#truelove #allowing #dating
Fast forward to today: I spent four hours waiting for my washing machine to get fixed. For four angry hours, I bemoaned the lack of control I had over my schedule and thought about how I could have better utilized that time — working at the office, playing with my daughter, or simply enjoying planned down time. And rather than appreciate the distractions at my fingertips (social media, email, music, and countless online magazines), I grew irritated by the feeling that I was a prisoner in my own home.
While I would like to be the kind of person — like my younger self — who can breathe meaning into any moment or at least make the most of a less than perfect situation, it became obvious to me today that I can’t (at least not yet) appreciate times over which I have no control: times like waiting at the airport for a delayed flight, or waiting on the phone for a customer service representative, or even waiting for an in-home service like a washing machine repair.
After a couple of wasted hours at home, I started to wonder about my impatience. I knew I wasn’t always addicted to on-demand service, so I wondered what had changed. Was it my fault that I was so frustrated by today’s waiting game? Perhaps it was: According to a 1960s study, notoriously called the Marshmallow Study, in which preschooler self-control was tested with marshmallows, some people are more susceptible to the emotions that trigger impulsive actions and that demand instant gratification. Perhaps it never occurred to me that I was one of those people. Maybe as a child I wasn’t quite as patient as I remember. And perhaps I’ve grown accustom, thanks to advances in technology, to getting things at the exact moment when I want or need them.
But even if I am one of those individuals with a low patience threshold, is it so bad that as an adult I’ve learned to appreciate the value of my time? Was I wrong to feel that precious hours of my life that I could never recoup were being stolen from me? According to a study by TOA Technologies, a company that specializes in solving the “waiting without knowing” problem, the annual cost of waiting for Americans amounts to $37.7 billion dollars. That comes out to the loss of two full workdays per individual for merely waiting on at-home services! Just think of what you could do with two extra days of time off from work! If time is so precious, I wondered why this repair company did not seem to value it — at least on my end. After all, most companies make customer satisfaction not just a number one priority but the foundation of their very business. They understand the value associated with happy customers. So why was in-home service any different? Why could I get on-demand service, even if at a higher price, for nearly anything else from movies and music to books and groceries?
When the service person finally arrived at my house, just a few minutes before the end of the four-hour window promised to me, he cordially introduced himself, made his way over to the broken washing machine, and then promptly told me he would have to come back another day — he didn’t have the right parts for the job. Perhaps at that point I should have called the company asking them to compensate me for the loss of what would amount to a full day’s work… but I worried that I would be left waiting on the line for hours before I would finally have a chance to speak with a customer service representative. Instead, I’m trying to learn to re-appreciate those moments over which I have no control. After all, it seems like waiting will always be a part of life.
As eager as I am to slam the door shut on you, I want to take a moment to say thank you. Thank you for all of the humbling lessons and for showing me ways to hold myself up and that when things don’t work out, pain can be the bad tasting medicine that pushes us to where we need to be and that the twin pillars of the empty nest: silence and being alone, are uncomfortable, but still, they are not a tumor.
Thank you for catapulting me in a way I never imagined, into a new job that I never let myself dream that I could have. You found me a new place to live where life is smaller, but beautiful in it’s simplicity. Thank you for my commute on I-95, which has taught me patience and to slow down and to be kind because the person ahead of you might have just lost their dog.
Thank you for ricocheting me back to my partner and for showing me that sometimes we find what we are looking for in places we couldn’t have imagined in a million years, and that the unimaginable place might be what Dorothy spoke of in The Wizard of Oz- your own back yard. Thank you for surprising me with answers that were so close that I could not see them until my circumstances insisted.
You taught me to resist my craving for oblivion in the many dark, sweet ways it has presented itself to me. Now I am learning to sit with this new quietness, and I can hear what’s important- and that is this: If we take care of the moments, the years will take care of themselves. If we can resist the urge to numb or run away or be busy, then we will be rewarded in small things done well and with minimal regrets.
You threw me curve balls and I swung and missed but eventually, I learned to force open my eyes and look at the ball and guess what? I hit a few. I found my way to home base.
I lost a few people and that stings. But just like a cauterized wound, each day helps my wounds heal. I feel the sweetness of having loved and lost. At times you made me feel raw and bruised but also it was like some barrier inside me was kicked down and I learned that if you knock me down, it might be easy to stay down, but that I need to land on my back, and that if I can look up, then I can get up. It doesn’t take any effort to be a loser, but the only thing you needed me to do was to get back on my feet and that has taught me that my biggest enemy is sometimes myself. You taught me to let it go. To be kind. To keep it simple. And that today is the only important day. And to just do it.
Thank you 2013. Now here’s your hat.
