Tag Archives: Family

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Let Laughter Live

When downtown Manhattan is wishing you well on your day trip to Governor’s Island, tousling the flaps of your faux-flapper dress in the wind on a sunny Sunday afternoon – it’s hard to have any worries. Especially when your addiction to Group-buying sites landed you a $35 deal including a three-course lunch, unlimited drinks, and the guarantee of a good time when you’re in the company of M, R, and K.

I write this post later than I anticipated -just under a hour and some change left to go until tomorrow – because today wasn’t about blogging. It wasn’t about love, dating, sex, relationships, men, or any of that jazz. Rather, it was about actual jazz at Governor Island’s biannual Jazz Fest Lawn Party where three of my friends and I dressed up in era-like costumes while mastering the unforgotten art of waiting in extremely long lines for the cause of getting boozy.

Blame the champagne cocktails, sangria, or chocolate ice cream cones – but we were all a little giggly. Our conversations evolved from historical discussions and debates to inappropriate candor on the train uptown at the end of the afternoon, with dirty glances from older women only making our laughter more contagious. When M and I rested at my apartment, asking the gods of the “Ask Me” cards (silly deck that gives you unassuming answers) and watching reruns of Sex & the City on low volume so we could add our own commentary – I thought about writing my blog, but then decided against it. M reminded me: “You’ve got until midnight! Won’t take you long!” And so, after cleaning my apartment and making the 100th poor food choice of the weekend with a giant cherry vanilla milkshake from Tom’s Restaurant and a handful of M’s cheesefries with blue cheese dressing (Yes, we’re very healthy these days) – I sat down to post something for June 26, 2011.

I had considered a few topics of interest that were suggested to me: “Write about how some think we’ll date a few more guys before getting married or how a few of us think the next one is it,” or “Write one completely about me and how wonderful I am since your last post made me seem like a bitch!!” or “Write about the changes with Mr. Possibility,” or “Write about how adorable men look in those suspenders and when they actually do The Charleston with their girlfriends – where do we find them?? Why are they taken or gay??”

All of those ideas are relevant and probably posts I could write and a couple I may actually flush out one day – but as I sat down to my computer, going through emails and preparing for the week ahead of me while putting Monday out of my mind for a few more hours – I couldn’t stop smiling.

I’m just so happy, damnit.

Things aren’t perfect but things are pretty great. I’m blessed to have a supporting, hilarious, free-spirited, adventure-trying, beautiful group of girlfriends (especially R who contrary to other blogs isn’t as crazy as she may seem), a job that makes me want to go to work in the morning, a byline that people remember and an impact to make, a boyfriend who often catches me off guard with his sincerity and kindness, and of course, a city that I will always be madly in love with.

Maybe blogging is easier or you get more traffic when you write about all the things that are wrong in your life. Maybe the best copy is bore out of grief, sorrow, longing, or disappointment. Maybe the writers who go down in history or have their books reprinted for lifetimes that exceed their own, are the ones who experienced the worse of the world and forced themselves to describe it. Maybe there will always be a hell of a lot of bad.

But, if you take a moment to take it easy, and let laughter live in your life, then you’ll discover the good is always there, too. With every opportunity we’re given that we don’t win, each love we leap to find and we end up falling, each friend we leave behind that we lose touch with, each passing day that we regret wasting – there is a second chance, an adventurous lover, a new best friend, and a new sunrise just a few moments away.

And so in my new quest to let laughter live more fully in my life as I continue this journey – I’ll end each post with something I’m thankful for. If I can find the reasons to laugh and cherish my life, maybe when the bad starts to shadow the sun, I’ll have the strength to brighten my own skies…with gratitude.

Today, I’m thankful for the friendships I’ve found in unexpected places and for the women who remind me each day to…laugh at life, at love, and most importantly, at myself. The me who wears 3-inch heels to a lawn party because it went with my outfit better than flats.

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No Other Man Could Compare

There are a lot of things a man can do to impress me. Like remembering little things I said or having knowledge of current events and the ability to hold a normal, adult conversation. Knowing the right things to say, but more importantly, having the conviction to follow-through with promises and nurturing a life outside of our relationship. Or not needing me to be rule his life, no matter how much validity there is to the Oedipus complex.

But above all other things, characteristics, traits or talents – there is one sure-fire way to make your way into my heart: remind me of my father.

The one topic that is the most difficult for me to write about is my dad. Thoughts of him are so tightly sewn to my heart that when I try to put our relationship into words, it feels like it tears at my most delicate areas. I admire him in a way that knows no boundaries, I cannot stay angry at him for any period of time, and when I need to know how to cook or build something, or when another guy stomps on the love I give him, I never want to call anyone by my daddy.

