Count Your Blessings, page 7
After navigating the subway system, we soaked up as much of London as we could, taking in sights that we had only ever seen courtesy of the Travel Channel; the Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, even original manuscripts by Jane Austen and sketches by da Vinci. We boarded the Eurostar and zoomed to Paris to cap off our adventure. As we exited a corner bakery, croissant in hand, the Eiffel Tower peeked out at us and we pinched ourselves. We toured the gothic Notre Dame and marveled at the brilliant stained glass of the round “Rose” windows. Unable to afford a fancy dinner, we bought fresh bread, cheese and fruit and nibbled away as we sat in the courtyard of the Louvre. We stood beneath the colossal Arc de Triomphe, the sculptured marbled angels towering above us. It was truly amazing.
On our last night in Paris, after witnessing the Eiffel Tower twinkle with hundreds of white lights while Parisians picnicked on the lawn, Doug found a payphone in a small pavilion and called home. It was midnight. We were sleepy but giddy.
“Bonjour,” he chirped as his mother answered the phone back in Illinois. In mere seconds, my husband’s face fell, his blithe expression suddenly somber. My heart immediately went into overdrive.
“What?” I said. “What’s wrong?”
He shooed my question away with his hand and continued to listen. I began to silently pray. Oh God, Oh God, My kids my kids. A prayer of desperation. A prayer I hoped God could decipher. I had no idea what was going on, had no idea what to pray.
Finally, Doug covered the mouthpiece and whispered to me that Elijah, our seven-year-old, had fallen off his bike and broken his leg. I began to cry. Was it a bad break? Yes. Was he in pain? Yes. But he was okay. He had broken his leg. Just his leg. He was okay but we needed to get him to an orthopedic surgeon in our hometown as soon as possible.
As we walked back to our hotel, Paris suddenly lost its charm. I don’t want to be here, I thought. I shouldn’t be here, I should be home with my kids, with my son, and our flight didn’t leave until the following afternoon. It wasn’t soon enough.
The next day we made it as far as Cleveland only to discover that our flight to Chicago was delayed due to storms. I sat in the terminal with other disgruntled travelers, most of whom had not just endured a transatlantic flight, and couldn’t help but overhear their conversations:
“I was supposed to be at a meeting tonight.”
“We’ll have to cancel our dinner plans.”
“Better find a hotel and come back in the morning.”
I sat and seethed, wanting to scream that none of their petty plans mattered—I needed to get home to my son. Had I been in my right mind I would have realized that everyone around me had a life too; they had their own problems and dilemmas, some probably more dire than mine. But in that moment I was completely myopic. I was an irrational, frightened mother who didn’t understand why the plane couldn’t just fly through the lightning bolts to get her home.
We finally got into Chicago at around three in the morning and I snuck a peek at both of my sleeping children, wanting and not wanting to wake them. There is nothing, nothing, nothing like the sight of your children after you’ve been separated. No cathedral, no great painting or famous landmark compares to the sight of their sweet faces.
For the rest of the summer and into the fall, Elijah was in a hip-to-toe cast. We took up jigsaw puzzles, read James and the Giant Peach, drew all over his plastered leg with markers and even hobbled to the beach and dug out a water hole for his good leg to soak in.
We told our kids all about the great cities of London and Paris, showed them our photographs and gave them the souvenirs we had bought for them. Yet the truth was, out of all the amazing sights we took in that summer, our favorites were the two little faces that greeted us at home.
~Rachel Allord
We Have It All
A successful marriage requires falling in love many times,
always with the same person.
~Mignon McLaughlin
We thought we had it all—a beautiful house, three healthy children and one more on the way, two cars, a couple of four-wheelers for entertainment—and we loved it. We spent money like it was going out of style. Then, the market turned and my husband’s job as a bigwig at a construction company was gone. The company had declared bankruptcy and was closing down for good.
We both started looking for jobs right away, but there weren’t any to be found. With each passing day our panic increased and we continued to work together in order to pull our family through. The more we pulled together, the closer we got. I felt feelings of adoration for my husband that I hadn’t felt in years.
That’s why it was so hard for me to watch him blame himself for our current situation. I knew that he had no control over the economy, however, he constantly degraded himself and his spirits sunk lower with each snide comment. I continually asked him to stop, but he seemed to want to punish himself for not having a job.
Finally, one afternoon I pulled him aside and said, “We have four healthy children and each other. That’s what’s important. That makes you a rich man.”
“But what if we lose the house? They’ll hate me—you’ll hate me,” he replied.
I smiled at him and put my hands on both sides of his face to make him look me in the eye. “If we live in a cardboard box on the empty lot across the street I will be happy—as long as I have you.” I smiled again as I realized that I wasn’t just saying it. Somehow, in all the struggling together I had found that deep abiding love for him that I had on the day we said “I do.”
I could see relief wash through him as his shoulders and neck relaxed and the tension left his body. He held me close and we were able to talk and plan and dream together in a way that we hadn’t in quite some time. It was a turning point for us as a couple and a family.
