Grateful Struggle

 

I was on the way home from picking up Eleanore from school a couple of days ago when that song came on the radio. You know the one. The one from years ago that you almost never hear anymore. The one that immediately transports you back to a completely different time and place. The one that reminds you of the past. The one that, amazingly, you are still powerless against—that forces you back. That forces you to relive it all, like it or not. 

This particular song did not bring up what one would label as happy memories. 

I was instantly in college again. It was Thanksgiving, and I was driving home to Mom and Dad’s house for fall break. I was crying, again, because, well, college wasn’t a really good time for me. And I was about to drive home to put on the happy face with the family, pretend things were fine, and pray that I could lie my way through time with my best friend, who I didn’t often see, but who could always (and still) see right through me. 

There was depression. There was an eating disorder I was trying to work through. There were academic struggles. And significant financial hardship. And an emotionally abuse relationship I was trying to justify to myself and to others. This was not a happy time…not my best look. And I knew it. I was smart enough to know I was a mess. I just wasn’t quite smart enough to figure out a way out. And that was the most frustrating part of all. 

Gah, and that song. The one that was on the radio constantly that winter. The one I remember listening to in the car on the way home for thanksgiving as I wrestled with all of this. Here it was again, reminding me of a painful past that I have never been proud of. 

That was twenty years ago. Twenty. 

When the song came on the radio this week, I was instantly thrown back to being that scared, insecure, hot-mess of a twenty year old. Alone in my car, I think that I actually twitched when I thought about who I was then. Embarrassed. 

And then I fast-forwarded through all the Thanksgivings between then and now, and I could very vividly remember them all. The incredibly challenging years to come—the ones I spent alone because I couldn’t afford to go home or to even buy food. (By the way, most depressing Thanksgiving ever? The one I spent alone in my apartment eating StoveTop Stuffing straight from the container because that’s all I could afford.) The years without mom, and then without dad. And the ones I spent in relationships past with other families that ended in eventual heartbreak. 

But then, I was reminded that for the last twenty years, those hard Thanksgivings weren’t the norm. That for most of the last 20 years, after I had found the strength and courage to pull myself out of the college-drama-stooper, I had had amazing Thanksgivings. That I have had a roof overhead. And just enough money to feed me and my friends and family. That I got to spend every Thanksgiving after that super depressing one with my dad. That I got engaged over thanksgiving. That I have come to be known as the house to go to for Thanksgiving when you don’t have anywhere else to go (thanks to that one Thanksgiving all by myself, I swore that no one would ever have to do that if I could help it. There is always room for anyone and everyone at my Thanksgiving table.) These are beautiful Thanksgiving memories, and far, far outnumber the sad and lonely ones. 

I guess the point is, things got better. And while I take great pride in having had the fortitude and tenacity to have turned things around for myself, I’m neither so proud nor so naïve as believe I did it all by myself. The friends who tutored me when school sucked, loaned me money when I didn’t have two dimes to rub together, talked to me and supported me (and directed me to counseling when they couldn’t support or talk to me on their own anymore…) who stood by me when things were crap… it was those people that suddenly appeared to me, flashing through my mind like an old black and white news reel as I traveled through the Thanksgivings of the past. 

 I look around at my life now and hardly know what to say. I’m surrounded by blessings that are far too many to count, and for which I wonder if I deserve. A loving family. An amazing husband. Two beautiful children. A warm house. A steady job that allows me to provide for those I love. And all those friends who helped me along the way, still here with me today. I could not be more grateful. It hardly seems possible that that girl from twenty years ago could be standing here where I am. But here we are. And for that, I am endlessly grateful. 

By the time the song had ended on that drive home, I was no longer embarrassed by that 20 year old. I was proud. And I was incredibly grateful for her struggle. Not only did I prove that I can do anything—can overcome anything with hard work and faith and the refusal to give in—but grateful for the people in my life who helped me get here. I have more than my fair share of loving support. I can only hope to pass that along to others. To share the love. To support others who need it. To open up my table to all. 

This old radio song that had caused my reverie was slowly replaced by another song from college that has always meant a great deal to me. Those who know me well know that this song has pretty much been on every mix tape (yeah, I said mix tape) and compilation I’ve ever made since I first heard it. These words. This sentiment. THIS is what I’m thankful for this year. I’m thankful for the struggle that has made me who I am. That has brought me here to this incredible place of blessings. That has forced me to grow up. That has made it impossible for me to forget my dear friends who have helped bring me here. 

