Month: December 2013

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WTF, OMFG, GTFO, and Other Mothering Mantras

Here within the Mary Tyler Family we place a lot of importance on knowing and understanding our feelings.  I attribute it to my training and experience as a clinical social worker.  It’s so important in today’s busy and modern families, amirite? But knowing your feelings can be a challenge these days, what with small children running around our ankles all the time.

That’s why I’ve devised a new system for helping the whole lot of us get better at knowing and understanding our feelings, all the feelings.  I call it the WTF System — What’s The Feeling?  It’s so easy, you and your family can do it, too!

Here’s how it works . . .

Let’s say you come home from a busy weekend day of holiday shopping only to find your kids still in their pajamas, leftover food and dishes all over the coffee table, and your husband in his boxers watching the football game with a beer in his hand.  What might be running through your mind in that moment?

This is the time to say, WTF?  What’s The Feeling?  See how that works? Are you mad?  Aggravated?  Frustrated?  Angry?  Well then, saying to yourself WTF will help you identify those troubling feelings.  Saying it out loud will only add to the experience.

Here’s another example.  You’ve just spent a busy day with your extended family.  You’re tired and ready to head back home.  As you’re gathering up your kids and things, the munchkins decide it’s time for a meltdown.  Your older maiden aunt says out loud to no one in particular, “Sheesh!  In my day, we were able to control our children!”  You know what’s coming — WTF?  What’s The Feeling?!  While you might be railing inside your head — What in the Sam Hilll does that old bat know about raising kids?, it’s really important to identify the feeling. Instead, just say to yourself, WTF?!  You can even say it out loud!  Here, let’s do it together — W T F?

See how well that works?

In employing my WTF System, I learned that a frequent mommy feeling I was having was guilt.  You know what I mean, moms, don’t you?  I’ve got an acronym for guilt, too.  I call it OMFG — Oh, Mom’s Feeling Guilty!  This happened just yesterday to me. I was wanting to give my older son a special treat after a long day at school.  Ususally, chocolate is reserved for dessert after dinner, and just a bite, but he had had a rough day on the playground, so I says to myself, “Go ahead, mama, give the boy a thrill and offer some chocolate before dinner.”

So I did.  And then he proceeded to bounce off the walls with a sugar high. Screaming and hooting and hollering, waking up the baby from his nap!  This is when I screamed out loud, OMFG!  Oh, Mom’s Feeling Guilty!  See? If I hadn’t changed the rules and offered the boy chocolate, he would probably just be sitting quietly enjoying a book.  But no, I had to offer the kid some contraband chocolate, probably, unconsciously, in an attempt to curry his favor.  GUILT!  OMFG!

And when that guilt hits, I know it’s time to take stock of my parenting and let my feelings all out, or what I like to call LMFAO — Let My Feelings All Out. It’s just astounding what a good LMFAO session will do for your soul!

Another positive feeling method I use comes in really handy when house guests are visiting.  You know what they say about fish and house guests — three days is what all are capable of before going rotten.  For instructive purposes, I will share a personal story with you.  The in-laws were in town, and well, let’s just say we were on day seven — well past our collective expiration.  We all got into it over the pot roast, and I knew it was the things unsaid that was causing the bickering — those dreaded feelings.  Well, I popped right up and gave an inspirational GTFO (Get Those Feelings Out)!

I think it worked, cause the next morning, they couldn’t leave quickly enough. I am sure they just wanted to get home and talk about their feelings!  Mission accomplished.

One last tip works really well in large settings.  This past weekend I took my first trip to a Chuck E. Cheese establishment. Oh my.  Well, there sure were a lot of folks there, and where there are a lot of folks, there are certain to be a lot of feelings. Too much stimulation can cause lots of confusing feelings, too.  Why just in a brief snippet of that visit I witnessed about seven melt downs, foot stomping, bells ringing, and crying galore.

I stood up on a table and screamed STFU.  That is a great method in a crowd to alert the folks you’re with to Start Those Feelings Up!  There’s nothing better for creating calm out of chaos than to stand on a chair and shout STFU to all within hearing distance.  Before you know it, dozens of blank and quiet faces will be staring up at you, grateful for your intervention and the opportunity you gave them to look at their feelings.

I hope all you gals learn from my hard earned mothering experience.  Some days, us moms just gots to say WTF?  If we don’t, well then, OMFG, the guilt will consume us.  If we could all just learn to LMFAO, our whole lives would be so much easier.

