SO HAPPY FOR A SNOW DAY!

Lucy has her friend Lilly here, they are watching movies on demand and making those Pillsbury cookies you cut and bake. The perfect snow day food – cut and bakes cookies. Thank goodness I have lost the taste for the raw dough itself and I’m staying out of the kitchen until the cookies have all been eaten.

First off I want to thank all of you who are my friends and really wrote in with such concern, good advice and even prayers in the case of lovely Susan in Tacoma when it looked like I might fall off the Word Warrior wagon.

Despite the fact many of you think I should go for the jugular I have decided against it, as at the end of the day it will accomplish nothing and it could only do more damage to Lucy who has to attend school with the person’s child,  and she likes the child.

I can’t at the moment in good faith let them play, as I don’t know what things will be spread about Lucy if I do.  But, I am leaving well enough alone and doing what I do best, taking my marbles, how ever many I have left, and going home quietly to my beautiful view of snowy Central Park.

Many people feel that talking things out “face to face” is the best approach.  And you know I imagine in many instances it is.

I personally have had very little luck where this is concerned.

There are many reasons for it, number one being, I have had very little practice so I am not good at it.

If I were good at one on one verbal confrontation,  “I reckon you done me wrong, how are we going to mosey on from here?” I would be a lawyer or lobbyist and not a writer, who sits in a room all day alone with a shovel and my thoughts.

So many of these blogs go back to family and our early training.

I think talking things out is vital; I think most of the time it’s the only way to move forward: If in fact forward is where you want to go.

But, I come from a family where this was never the practice.

It was either scream and yell, or the silent treatment followed by some form of let’s make up and never talk about what happened until I get mad again and then I will bring it up, as it will be safely packed in my bag marked “grudges” which I carry with me wherever I go.

This was and is true of both my parents.

My father is more willing to talk about what happened, and makes attempts at fixing it, but the attempts are often just that, but that is better than nothing and this case I take whatever crumbs come my way.

I was not schooled in “lets sit down and talk it over” I have had to learn to do it. And I can do it, I can do it with those I feel safe with and I can do it in cases where the relationship means so much to me it’s worth saving, even if I do have to venture out of my comfort zone.

But, if I don’t trust the person or if the person has already lied or hidden the facts from me and set me up in some way, I truly do not believe that sitting them down and pointing it and getting to the bottom of it, gets to the bottom of anything but more dissembling and mis-truths.

If I truly care about a relationship and it’s worth saving then l will muster all the courage I can and fight my nature and go out there and try and save it.

And of course if I have been the cause of someone’s pain or discomfort I do have it in me to apologize.

But in this case none of the above apply, except my mistrust so I shall remain quiet and calm. I don’t think this is a problem to be solved, it’s a problem that needs to be put on the shelf, forgotten and we must move on.

Lucy went in the school through the front door yesterday, she is resilient and loved.

Life is full of ups and downs and she is not innocent in this situation, she did do something out of line, it’s just the way it was handled and presented from that point on that was way off -course.

But Susan said it and Susan is wise, brimming with faith and comes from a very solid family with good values. Her mother was sort of an ideal for me when I was growing up.  I even mention her in my book.

Do we think I can mention my book once in every blog between now and next January?

Anyway, Susan said, “they need to see us model good problem solving skills” or a version of that,  And she is right.

My mother resolved conflicts by sending nasty notes and not speaking to people and she handled her issues with her own mother this way and she has done the same with me.  She is attempting to do it at the moment from afar while not even speaking to me.

It’s quite a skill she has honed.  But this behavior has been hard wired into my DNA.

So it is up to me to take the hard drive and reprogram it.

I was reminded of this yesterday in a big way when cutting footage for LUCKY DUCKS.

The Teen Whisperer talks a lot about conflict resolution; truth be told he’s not so good at himself, but it’s a case of do as I say not as I do.

But it is very important to our children to see how we resolve conflicts in the household, with them, our friends, the lady at the market who is rude and pushes you aside and cuts in line. The cab driver who throws the tip back at you because he didn’t think it was enough. The person who is thoughtless and mean for no other reason than they are unhappy themselves want to drag you into their misery bunker with them.

Life is full of daily conflicts and they are all learning experiences, and the ways we deal with them can be  just as valuable lessons as the conflicts themselves.

It’s very easy to blow, but not as easy to sit with it and try and find your way out, or sometimes just admit there is no way out, but it is what it is.

The wonderful composer and diarist Ned Rorem is responsible for one of my favorite quotes – he says – “The answer is in the waiting.”

I have learned it’s almost never in the nasty message and the send button.

While we must protect our kids, we must also be vigilant in how they see us behave in all sorts of situations, especially the unpleasant ones, even when it involves them.  Protecting our loved ones, does not necessarily entitle us to unharnassed rage, and having been the recipient of unharnassed rage myself, from the people who were supposed to love and protect me, that has often times made me feel like I was entitled to do the same to others.

It does not, especially if I want my children to go through life with a strong set of conflict resolution skills.

Thank you all.

I love you and I love the view from my wagon.

Freshman Mom