As a retired fire captain, he is the symbol of bravery and courage in my mind. He represents the strength it takes to overcome anything – even an illness that nearly emotionally and mentally paralyzed him for six years. In his weakest of moments and darkest of hours, he still supported me. He never forgot to tell me how much he loves me and when all else had failed, when I didn’t know if tomorrow would be a day he would see, I could rest assured that I was among the lucky and the blessed to have a remarkable father.

And I was also part of the crowd who grew up with a shining example of a supportive marriage. Apart from the time my dad was sick, my parents have been each other’s best friends, confidants, and life partners. They make decisions together, they have hobbies together, they communicate in a language I don’t and would never want to understand. They respect each other and dissolve their anger before laying to rest. Their marriage isn’t perfect and it has seen its trials, but they are still standing – though aging and a tad bored – it’s impossible to deny the love they share.

In every man I’ve dated, each affair I’ve entertained – I’ve looked for my father. For someone who looks at me with the same admiration in his eyes that my dad has when he looks at me or at my mother. I’ve looked for someone to protect me, to comfort me, to chase away the adult monsters that seem so much scarier and life-altering than the ones I thought were under my bed. I’ve looked for someone with that same passion, that same intensity, that some vitality that I see in my sweet daddy – the guy who taught me to ride a bike, drive a boat and a jet ski, and encouraged me to go higher on the swing even when mom thought I was plenty high enough. For someone who will push me to be a better person, he will challenge me, and who will have that same intoxicating smile and laugh that I miss so much inNew York.

But recently, I’ve come to realize that I’m looking for my dad in all the wrong places. He isn’t going to be found in the arms of Mr. Possibility – no matter how many similarities they seem to share. I’m not going to develop and create a relationship or marriage like my parent’s love because that belongs to them, not to me. I’m not going to find my father by searching for his 20 or 30-something form in the streets, bars or buses of Manhattan.

The only place I’m going to find my daddy, my hero, is by pressing “5” on my speed dial. Or by logging into Skype or sending an email to Captain Tigar. Or by way of a direct flight from JFK to Asheville, where he’ll be there standing and waiting for me with a silly hat, a big goofy grin and a tear running down his cheek he’ll try to hide.

And that’s where he should be.

Maybe we look for our parents in the relationships we have as adults and maybe we sometimes look for the exact opposite – but what if instead of investigating who has the most potential to reincarnate our dads…we valued our father? We made who he is special. And help that daddy/daughter relationship as sacred as it deserves to be. What if we kicked our own daddy complex out the window?

I’m not going to meet someone who is just like my father and no man, regardless if he’s my boyfriend, my lover or my husband will ever mean what my dad means to me. Nor should he. No other man could ever compare. The love of my father I keep in my heart wherever I go belongs to me and my dad, no one else.

Because I don’t want to meet another daddy. I love the one I have too much to share him.

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Baby Steps Toward Stability

I’ve been dreaming vividly lately about very odd things. My mother says dreams are meant to help us work out things we’re thinking of or things that are causing us trouble, regardless if we’re conscious of our ailments or not.

If she’s right, apparently my mind has been preoccupied with babies and proposals. (Though, as far as I’m concerned, it hasn’t been)

I’ve had dreams about being pregnant, about giving birth, about rescuing children from incapable parents. I’ve envisioned spoon-feeding and watching a cesarean performed on me (yes, I know, gross). A certain dream about being stuck in some unidentified room with what appeared to be an eighth-month belly felt so real that I woke up in a dead panic, waking up Mr. Possibility in the process and frantically grabbing my stomach to make sure it wasn’t so. After the fifth consecutive dream about babies, that time of the month came (whew!) and I started having elaborate dreams about proposals.

Some of the dudes were guys I actually know and still talk to, like Mr. Idea. Others were complete strangers I was apparently in love with. The proposals were ridiculous – some involved flying fish and tomatoes, some were in NYC and some overseas (I think, it looked Greece-like). There was dinner and fireworks, friends and family, crying and Coca-Cola.

I don’t know what I’m eating these days or what crosses my mind without me knowing, but wow, when the crazy dreams stopped a few days ago, I was relieved and as any addict would be, obsessed with trying to figure out what they mean.

After all, doesn’t everything have meaning if you dig deep enough? Any proper journalist would tell you it does.

To uncover my unconscious hidden agendas, I sought the counsel of my friends. After all possibility of actually being pregnant was put to bed, they pretty much all reached the conclusion that I was getting ready to birth a new change. Or something would be proposed to me – not a ring, but something else. (No dearies, I’m gladly nowhere close to even wanting to walk down the aisle. Let me find peace with the term ‘boyfriend’ first).

