Day 25 of NaBloPoMo: Married to Amazement

I never could have fully appreciated my own mother and her sacrifices for me unless I had children of my own. I’ve always loved my mom in the way that children love the person who gave them life, but now as a mother I love her as a compatriot. She is a retired general, and I am an infrantrywoman. The battle is for the future of our genetics and our legacy. I take that responsibility seriously, following the code of morals that her parents were taught when they were small.

I can see now that much of my mom’s life was devoted to trying to help me find happiness, often at the expense of her own. It probably wasn’t enjoyable to live in a trailer at the county fair for a week, with careless kids dragging remnants of the pig barn in and out of the tiny space each time they mounted the stairs. I loved those weeks; the snuggling with the clean pigs in their pen, competing after months of practice, the night when she let me run wild with my friends at the carnival. That is one tiny example of many which illustrate what a great childhood I had because of my mother.

I struggle with this, the self-sacrifice for children. She is close enough to me to be able to step in and remind me what it’s all about. And every so often she gives me the gift of a week off, time I deeply, deeply, wholeheartedly appreciate. I come back from those periods with a well of strength that allows me to dig a little deeper, to be a little bit more like the mother I had as a child.

Day 24 of NaBloPoMo: Married to Amazement

When I got married and realized how much TH was gone from home, or working from home, I was confused. This wasn’t the happily ever after story I imagined for myself growing up. Weren’t we supposed to cook all our dinners together and snuggle in for brunch-in-bed every Saturday and Sunday? When I brought this up with my mom she pointed out that her spouse had worked a lot too. In fact, in my childhood community it was standard for the men to work long hours while the wives held down the homefront.

Now that I have children I reflect a lot more on what it was like to have a childhood where my dad worked a lot. Whatever I felt back then, I now hold no hard or sad feelings about the experience. I understand just enough about the world my dad was operating in to see how hard he pushed himself to establish something from very little. He didn’t just work hard physically, he explored new frontiers that expanded his knowledgebase. He took chances and survived the bad years (this is what farming is all about), saw the potential for a new farming method and built up a business with multiple locations, was ahead of the curve in relation to medium/large-scale organic farming, has developed products and gone through the patent application process, is respected in his work community and sits on at least one influential board (maybe more?), is currently exploring the world of produce packing, and has a reach expansive enough that I can buy his organic onions at my local Whole Foods. He would never tell you any of this because he is the epitome of the hardworking humble farmer. I respect him so much for everything he has done and reference his dedication often as I’m thinking about how to live my own life.

My leap from Mormonism was hard for my dad, still is every day. He’s not so into my blogging either. I get that, and we are navigating the transition from adult to child relationship the way all parents and offspring must do. What has been constant through the tumult though, is my knowledge that my dad loves me for me, no matter what. I need that, and it is a gift he has always very generously provided.

Day 23 of NaBloPoMo: Married to Amazement

My sister and I were close as children, the way kids are close. Snuggling one second and bickering the next. She came to BYU early and I was very excited to have her in the same city as me. We spent some time together, but with four years between us we were moving in completely different circles navigating different experiences.

When she got married I thought we would move directly into BFF Married Sibling mode. We could dish about our husbands, talk about what meals we were cooking, and have babies at the same time. The marriage wasn’t what she thought it was going to be though, and as she worked through that we went through a period where we didn’t talk much. I wish I had reached out to her more during that hard time, because I didn’t know much until the end of the relationship, but I confess I let myself become consumed with motherhood and my own life.

It’s been a few years since that time, and now we are closer than we’ve ever been before. We talk daily using the app Voxer and are finding that our views are aligning a lot more as we both make our way toward thirty. I love her, trust her with my secrets, and value the feedback she gives me when I’m working through something. She lets me voice my thoughts about her situations and is very forgiving when I am wrong or insensitive. She is one of my best friends.

I tried to get her to live with me, but she decided to learn a little bit more about the family business instead. Maybe she will take it over one day? I would be very happy to see my parents pass on what they have built to one of their children (it won’t be me, they know I’ve said bye-bye to Central WA for good.) Right now when I take the kids to see Nana and Papa I get to hang out with my sister too, and that’s a pretty sweet place to be.

Day 22 of NaBloPoMo: Married to Amazement

Attaching “in-law” to these individuals feels too distant and sterile for what they mean to me. They are the people who made my husband who he is today, and they’ve shown me so much kindness. They are my family.

We live too far away from each other and I wish we could visit more regularly. I treasure the time we’ve been able to spend with them so far. I worry that my kids won’t have the chance to really get to know them the way all of them deserve to know and love each other. You can love from afar, but it’s hard to form a deep sort of affection, trust, and life-long relationship with someone you don’t spend long periods of time with.

I’d like the kids to spend summers over in Poland at some point, maybe with me in tow if my schedule allows. Wouldn’t that be a nice way to jump into speaking some conversational Polish with our extended immediate family?

Day 20 of NaBloPoMo 2014: Married to Amazement

Today goes to occasional friends. Not the lifelong friends I see occasionally, and not the core group of friends that live around me and feel essential to my sanity and happiness.

Occasional friends are those like HH. She is a Bay Area reader of That Wife who made it onto a list I keep of people who have expressed interest in getting together on the weekends (a list I’ll be referring to once again now that TH is working just as much as he was before; new job is not quite what we thought it would be). HH had never met me before but because she is the sort of a person who is open to possibility she agreed to spend an hour driving in the car with me to a food festival. We clicked immediately. She was also working to build up her friend base after a recent move to San Francisco, and we even got together one night for a kid-free double-date.

We live an hour away from each other, and we’re both moms, so we don’t see each other very often. When we do I really enjoy reliving the recent past as we catch up with each other. She adds a slightly different perspective on things than what I get from the friends I see on a more regular basis, and I really like that. I think finding the line between self-care and friend-care can sometimes be difficult. Try as I might, there is only so much room for daily/weekly contact with non-familial relations and I’ve found that spreading myself too thin neglects both myself and the people who deserve something better.

And so I’ve learned to create a new category, occasional friends. Maybe we live a bit farther away from each other, or maybe we lead drastically different lifestyles. Occasional friends meet me over a drink or at the park with our kids a few times a year, we swap stories, I listen to what they have to say and think “I hadn’t thought about it that way before,” and we part declaring that the exchange needs to happen again, soon. It never seems to happen quite as often as we promise each other it will, but that’s okay. We are occasional friends and we both know we’re good with what we’ve got.