The 1 % Legacy

 
Mom is caught between who she is and who she wants to be

I was supposed to be a trophy wife. It's what my mother trained me to do. (I hope she unknowingly trained me in this and did not purposefully only give me the skills I'd need to trap keep a man.)

(I'll never know.)

(I suspect it was intentional.)

(I can't blame her though, growing up I gave no indication I could survive on my own.)

I learned how to chemically improve my hair, exploit the purpose of make-up, flirt…and take the path of least resistance. 

Unfortunately, trophy wife-ism is the only thing I fully trained for and now I'm too old to be one. I missed my calling AND since I'm not doing it, I'm drowning in a world I have to run because I have only useless skills to draw from. Smiling gratuitously does not help balance a budget.

It’s possible I have this all wrong, but the thought process of the moment is:

Perceived Trophy Wife Skills

Maintain Improve Appearance

I am very good at this on any budget level (currently I buy the fabulous $2 NYC nail polish at Target, the wonderful store where a spray tan in a can is $8 on sale...impossible to apply evenly, but it keeps me busy trying). However, I could actually look like a trophy wife with a professional manicure, pedicure, spray tan, eye lift, regular micro-dermabrasion and a daily massage. Now I use 20 gage sand paper in an “at-home” dermabrasion technique along with Scotch tape to lift my eyelids out of my eyes. 

My point is though – I have the skills to stand in a spray tan booth and sit with a manicurist.

Traveling

I am very good at staying in hotels. Plus, I speak French - which is useless unless you're a trophy wife who travels. (Oh!! My mother suggested I take French!)

Thoughtful Consumption

Drinking poolside, ordering dinner from the chef for children who are elsewhere, very discerning with fine chocolate, wine, Tuscan cuisine. I’m pretty sure I can do this.

Additionally, starving myself when the above get out of hand. 

Good with men

I can make a man feel - good. about himself. about me. That's the true calling of the trophy wife. I think. We didn’t get that far in my training. I did learn how to dance, laugh and smile gratuitously,  and flirting with men are the only areas in which I have found these skills to be useful.

Exciting previous career

I was a Rockette and something like 99% of Rockette's marry millionaires. Seriously. I am in the 1%. I did not marry a millionaire. 

That's it. 

How did I miss what I spent my entire life preparing for?

I know actually.  I said no to all the men who could give me a trophy life and married the confident boy who wisely made me laugh out loud and learn to like who I was underneath the $2 nail polish and $8 spray tan. And he's younger...I guess that actually makes me a cougar

I said yes to genuine laughter and joy - and a lifetime of luxury avoidance. I guess I'm deeper than my mother and I thought at the outset. And my life is not completely devoid of hedonistic richness, in fact, compared to most other countries – I live in the lap of luxury. A small, comfortable lap. 

So, what do I do with the skills I have, but don’t need? How do I get the skills I do need? Is it possible that I already have everything I need to be the wife of a teacher and a mother of two girls, just not the capacity to recognize it?

Am I just confusing a trophy wife with white trash? Am I just a white trash cougar? Probably.

Because if I was really trophy wife material I would 1) be one and 2) yeah, I don’t have a 2). Trophy wives are amazing now – they start multi-million dollar businesses. Gone are the days when they only looked good. Damn! Again, I say, I missed it!!!

Ultimately, my soul is torn between gratitude for our sweet, warm lives and the desire for lazy luxurious days. I am so very grateful for all I’ve been blessed with and haven’t yet destroyed by ignorance. Nothing changes that. Scared though, that the legacy I’m leaving my daughters is the same soul-searching struggle.

My girls are almost grown. It’s time. It’s just time, for me to become something more than a white-trash-cougar-trophy-wife-wanna-be. I wanna be something good. And where do I go from here? I'm still floundering around looking for something else I'm trained for. 

Where is the job that calls for a lazy, un-evenly tan, laughing woman with peeling nail polish and Scotch tape above her eyes? 

  

Is it possible the job is still at home, guiding two teenage girls to come into their own 1%? 

I hope I've trained them to say yes to good things. To respect themselves enough to consciously choose their path, not fall into it, maybe to find the boy who will help them change the world, or make $30 million his first year out and still be able to genuinely make them laugh - at themselves, and their mother. But, kindly, and while handing her a glass of Château Lafite and a box of Godiva chocolate- in Paris (and by “her” I mean “me”).

My girls are going to be leaving home soon and I will have to find a paying job. 

Where do the 1% go back to work? 

I am seriously asking. Please feel free to suggest.

 

Blessings and Evil, Now More Than Ever

I'm having trouble reconciling the warm, soft, sweet life our family has been blessed with against the horrendous pain the families in Connecticut have been handed.

This morning I woke inside the softest cocoon wrapped in my husband's arms. Our fluffy cat purred and curled up in mine. My children slept safe and warm, lit by their Christmas trees in the corner of their rooms.