I hope you, too, learn to use my handy dandy system for feeling all the feelings and when you do, say, “Thanks, MTM! Because of you I can say WTF to my husband, OMFG to my kids and LMFAO in a healthy and productive manner!”  And whatever you do, don’t forget to GTFO sometimes.  If you don’t, someone will be reminding you to STFU.

And, just because I like to be helpful, I made you a cheat sheet so you can practice feeling all the feelings at home!  Happy feeling!

WTF

Note:  Grateful thanks to my husband for both helping with and inspiring this post.  Whenever I’m feeling down, I ask myself, “WWJD?,”  cause I know my Jeremy has all the answers.

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The Santa Question: When Your Kid Stops Believing

Cue the carols and the jingle bells and the egg nog — all the folks are getting their Christmas on this time of year, including four year old Mary Tyler Son. Except, little logical thinker that he is, he’s been asking a lot of questions about Santa. Hard questions that lead me to believe he will lose his belief in Mr. Kris Kringle a hell of a whole lot sooner than I thought he would.

What on earth is a Mom to do?

Seriously — what do you do when your kid, at four, is outgrowing the magic, or as some (but not me) would say, myth, of Santa? Kids need magic. Adults need kids to need magic, cause, let’s be honest, we live vicariously through them for that kind of thing.  I was a little shocked and heartbroken to hear his questions repeated over a few days this week.

  • Where are Santa’s elves, reindeer, and sled when he is visiting with all the kids?
  • How does he make reindeer fly?
  • Why does he say HO HO HO?
  • Is he (the guy at the mall he takes his pictures with) just a person dressed up like Santa?
  • How can he see me when I am all the way at my house?

For better or worse, Mary Tyler Son is a bright, inquisitive child.  He wants to know how, what, why, when, and where and doesn’t take “because I said so” as an appropriate answer to his questions.  And, as a rule, we love to entertain his questions, to see how his mind works and is processing everything the world throws at him, including Santa Claus.

You see, I think my boy wants to believe in Santa, it’s just that the evidence doesn’t really stack up and he’s too literal and logical a thinker to ignore that evidence.  Are you real, or just a man in a suit?

I posed my concern on Facebook the other day and got more than a few comments encouraging me to respond with the dictum, “You have to believe to receive.”  No offense, but what works in your house might not work in mine.  For my husband and I, that answer doesn’t match our style of parenting.  More power to you if it meets your needs, but I was still struggling.

This morning a friend reached out and asked if I wanted to go visit Santa together with our kiddos.  Why yes, yes I did.  I had been encouraging Mary Tyler Son to keep track of his questions so that he could ask Santa himself. Way to pass the buck, amirite?  I thought maybe the Big Guy himself could solve the problem.

Lo and behold, he did not disappoint.

Mary Tyler Son has visited with the same Santa for three years now.  This man is a gem and is the real deal (Northbrook Court, yo, for all you locals). Thick beard, shiny white hair, big belly and an accent that is hard to place. British?  Actor? More than anything, sort of an oratorical voice, but familiar, warm, comforting.  I kid you not that every year I have wanted to crawl into his ample lap and pour out the sob story of my life.

Santa makes everything better.

My boy timidly approached him.  There was no one else waiting to visit or have photos snapped, so Santa was very generous with his time.  I’m not joking when I say that he spent 10-15 minutes talking with my boy, explaining things like astrophysics and how they apply to reindeer flight.  The circumference of the earth was mentioned a time or two.  Mary Tyler Son posed his first question:  How do reindeer fly?

Sure enough, Santa had an answer.  Mrs. Claus feeds the reindeer magic corn one night a year — Christmas Eve.  The rest of the time, he said, they are just regular mammals, eating regular food, and walking around their pens on the North Pole.  Next question!

Where are your elves and sled and reindeer?  Well, at the North Pole, of course!  Someone has to build the toys.  Santa explained that Mrs. Clause keeps an eye on things and keeps everything running smoothly while he is away meeting children.  Next question!

How do you get all the toys to all the children?  This is where the astrophysics came in.  Santa very creatively and patiently explained the speed with which reindeer who have ingested magic corn can fly.  Mary Tyler Son was mesmerized.  He was eating it up, just as those reindeer ate the corn.  Honestly, I lost track of all the details and numbers that were flying around, but not my boy.  He was in seventh heaven.  Next question!

