On Wednesday, I began with the first five things on my 40 things list.   Today I wanted to discuss the second five things.  I’m breaking the list up into groups of five because it seems about the right length for a blog post.  Once I’ve listed all the items in posts, I’ll create a page which will have the list in its entirety.   For today, however, we’ll just deal with the second group of five.

List Item 6:  Find some style -  I have, and I freely admit this, the world’s most boring wardrobe.  I have made attempts to be fashionable and/or find a style of my own in the past and they didn’t work well.  Most attempts were not attractive and some were downright painful.   This time I’d like to find  look that is both comfortable and attractive.

List Item 7: Help fight cancer – I lost my mother to cancer six years ago.  I have an uncle that survived a round of prostate cancer and another that is currently fighting colon cancer.  I know what devestation cancer can cause, and I’d like to be at least a small part of helping fight it.  I’m guessing that will mean that I do something like Relay for Life, or it could mean volunteering for the American Cancer Society.  I just know I want to make at least some small contribution.

List Item 8: Have a Party – This may sound like an odd list item, but throwing parties is something I don’t do well or easily.   I’m very protective of my private space and very choosy about who I let into it.  I also tend to be a perfectionist and suffer extreme levels of stress and anxiety when I think of having people over to my home.  I want to get past that.  I want my home to be a welcoming place where my friends and family can come and be comfortable.  I figure one step on that path is to throw a party.

List Item 9:  Create a Home Decor that Suits Me -  I bought my first home in August of 2008.  I’ve done very little about decorating it.  That is partly because money is a bit tight right now, and being crafty is not really a skill set of mine, and partly because I’m not sure what to do.  Part of my goal for this year is to find my own style, and to create a home that reflects my tastes and is welcoming and comfortable.

List Item 10: Learn to shoot a gun – This is another thing that has been on my list of things to do for a while now, but still somehow hasn’t gotten done.  I want to learn to shoot.  I’d like to become a good shot, but I’ll settle for learning how to shoot at all.

This post marks the first quarter of my list.  There are some exciting things on the list so far.  It will be interesting to see how this list changes my life during the course of my 40th year.

My maternal grandmother died tonight.  She was 98.

It’s hard to sum up what Grandma meant to me.  She loved to laugh and she loved silly practical jokes.  I can still remember playing euchre with her while she drank Hot Damn and laughed at the cards.  We’d mess up each other’s aura and she’d celebrate every trick and every win.  She was a fierce cardplayer and also loved bowling and golf.

She also loved learning.  For an intellectual kid who always felt like the odd one out in my family, Grandma was a godsend.  She always encouraged me in my latest interest.  I got bird books and rock collections and was encouraged to stand outside on the lawn on a snowy winters night and look at the moon.  Grandma always encouraged us to ask why and how and to not stop until we got the answer.

Grandma also loved nature.  She kept a list of weather sayings.  She loved seeing natural wonders like Yellowstone Park and the Teton Mountains.  I can remember her encouraging me to learn about nature, why animals did the things they did and what plants were good for you and which were to be avoided.  She loved the beauty that was all around us and she encouraged me to love it too.

She was also quite an artist.  I was the recipient of several of her paintings over the years.  All of her family have at least one.  She painted and drew and did woodburning.  Her love of art was a constant.  It shouldn’t be any surprise, given her love of nature, that most of what she painted were landscapes or animals.

I loved my Grandma.  In the past years I may not have done right by her, she slipped into senility and it was hard to see her like that.  I suppose I was selfish, I preferred to remember the laughing, artistic, sharp as a tack Grandma I’d known as a kid.   That’s my loss.  I believe, and I hope I’m right, that she knew I loved her and appreciated her.

Whenever I’d see Grandma in the last years I’d hug her and say “Hi Shorty”.  She’d always laugh and it kind of became our thing.   I guess, with one slight change, I should say it one last time.

Goodbye Shorty.  Thanks for everything.

Glenda Lee Ackerman Shreve Fosgitt passed away six years ago today.  She died of liver cancer.  She was 56.  She was my mother.

To understand the magnitude of losing my Mom at the young age of 56, you have to understand something about the women on both sides of my family.  I have good genes.  The women in my family lived forever.  My paternal great grandmother lived to be 99.  I have maternal great aunts who are in their 90s.  My maternal grandmother is 98.  Given that record, I expected to have my Mom around for many more years.  Losing her at 56 was a shock.

