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The Memory Keeper’s Granddaughter

posted 15th April 2012    Written by: Sarah    CATEGORY: All Posts, Family, Quarterlife Crisis, Sarah

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Grandma, me, and Kate at three months.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My sister, Megan, Kate at twelve months, and my Grandma.

For the third time that evening she asked me where I live.

You know where I live, Grandma.  Same place I’ve lived for a long time now.  With Dan and Kate.  The house with the black shutters?  Remember how my daffodils are coming up?  We talked about that.

My family moved to Virginia the summer before my 8th grade year.  We picked a house five minutes down the road from my Grandma.  She’d been a widower for a while by then, still living in a house much too big for one person.  But she kept herself busy, worked a couple of hours a week.

Middle school was a rough time for me.  I was the new girl with a mouth full of braces and curvier than my narrow-hipped friends.  And my parents and I got into it with the usual teenage angst stuff that ended with me slamming my door and it coming off the hinges as punishment.

But I had an ally.

My Grandma Rosemary, my mom’s mom, and for whom I get the Rosemary in Sarah Rosemary, became my confidant.

I’d call her up when my mom refused to buy me the latest and greatest jeans, and she’d drive on over in her white Subaru and take me shopping and out to lunch.

After school I’d walk over and she’d pour me a diet Coke and offer me her signature, baked-to-a-crisp, chocolate oatmeal cookies while I whinned about mean middle school girls and how my parents didn’t understand me.

When I got my driver’s license, she let me drive her all over town.  Whenever my parents said no because they were in a hurry, I knew I could count on my Grandma.  She’d hand over her keys without me asking and away we’d go.  She never cared where we went, hasseled me over my following distance, or braced herself when approaching a stop sign.

One time my parents were out of town, so my sister and I spent the night at my Grandma’s.  I needed to get up early for my morning shift at the vet, so I jumped into my parent’s van at the top of my Grandma’s curvy driveway.

It was dark.  I was a new driver.  Backing up was not my best thing.

Misjudging the path down the driveway, I veered too far to the left, smashing into a fire hydrant.

I slammed the van into park and got out to assess the damage.  I broke the tail light.  Bits and pieces of reflective red plastic littered the grass.

My Grandma padded down the driveway in her dog-chewed slippers and picked up the largest piece of tail light.  Maybe we can glue it back together she said.

She told me she’d take care of it, just to get back in the car and go onto work.  I spent the day in knots, wondering just how my parents planned to kill me.  When I got back to my Grandma’s house she said she had a plan.

This is how it’s going to go she said.  I’m going to call your dad and say I did it.

I was pretty sure letting my Grandma take the fall for me would rank me up there as one of the Worst Grandchildren in History, so I told her thanks, but no thanks, to let me face my parent’s wrath myself.

She nodded and started dialing my Dad’s number.  When he answered she put on her best gruff voice and said now Michael, Sarah has something to tell you, and you better not yell at her.  It’s not her fault.  She’s only 16.

I got in pretty big trouble for that broken tail light.  And I shelled $80 for the repair.  But my Grandma softened the blow.

But now, when I look into her eyes, I see symptons of the disease taking over her mind, her thoughts.  I repeat the same answers over and over again.  Calmly explain remember, we had to sell your car when she calls me up and asks what happened to her Subaru.  Print out a list of family members and friend’s names, phone numbers, and birthdays in size 100 font to tape up on her fridge.

My Grandmother’s 85.  But it feels like she left me years ago.  She gets frustrated and angry.  Upset with herself, my mother, me, the cashier at CVS.  Doesn’t understand this world we live in.

When I suffered through my mini-teenage crisis, my Grandma came to my rescue.  Now, at this quarterlife crisis stage, I can’t call her up to moan about feeling lonely in motherhood or complain about Dan’s travel schedule because I’d have to remind her who Dan is.

It’s almost as if we’re both moving through a life crisis, her at the end of her life and me, in so many ways, just beginning.  When I brace her for a hug, I wish her mind would come back and she’d be my confidant, help me through my QLC with her sage-y grandma-isms.  But I know she won’t.  So I’ll help her.  I’ll keep reminding her, repeating answers, filling those gaps in her memory to keep her spirit alive.