A star will always adorn Mary Tyler Son's face in these posts, as he is my light, my star above, that brought me out of the darkness after his sister's death.
A star will always adorn Mary Tyler Son’s face in these posts, as he is my light, my star above, that brought me out of the darkness after his sister’s death.

This is when things got serious.  My boy, brave as he is, asked the question that might have held the answer he didn’t really want to hear.  You see, I think my boy wants to believe in Santa, it’s just that the evidence doesn’t really stack up and he’s too literal and logical a thinker to ignore that evidence.  Are you real, or just a man in a suit?  I held my breath, and was grateful I wasn’t alone to field the question.

Santa bent down close to my son and looked him straight in the eye, “I’m not real.  I am what you call immortal.  Do you know what immortality is?  It’s when you live forever and real people don’t live forever, do they?  I am not a real person, I am a spirit, an immortal spirit, a miracle of wonder.”  Well, there I was blubbering away, because of course we know, more than most, that real people die and there Mary Tyler Son was, nodding and agreeing.  He, too, knows that real people die, and there was Santa, confirming his belief, he was not real — he was better.  He was a spirit, a wonder, a miracle, immortal.

Good God.  All this wisdom from a mall Santa Claus.  Forget it.  I am a believer.  In that moment, right there, I became a believer.  Because somehow, some way, that beautiful man knew exactly, I mean exactly what to say to my son that would enable him to maintain his belief.  Hell, that would enable me to find my belief, lost long ago.

Thank you, mall Santa, thank you.  You reminded me of the importance of hope and belief in not only our kid’s lives, but in our own.  And hell, if I didn’t believe, would this have been possible:

The anchor is an ancient sailor's symbol of hope. Mary Tyler Baby will always proudly wear the anchor in my posts, as he is my own little anchor, proof of what can happen when you hope.
The anchor is an ancient sailor’s symbol of hope. Mary Tyler Baby will always proudly wear the anchor in my posts, as he is my own little anchor, proof of what can happen when you hope.

Post script:  When you’re a mom blogger, you learn that there is just about anything that can cause controversy.  Last year, naive gal that I am, I learned that there was a whole anti-Santa platform of parenting.  No disrespect intended, but there is a school of parenting that tells you if you encourage your child to believe in Santa, you are dealing in lies that will harm your child.  I was honestly a bit shocked, but to each their own, you know?  I vacinnate, I circumscise, and yes, I want my children to believe in Santa.  To each their own, indeed.  Merry Christmas to all! 

LOUD AND PROUD, BABY!
LOUD AND PROUD, BABY!

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Hosting the Holidays

I have been lucky enough to spend the vast majority of my holidays with the very same group of family for all of my forty-four years.  For my entire childhood, my Mom hosted Christmas and my Aunt hosted Thanksgiving.  It was set in stone and, as far as I know, not really a discussion.  We all just knew where we would be on those most symbolic of holidays.

These were lovely traditional gatherings.  Both dinner tables featured turkeys, and I’m not just referring to the errant odd relative, cranberry sauce, and margarine, not butter.  They were predictable and warm and so very anticipated.  When I was a kid, I loved, loved, loved those gatherings — even more so than the presents under the tree.

I never thought too much about the work attached to hosting a family event, but I do remember how stressful it was for my Mom.  My folks’ marriage, I think — cause honestly, who really knows — was quite a bit different than my own marriage.  My husband, unlike my Dad, does the holiday cooking.  Trust me when I say that if I were ever to host a Thanksgiving dinner independently, it would be turkey tacos on the menu.  I stick to what I do best — cleaning our home, setting a beautiful table, making certain people not only eat good food, but eat it in a warm and special setting.

I could never cook a turkey people would want to eat, but then again, Mary Tyler Dad would never think to spray the table with mini gourds or arrange a vase of flowers. Yin and yang, style and substance. It works for us.
I could never cook a turkey people would want to eat, but then again, Mary Tyler Dad would never think to spray the table with mini gourds or arrange a vase of flowers. Yin and yang, style and substance. It works for us.

After my Mom was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died less than a year later, well, the holidays were in a bit of a flux on our end.  My folks never again lived in the home they shared after my Mom got sick.  That home was their retirement home and located three hours outside Chicago.  They rented an apartment in the city to be closer to better medical care and family.  Small apartments with old widowers are not really accommodating to large family gatherings.

Just a couple of years after my Mom died, my daughter was diagnosed with her own brain tumor.

Ho ho ho.

For my husband and I, the holidays will never be the same.