And so, to all my friends on this Thanksgiving Day, this song is for you, with my most grateful thanks. 

The Wood Song- Indigo Girls 

September

 

When I was in high school, my very favorite time of year was fall. September. I loved going back to school. Starting anew. Back to seeing friends. New classes. New chances. New school supplies (AH! I love school supplies!) I loved marching band. I loved Friday night football games. Crunchy leaves and frost in the mornings. Sweaters and hot cocoa and bonfires with friends. Some of my happiest times and fondest high school memories come from crisp fall nights. 

As I grew older and became a teacher, I loved September, but for different reasons. I loved new faces in my classroom—new chances to meet new people. If the year before had been crummy, this was a fresh chance. If the year before had been amazing, then something new to live up to. And, you know, football and leaves and frost and sweaters and hot cocoa, and bonfires with friends. 

It’s weird. As other people think about fall as the beginning of the end of a year, I always think of it as the beginning of, well, the beginning. A new year dawning. Fresh starts. Comfortable routines. (I have a feeling that most teachers feel that way, too. I actively seek out “academic year” calendars that run from July to July instead of the ones that start in January. Is that weird? Teachers, you with me?) 

I had no idea when I was in high school or undergrad what September would end up meaning to me, but in my adult life, it has become the month for which I am most grateful. Some people take the month of November to innumerate all the things for which they are thankful, what with it being Thanksgiving and all (how predictable!) But not me. For me, it’s September. And not just for the football and leaves and frost and sweaters and hot cocoa and bonfires with friends (although, let’s be honest, I do still so love all of those things), but instead for all the things that September has come to mean for me as a grown up. 

It seems astonishing to me that 10 years ago this month, I started in my doctoral program at Penn State. This event was life altering to me in ways I never would have expected. Yes, I got a terminal degree that changed the course of my professional career (NBD.) And yes, it was the best four years (well, five and a half, in the end) of my life, having met such amazing friends both in my program and in the town where I lived—friends that I will no doubt have for the rest of my days. Penn State was the place I got my first professional job; where I followed my mentor and where I sadly also had to say goodbye to him. Penn State was home. Penn State was family. (And, we’ve mentioned my love of fall football, right?) 

And most importantly, ten years ago, on a random September day at Penn State, I met J. 

It was unceremonious. Almost accidental. But the beginning of fall reminds me of the beginning of us, even when, at the time, there was absolutely no us that was beginning. 

Most of you know that J and I fell in love through writing-- or at least that I fell in love with him through his writing. I can’t totally confirm that the first time I read his writing was in September, but it was assuredly fall. The beginning of the school year. The beginning of something new. New feelings. New connections. 

And so it makes sense to me that we got married in September. That today is our anniversary. The beginning of another something beautiful. (It only took us six years to get it together after that first meeting. We’re a little slow on the uptake.) I love that we got married in September. And it’s been a wonderful, hard, exceptional four years of laughter and love and tomfoolery. This guy, who in the beginning didn’t pull a second glance from me, has taught me more about what real life, and real love, and real sacrifice mean than any other person in the world.

It’s hilarious to me that last night, the night before our anniversary, we were both sitting on the couch, obviously distracted, thinking about how we could carve out the time to get away from one another for a few minutes to go and write something beautiful for each other as our gifts to celebrate today. It’s hilarious and ironic, and exactly what you would expect from the two of us: me working on this piece next to him on the couch, and J working on one of the most beautiful pieces of writing I have ever read there on his computer, a piece that will forever be held in my heart as one of the most loving letters a man could write to his wife. 

(Please take a moment to read why I fell in love with my husband by reading his anniversary piece here.) 

One year and three weeks after we were married, we gave birth to Ellie. Another wonderful September beginning. And we could not have possibly conceived how she would change our lives. Not just our lives to the outside world, but our lives as a married couple. Children change a marriage. Make it new and challenging and exhausting and exciting. You learn interesting things about how people handle stress, how people express frustration, and how limitless a person’s capacity for love can be. I certainly know that the deepth and breadth of my feelings for my husband expanded exponentially the first time I watched him hold our daughter. 