There’s a tendency after someone dies to change them into some sort of saint.  Much as I’d like to do that with Mom, I can’t.  We had our share of conflicts over the years, and there was a lot we didn’t agree on.  There were times I felt that she wanted me to be anyone but who I was, and I’m sure there were times she felt the same thing about me in reverse.  Fortunately, we made our peace and got quite close before she died.  Somehow, even though it made losing that wonderful new relationship we had that much worse, it also made losing her a little easier.  When she died I knew she was proud of me and what I was becoming.  I’ll be grateful for that knowledge for the rest of my life.

Mom and I had completely different personalities and we wanted a lot of different things from life.  I can’t say I ever hoped to grow up to be just like her, but she did teach me several lessons that I value.  The biggest lesson she taught me was to value myself.  She also taught me to have compassion and to care for and about others.  Mom loved her family very much and when the chips were down I knew she would be there for me, even in the times when we didn’t like each other very much.

Today, on the sixth anniversary of her death, I think she would be proud of who and what I’ve become.  I still have a way to go before I become the person I aspire to be, but I think I’m closer now than I’ve ever been.  I wish she was here to see it, and to know that the screwed up young woman over whom she despaired has become a functioning, responsible adult.  She got to see the beginnings of that.  I wish she had gotten to see more.

Still, today, I choose to believe that she knows and is proud of me and happy for me.

I love you Mom, and I always will.

Most of the time I’ve made my peace with the fact that Mom is no longer with us. It will be six years since she died in September, and the sharp rawness of new loss has been worn down a bit. Most of the time the hole where she used to be is closed over. Every once in a while, however, something happens that rips the scab off the wound and, for a brief time, I miss her as much as I did the day she died.

Buying a house was a great triumph and a victory for me. The one bit of sadness I had was that Mom wasn’t here to see it. She would have loved being a part of the process of looking for a house. She would have had a million ideas for how to decorate. She would have been so excited the day I moved and would have come to help supervise. She would have been so pleased and happy for me.

You can say, if you like, that she’s somewhere and she knows what’s happening, and part of me believes that’s true. I don’t find that much of a comfort though. She isn’t here, transparently happy and so pleased for me. I don’t get to see her relief and happiness that the kid who had such a hard start at being an adult turned out all right after all. I don’t get to hear her say she’s proud of me. I regret missing all of that.

I suppose each milestone that happens now will have a small bit of sadness in it. I guess I just have to take a moment to acknowledge the sadness and then move on and enjoy the happiness. If there’s one thing Mom always wanted for me, it was that I be happy. If she can see me now, I bet she’s smiling.

There are some members of my family with whom I am not close. My sister and I? Not close. My biological father and I? Not close. There are various reasons for this lack of closeness. Some of it is hurt feelings. Some of it is stubbornness. Some of it is simply a dislike of life choices the other person has made. Sometimes it is just the fact that you get tired of trying.

Sometimes I wonder if I give up on relationships too easily. Finding boundaries is often hard for me since I didn’t set any at all for so long. I suppose sometimes I err on the side of drawing my boundaries too broadly or enforcing them to rigidly. On the other hand, I’ve worked hard to become the person I am and that should be respected. On the other hand, maybe I’m insisting so hard on my feelings and boundaries being respected that I’m not respecting those of others.

So, I wonder about my relationships with family members a lot. Then, every once in a while, something happens that tells me maybe I haven’t totally messed everything up. Take this evening for instance. I had dinner with an aunt and uncle of mine whom I really enjoy. They are the people I first lived with when I moved to this area. They took me in at a time when I was very down and out and I haven’t always repaid them for that kindness as well as I should have done. I’ve said it before and I’ll most likely say it again, I’ve made mistakes in my life.

Still, regardless of the mistakes I’ve made, they were able to forgive them and we now get together every few months or so and have dinner. We talk over family gossip and laugh about what the various family members are doing and have a very nice dinner. There’s no stress, no pressure, no hurt feelings and no drama. It’s just a nice time.