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A Lesson in Forgiveness from a Pint of Guinness

posted 10th April 2012    Written by: Caitlin    CATEGORY: All Posts, Caiti, Season 6, Travel/Adventure, What I've Learned

I recently found myself nervous about imbibing a pint of Guinness in an Irish pub. My college self would be making SO MUCH FUN OF ME right now.

College Caiti knew how to have a good time, or at least a good time in that straightlaced-teenager-finally-off-the-leash kind of way that the beginning of college always seems to provoke. She worked her butt off at school during the week so that she could spend her weekends swimming in Jungle Juice at house parties on East Campus or sneaking into the Music Cafe with her dorm mates, the one bar in town where they knew they wouldn’t get carded.

While I could certainly come up with more than a handful of beer-fueled memories that I hope to hold onto forever, a great deal of them make me cringe. Not being able to talk to guys unless I was at least two drinks in. Not knowing how to really be myself when I wasn’t drinking. Never being able to decipher the line between “just enough” and “too much.” A situation with some fraternity boys that barely avoided turning into the plot of a Lifetime movie. And the beer tears, oh goodness, THE BEER TEARS.

After a few years of this behavior, I flipped a switch. I was done with drinking. Dunzo. I was beginning to realize that the sense of self I lost whenever I indulged too much wasn’t worth the temporary buzz. Not to mention the unofficial tally of hours wasted to nursing hangovers. That lost time frightened me.

Not everyone understood my change of behavior, though. I lost some friendships towards the end of college because of it, and was told, “You’re a lot more fun when you’re drinking.” Ouch.

I thought my perceived lack of fun-ness didn’t matter that much (though I preferred the term “old soul”)– I graduated college, and moved to a town just outside of Chicago with a lot less of a twentysomething bar scene and more of a thirtysomethings-with-kids scene. I wined and dined with friends at restaurants and at dinner parties, but I’d duck out before the nightlife really kicked off. It was fine with me that my idea of fun didn’t include trying to maintain a conversation at shouting volume in a dark, crowded bar, and DID include far more tea, NPR, and Scrabble than was probably normal for someone in their twenties.

Fast forward to a week or so ago in Ireland. Where, instead of Starbucks, there are pubs on every corner, and drinking is undoubtedly a part of Irish culture. And every time I was faced with the option of going to the pub for a pint, I found myself resistant and anxiety-ridden. When I envisioned “bar culture,” I could only think about the loud, over-indulgent environment of my college days and my former lack of control. I couldn’t stop holding onto who I had been, and–in the process– had inadvertently let it shape who I am. And what kind progress will I ever be able to make in my life if I can’t let go of the past?

So I said yes to my first pint of Guinness, on St. Patrick’s Day in a pub in Dublin, Ireland. But I think I also said yes to forgiveness. I think I’m realizing that the people we were yesterday will never matter as much as the people we are today. Looking backward, it’s easy for me to get hung up on extremes– the girl who partied and the the girl who abstained. But we aren’t intended to be black-and-white creatures; we are a beautiful mix of color and variance and idiosyncrasies. I can have a drink at 9pm in the middle of the week when the bars aren’t packed, AND THEN go home and crochet while watching documentaries on Netflix!

And, really, this idea is so much bigger than than to drink or not to drink, isn’t it? My past career “failures” don’t mean I’M a failure or that I’m somehow doomed to lifetime of professional drudgery. And I don’t have to punish myself for the friendships that have faded, because tomorrow is an opportunity for fresh relationships, or new life for old ones. While we can often learn from the past, it’s sometimes far to easy to chain yourself to it, and I know I don’t want to do that anymore. It makes me ponder who I would be today and tomorrow if I had no memory of my personal history, which is a pretty thrilling thought. But I think I’ll need a fresh pint before I go there.

{Image credit: Me}

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Mothering with Confidence

posted 8th April 2012    Written by: Sarah    CATEGORY: All Posts, Family, Quarterlife Crisis, Sarah

I didn’t take any parenting classes.  No birthing classes, breastfeeding classes, taking care of infants classes.

As I sat in front of my computer around 30 weeks pregnant, one hand scrolling through the hospital’s class listings and the other hand feeling my daughter punch and kick through my round belly, I decided we’d wing it.

