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“You don’t need to come. I’m not dying.”
My mom had surgery last week, and that’s what she said when she heard I was flying across the country to help my dad, and to spend time with her, after her surgery.
I think her response is part consideration for my busy life–not wanting to be a burden to her not-close-to-retirement son with a bustling family, and part defiance that the surgery posed any kind of risk for her. I get it.
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I did the math in my head. If the sales revenue generated on the opening day of our fourth location remained even sort-of consistent, we would be good–finally over the hump to financial security. We started with one whole grain bread bakery in 2004, and four years later, we had added three locations, and I thought we had reached our goal. I remember where I was standing, on the stairs leading to our kitchen, when I was overcome by relief. A goal attained. At last. At long last.
But it didn’t last. I grew to resent those opening day looky-loos for getting my hopes up. Our fourth location settled into a revenue performance much like that of our other three bakeries. We would survive. But we were not going to thrive. So I looked for a new path to achieve our goal of financial security. I adjusted the product lines, trimmed down our workforce, promoted seasonal specials, changed our operating hours, partnered with other organizations, donated tons of bread in the community. I even ate nothing but whole grain bread for a whole month, and lost weight, to debunk the gluten-free frenzy. And I did it all in pursuit of a goal.
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(Click here to read part one.)
Confused about the sources of her anxiety, and incapable of confronting Chris for the alcohol or relationship dysfunction, Rose did what she’d been trained to do her whole life. She signed up for 5k runs and thumbed through grad school degree catalogs. Deflection and gaslighting are traits so often assigned to people experiencing addiction first hand. But second-hand alcoholics can get pretty good at them, too. Rose could have taught a grad school class in denying reality and looking for a solution in external gratification.
Rose ignored the anxiety and her partner’s drinking, and instead focused on the next degree, the next job, or at least the next PR in the next Saturday morning race. It is a good thing she didn’t get the euphoric feeling from booze that many of us alcoholics experience. She had the denial and deflection down so well that it’s kind of amazing that she didn’t develop a debilitating addiction of her own.
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He took a cube of cheese right out of Rose’s mouth. It was the move a parent makes when a baby shoves an unhalved grape past its toothless gums. “You should eat more protein,” is what Rose’s partner, Chris, said.
“You’re too fat,” is what she heard.
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Is having enough about getting more or needing less?
I was at a casual lunch meeting with six people and two eight-slice pizzas. I ate one slice of pepperoni and one slice of margherita. I was still hungry, and the pizza was really delicious, but you could not have force-fed me a third slice.
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I touched her shoulder and her back a lot. My connection to her, and our comfort with each other, was evident to anyone who cared to pay attention to us in the crowded bar. Her husband definitely noticed. We had recently traveled together, she and I, and her husband’s mind was swirling with anger, jealousy, and questions.
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I hate having my priorities in order. Why do I listen to all the talking heads who unanimously confirm that when people are on their deathbeds, they want their families around them, and they don’t utter a single word about their careers or their money. Knowing relationships matter more than power and prestige is unhelpful. I’ve been societally conditioned since birth to achieve and accumulate. Now I’ve got to consistently put the people who love and trust me first? What a drag.
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When Sheri was pregnant with our first child, we decided we needed a safer, more sensible family-oriented car. Nothing like pregnancy to open our eyes to the death-tempting lifestyle we’d been socially conditioned to accept. You might have thought we were lion tamers or sword swallowers, not an inside sales representative and his bank-teller wife.
It must be fun to sell cars when a young couple enters the dealership with bright eyes and bushy tails, and maybe a little drool forming at the corners of their mouths to offset the sparkle of innocent naivety in their eyes. I came prepared with my internet printouts from the KBB website determined to get the best of my adversary in his clip-on tie and rubber-soled wingtips. We found a car we liked, and as we started the negotiation process, our salesman pointed to another couple sitting with one of his coworkers at a similar showroom desk. He said the couple was interested in the same car, and that it was the only one with those features in inventory. As Mike Tyson famously said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” I think I offered $500 over sticker. The ink wouldn’t come out of the pen fast enough as I hastily wrote the biggest check of my young-adult life. My bride was impressed. With the salesman. Through the years, I justified my impetuous overpayment by reminding myself that the car had clearly protected our baby from all the untamed lions in Minnesota.
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There are only two bathrooms in our house, which means sharing sometimes. Occasionally, the sharing is delightful, like when I am brushing my teeth as my wife steps out of the shower. More often, sharing involves one person sitting down as another person tries not to gag while attempting to identify a new pimplish bump just far enough back on the shoulder as to make the mirror a frustrating accomplice in a fruitless attempt at diagnosis.
My wife instinctively demands, “Courtesy flush, please,” even when she walks into a miraculously unoccupied bathroom.
In the center of the living room sits a large wooden coffee table. On top of the table are thirteen finished puzzles and two puzzle boxes. Twelve of the puzzles are small – scenes of Christmas featuring Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the rest of the Peanuts gang. One is large and intricate – a cityscape of brownstone buildings decorated for Christmas. Under the coffee table is a stack of magazines that usually sit on the table, a board game, a collection of our family Christmas letters from years past shoved into plastic sleeves contained in a three-ring binder, two candy canes, and a picture album. There is another picture album on the side table next to the sofa.