Even without knowing the evil that goes off in an uncontrolled rampage, I would be grateful. But, seeing mental illness/evil displayed in such an innocent place makes me sob with immeasurable sorrow even with our immeasurable blessings.

I grew up in the shadow of the Vietnam War, which was fought another world away. Still, it was a dark era.. Never, did it seem that the heart of darkness would be in our own, American world. But, here it moved: Columbine, New York City, Hurricane’s Katrina and Sandy, Movie Theater’s, shopping malls, post offices, and city streets. I've missed so many tragedies just in this short list.

Now, more than ever, treasuring the lives we have been blessed with, may be our only hope to continue on. And possibly the only hope to be able to recognize and stop the nature of evil among us. And maybe not.

The goodness that will rise out of this will also be immeasurable. Now, more than ever, I hope to hear every good, kind act and to find a way myself to somehow soften the blow of someone else's horrendous pain.

Facebook!

I love Facebook. I love the immediate response from "friends" I forgot were alive and from those whose minds work in such creative, observant one sentence blasts (Jenny). People, in general, are so clever and inspiring. Facebook makes me love the human race. I also love being able to see what my children and their friends are up to.

There is such humor and pathos readily available, without the added responsibility of actually having to speak to another human being -  in person. The irony of Facebook. Contact without connection. When I was assigned to write a poem about pop culture I had trouble choosing between Lady Gaga (who I also love!) and Facebook. Facebook was just...more in my face. :)

I Won’t Call Her Because I Know She’s Planting Foxgloves

What a wonderful world.


Katie and John smile from a wave runner in the sparkling sun-lit blue water of Cabo.

Lindsey and Bruce wave from the deck of a Princess cruise ship sailing toward the sunset.

Madison made two varsity sports her freshman year.

It’s Suicide Awareness Day

and never too late,

or too early,

to be whoever you want to be.

Denise is planting foxgloves with little to no hope of ever seeing their bells blow in the wind.

Kerby likes Amazon.com

And Disneyland.

Laurie is afraid of the dark.

The towers that “we will never forget”

Of faces that were lost this day, 11 years ago in September

Sharing the smoky images might keep this horror from ever happening again.

The faces in Facebook

knowing everything about a distant face with no time spent face to face.



And my life makes less sense with every highlight reel I sit in the dark to watch,

Feeling less like a star and more like a burnt-out light.



But, my status looks good, so maybe I live in a wonderful world. Too.

A photograph

I'm taking a creative writing class and I had to write a poem for Tuesday. This is the final draft.

Still Shot

The mesmerizing stillness of a smiling photograph.

A bronzed, rugged cowboy atop his barely tamed horse paused on the edge of a cliff.

Turned back to smile for the camera.

A perfect shot.

A shot in the dark.

Finally.

And he leaves just the haunting of his smile

atop his closed, lovingly polished, coffin.

But the smile I want to resurrect

is before he turned his back.

Before the laughter slid into silence.

Before his merciless demons chained

him to only one hope of escape.

This man of wild epiphany’s and chaos, encased in a perfect façade,

Who saved me from here, the home I had known so far,

and then left

demanding my life be worthy of more than he was becoming.

I could not hold his horse away from the edge.

Fleeting moments and choices made sear the beginning and end together

And only fragments in-between remain.

And nothing can ever change the time that was.

Choices cannot be re-made.

Memory cannot be trusted.

We can never go back to before.

His smile will remain unchained in the merciful coffin of his inevitable choice.

I will remain

looking on from here.

Living the life he gave me by living at all,

and leaving.

Still.

___________________________

This isn't really a post for mothers. It's a post because I was a woman before I became a mother and something happened that reminded me that maybe I'm still a woman. Just not the woman I was. Thank God.

Not everyone marries their high school sweetheart. I didn't. Thank God. Some of us came close to marrying dozens of handsome (and not-so-handsome, but funny) men. I did not marry my high school sweetheart. I came close to marrying several other girls’ high school sweethearts though. And I thoroughly relished the process. I am a very good flirt. Something my husband reminded me of on Saturday night...I have never considered that I actually flirt - I just like to have fun. Men are a little more fun than women.

While my husband is the bravest, funniest, cutest, best one of them all, there was one who held my heart deeply in his embrace for 10 years before my brave, funny, cute, best one showed up and he was the best flirt of all time. He was the most charming person on earth when he was in an upswing. He was devastating to know when he wasn't. A bi-polar man trying not to combust his entire life. He was only biding his time here until he could get to heaven. My mother pointed out "He held on as long as could." He was in his sixties when he gave up waiting for heaven 2 years ago and took a short cut.

He and his family were the first people who showed me I was lovable and it changed the way I viewed the world for the rest of my life. I'm grateful to remember the woman I was and relieved I'm the woman I've become.Very.

It's haunting how you don't think of someone for years and then early one morning you get a phone call that says their gone and immediately you remember them....as the flirt they were...at first.