We are still struggling financially, but I consider us well-off because we have something that money can’t buy and no one can take away from us.
~Christina Dymock
The Flag
You’re the emblem of The land I love.
The home of the free and the brave.
~George M. Cohan
Sitting on the beach, I find myself mesmerized by the waves crashing into the sand. My trance-like state is interrupted by my two-year-old son. He is pointing at an object in the distance.
“Flag,” he says.
I am intrigued by his new observation, a stark contrast from his usual sightings of trucks, trains and planes. Where did he learn this new word? What does he find fascinating about the flag? Most likely, he is interested in the bright red, white and blue colors fluttering in the wind.
Soon he will learn what the colors, stripes and stars represent. The stars symbolizing the fifty states, the stripes signifying the original thirteen colonies and the colors indicating philosophical attributes—red for hardiness and valor, white for purity and innocence, and blue for vigilance, perseverance, and justice.
Later in life he will learn that the flag stands for democracy, freedom and equality. When he is finished with his social studies lessons, I will step in and impart my wisdom.
I will share with him the horrific tragedies this country has endured recently. Instead of focusing on the gory details, I will highlight stories about altruism and bravery. He will learn about people who gave their life in an attempt to rescue strangers from a building brought down by terrorism. He will learn about the people who opened their homes to strangers left homeless by a hurricane. He will learn about the schoolchildren who sent letters and care packages to strangers fighting for freedom in a foreign land.
“Flag,” my son adamantly says again. Understandably, he wants to make sure I see it.
~Cheryl Maguire
My Half of the Sheets
Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.
~Buddha
Divorced. There I was, after fourteen years of being wildly in love with one person, desperately trying to fall asleep in a strange, rental home on my half of the sheets and pillowcases. I never would have imagined this scenario, after so many years of thinking that we’d be forever. Not only was I a newly single mother of two little boys; I’d also learned days earlier that my soon-to-be ex-husband and I were about four million (yes, million) dollars in debt. My ex is a brilliantly talented entertainer, and the debt was some bizarre combination of bad investments, legal fees and incredible lack of foresight and responsibility on anyone’s part.
This may sound naïve (and it was) but I had lived for fourteen years in the blissful glow of submissive love, allowing my man to lead the way. If he said finances were handled by the business manager and “not my role,” I was happy to believe that the things I brought to our relationship had equal, if not more, importance. My eyes were shut firmly to the whole picture, and I ignored the occasional feeling in my gut that something was severely out of balance in my relationship. Ultimately, my lack of participation in our finances did not in any way absolve me from being accountable for the result. “Ignorance of finances” is no more an excuse than “ignorance of the law.”
As an intelligent, educated grown woman, I was incredibly angry at myself for whatever role (albeit passive) that I had played in creating the whole mess. I felt so much guilt and shame. For years I had allowed being in love to override my own values, and now my children and I were paying the price. I had no idea how we would manage, and I was terrified. To make matters worse, my divorce was far from amicable. It seemed that the great love that my husband and I had shared had morphed into a greater degree of bitterness and resentment. He was furious; it didn’t matter who left whom or why; on some level, I had abdicated the monarchy. The person to whom I had completely devoted myself was now my biggest adversary; my boys were devastated, and the divorce was overriding every part of my life.
The massive debt made me feel isolated from the rest of the world. I recalled years before having to use a wheelchair for a brief time after my car accident. Strangers either avoided my eyes or looked down on me with pity. Being broke brought back those same, dejected feelings of being an outcast. For me, whoever “knew” or whoever found out would either feel sorry for me or imagine me a huge failure. Once again, I felt handicapped; fear, shame and guilt colored all my thoughts and emotions.
I was blessed with incredibly supportive parents, and there was no time for self-pity: I needed to find work, fast. An artist by nature, my role as a full-time wife and mother had pretty much eclipsed my capacity to earn a living, and my prospects were slim. I was doing my best to keep my spirits up, but “my half of the sheets” posed a big problem, since I had to sleep on them every night. They represented “us,” and no matter how hard I tried, I could not wash away the memories of the intimacy we’d shared lying between them. With bankruptcy looming in the foreground, I wasn’t about to buy new bedding.
A funny thing about artists—when we can’t afford something, our next resort is always an attempt to “make” that something ourselves. À la Scarlett O’Hara, I ripped my half of the sheets off the bed, throwing them into the washing machine with some Rit Dye that I’d picked up at Walgreens. By the time the spin cycle had spun, the sheets were transformed, along with a tiny piece of my sorrow. The pillowcases and the slipcovers off the sofa were next, and before I knew it, my refurbished furnishings would have made Martha Stewart proud.
Into the next load went an old suede jacket. The results were phenomenal—as I experimented with the cycle lengths and mixing different colors directly in the machine, I didn’t know what I had, but I knew I had something. My parents loaned me a few hundred dollars, and I began dying different colored pieces of suede. The pieces became shawls and the shawls became skirts. Pretending to be on top of the world, I proudly wore my creations into all of the stores I had shopped in before going broke, and sold my one-of-a-kind skirts to every single buyer, right out of the gate. Before I knew it, celebrities all over Hollywood were wearing my designs, big resorts were selling my clothes, and I couldn’t keep up with the demand.
