Who's Who? Not Me.

I received the following in an email today:

You have recently been selected as a candidate to represent your professional community in this year's edition of Who's Who among Executives and Professionals.

Your candidacy for membership was officially approved May 29th. You have been selected based upon your professional experience and achievements, and as such, we believe that your profile makes a fitting addition to our publication.

Seriously?  Who gave them my name?  I'm not an executive or a professional, and what have I contributed or achieved?  I'm sitting here going over my life and wondering what I could say if I actually filled out the membership request.  Hmmmm, can't think what to say.  I could make up some stuff, because we all know I have a vivid imagination.

I do have my MRS degree, and that could be considered a great accomplishment considering what a pain I am to live with.  I've managed to be married for twenty three years, and Paul still claims to love me, so having my MRS degree could be considered a success/achievement.

I have the MOM degree too, and that one was earned through many years of exhaustion, tears, joy, laughter, failures, personality conflicts, problem solving, teaching, undoing, re-doing, perseverance, defeats, success, and just plain old determination.  There should be executive pay for the MOM degree, and it should be acknowledged as the highest of the degree's a person can earn.  You earn the MOM degree without any training, no manual to read, no experience, just living the day, and making it all work.  You learn from your mistakes, and you hope you will be able to see positive results in the citizens your children become.  It's a thankless job at times, but it is also the most rewarding.


Considering those are the only two degrees I have, I don't have the qualifications for a membership to Who's Who.  In their eyes I would not be a professional, and MRS and MOM degrees just aren't worth mentioning in the professional scheme of things.  Little do they know the power of a MOM.  The MRS degree is like an associates degree.  It's a prelude to the Masters....which is MOM.  


So who am I?  I'm just me.  Mrs. Bittner and the mom of Sarah, Julie and Jacob.  Not worthy to be a member of Who's Who, but I'm the one who matters to Paul, Sarah, Julie and Jacob, and that's good enough for me.

The Joy of Friendship

Several months ago, I met a very special person on Facebook.  Our friendship began, and a plan was made for her to travel to the USofA to visit.  When the trip was first mentioned, it really didn't seem like it would be a reality.  Now it has become a reality, and my Australian friend and I had a wonderful week together.

It's easy to chat on Facebook.  You can be on your best behavior, you can delete things before you send them, and you can impress a person with your portrayed  perfection. To be together in person is a different story.  In person you see and hear the reality.  Lill and I started off being honest, sharing our feelings about life, about relationships, about children, about work, and when she arrived, it was like an old friend came home for a visit.

My kids tell me that Lill is my Australian clone, and if that is the case, then I would be friends with myself, because I love Lill and the wonderful friendship that we have established.  Her visit was much anticipated, and even though she came at a busy time for me, it made the busyness more enjoyable, the days more happy, and less stressful.  She made me laugh, she made me see my life, my family and New Mexico in a new light.  She made me think about our language, and even though we both speak English, she says many words differently  I will never again say the word water without laughing and remembering Lill.  Nor will I say path and master without wondering how they are really pronounced, and how did I say them so differently?

The two of us in her little rental car had one little adventure after another.  Sal riding along in the back seat felt compelled to set us straight a time or two, and that was fine.  We just let her have her say, and then we enjoyed her play acting when we arrived home, and she felt compelled to act out our antics of the day for the sake of Julie and Jacob, and for telling stories.  I am especially fond of Sal's reenactment of our brief stop over in Galisteo.  I wish I had taking a video of her reenactment.  Very entertaining, and right on the mark.  I don't care what Sal says, I do love those mailboxes in Galisteo and I don't know why.

I've never really enjoyed shopping, until I went shopping with Lill.  The joy of the best price cannot be surpassed with the joy Lill feels for it.  I can just hear her, "Aye, Creeesh.  Look at this price!  At home this would be.....I must have it, don't you reckon?  I could never get this at home for this price."  "Creesh, look at this!  What'da ya reckon?  Will this color look good?"  Shopping became a thrill, and I didn't mind carrying 90% of the stock on my arm to the dressing room for a session of trying on clothes.  I teased her about all her clothes, and told her that the "blokes" would be turning their heads for a second and third glimpse when she walked into the room.  The color and and vibrancy that is Lill just makes people look again, and then they smile.  I know, because I smiled a lot this past week.