Yesterday, I was reading an article on unconventional songs played at weddings. One of the songs on the list was one I have always loved, by Earth Wind and Fire, aptly named “September.” It’s one of those songs that I always sorta groove along to when I hear, but that I had never really listened to the words of. It seemed like an odd choice of wedding songs to me, until I read the lyrics. It’s perfect. Perfect for weddings. And perfect for us. And perfect for my celebration of September. 

So please, share today with me my love of my husband. The love of my kiddo, and my love of September with a little Earth Wind and Fire. It’s a good way to mark yet another beginning of another beautiful year. 

“September” Earth, Wind and Fire

Unpacking it all

 

Do you crave change and upheaval? Never knowing what’s next or where you’ll be in 2 years? Well then, let me tell ya…Military life is for you! 

One of the most interesting and exciting (and annoying) parts of this lifestyle is the PCS. For those of you not privy to the ol’ lingo, a PCS is a “Permanent Change of Station,” which is fancy talk for “you’re moving again, solider!”

I myself have always found this to be a bit of a perk of military life because I hate being stagnant. I hate being tied down; hate getting too used to a particular routine. Now, I do like a good routine, which we’ve clearly discussed before, but I also like to change things up a bit before life gets stuck in what I have always considered to be the inevitable rut waiting just around the corner. So a little PCS every two or three years isn’t the worst thing to me. You meet new people and see great parts of the world. And people always have a new vacation spot to come visit you. (Side note: In the 21 years since leaving my parents’ house for college, I have lived in 14 different apartments/ houses. And that was well before J and I got hitched. I am no stranger to an ever-so-slightly nomadic lifestyle.)

Military spouses wear the number of PCSs they’ve endured like a badge of honor (for good reason—it’s a colossal pain in the ass.) I was at a change of command luncheon for military spouses not too long ago (yes, and that’s a story for another time) and one of the first biographical facts given to help us get to know the new General’s wife was that she had had to pack up her household goods and move 18 times over the last 24 years. Don’t remember her name or where she grew up or went to school, but God Bless the woman who’s had to pack out her house 18 times. 

The good news about all this moving is that you get really good at boxing things up. And every couple of years, you get to do a substantial stuff purge: Stash the things away that you care about (read: reevaluate what it is you care about), and toss the things you don’t. Using this philosophy you would assume that J and I would have infinitely less stuff in our house than we do. Alas, we still have a metric ton of shit. 

“Well, at least you don’t have to pack it yourselves!” is the recurring cry of all my non-military friends who always try to “glass-half-full” the constant moving process. And to some degree that is true. And it IS a good thing (Believe me, I’m not trying to wrap up all my dishes *again.* Ever.) 

But let me tell you my friends, the pack-out process of your home is one of the most stressful parts of moving regardless of the fact that you’re not the one doing the packing. No, instead, you’re the one standing in the corner, trying not to get in the way, wondering why on earth they are putting three items from your bathroom, one from your bedroom, and one from your front lawn all in one box labeled “stuff from the rooms.” (Seriously, whomever it is teaching these folks packing and labeling skills has a sadistic as hell sense of humor.) No rhyme. No reason. And often handwriting and spelling are bad enough that they might as well have not labeled the boxes anyway. 

This process is also never door-to-door, by the way (yeah, they don’t share that little tidbit very often…) Rather, a semi-truck that is half-full of other people’s things arrives at your house, they fill it up as best they can, realize that, like, two pieces of your furniture won’t fit, call a small moving van for those random things, and off drive(s) the truck(s) cross-country, without you, to a storage facility somewhere in the town to which you’re moving, to be unpacked unceremoniously with less rhyme and reason than when packed. And then you’re given a “target date” upon which a different team of movers goes back to the storage facility, puts your stuff in another random truck and it is delivered to your door, where you will be joyfully reunited with all your earthly belongings approximately 6 weeks after you have last seen them. 

But let’s be honest. It never actually happens that way. That’s a pipe dream. It’s folly. 