I didn’t want to tour the hospital.  What could I learn about nursing before I had a baby to nurse?  Spending an entire Saturday and Sunday talking about birthing a baby when no one could say with certainty how she’d arrive felt like a waste.

I had a copy of What To Expect (also known as Start Freaking Out Now), that I’d thumb through and immediately put down when it started to verge into the this probably won’t happen to you but let’s get you all nervous anyway territory.

So I gave up parenting books.  And parenting classes.  Parenting websites.  Growing baby newsletter updates.  I dutifully checked in with my OB at our scheduled appointments, peed in numerous cups, drank nasty orange glucose-checking serums, slathered up in blue goo for ultrasound appointments.  I listened to my OB and my OB only.

When labor came on out of nowhere, I felt calm.  My OB would be there.  This was happening. Everything would be okay.

Kate delivered just fine.  No issues.  Healthy baby, healthy mama.

And then she had jaundice and I completely melted down.

Now I know that jaundice is no big deal, as a first time mom, it threw me for a loop.  How did this happen?  I bet they covered this in those stupid parenting classes.  Clearly I am a bad mother.

And so it began.

I’m a bad mother became my refrain.

Whatever bouts of confidence in myself I had before Kate vanished once I held that jaundiced-yellow baby in my arms.  I cried every single day.  Multiple times a day.  Slept with my face next to hers.  With one eye open.  Until I just about ran myself ragged.

Why did I think I could do this?  Clearly, I wasn’t meant to be a mother.  I second-guessed myself from minute to minute.  Should I let her cry or go get her?  Hmm…does she have a cold or something worse?  Should I force her to drink from the bottle?  How much tummy time have I done today?  She’s getting too much sun.  Or not enough.  Isn’t there something I’m supposed to be doing about Vitamin D?

I tormented myself.  Then I got caught up in what every other mother was doing.  What book is she reading?  Well then I better read that, too.  Oh wait, maybe I should read this book as well.  Wait.  Those books contradict each other.  Aren’t you people supposed to be experts?  What am I supposed to do?

Somewhere around six months, I gave up all parenting stuff.  No more books.  No more advice.  No more parenting websites.  All that stuff just served to make me distrust myself.  I kept searching for answers that weren’t there.  Because all that advice was about some fictional baby.  And my baby was Kate.

So I started listening to my instincts instead.  When I thought Kate was hungry, I fed her.  When I thought she was sleepy, I put her down for a nap.  When I thought her cries were really whines, I let her go.  When I thought her cries meant she needed mama, I went to her.

And I started doing better.  And Kate became less fussy.

Now, as Kate is almost two, I feel I’m back at that newborn stage again.  While we’re past breastfeeding and swaddling, issues like very public displays of tantrums, “no,” and refusal to eat anything besides goldfish have become my new battle grounds.

And, of course, there are all sorts of books and advice on how to deal with these Terrible Twos.

Everyone has a theory.  And there’s is best.  So when I listen to moms debate when and how to potty train, I get that anxious feeling in my stomach.  Is that what I should do?  Gosh, I don’t have a plan for that yet.  I better do that.  Like yesterday.

There’s nothing like parenting to make you feel like a failure.

But there’s also nothing like parenting that makes you feel empowered to grow and nurture and support your baby in a way that only you know how.

The other day at the park a mom and I were talking about parenting toddlers.  I was telling her some stuff that seems to work for me – at least for now.  She eagerly took my advice and asked what book I was using.  I laughed and said I came up with this stuff on my own.  From being Kate’s mom.

The thing about kids is, there’s always something.  And I know parents like me worry every day, hoping they said and did the right things.  But maybe there is no right thing.  And while sometimes I watch Kate run across the playground, and I think I don’t know what tomorrow will bring or if I’m ready for it, I figure I’ll just do the best I can.  And perhaps wing it.

 

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When Life Get Too Easy, I Get Suspicious

posted 3rd April 2012    Written by: Caitlin    CATEGORY: All Posts, Caiti, Season 6, Travel/Adventure

I’ve been in Ireland just over two weeks at the time I’m writing this. And so far, things have been remarkably easy.

Almost too much so… which makes me suspicious.

When I arrived in Dublin after my overnight flight from Chicago, my husband Mark was at the airport ready to pick me up, since he had been living and working in Ireland for a month already.

