ALL IS FAIR IN LOVE AND BLOGGING

I’m taking today’s blog to address some of the responses from the last two days.

This blog is being read by more people than I had anticipated which is a good thing.  An ignored blog is not a happy blog.

But of course when one puts one’s feelings out for all to see one has to accept the fact some people won’t agree – some will get their feelings hurt and those who don’t actually know you will come to conclusions sans a full dossier of facts.

CHHHHNAGES  got some really interesting feedback.

 First off, Lynnda, I never thought for a second you didn’t want me to keep the blog going.  I was merely saying in your really astute analysis of my dream that my abandoning it was the only part where I didn’t agree with you. I do like doing it even if it ruffles feathers at times and I have to take a few cyber punches or angry emails as a result. I think it is making some people feel less alone and I think all of you who send in comments and your own experiences give it a vibrancy that keeps people coming back to visit the site.

So I thank you.

I also find it really interesting how different people react to what is many times the same situation.  My friend Will Akers who generously offered up that his kids forgot their mother’s birthday and it  “didn’t bother her.” I wish I was more like that. I have a thing about birthdays and family events and their being remembered. I remember many people’s birthdays and throw parties for lots and have a fit when mine is overlooked, at least by those who are close to me. 

I think it has to do with my childhood and  the parties my mother gave for me. They were always elaborate with a lot of thought and in my family love was oftentimes offered up in the form of things. I don’t think it’s perhaps the healthiest of ways but it had its upside and it has stuck with me all these decades.

I also think, and I will get more into this later, that kids need to be thoughtful whether they are in the next room or three thousand miles away. We are not doing them any favors by not reinforcing the value of other’s feelings and needs for certain things at certain times.

In my husband’s family birthdays were not a big deal, gifts were not exchanged, parties were not elaborate and consequently feelings are not hurt when special days are forgotten. In my family, or the group of disparate characters that make up my bloodline, forgetting a birthday is a major sin.  I used to give my mother parties when we were close and tried to acknowledge her birthday in a variety of ways. After I grew up she did  give me parties at twenty- one and thirty. Thirty was lovely, I must say.

But since then she has not spent a birthday with me and was in fact always out of the country on my birthday. I asked her about this once and her response was, “It’s not my fault your birthday falls at the time of year I like to be in China.” I’m not telling this story to air dirty laundry, though it comes off that way. It’s just many of you who knew me when I was younger and can’t figure out how what seemed to be a close relationship devolved into such a hell hole, I merely offer up examples of what has led me to the place I’m at. This is a minor example.

So I do not want my kids forgetting their family’s birthdays and when they get older they may fall in love and marry someone for whom these days are important and better to be ahead of the game and prepared. Nice manners never hurt anyone.

We are all busy. But it takes very little time, especially these days with e-cards, just to let people know they  count. This is not a bad request and I don’t find it “needy and smothering” like Mr. Rojack who responded so rudely to Friday’s blog.

Which brings me to another point: the comment I made about how you can be in a meeting or with the Pope and your kids expect you to drop everything, this got a bigger response from people than almost anything I have written.   It seems to be an epidemic among today’s youth.  My friend Dominique feels it has to do with their need for instant gratification.  They all have cell phones and they want it now.  I think she has a point.  But for me it also falls into the land of narcissism.  What it’s saying and teaching is other people’s time isn’t valuable.  Now Taylor I must say for the most part has learned to be good about this. She slips at times, but we all do. However it does happen and it happens with all kids. You have to be there for me but you have to leave me alone.  And there is a problem with saying they are all “self-involved and it’s part of the age.”  What if it continues? Some will come out of it and some will not and those who don’t are going to live a frightful existence as lonely narcissists, unless they are lucky enough to become superstars. They will live lives of loneliness with ultimately no real friends and a family who merely tolerates them or sometimes has nothing to do with them at all.

Empathy is one of the greatest traits a human can possess. I have very strong feelings about empathy and responsibility, namely: if you are old enough to have sex, drink yourself blind, get high, live on your own, fight for your country and vote then you are old enough to remember your keys, take responsibility for your behavior, be kind to those who are good to you and give something back to the world that has given you so much. Adulthood is not just an age, it’s a state of mind and a form of behavior. This is something we seem to have forgotten. Granted our freshman are out there learning this, but we are not helping if we don’t reinforce it in some way. 

So in response to my friend Christina and her comment  “They are all like this and they will call when they want money.”  My feeling is, only if you allow it.

They have some responsibility to you too. And  it’s not to call every day and tell you every move unlike what Mr. Rojack feels we are demanding.  I don’t think any of us are asking all the details and yes, I’m thrilled she is happy. I would hate it if she were miserable.  But we are paying a lot of money and we are there when then need us no matter what time of day or night and as Lynnda said to Matthew if you like your car, and your ATM and your tuition than you can answer the phone every now and then and let me know you are OK.  And you know what that is not being smothering or needy it’s being a mother who cares and has taken amazing care of this person for eighteen years and deserves a “hi, how are you?” from time to time. And if there is anyone out there -Mr. Rojack – who does not get this – honestly – fuck you.

I have in the last several weeks offended many. My ex-husband was so upset by THE STEPS STEP UP TO THE PLATE he sent me an email, odd since he sat through Taylor’s entire graduation without uttering a word to either Glenn or myself.  But he feels there is “a special place in hell just for me” because I left out his mother, though she has not contacted Taylor in seven years and I left out my mother who disowned Taylor and went so far as to send her back her birth announcement the other day. The blog was not about grandparents it was about step-grandparents.  

My own mother is still reeling as she doesn’t seem to remember not driving me to Acting School and feels I am making all this up as I go along. Trust me, twenty years of being a story writer and even I couldn’t think up some of the things that have transpired. 

And then my new cyber friend Pace asked me genuinely if I am more sensitive to Taylor‘s  going to college since I didn’t go?  Quite the contrary, I wanted her to go as I think my not going was a major mistake. And I want her to thrive.

 I don’t understand certain rites of passage and things that are going on as I did not go through them myself. Glenn will talk about his days in Bennington and he gets it all completely. I have no frames of reference or experiences to draw on, so it is all new to me.

I went pretty much from thirteen to thirty and there are big gaps in there that will never get filled in, so in that area I am a Freshman Mom in progress, learning about college through her.

And also, you know what plain and simple, I miss her. I wake up every day and there is tiny hole in my heart because I can’t walk in the next room and find her there. I’m not smothering her nor do I want her running home to me unhappy and unable to cope. But the two things can co- exist.  I can miss her and feel the hole in our lives her absence creates, while still relishing her newfound independence and, hopefully, growth and maturity.

Clearly this is something Mr. Rojack also doesn’t get, perhaps he is childless. You live with someone for eighteen years, you love them in a way unique to all other relationships, for the most part you know where they are and you know they will always have to come home. And you wake up one day and they’re not there. That takes a big adjustment  and if it weren’t the case I don’t think people would be relating to this site in the way they do.

It’s the tough stuff. We will get used to it. But it takes time. 

FRESHMAN MOM

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