Author Archives: lifeonwry.com

Keeping the Glass Half Full: My 100 Day Gratitude Experiment

Today begins my 100 day gratitude experiment. As completely cliché as it sounds, I am compelled to do it. To test how being grateful can affect my life and those around me.

Each day for 100 days I will blog about something or someone or someplace that I am grateful for. I know gratitude can change how you see absolutely everything in life, even when your chips are down. I have experienced it. But I don’t do it enough. And, as a side benefit this will help me teach my kids more about gratitude because I am thankful that my parents taught me about it (and so it begins).

Gratitude Day 1: Today I am grateful that I have two hands and that I am able to type in the dark, since I am typing this at 4:37 a.m.  Side note: I am also grateful that I can remember where the numbers 4, 3 and 7 are on the keyboard without looking  – this helps ease my Alzheimer’s paranoia.

Oh, and thank you for reading this.

Pantyhose and purple power suits

I think the color of pantyhose I used to wear was actually called “suntan.”  Did we think we were fooling anyone?  I guess tanning lotions and tanning salons on every corner came about long after panty hose became passe.

And my old pals still chuckle about my early nineties (or fashion ideas left over from the 80’s) brightly colored “power suits.”  This one was purple, yes purple.  I wore it as a full suit and actually thought I looked like a bad ass.  It had large shiny fake gold buttons that looked like earrings.  And I may have worn the earrings to match but I’ve blurred that out of my memory for good reason.

What’s even more hilarious is that I thought these suits made me look older so I could run with the big dogs in the ad biz as a junior account executive at age 23.  I so desperately wanted to be accepted and climb that ladder, fast.  I even drank Jack and Coke a few times and pretended that I liked it.  And I acted like the cigarette smoke filling the building didn’t bother me either.

Last week at a client meeting I was reminded of all of this.  My client’s young, chirpy, quick- to-answer-with-a-better-answer assistant was in the meeting, taking notes on every word I said (yikes). She’s freshly a year or two out of college and smart as a whip.  She really did have terrific ideas for our campaign brainstorming session — trying so hard to prove herself that I tried not to be annoyed.  Was I secretly a little jealous that she got to be the young perky one now?

Toward the end of the meeting I made some kind of old school reference and then realized she probably didn’t know what I meant. I corrected myself with the newer term and made a mention of her youth and how I was showing my age.  She quickly corrected me and told me that she wasn’t that young.

I immediately recalled that feeling of irritation she was experiencing and I tried to explain. My client and I giggled as we recalled just how much we missed being the young one in the room and being the target of those “you’re too young to know” comments.  And I really do.  Especially now that no one checks my ID no matter how desperately I try to signal to them that they should.  She just looked at us and smiled, letting us think we were funny.

She’ll probably be in a modern day, corporate casual version of my purple power suit at the next meeting when I see her, sans the suntan hose.  Maybe a purple cardigan and tangerine skinny jeans.  But I bet she won’t have my fancy, shiny earring buttons.

Cheerleading tryouts not required

I was a cheerleader in 5th grade.  And that’s because tryouts weren’t required that year.  Oh, and my friend’s mom was in charge.  Sad, but true.

My mother tried to help me understand before I tried out the next year (when there actually were tryouts and it was school-organized) that perhaps it wasn’t the sport for me. My sister and I always joked that it was amazing we turned out as positive, able and accomplished as we did despite our mother’s ability to pop a hole in any balloon filled with aspirations of challenging new heights we hoped to achieve.  Now I know she was just trying to protect us from getting our hopes up, but I have to slap myself when I catch  myself doing the same thing with my boys. Because most of the time I proved her wrong.

Nevertheless, she had a point. And I didn’t make cheerleader that year. At that point my legs were longer and skinnier than a baby giraffe and I had the grace of newborn foal.  And I couldn’t even pull off a cartwheel which was a beginner move for my agile, better proportioned cheering peers.

But perhaps that cheerleading experience from 5th grade, fictitious as it was, gave me good experience for adulthood as a woman.  Honestly I think cheerleading should be part of the job description to be a mom and a wife.  Even a sister, a friend and a daughter.

Today I was a cheerleader for my husband regarding his career. And a cheerleader for my son regarding his ability to make better choices.  Last week I was a cheerleader for my niece after a humiliating day as a second year med student new to hospital rotations. And yesterday for my friend who was applying for a job after a long professional hiatus.  And on many days I cheer my step dad on after his long days caring for my mother and her Alzheimer’s-addled brain.

I’m actually pretty good at cheerleading afterall.  My mother would be proud.

Thrown to the wolves by his mother

So thank goodness there are really nice moms out there. My faith in humanity is temporarily restored. My post-concussion former lacrosse playing son is now officially involved with his high school tennis team.  But he’s going in bruised and battered.