That makes sense and is about as rational of an explanation that I can find – having a baby or agreeing to spend the rest of my life with someone would definitely be a dramatic shift. My priorities, my health, my finances, my body, my lifestyle – all of it. But then again – when you’re in your 20s, doesn’t everything change…all the time?

The people I’m the closest to today, I didn’t know a few years ago. My speed dial assignments have changed at least a handful of times since when I signed my Verizon contract. I’ll probably have my mail forwarded a dozen times before I leave this city – or if I ever do. My single gal friends have a new leading man every week or so, some are dismayed by this fact, others relish in it. I toss out clothes as often as I buy new ones at H&M, and when a heel breaks, another pair makes it into my closet. I try this beauty product and then this one, and while I’ve tried to pick out a signature scent, I can’t decide on just one. I read and read, day after day, and so my views, my language, my direction is constantly shifting. I make plans, I break them. I think I know who I am and then I question.

Call me crazy, but sure, life changes a lot when you have a baby – but doesn’t it also settle down a bit? I’d like to think that at the point in my life when I’m engaged and eventually starting a family, I’ll have my ducks-in-a-row. I’ll be secure in a job I love, I’ll be confident in the person I’m picking as everlasting partner, and hopefully instead of renting, I’ll be putting my dough toward a home or an apartment I own. Friends will still change but some won’t. I’ll be stronger in my convictions, but maybe my viewpoints will mold too. However, those foundation-building blocks will be set in stone, instead of airing in the New York summer sun. Or at least, I hope so.

So what is it that babies maybe signify instead? A thirst for stability? A hunger to be working toward something tangible instead of all of those things that seem so indefinite? I don’t have a baby, I’ve never been asked to marry someone (expect on Twitter), but I think those changes may rock my world, but they’ll also steady it, too. Right?

I can’t attest for sure, I’m not a psychic or a dream-reader, though I could probably walk a block in either direction and pay $150 for a reading. For now, though, regardless if these dreams mean a change or mean I’ll found solid footing, I hope they continue to subside.

My ovaries can’t handle any more fear.

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Happily For Now

For the volunteer group I’m part of, we recently had the group of young, budding writers create their own fairytales. As expected, the boys’ stories were ripe with fights between worlds and superheroes rescuing the day, while the girls wrote about princesses, friendships, celebrities, and falling in love.

As I’m going around to the kids, supervising and encouraging them to keep going when they get stuck, a sweet little girl in pigtails and polka-dots looked up at me and said, “Lindsay, I’m done! Look!” She had almost filled a full page in her composition notebook and because we usually encourage them to write a few pages, I told her I wanted to read it when it was finished. She replied by saying, “But, I ended it with ‘And they lived happily ever after.’ There isn’t anything else! That’s the end!”

Out of reflex and without hesitation, I bent down to her level and asked: “But what happens after they get married?” She blushed and answered: “They are happy! They have babies! That’s it!” Not willing to let another one be fooled by the delusions of forever-and-ever marital bliss, I sweetly challenged the 10 year old: “But don’t you think it is more like a beginning, not an ending? They just got married! Think of all the things they have left to do now.”

She looked at me funny and then smiled, “Well, I guess they have a party after they get married and then they have children and then those have children.” Hoping I made a little progress, I told her she should write at least five more sentences before it was time to read to the class. Looking like something was brewing upstairs, she nodded excitedly and continued to scribble. I walked around to the different tables, reading over stories, and answering questions, as all the volunteers and I attempted to keep control of 15 children who had far more energy than we do on a Friday afternoon. As I was supervising, the girl would come up and show me her progress, sentence-by-sentence. Each time I’d push her to write a little more and off she would go to squeeze in some more lines. When it was finally time to share their fairytales, she volunteered to go third and her story sounded like every other Disney-designed plot line, except for her last sentence:

“…and they all lived happily ever after, for now.”

Clapping for her and sharing unspoken sentiments, the other female volunteers and I exchanged knowing looks – this gal had it right: in today’s time, forever seems a tad suffocating and far-fetched. Doesn’t it?

But forever-and-ever-and-always as a child isn’t that scary; it is more comforting. After all, the stories we hear and the make believe we play all end when the prince drops to one knee, lovingly begs us to spend the rest of our life with him, and we say “I do.” We conclude happily ever after when we make a vow to another person, tying us to them in what we think (and hope) will be an everlasting partnership. But if we think about it – the wedding is just the start of the next segment of our lives, a chapter (or maybe the rest of the story) we’ll share with someone else. It isn’t a conclusion, it is an introductory sentence.