The target date is typically pretty right on, though never when you want it to be (What do you mean I’ll be living in an empty house sleeping on an air mattress and ordering take-out for three weeks before my stuff arrives? Didn’t you leave my house, like, a week before I did?) And then they show up with…meh…80% of your stuff? (Whoops, forgot those two pieces in the other truck…we’ll find them somewhere…) And without fail, one of your boxes fell off a truck somewhere in an Iowa cornfield never to be seen again. And at least one box *may* have been featured on Mythbusters in a “What happens when we drop this moving box from a helicopter from 100 feet in the air onto a bed of glass shards?” episode. And you’re definitely going to be missing one of the legs of your dining room table (THIS is one of the great mysteries of the world to me. I watched you take the table apart… You put all the legs in a pile together. You wrapped said legs. How did all the legs not get into the same box at the same time? Seriously…how does ONE LEG decide to just say “eff this noise, I’m going to live with a family in New Jersey!”?) 

Anyway. All of this is by way of saying that SOMETIMES, you sorta wish you were the one doing the moving. You’ve got no control. And you have no idea where you stuff is, what your stuff is, or whether or not you’re ever seeing it again. 

In our last house, we had a huge basement. It could have been livable if we really worked at it, but we didn’t need the space, and so it became storage by default. Like, whoa storage. I could not have told you what was down there any more than I could have recited Atlas Shrugged to you by memory. I had a vague sense that the basement was the black hole where things we weren’t using right now were living; things we needed to hold on to, for sure, but that we definitely weren’t touching on a daily basis. But I couldn’t have laid my hands on those things if you had paid me. 

The basement then, was not a part of the pack out process that I supervised. I was upstairs trying to make sure that the mattresses were labeled “master bedroom mattresses” instead of “padded wall hangings from the hallway.” The basement was already an amalgam of random. Labeling it “basement stuff” was probably as close as we were going to get, and more accurate than any of the other labels in the house might be. 

When we moved into our new house, all the “basement stuff” got dumped into the spare bedroom that we weren’t using. We likely didn’t use this stuff at the old house; it probably wasn’t necessary to open it immediately here either. And so there it has been sitting since April when we first descended upon this locale. Basement stuff in the guest bedroom. 

Now that we’re closing in on D-day for 2.0 (how did I get to be 7 months pregnant already, by the way?) we figured that the we should start cleaning out the guest room, that sooner than later would become the nursery for Little Man. J took Ellie yesterday for a playdate while I was left with a large, unkempt room and the three traditional moving piles: Toss it; donate it; wrap it back up and save it for later. 

I had been making solid progress with the room of random yesterday (and it was mostly all completely unnecessary stuff to donate or toss…) when I came upon a totally unmarked box. No real label. Just “basement stuff” written on the side. 

I was unprepared for the contents. 

When I opened it up, the first thing I opened was a box of correspondences from my wedding. Shower invitations; cards; gift tags; our save the date postcards and wedding bulletins; my bouquet of bows from my showers, and a list of all the people who had sent us well wishes along the way. 

And then it was box of all the correspondences I had received when my mother passed away. Newspaper clippings and unexpected greetings from long-ago friends. 

And three photo albums of my family from my youth that I haven’t looked at for ages. 

And my birth announcements for Ellie, to include pictures and cards from my surprise baby shower. And a photo album that my father had secretly been putting together of every picture or note that I had sent to him about Eleanore. 

And all of my father’s funeral documents. And pictures. Hand written notes to me from mom and dad. 

And a box of mix tapes that were made for me from my best friend from high school and college, artifacts of my youth that were, for much of my formative years, my most prized possessions. (The stories those songs tell…) 

And a copy of my dissertation that I had given my dad that he had hand written notes in the margins of. Questions for later. 

Clearly, there was no way that the movers would have known that what they should have labeled this box was “Fragile. Open with Care. Your whole life is inside.” 

As I dug, I just kept discovering more and more and more, and I found myself reduced to tears. So many amazing and wonderful and beautiful and heart-wrenching little items all in one box, the collective so overwhelming that I had to put the lid back on. 

Physically, mentally and emotionally, I don’t think I’m quite ready to unpack that box just yet. 

But I like knowing it’s there. And I like that my first memory of the new kid’s new room is that of overwhelming love and amazing good memories. 

Someday, maybe after we’re done with the Army and we’re done with the moving for good, it will be time to open up the box again. And it is my hope that at that point, I’ll have even more amazing and loving memories to stash inside. 

But I’ll need a bigger box. And I’ll probably just label it “Happy.”