Once I realized his symptoms had ceased,  I researched and reached out to a very involved tennis Mom I knew from lacrosse.  Here’s the humanity part – she then took the time to talk to one of the main coaches about my son and his concussion situation and what a great athlete he is. In turn, that coach took the time to call me personally about getting him involved at this late date. This I am certainly not used to as it seems many high school coaches are not into parent conversations, to say the least.

After asking about his tennis background (he played team tennis a few summers back and was one of the fastest, though skinniest, kids in lacrosse), the coach suggested I bring him to the camp that was that very day in a few hours.  They had been running morning and afternoon training camps for two weeks.  Wow, I was thrilled, this was happening. He warned that these kids were pretty good but suggested my son ‘give it a shot’ and then come to the next day’s camps as well. It wasn’t too late.

Foreshadowing note:  these are the LAST two days of a two week intensive training camp. And my son’s only sport activity has been three private tennis sessions after a 4 month concussion sport hiatus from a lacrosse injury.

To my amazement, I talked my son into going.  We got there and my stomach began to sink.  These tennis kids looked beyond HARD CORE and I tried not to let the fear for my son’s very life show in my eyes before I left. I drove off afraid for his already fragile post-concussion ego.

At pickup, he was wrecked, both physically and mentally.  I felt horrible.  He felt he did not measure up to these kids’ skills and had no business playing tennis.  I think a few curse words were used, his head hung incredibly low, you get the point.  It was bad.  Fast forward a few hours –  I learned that the coach had failed to mention that the afternoon camps were for area CHAMPIONSHIP tennis players – some college aged.  These kids were lifers, had been playing since birth.  Some even had sponsors and everything. For real. What a great entry for my broken son.  I could not have felt worse.

Thank goodness the coach called that night (again, the humanity) to check on him and encouraged him to come to the less intense session the next morning.  The next day went beyond well (no comparison) and I now can see a glimmer of my son’s former swagger in his eyes, bruises and all.

Tennis to the rescue

Okay, so finally my son’s concussion symptoms have ceased, after four months. He’s not getting headaches whenever he runs anymore. Thank God. All I need now is the final official doctor release.

Not that I blame him (I’m actually secretly thrilled ), but he doesn’t want to play fall lacrosse. I can only imagine how scary it would be getting back on the field after having a concussion wreak so much havoc on your life as a teenager. So we are going to give tennis a try.  He played team tennis a few years ago and was pretty good, but gave it up for lacrosse since the schedules conflicted.

Unfortunately, signing up for tennis at his large high school where 160 other kids play tennis on six teams is no easy task.  Who would have thought starting the process in early August would be late?

 

Concussions be damned

We all have heard countless stories on the news about the scary “concussion.”  Heightened awareness has been great for all involved – and scary for me.

My son, a fifteen year old, got a concussion like no other last spring, on April 6, to be precise.  He got “slashed” in the neck with a lacrosse stick on the back of his neck, the one place he had no protection or pads (note: other player was kicked out of the game as this is a no-no).

Fast forward four months.  I am rescheduling probably the 18th appointment related to this concussion.  And we are several months past the episode.  The concussion has wreaked havoc not only for my son’s life, but for our whole family’s.

Few news stories mention the personality changes, the depression and the bad choices that can enter a successful athlete’s life when pulled from his sport.  His speed and agility on the field were a source of needed self esteem which was already touch and go as a freshman at a huge high school.  This was the tipping point we didn’t need.

My hopes are that more become aware – not only of the damage to the brain a concussion can cause – but also of these more silent symptoms, and how to treat them.

Best Laid Plants

This morning after carpool drop-off as I drove through my winding suburban neighborhood streets I noticed an annual sighting. Not annual because annual flowers were involved, but annual in that each and every spring since I have lived in this neighborhood, it happens.

The same well -intended neighbor goes hog wild at the nursery at the first promising sight of spring and covers her yard with gallon and half gallon containers of roses, geraniums and petunias – all placed precisely where she intends to plant them. If history serves, these poor plants will begin withering by late tomorrow and continue to yearn for a permanent home or some hydration at least – until their death by early July – when they will be baked to perfection – as crunchy as Lay’s potato chips.

They will then sit, posthumously, for another week or two until a neighbor, or possibly even the well intended would-be future planter of such plantings decides to throw in the towel, admitting that sometimes the best laid plants simply don’t happen.

Here we go, as Oprah says.

Months later, after much pondering over the idea for this blog, I’ve decided the common theme of this blog will be the wryness of it all – life as a normal person peering out from the boundaries of suburbia, life as a mother of teenagers, life as a freelance working writer, life with a Mother who has Alzheimer’s.

My blog about my life as a sandwich generation x’er, complete with full-on irony each and every day.

wry http://img.tfd.com/m/sound.swf (r)

adj. wri·er (rr) or wry·er, wri·est (rst) or wry·est

1. Dryly humorous, often with a touch of irony.
2. Temporarily twisted in an expression of distaste or displeasure: made a wry face.
3. Abnormally twisted or bent to one side; crooked: a wry nose.
4. Being at variance with what is right, proper, or suitable; perverse.