I sometimes think that part of my longing for connection is caused by the fact that I don’t really feel connected to my own family. I don’t spend a lot of time with people with whom I have a long history. My aunt and uncle have known me since birth. They play a huge part in the childhood memories I do have. When I’m with them I do feel connected and part of something larger. I’m discovering I like that feeling.

I guess, for me, family is probably always going to be comprised of those who love me, regardless of whether they’re related to me by blood or not. I kind of like that idea because it means I can find members of my family almost anywhere. That is, somehow, a comforting thought.

My mother died in September of 2002.  She was 11 days shy of her 57th birthday.  Women in my family live forever, so I had a resonable expectation that I would have my mother around a lot longer than I did.  The one saving grace of the whole experience of her cancer and death is that we did have the time to work out a lot of things between us.  The greatest sadness of the whole experience was that we had finally come to an understanding and created a great relationship and then she was gone.   I’m grateful we had the chance to become closer.  I’m also deeply saddened that we didn’t get to savor that closeness for a longer period of time.

If there were ever two people who were absolutely opposites in almost everything, it was my mother and myself.  I was firmly convinced when I was a child that gypsies had sold me to the family in which I lived and that somewhere my real family, the family that would understand me, existed.   I’m sure there were times when my mother wondered how she had given birth to a child like me.  We agreed on very little.  Everything that was important to her was not important to me and vice versa.  It made for some interesting experiences as I was growing up.

Even though we didn’t have a meeting of the minds on too many things, there were a few on which we agreed.  We both loved music.  I can still remember standing by the piano singing while she played.  We did that a lot.  We also both loved to read, although it made her nuts that I would tear through books so quickly.  I think, for her, that was just another sign that I was different.  I also think she knew, at times, that being different would cause me pain, and she wanted to help me avoid that.  She wanted me to be a regular kid, and that was something I just didn’t know how to be.

My Mom was an odd combination of timidity and trailblazer.  She worked outside the home when a lot of women didn’t do that.  She encouraged the women who worked for her to better their lot, and helped a lot of them to do so.  She was always active in our activities when my sister and I were young, running our talent shows, leading our Girl Scout troops and encouraging us to try new things.   In some ways she was very brave.

Despite being a trailblazer at times, she was also very unsure of herself.  She was convinced she needed a man to be whole, and stayed married to my biological father for 20 years, even though he treated her and, to a lesser extent, us quite badly for a lot of that time.   She always wanted to be a lawyer but never had the courage to return to school.  She also had a tendency to encourage my sister and I to pursue more traditional paths.  I think, mostly, she wanted us to be happy and she saw that striking out would bring a lot more chances for unhappiness.  

Up until the last few years before she died, my Mom and I loved each other, but didn’t understand each other.  I didn’t get why she thought being with someone, even in a bad relationship, was better than being alone.  She didn’t get why I wanted to be a writer, which was such a precarious career.  I didn’t understand why she devoted so much time to her appearance.  She couldn’t understand how I could endure being overweight.    We were chalk and cheese, about as different as two people could be and still share the same genetic material.

Still, on this Mother’s Day, as on every one since she died, I miss my Mom.  One of the biggest blessing that came out of her cancer was the fact that we both learned to understand each other.  I learned she was braver than I had given her credit for being.  She learned that I cared for her more than she thought I did.  We both learned to appreciate what was best about the other one, and we both learned to overlook the things that grated.   I’m grateful for that. 

It does, however, just make me miss her more. 

I’ve never wanted to have children.  I get as gooey over babies as the next person.  When a baby or small child snuggles their head into my neck and gives that special contented sigh, my heart twangs a little, just as I expect most people’s would.  I find small children, in small doses, to be quite adorable and fun to be around.  The way they notice the world and the questions they ask can be very entertaining.  I’m also, when I want to be, quite good with kids.  I like kids just fine.  I just don’t feel any pressing need to have any of my own.

It is somewhat odd being a woman who doesn’t want children.  Everyone just expects that you do want them and, if you don’t have them, that the lack has somehow left a hole in your life.  I read the blogs of women who have desperately tried to have children, women like Tertia, and Julia and Julie, and I can sympathize and rejoice with their ups and downs.  I don’t, however, understand the desperate longing.   