It was a joy to walk into the kitchen in the mornings and see her sitting at the dining room table, computer up and running, and a smile on her face.   "Good morning!  Did you have a good night?  What's the plan for today?",  and we would be off.

I hope to go to Australia to visit her and Sal.  I know I will be welcomed there, and I know it will feel like I've been there before.  I know when I see her  it will be as if we never parted ways, and that there were no oceans between us.  I know that she plans to make me drive on the wrong side of the road, and I know she will fall forward when I slam on the brakes.  I know that when I want to go to the right, she will be there to remind me to stay left.  I know all the excuses to have when I want to stay right, and she yells for me to go left.  I know all the excuses, because she taught them to me.  And then.... we will laugh, and we might take a picture of me going right when I should be going left.  I will just tell her that I was tired and everything is backwards in Australia.

Maybe by the time I go to Australia to visit Lill and Sal, Lill will have made good on her promise to introduce drive up banking, and will have a chain of Sonic drive ins open and succeeding.  She will have introduced all of Aussieland to cherry limeade chillers, and she will be taking her earnings to the bank, and taking those earnings only to a drive up bank.  Sonic and drive through banking will be common place in Aussieland, and I will think nothing of it.

By the time I arrive for my visit, the "blokes" on bikes will have rebelled about wearing helmets and I won't even notice.  Babe Ruth, Reeces peanut buttercups, and S'mores will be common place as well. So common place that  I will just take them for granted.  If we decide to have Frito pie, it won't be a big deal, because Lill will have opened up the shipping to Frito Lay.  I might have to wait until I arrive back home to satisfy my green chili cravings.  I failed to convince them it's close to impossible to live without green chili.

By the time I arrive for my visit, Sal will have met her one and only.  You know who he is.  He's the one with the pick up truck, and not just any old pickup truck, but a Dodge Ram. No decent man would drive a FORD and win Sal's heart.  He will have horses for Sal to love, and a horse "float" to haul them in.  The horses will all have rugs, a personal dentist and vet, as well as a weekly "mass awge".

I've been blessed with an abundance of friends, and all of them have added so much to my life.  Without my friends my life would be so bland.  The joy of friendship is without measure, and Sal and Lill have just added more riches to my friendship basket.  If I could put all the joy into a basket, it would be full to over flowing, and like Lill often remarked when taking pictures, "Pictures just don't capture the beauty and the magnitude of it."   Words, as with the pictures, just can't capture all the beauty and magnitude of friendship... and the joys of it.

Cretia

Cretia

Motherhood: The Assumption

Motherhood doesn't really become easier with age.  I thought it would, but I was wrong.  It seems that I'm wrong more than I'm right, and I wish that wasn't the case.  I thought once the babies were toddlers it would be easier, this mothering business.  I was wrong.  The toddlers are just busier, eating things that they shouldn't climbing on things that they shouldn't be climbing, running you ragged by the minute.  Well then, since toddlers weren't so easy, then when they could talk, were potty trained, could feed themselves.  That would be easier.  I was wrong....Again.

Surely when they were teenagers, and I could reason with them, it would be easier.  Okay, so I was really wrong on that one.  Whatever made me think that I could reason with a teenager?  I was an unreasonable teenager myself once, but then I thought it was my mom that was so unreasonable.  Reason with a teenager!  Right!

When the kids are grown up, living on their own, making their own choices, paying their own bills, raising their own kids, getting their college education, then motherhood would be easier. That's the kickback and relax stage then.  Seriously, I don't know where my brain is through all of this.  Maybe living in a fairy tale of assumed motherhood.  I assumed it would all be perfect, and that's where I got stuck.  We all know about that word assumed and what it says about you and me.


I just assumed my mom didn't understand me, and that I would be far and above a better mother to my children.  I'm not saying that I had a bad mother.  Not the case at all.  My mom was a good mom, still is.  What I didn't consider in the assumption was...she had me for a daughter.  She had a tough job, and now I can see that she really had to work hard getting me raised.  I still give her grief, and not only that, I had three kids to add to her worry.  Now I understand some of her worries...worries that as a teenager I thought were so ridiculous.  I knew I was fine when I was out at two o'clock in the morning, why should she be worried?

I assumed that I would be such a great mom that my kids would be perfect.  In their perfection, I would be perfect, and all would be perfect in our perfect little world.  That's what I assumed.  I should have known better than that, but I didn't.  I just didn't think it through past the assumption of perfectness.