So why aren’t there fairytales about marriage?

About the reality of promising our loyalty and life to another person forever more? It is indeed a vast commitment that carries more weight than we understand until (or if) we get there. Why don’t we teach our children and our teenagers about what it really means to be an active, giving, and loving participant in a relationship? What it means to be a partner and what we should expect out of man? I have yet needed to be rescued from my “awful single existence” by a man in a tight-white getup, giddy-upping his way toward me – but I’ve dated some pretty incredible men. They aren’t always dreamy and they don’t come with a fortune or titles, but it has been the reality of who they are that’s turned me on the most.

I’m no expert in relationships – if I was, would I be writing this blog? – but I’ve learned a valuable lesson in the last few years that’s made me want to be less of a princess-in-waiting and more of a lady in transition: stop thinking in terms of forever and take people, especially men, as they are. Not all women but quite a few, never lose the rose-colored glasses we were handed as little girls playing house and wearing plastic sparkly crowns.

But the truth is, no man will be perfect and unless you’re Kate Middleton, he won’t be a prince either. Even when we wear the lace wedding gown and sport a diamond on our left hand, there is no promise that they will be standing next to us all of our dying days. We aren’t princesses and guys don’t hold a magical solution or power to free us from our unhappiness or our lonely nights. They are added additions that if we’re lucky, will develop our character and add a few interesting plots in our own story. They don’t make us and they aren’t the only part of our existence, and our lives don’t end if we decide to marry a special one.

They come and go, and one will come and stay, maybe forever, maybe for several years, and maybe just for a night. Regardless, the advice to take is from little Miss Polka Dot: enjoy what you have and be happy that he makes you happily ever after…

…for now.

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A Sweet Longing

The last week or so, I’ve been feeling a little homesick.

While this may break my mother’s heart (I apologize in advance, Mama), I don’t miss home all that often. I’ve come to find that home is where you make it and who you make it with, so really, right now, my home is inNew York, in the company of my friends, and in the lights of the city.

But nothing really replaces your mom. Or your dad. Or the smellNorth Carolinaeludes with the arrival of summer. Or the quiet that comes from an old country road where the only noise prohibited is the sweet melody of song birds in the morning. And no matter how many years I’m away from NC or how many friends I make or how many roots I try to plant  in the pavement, holidays are tough away from the place you always spent them.

They say the mark of a successful parent is when they raise their child to be a mature, functioning, self-sufficient, and happy adult who can handle life without them. I’d say my parents have achieved this feat and I would think that all great parents want their children to turn into capable adults who create an existence that brings them joy, prosperity, and love, of course – but part of growing up is moving on.

If you’re the product of a very happy home with a supportive, loving family, and a community that encouraged success and bigger things than what sweet littleCarolinacan offer – the process of moving on means letting go of where you were to establish where you are. And it isn’t easy. I love my background but I’m confident my future has just as much possibility, if not more. But making that possibility feel just right is a process in itself.

I do consider myself an adult and I am completely independent of my parents for all of my financial needs and wants. I don’t depend on them for anything more than a daily phone call and to be there should I want to spend an outrageous amount of money flying south for a weekend. But there are times, like when I miss them that I feel like I’m less of an adult.

Maybe it is a misconception on my part to think that longing to see your family makes you more of a child and less of a grown-up, but when you travel away from home, as children should – when do you stop missing where you come from? Or not really where, but who?

I think part of the appeal of a relationship or the desire to one day get married comes from the hunger for a home. Especially if you came from a healthy and happy home – why would you not want to design the same foundation? And maybe we think by finding that sense of security or making plans for the future, we’ll stop missing what we had to leave behind to get to where we wanted to be. Maybe we think that sadness that surprises us from time-to-time will stop coming around. Maybe we think by finding love, the love of our childhood home won’t be something we wish we could capture and carry around with us, should a day ever be nothing but doom-and-gloom.

I’m not there yet, so I can’t argue effectively, but I know that nothing compares to my mother’s embrace or the smell of her perfume that lingers on you after. Or my father’s infectious laugher that burns his face and fills in the lines of his wrinkled cheeks. You can’t capture the same smells of bacon and eggs in the morning paired with instant-coffee, or the sound of the washing machine constantly running while my dog scratches at my bedroom door.

And not being able to see your parents on Easter or Mother’s Day or Father’s Day – because it isn’t sensible to fork over $300 in such a short period of time, just sucks. Or knowing the baby cousins you left will only see you once or twice a year, meaning you won’t watch them grow, is sad. Or that you only get to hug your family for a week at a time, maybe twice or three times a year, hurts.

There really is no place like home, no matter how sweet your new one is.