I’ve often wondered if this lack of longing to have children means I’m missing something that most women have.  After all, women have a uterus for a reason, and for most women, having a uterus seems to mean you should want to use it.  Society seems to expect you to use it.  If you’re a man and you never have children, people can spotlight your fulfilling career, or your happy home-life and no one will think anything of it.  If you’re female and don’t have children, you may be a success everywhere else, but that lack of children will somehow work its way into the story.

For me, the question of whether or not to have children has always come down to this:  if I can’t say absolutely that I want to have a baby, than I shouldn’t have one.  I’ve never been able to say that.  I want to write and work on my career and learn new things and have new experiences and indulge myself in ways that probably wouldn’t happen if I had a child.  That may sound selfish, but I think recognizing that is what I want and choosing not to have a kid is less selfish than having a kid I’m not really sure I want and then realizing after the fact that I’m not up for the challenge. 

Someone, George Clooney I think, said that raising a child is the most important thing you can do and if you can’t do it 110% you shouldn’t do it.   I’ve never felt the need or the desire to make that sort of commitment to having and raising a child.  I admire those who do it, but I also know it’s not for me.  

I guess, in this case settling for more means settling for what some people would consider to be less.  Maybe I will miss out on the joy of having some little tyke call me Mommy, but I’m willing to accept that.   I’m guessing, as I continue this journey, I’ll discover that settling for my version of more requires compromises and, sometimes, going against what the accepted version of more is.  I’m o.k. with that.  Everyone has their own version of more. 

Mine just doesn’t happen to include being a mother.

I’ve never much liked Christmas. 

 I don’t mean that in a Scrooged, bah-humbug sort of way.  I can get as gooey as the next person over Christmas movies.  I love to drive around and look at all the pretty Christmas lights.  I enjoy trying to pick out the perfect, or at least a darn good Christmas present for the people on my gift list.  I certainly love Christmas food, probably more than I should. 

My problem with Christmas centers more around expectations than anything else.  I’m sure my early Christmas experiences were fairly good.  I was still young enough to believe in Santa, and too young to sense the undercurrents in my family.  As I got older, things got more fraught.  People got drunk.  People threw Christmas presents across the room.  There were years where I spent all my time manufacturing a fake smile and a faux cheery “What a nice present”  when I opened boxes of things I didn’t want or need which were clearly bought for someone I wasn’t.

I always wanted a happy Norman Rockwell Christmas, or failing that, at least a Christmas that I felt good about.  Over the years Christmas has just started to feel like another duty.  I have to go because Mom will be upset if I don’t.  Then after Mom died, I have to go because Dad will be upset if I don’t.   Christmas became a day to get through, not something to enjoy.  It was also something I did to please others, which never quite worked out, because they either didn’t notice, or weren’t pleased by something I did anyway. 

I’ve come to think the best Christmas gift I could give myself is to structure a Christmas on my terms.  I’ll still see the people who really want to see me,  I’ll still give gifts to those to whom I want to give gifts, and the rest I’ll decline or ignore.  It may seem silly to say this, but at age 38 I’m finally learning that I can’t make anyone else happy until I can make me happy.  That doesn’t mean I don’t compromise, and make an effort, it just means that I have a right to say what my ideal Christmas is, and what it isn’t.

I’m coming to realize that part of settling for more is figuring out what my definition of more is, and what I’m willing to do to achieve it.  For me, part of more has always been being accepted as I am.  For a lot of my life, I felt that my family was trying to make me be something I wasn’t.   They liked large family gatherings, so I should.  They thrived on chaos and noise, so I should.   The needed constant stimulation and people, so I should. 

The fact that I didn’t need the things they did puzzled them.  I don’t mind that, I occasionally puzzle people and that’s fine by me.  What I did, and do, mind is the fact that I never feel as though I’m accepted as I am.  I’m still expected, or at least it feels that way, to want what they want, enjoy what they enjoy, and do what they do.   The hard fact is, I don’t. 

So, this Christmas, I’m planning to try something different.  I’ll fashion the sort of Christmas I want.  I’ll see who I want to see.  I’ll be honest about gifts I don’t want or need.  I’ll spend my holidays the way I want to spend them, giving my feelings and needs equal weight with the feelings and needs of those around me. 

At least I hope I will.  

I guess we’ll have to wait until the actual holiday to see if I can make it stick.