After a quick highway drive, we arrived at our apartment that Mark’s company arranged for us– a perfectly nice two-bedroom, furnished place located in a historic and adorably quintessential Irish town.

The company also provided us with everything else we’d need: utilities, a grocery allowance, a car, a cell phone, and even a TV and cable service (the last two arguably fall outside the “need” category, but hey, don’t bite the hand that feeds you, right?). Grocery stores, restaurants and brick-clad pubs lining Main Street are all within a few minutes’ walking distance of our front door, and there are tree-lined running paths practically in our backyard. There’s even a hilly sheep pasture across from the neighborhood where I hear the tiny bleating of fluffy lambs while I’m taking my morning walks, for pete’s sake.

My initial reaction is that it feels like a travel experience wrapped up in a shiny red bow.
Or maybe a bit like traveling with training wheels.
Or some pseudo travel scenario arranged by a producer of “The Bachelor” (minus the roses and silly emotional girls).
(Go ahead, pick your metaphor.)

Not that I’m complaining. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity that we’ve been given, and I know that Mark is paying his dues by working his butt off and putting in long hours at work. He’s been here in Ireland a lot longer than me, so he had to deal with learning to drive on the left and adjusting to roundabouts on his own. He has stories of getting hopelessly lost for hours in downtown Dublin after two flights and over 24 hours awake.

But for me, it’s been a pretty sweet deal. During the days, I get to work on writing and design work, go exploring around town, and cook dinner for us, and our weekends are full of excursions, where I happily snap hundreds of photos of the beautiful countryside. Sometimes I think it’s too good to be true.

I’m interested in what my general suspicion about the ease of this trip may reveal about myself. I’ve determined a few things:

1. I go in to new situations expecting them to be difficult.
It’s one thing to acknowledge a new situation that might feel uncomfortable, and to give yourself a little leeway as you ease into it. But that’s not what I do. I enter it on the defensive, expecting a struggle. My mind is all caught up in the future, imagining possible scenarios– all of which go fantastically horrible, of course. I mean, traveling is fun and amazing, but it isn’t supposed to be easy. On this trip, I imagined immigration not letting me into the country or Mark not wanting me here after getting settled in on his own (WHAT? I’m his wife! But Crazybrain doesn’t concern itself with things like “logic”).

The lesson: There’s a fine line between being prepared and obsessing. I really want move away from having my guard up all the time and instead put more of an effort into paying attention to the present moment, where– 95% of the time– things are absolutely fine.

2. I have a hard time owning my happiness.
I’ve noticed that as much as I have trouble opening up about the hard stuff I’m going through (like quitting my job), I also feel uncomfortable talking about the good stuff. It feels like I’m bragging or rubbing my good fortune in other people’s faces when I talk about how well things are going. A part of me also feels a bit unworthy, since we are here in Ireland because of Mark, and I’m just “tagging along.”

The lesson: If being happy at the sight of baby sheep is wrong, I don’t want to be right! In all seriousness, I need to take a lesson from Molly, who often talks about the importance of celebrating your accomplishments. So here it goes: Everything is great and I am happy! I am so grateful for this experience! Corporate-funded travel is pretty much The Actual Best!

3. I’m worried about getting too comfortable.
Since we have a home base here in Ireland (as opposed to a hotel situation) and I happen to be a bit of a homebody, I don’t want to end up inadvertently choosing my comfort zone over any of the varied experiences I’d have outside my door.

The Lesson: I want to keep those confidence-building, boundary-pushing goals in mind. As with almost everything else in my life, it’s a delicate balance– choosing quieter activities that refill my well (since I am a pretty classic INFP introvert), weighed against the situations that’d be growth opportunities full of lasting memories. I’m pretty sure that a mix of both scenarios would lead to the happiest version of me.

… So this is where my thoughts are as I get settled into Ireland. It’s been amazing and gorgeous and fun so far, and I can’t wait to see what the next few months brings. I’m 99% sure that it won’t include an immigration officer knocking on my door and kicking me out of the country, despite what my brain seems to think.

