Life, it just keeps on going

How is it that we get so caught up in our own lives that we lose ourselves? I put my needs first but now I just want my son to come home. I see now that I cannot compete with his friends. Maybe it is his age, a time between his high school graduation and adulthood. Either way I am still sitting here waiting for him to “get tired of his moral obsession and come home” (Prasad). I’ll just wait. Then a thought comes, “why sit here and sulk?” He is an adult now. Should not I be having fun?  I can find new friends ones who are not married. Do I still have it in me to party with the girls? Do I have the guts after 17 years of marriage to order my own drink to dance with another? I think John Ashbury completes my thoughts best in his essay, My Philosophy of Life “You can’t always be worrying about others and keeping track of yourself at the same time.” Maybe that should be my new philosophy…to get lost, go some place where no one knows me. Then all at once reality comes back as my fourteen-year-old daughter comes in needing one more thing from me. The saddest part, knowing that in 5 years she will be just like my son; not needing me or at least thinking she doesn’t.

Parenthood, I look at pictures of my children and soak in the ways they have grown up. Halloween pictures tell and show the most. For this one day they get to be anyone other than themselves. If it is a cat or a princess for just one night they get so excited forgetting while they look in a mirror that it is them under that costume. The way they run to you is something you hold in your heart for a lifetime. The sadness that comes the day they say they are too old to dress up. We want them to become independent, do good in school, go to college and get a good job. But then just as Sharon Olds says “I say ‘college,’ but I cannot tell the difference between her leaving for college and our parting forever.” As with my son this was my thought, the time I have been waiting for, off to college to a better life than mine. Then tragedy hit and not only will my son’s life never be the same but our family unit is devastated in just one day.

One accusation can bring a whole world tumbling out of control. My son becomes the strong one, while in my selfishness I become the weak one. I am now the person that has to be picked up off the floor. Which person to believe? Blood of my blood or who I thought would be my partner? Can I believe them both? Is that fair? How do you not know what is going on right under your nose? I dread the realization that my life was so caught up that I lost myself. And what of my daughter? Blood of my blood, but also his. I have to rely on a judge who has never set eyes on me deal out my family’s fate. New issues abound: house, custody, child support, jail.  All these before I am forty unless the court dates get put off another month. How do you tell people? What do they think when they look at you? I demand a different way out, a different truth. Someone tell God that He did this to the wrong person. And yet like Job, I will still praise Him.

Can I be as Sontag is in her poem, Notes on Camp, “Camp involves a new, more complex relation to ‘the serious’ one can be serious about frivolous, frivolous about the serious.” Can my life be changed to just “Camp” or can I come up with another word for camp and life? What would I call it? How I long to call it “vacation.” To just sit on my porch spitting out philosophy to anyone who will listen. Or read novels until I can’t remember what’s real and what fantasy is. How does a singer like Kelly Clarkson figure out life when she’s ten years younger than me? Her song Stronger is my new anthem as she belts out “What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, Stand a little taller, Just me, myself and I, What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, Stand a little taller, Doesn't mean I'm lonely when I'm alone” (Clarkson). At least when the song comes on I can blare it, let him think what he wants. I want to be the person she is talking about  to feel stronger, not weaker, to tell someone with confidence, “just me, myself and I,” and be okay with it. Lyrics are my new getaway. Songs bring on new meanings Elton John sings “Sad songs say so much.” But so do breakup songs which let you know you are going to be okay with just a setback. As in the singer Drake’s new song Take Care which features another singer named Rihanna as she sings “I’ve loved and I’ve lost.” The meaning becomes clearly that I have loved and I definitely have lost, just as I will live and die.

My kids will grow up and leave me. They will set new lives out for themselves and no matter how much I have prepared them, it will still be their lives. Or like Babbitt in Sinclair Lewis’ story of the same name, will they just go with the flow, accepting what others think they should be doing or just do it? Will they be like me starting and stopping something to go on to the next? Hopefully they will be something other than burger flippers and minimum wage earners. The umbrella of scholarship has not helped my son but in time he will have to face life by moving on. I watch my daughter just embarking on teen aged life. She’s not the awkward girl I once was. Instead, she is shy but strong, smarter than my college educated mind is. She loves testing and did not inherit my anxiety for it. She gets perfect math scores on state testing, without studying or going to a good school. She tells me not to worry since college will be paid for as soon as she scores on the PSAT and becomes a National Merit. As valedictorian for eighth grade this year, I believe her. She may not know what she wants to do when she grows up but she knows how to get there.

As puzzles of my life start fitting together I see myself in my children. Maybe I just want to hold on just a little longer, just a little tighter, before their “interests” take over. Each court date brings reality just a little closer. Will the truth come out and when it does will it set everyone free? They say you don’t know someone until you divorce them. I’m wondering if I ever knew him. Life is being pulled in so many directions. Just once I would like time to stop like in a movie while I glance around at what is around me. The characters in a movie that can do that always make me jealous. Why go back? Why not just stay and walk around in the solitude? I now understand what my Mom always told me that one day I’ll know; I’ll have a mini me walking around making the same mistakes I did; now I have two. Life has to get better since it just keeps going. I will leave my kids with Ashbury’s thoughts, “I want you to go out there and enjoy yourself, and yes, enjoy your philosophy of life, too.”

Works Cited

Ashley, John. "My Philosophy of Life."  Poets.org, 1994. Web. 15 Apr 2012. http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15460

Clarkson, Kelly. Stronger. 2012. AZ Lyrics. Web. 17 April 2012. http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/kellyclarkson/whatdoesntkillyoustronger.html

Drake. Take Care. 2012. AZ Lyrics. Web. 16 April 2012. http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/drake/takecare.html

Lewis, Sinclair. "Chapter 12 of Babbitt." Oklahoma University, 1922. Web. 17 Apr 2012. http://www.ou.edu/cls/online/LSTD4243/unit5_babbitt.shtml

Prasad, Udayan. Dir. My Son the Fanatic. BBC Films, 1998. DVD.

Olds, Sharon. "The Wellsping." University of Oklahoma, n.d. Web. 17 Apr 2012. http://www.ou.edu/cls/online/LSTD4243/unit5_olds.shtml

Sontag, Susan. "Notes on Camp." University of Oklahoma. N.p., 1964. Web. 15 Apr 2012. http://www.ou.edu/cls/online/LSTD4243/unit5_sontag.shtml