I guess what I need to consider in all of my assumptions is the fact that I'm a mom, I have 3 kids, I will always be their mom, no matter what.  I put my all into being a mom, and sometimes I just... well I just fall short.  Welcome to motherhood. It's not perfect....it's not always rewarding...it's not always easy...it can be heartbreaking...it can be tiring...it can be disheartening.  It can also be very rewarding.  In all the drama, the heartache, the weary days, when just one of the three says, "I love you mom." it makes it all worthwhile.

When your adult children are in pain, you can't just gather them up onto your lap and kiss the pain away.  You can listen to them, cry with them, try to console them, help them see other options, be there for them, but you can't kiss away the pain.  When your oldest calls, and just needs to talk, you listen, but you can't just gather her up in your lap and kiss away her pain.  When your middle child is struggling, you can't just gather her up onto your lap and kiss away her pain.  When your youngest is soon leaving home, you can't hold him in your lap and just keep him there.  You put on your brave face, smile and tell him you're proud, and wish that someone would kiss away your pain.


Twenty two years ago I started on this journey called motherhood, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.  I might want to change some things.  I might want to change my mind, change some actions, some words, some thoughts, my attitude.  I might wish that I had been more understanding, kinder, listened instead of talked, hugged instead of being angry, been more peaceable, more present...I might have changed some things, done some differently, but I will never, ever regret being a mother to my three children.

Ready or Not

Yesterday Julie and I picked Jacob up from school, and all the questions I asked him were answered with one word or less.  The Or less would be a shrug and a ummmhhhh.  In other words, MOM STOP WITH ALL THE QUESTIONS.  I told him that so many things about him are important to me, and I need to know.  You can imagine the look that got me.

I was thinking about his childhood and his future, and trying to see myself as he sees me.  Yes well, I won't get too descriptive about what he might see.  I'm sure it's not a pretty picture.  I know he wishes that I would just tamp down on the curiosity concerning his senior goodbye speech for FFA.  He tells me he has it covered, just not written. I told him I want the plaque with his speech on it, and he told me not to worry, I'd get the plaque. He is sick to death of me reminding him that his grades are important, and he really does not want to discuss life at NMSU, and his behavior at the number one party school in NM.  When he lowers himself to answering me, it's always with the following, "Don't worry mom.  I'll be fine."  I know that...sort of.

After our non-discussion about school, speeches and grades yesterday, he came into the house ahead of me, and just casually dropped his cap and gown package on my desk chair. He didn't even tell me that he had them.  Oh sure, it's no big deal really.  Other than to slam it home to my heart that this graduation of my youngest child is really going to happen, and in only a couple of weeks.  I just picked it up and held it, and thought of when I first held him in my arms 18 years ago, and never saw myself looking at an 18 year old, ready to graduate, move away from home, and be a person without me.

I went through this emotional roller coaster with Sarah and Julie too, but with Sarah, I knew I still had Julie and Jacob at home.  With Julie, I still had Jacob, but with Jacob....what? who?  Yes, I will have my little buddy Greyson, but he's Julie and Dom's.  Maybe they will remember to invite me to all the special events.  I guess the question that begs an answer is:  Who will I be now?  My kids are grown.  Who will I be now?  My kids can make their own choices and mistakes.  Who will I be now?  They have their own jobs, their own ideas, their own lives.  Who will I be now?

Jacob eventually wander back into the den, and I said, "Oh sure, you just drop this package on my chair like it's no big deal."  He just smiled at me, opened the package and put on his cap and gown.  It's hard to swallow around that boulder sitting in my throat.  He said, "Hey mom, you still have Sarah and Julie's caps and gowns right?"  Yes. "We should all put them on, and you can take a picture of all your graduates."  My heart should just shatter too, but he's right, I would love a picture of the three of them together in their caps and gowns.  They all three accomplished what I never did.  I'm proud of them.

Who am I now?  I'm their mom.  I will always be their mom.  I haven't lost my identity, I've just added more accomplishments to my mom resume.  Babyhood for three babies, done.  Toddlerhood for three toddlers, done.  Adolescents for three adolescents, done.  Teenage agony for three teenagers, almost done.  Adulthood for three adults, in progress.  Motherhood, never ending.

So in all his casualness, his lack of response to my millions of questions, his "I've got it covered", and so on, I know he really loves me, and I know he will be okay.  Sarah is a success, Julie is too, so why should I worry?
And ready or not, life goes on.

Cretia