{Image Credit: My husband}

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The Highs and Lows of Shaping My Own Career

posted 2nd April 2012    Written by: Arielle    CATEGORY: All Posts, Arielle, Job/Career/Work, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 6

The white expanse of a blank Word document sat in front of me. The cursor blinked, unmoving, taunting me with its stillness. Blink blink. There were, quite literally, no words.

A few weeks ago, I was put in touch with the executive director of a non-profit via a colleague of a friend of my dad’s (Networking: not just bogus lip service from your college career counselor!). I went to his office and we had a really great discussion about where I’ve been, where the organization is going, and a possible marriage between the two.

I assumed that the director had only agreed to meet with me as a favor to the person who had referred me, so naturally I was surprised when he said:

“I think the best way to proceed from here is for you to write up a job description of what you’d like to do. When you’re done, send it to me and we’ll go from there.”

This brought me to the blank Word document and the dreaded blinking cursor.

(Coming to a theater near you, the newest Hollywood suspense-thriller – The Blank Word Document and the Dreaded Blinking Cursor)

I tried to write down some bullet points.

Report on –

Blink blink.

Manage process for -

Blink.

Liaise with -

BLINK BLINK BLINK.

All I had were those résumé-friendly action words. This paltry excuse for a job description had the potential for a whole lot of doing, if only I knew what I actually wanted to do.

Yet the god damned cursor kept blinking at me. On off on off on off.

“STOP IT!” I wanted to yell. “Don’t you know, you blinking asshole, that I just started this quarterlife crisis blogging thing and I just wrote a post about how I don’t know how to articulate what I want to do with my career yet here you are expecting me to articulate what I want to with my career? VODKA. NOW.”

Blink blink.

I eventually calmed down and knew I had to get something substantive down on the page. So I thought more about our conversation. I thought about what the organization does and how I might contribute. I thought about job responsibilities that I would excel at, as well as ones that I knew I couldn’t even do yet but that I wanted to grow into.

And just like that, I created my dream job. It might be a dream job limited to one employer, but it was something. It hadn’t been easy, but it hadn’t been that hard either.

I sent it off, and got a pretty quick reply that the director was impressed with what I wrote but wanted to revise it a bit before setting up another in-person meeting.

For the first time in my 2 years of job-hunting (because even from day 1 at my last job, I was always looking to leave), I felt like I was on the cusp on something wonderful.

No more working for companies that I didn’t connect with.

No more time spent doing mindless tasks that I’m pretty sure did not add value to anyone or anything.

No more feeling like I was underqualified for everything, or being rejected because “you’re great but we just want someone with 7 to 10 years of experience.”

For the first time in years, someone saw me as the capable, intelligent, driven person that deep down I always knew I was, but that I had lost sight of during the disheartening process of having my résumé passed over several hundred times (since March 2010 I have applied to 693 jobs).

Finally, after several weeks of waiting, I received another email from the director. He was still revising my job description and would get back to me by Monday to discuss next steps.

BOOYAH!

And then I noticed something weird: the subject of the email.

“Internship”

I’m sorry…what? Where did that come from?

This one word brought everything to a halt. My chest tightened, and I felt that pit in my stomach that you get when you’re hugely and suddenly disappointed.

I know an internship isn’t the end of the world, and I don’t even know any of the details yet. But I do know, with this being a non-profit, that I would be foolish to expect there to be any money. That’s really what kills me. Unpaid internships are wonderful if you’re in college, but at this stage in my life I’m just not down with working for free.

Money may not be everything, but without it, it’s sometimes hard to have anything. And it’s really hard to make your student loan payments.

Seeing as all I have to go on is this one-word subject of an email, I may have jumped the gun as far as going into full-blown panic mode (okay, I definitely did, I know I’m being irrational but I can’t help it). I’m just…bummed.

I know the important pieces of the puzzle are still there: this organization still wants me. They still see my potential to provide value. I still got to tell an employer what I wanted to do for them instead of vice versa, which, FYI, is different than it was with the other 692 jobs. I guess I just thought that last piece, the piece where I get a biweekly paycheck, would have fit in too.

But I’m not just sitting around while I wait for the details of this internship. I’m going to keep sending out resumes, keep networking. There’s still a job out there for me, and I need to be prepared in case this isn’t it.

Time to open up a fresh Word document and compose another cover letter.

Blink blink.

 

Photo credit: madame furie

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