It happened so quickly; in truth I had no more clue how to run a business than I did to manage finances. After a series of very poor choices in planning and partners, my fledgling business went bust. There I was—creative, determined, single … and now, officially bankrupt. I did my best to make sense of it all, so I could explain it to my sons. Our life was about to change dramatically yet again—while their father helped, his financial situation was worse than mine. The difference was that he had a career, and I had nothing.
When we lost our home and moved into a tiny apartment, it began dawning on me that having “nothing” really could mean having everything—it was up to me to decide. The cramped quarters meant that my boys and I were living on top of one another; it also meant we were together more. The fact that there was little money with which to buy new things meant more forts made out of cardboard in our tiny living room, and more little friends sleeping inside of them. The lack of closets meant I could give everything we no longer used to families who had even less. My business had failed miserably, but through that experience I had tapped into some innate marketing skills that brought me steady consulting work. After long days with little pay, my sons and I played cards, watched cartoons, made brownies and ate the batter. We played outside and started making weekly trips to the library, where we took out books instead of buying them. Slowly, but surely, our lives became uncluttered and unencumbered.
I began to notice my sons’ becoming much more appreciative—because we no longer had very much, they took better care of everything. They were also developing a whole new level of respect for me. I had always been the stay-at-home mom; now my boys saw me working all hours to support our household as I navigated a fulltime job and various entrepreneurial endeavors. They watched as I fell down, and cheered when I got up. My sons became my biggest fans. They saw me cry, they heard me yell; I was no longer “perfect” and they loved me all the more. They witnessed my own parents’ rallying to our side, they brainstormed crazy ideas with me and earned their allowance by helping to clean up the constant mess we inevitably made in our simple, creative household.
At my consulting job, I was learning how to manage a budget—for the first time in my life. I excelled at Excel, although there were still many times my heart pounded as my debit card was declined, I slowly learned to apply my new financial skills to my personal life. At forty-two years of age, I was growing up. My compensation was small but, my education was huge. As my new life unfolded, I began to forgive myself. With each tiny victory, and every moment with my sons, my guilt and shame transformed into gratitude for the new life I was creating. To my own amazement, I began to see my divorce and bankruptcy as a gift. Once again, my parents encouraged and supported me in ways I could never have dreamed of. While my heart ached over the loss of love, I had found gratitude for the wonderful years I had shared with my ex, and I was grateful to him for giving me children. I was learning accountability, living according to my own truths and values, and most importantly, my boys and I had become a tight-knit team.
The blessings in disguise that resulted from this time in my life continue revealing themselves to this day. Had I not experienced “my half of the sheets,” I would never have understood that “nothing” can mean “everything.”
~Elizabeth Bryan
A Valentine’s Day to Remember
When you look at your life the greatest happiness are family happinesses.
~Dr. Joyce Brothers
Not long ago, my wife and I shared our tenth Valentine’s Day together, a day when I typically reflect on how lucky I am to have found the perfect soul mate. A day to express gratitude to the fates for bringing me a love usually reserved only for movies and Air Supply songs. A day every year that I do whatever is necessary to show her how much I truly care.
Though normally a well-planned and romantic day for us, this year’s version marked a dramatic change. At first glance, there could be only one word for it—failure.
Unlike prior years, there was no romantic dinner or picnic lunch. Flowers would not be delivered on the big day. There were no chocolates or candies. No small jewelry store boxes were placed on the dresser. There was no necklace, no bracelet, no ring. No limousines, no movie tickets, and no concerts were arranged. There was no homemade CD of “our” songs. There was no romantic poem hidden under her cereal bowl, professing my undying love.
There was nothing. Well, almost nothing.
There was a road trip—though not the kind of road trip we would have voluntarily embarked upon. The trip was not to the beach, the mountains, or any such getaway. No, this road trip was to the office of a UCLA doctor—a pediatric specialist. We needed answers, and we needed them quickly.
Only a week had passed since the first ripple began to rock our calm and quiet lives. A passing observation during our eighteen-month-old son’s routine checkup led to a blood test. An odd collection of contradictory data led to a more extensive blood test, then another, the results of which merely led to more questions. A brain MRI was immediately scheduled.
Doctors and nurses did their best to maintain a calm demeanor, but the hastiness and urgency of their actions belied their efforts to convince us these tests were merely precautionary. All the while, our little boy remained blissfully unaware that his parents were scared out of their minds.
Because of the conflicting nature of initial test results, the doctor opted to conduct an extensive and comprehensive investigation. During the course of the day, we found ourselves shuttling to radiologists, phlebotomists, and other specialists. Most of the day hovered in a narrow realm between surrealism and automatism. Through all the evaluations, we made every attempt to make the afternoon as normal and calm as possible for the little one.