But for most folks sitting around our holiday table, things are as they were before my Mom or daughter died.  Busy, hectic, loving, joyful, blessed.  That is what I want for my sons.  I want them to grow up with what I had and still value — a warm extended family that actually enjoys one another’s company.  We don’t all share the same politics or enjoy the same movies or books or music, but there is honest to goodness love and history there.  Shared love and shared history.

So that is why, just a year after our daughter died, Mary Tyler Dad and I made the choice to move into hosting the holidays.  We knew our limitations, so we opted for Thanksgiving over Christmas.  Taking the tree and presents out of the equation put the focus on food and family.  We could handle that.  With pleasure.

The devil is in the details. Turkey shaped butter. Butter tastes better when it's shaped like a turkey!
The devil is in the details. Turkey shaped butter. Butter tastes better when it’s shaped like a turkey!

This was our third Thanksgiving that we’ve hosted since making that choice. There are a new generation of cousins running around and causing mischief. They are all five and under.  Donna, who would have been the elder statesman of this generation of cousins, is only with us in her framed image that looks down over the table.  But Donna always loved a party, so that is what we try to create.

As an adult now, and a grieving adult at that, I so feel the stress that my Mom must have felt each and every Christmas in her own hosting duties.  My Dad was always there on the holidays, but he is from a different generation.  He carved the turkey, sure, but he didn’t cook it or stuff it or purchase it.  Just like he paid for the Christmas gifts, but didn’t choose or wrap them.  Different division of labor.  I get it.

I laugh now (it’s easy a week after my hosting responsibilities have ended) as the holiday season approaches and I can feel my stress level rise.  I always feel closer to my Mom during these days and say a silent “thank you” for everything she did to give us so many beautiful and warm holidays.  A few weeks ago I read a blog post chastising people from stressing over making a holiday dinner.  Pffft.  Honestly?  If I am hosting 25 people for a sit down dinner, I am allowed to stress.  You know why?  Because it’s stressful.  End of story.

Even with my husband “man”ning the kitchen, there are still a hell of a lot of things to accomplish to make a warm and comfortable gathering for two dozen folks.  There is cleaning and linens and table setting and flowers and shopping and stowing of random bric a brac that always manages to be most present this time of year.  There are closets to clear for extra coats and a kids table to figure out.  There are outfits to coordinate for two brothers.   There is furniture to move to accommodate all these folks in a dining room made for half their numbers.

The kid table. I actually wanted to eat here myself.
The kid table. I actually wanted to eat here myself.

It’s work, yo.

But, hallelajuh, what joyful work it is, even if I do curse in the moment.  And, damn it if I am not lucky to have this kind of work.

One of the things I put in place when we started hosting was a gratitude toast.  Ha!  All my relatives make fun of me and a few even roll their eyes.  I don’t care.  Those eye rolls are all in fun and what’s the sense of gathering on Thanksgiving if we can’t, for a few short moments, tell one another, the people we love most in this world, about our blessings?  One of my finest moments this Thanksgiving was my cousin who revealed in his toast that he thought about it ahead of time.  Three cheers for gratitude!

In my own toast, I always like to say the names of the people we are missing.  I don’t know why, but like most families, my own doesn’t talk enough about those we love who have died.  I don’t understand it myself, cause if we don’t talk about them who will?  Say the names, people.  Say the names.  Jack and Carolyn and Donna and Donna.  See?  It’s not so hard.  Say the names of those you love who have passed before.

But this year, generating snickers and hoots all around, I also expressed gratitude for having people to cook and clean for.  This was not a martyr’s wail — woe is me who had to brush ground in graham cracker crumbs out of the living room rug before guests arrived.  NO.  This was a grateful woman’s words of wonder that I am that lucky human being who has a room full of people in my home whom I get to cook and clean for, who willingly come to our home to celebrate a sacred day of gratitude.

Everything is better with chocolate -- even the holidays.
Everything is better with chocolate — even the holidays.

How amazing is that?  How lucky am I?

My Mom taught me well, she did.  And, like my Mom, I, too, will always and forever stress over hosting the holidays.  But never for a moment misinterpret that stress as a lack of gratitude or a complaint.  No way.  Despite my hardships, I am one hell of a lucky lady.  I get to spend my holidays with people I love, and whom, I think, love me.

Happy hosting holidays, folks.  If you are hosting, remember these words as you plan that menu and iron those linens and wonder where that 12th spoon has gone off to.  What a lucky freaking person you are.

Happy holidays, from me to you.

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