I feel slightly ashamed to have passed it on. Having a baby shifts things with friends, as does getting a divorce. You change, situations change, others change … and you shift up and down rungs of friendship ladders all the time. Yet you still feel like mourning the loss of a friendship regardless of whether the parting is good or bad.

Escaping to Durban meant my child was away from his school friends again for another month. He forgot their names. Everywhere we went he played with other children, behaving like he had a new best friend each and every day … only to forget that person the next time he met someone new. I couldn’t help but wonder why we fixate on the breaking down of long-lasting friendships when often the best thing to do is just let them run their course and then let go.

There are a few friends that have just drifted away and then there are those I have turfed out intentionally. I can count on one hand only the ones I have turfed intentionally. They are: the girl I shared digs with who slept with every guy I brought home for ‘coffee’ … hence having to wait an extraordinarily long time before I could find someone to harvest my cherry tree; the guy who almost beat up my husband on a small road in Putney outside the house we shared with him … I suspect it had something to do with pent up frustrations over my forbidden fruits; and there is the guy who I have known for longer than I have known my husband who, like all good gentlemen do, has backed the horse he feels will come out tops and is giving my husband advice on our divorce.

I used to obsess over the severing of these relationships as though they were limbs I could still feel even though they were no longer there. But through my child I am learning to look at what I have right in front of me … not only the magnificent friends I have and love but the incredible people all around me waiting to be delved into; waiting for that spark that begins it all.

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Old habits die hard

July 23rd, 2010

“You’re not grumpy about me, you’re grumpy about your car,” he stated when I was short with him moments after failing to push-start my car down the hill, having to abandon it at the bottom of the neighbourhood. I had searched everywhere for my car key so I could get him to school and discovered it – as I often do – in the ignition. Only this time it was different … the key was halfway on. My luck never seems to run out when it comes to my car always waiting there in the morning with the key begging someone to steal it, but this morning I sensed my luck was not going to get the car to start as I remembered how, while I was washing my car, my child had been listening to the radio while imagining he was his favourite new TV personality, The Stig. After pushing it halfway around the neighbourhood, over two very tricky speed humps and down two monstrous hills – I know because I usually run up them – I gave up and marched my child along the road to school.

But he never lets me get away with taking my frustration out on him. He always reminds me how important it is to separate my mood from his behaviour, like the time he sensed my mood and told me, “I don’t want to talk about this now,” knowing the outcome would change if he waited until I was in a better mood.

I think the most tortuous path one takes as a parent must be the undoing of injustices in your own childhood, not knowing if you’re only creating a new path to perpetuate the cycle.

He stands up to me, which is a great start as it is something I am only now learning to do with my own parents. And speaking of my own parents, I have spent a month with them and he stood up to them as well. When my mother told him to eat his food he told her, “I will eat it when I am ready.” When she told him to look at the pretty smoke coming out of a factory chimney he said, “It is not pretty smoke, it is bad for the environment.” When my father was getting impatient he said, “Just calm down poppop, it will be done when it is done.” When my mother threatened to smack him if he did something naughty he told her he’d smack her back if she did. He is called cheeky, he is sometimes called rude, but I let it slide because I always took exactly what was given to me and it seems that’s a hard habit to break.

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Ubertravel

July 22nd, 2010

Someone one said that you forget what people say to you and you forget what people do to you but you never forget how they made you feel. I could wax lyrical about that statement all day long but what I want to use it for right now is to try and prove that taking a 4-year-old child travelling to India – or anywhere else for that matter – is not something that can be easily forgotten … and I mean for the child. There are details about our trip that I can’t even remember but my child talks about them often. He’ll tell me that we caught a train to Siliguri after Varanasi; he’ll tell me about the place in Kalimpong and the one in Jaldaphara, where we had to fill up a bucket before pouring the water over our heads from jugs to wash. He asked me where we got lost when we found that nice taxi driver to take us to the Science centre, which he remembers was closed. He’ll tell me where we only had cold water, where we didn’t have a shower at all and where there were only squat toilets. He tells me in detail about his swimming in the Ganges and recognises the names of the places we went to when he sees India on a map. Someone may have said something to you several years ago, something that had a profound effect on you at the time – you will probably have forgotten what it was a few days or weeks after the words were spoken but the effect will live with you – possibly forever. Memory of the detail will fade … maybe …  but what he will always have is the memory of how the trip made him feel. He will always be that uber-cool kid who went backpacking around India when he was four and that is sure to feed who he is and work its way into his makeup. He is changed because of it … I suppose we both are.

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