It was the first line of the poem that caused my breath to catch before warm tears slid down my face.
The important thing about my mom is … she’s always there for me, even when I get in trouble.
You see, it hasn’t always been this way.
In the midst of my highly distracted life, I started a new practice that was quite different from the way I behaved up until that point. I became a yeller. It wasn’t often, but it was extreme — like an overloaded balloon that suddenly pops and makes everyone in earshot startle with fear.
So what was it about my then 3-year-old and 6-year-old children that caused me to lose it? Was it how she insisted on running off to get three more beaded necklaces and her favorite pink sunglasses when we were already late? Was it that she tried to pour her own cereal and dumped the entire box on the kitchen counter? Was it that she dropped and shattered my special glass angel on the hardwood floor after being told not to touch it? Was it that she fought sleep like a prizefighter when I needed peace and quiet the most? Was it that the two of them fought over ridiculous things like who would be first out of the car or who got the biggest dip of ice cream?
Yes, it was those things — normal mishaps and typical kid issues and attitudes that irritated me to the point of losing control.
That is not an easy sentence to write. Nor is this an easy time in my life to relive because truth be told, I hated myself in those moments. What had become of me that I needed to scream at two precious little people who I loved more than life?
Let me tell you what had become of me.
My distractions.
Excessive phone use, commitment overload, multiple page to-do lists and the pursuit of perfection consumed me. And yelling at the people I loved was a direct result of the loss of control I was feeling in my life.
Inevitably, I had to fall apart somewhere. So I fell apart behind closed doors in the company of the people who meant the most to me.
Until one fateful day.
My older daughter had gotten out a stool and was reaching for something in the pantry when she accidentally dumped an entire bag of rice on the floor. As a million tiny grains pelleted the floor like rain, my child’s eyes welled up with tears. And that’s when I saw it — the fear in her eyes as she braced herself for her mother’s tirade.
She’s scared of me, I thought with the most painful realization imaginable. My 6-year-old child is scared of my reaction to her innocent mistake.
With deep sorrow, I realized that was not the mother I wanted my children to grow up with, nor was it how I wanted to live the rest of my life.
Within a few weeks of that episode, I had my Breakdown Breakthrough — my moment of painful awareness that propelled me on a Hands Free journey to let go of distraction and grasp what really mattered. That was three years ago — three years of scaling back slowly on the excess and electronic distraction in my life … three years of releasing myself from the unachievable standard of perfection and societal pressure to “do it all.” As I let go of my internal and external distractions, the anger and stress pent up inside me slowly dissipated. With a lightened load, I was able to react to my children’s mistakes and wrongdoings in a more calm, compassionate and reasonable manner.
I said things like, “It’s just chocolate syrup. You can wipe it up, and the counter will be as good as new.”
(Instead of expelling an exasperated sigh and an eye roll for good measure.)
I offered to hold the broom while she swept up a sea of Cheerios that covered the floor.
(Instead of standing over her with a look of disapproval and utter annoyance.)
I helped her think through where she might have set down her glasses.
(Instead of shaming her for being so irresponsible.)
And in the moments when sheer exhaustion and incessant whining were about to get the best of me, I walked into the bathroom, shut the door and gave myself a moment to exhale and remind myself they are children, and children make mistakes. Just like me.
And over time, the fear that once flared in my children’s eyes when they were in trouble disappeared. And thank goodness, I became a haven in their times of trouble — instead of the enemy from which to run and hide.
I am not sure I would have thought to write about this profound transformation had it not been for the incident that happened while I was finishing up the manuscript for my book. In that moment, I got a taste of life overwhelmed and the urge to yell was on the tip of my tongue. I was nearing the final chapters of my book and my computer froze up. Suddenly the edits of three entire chapters disappeared in front of my eyes. I spent several minutes frantically trying to revert to the most recent version of the manuscript. When that failed to work, I consulted the Time Machine backup, only to find that it, too, had experienced an error. When I realized I would never recover the work I did on those three chapters, I wanted to cry — but even more so, I wanted to rage.
But I couldn’t because it was time to pick up the children from school and take them to swim team practice. With great restraint, I calmly shut my laptop and reminded myself there could be much, much worse problems than rewriting these chapters. Then I told myself there was absolutely nothing I could do about this problem right now.
When my children got in the car, they immediately knew something was wrong. “What’s wrong, Mama?” they asked in unison after taking one glimpse of my ashen face.
I felt like yelling, “I just lost a fourth of my book!”
I felt like hitting the steering wheel with my fist because sitting in the car was the last place I wanted to be in that moment. I wanted to go home and fix my book — not shuttle kids to swim team, wring out wet bathing suits, comb through tangled hair, make dinner, scrape dirty dishes and do the nightly tuck in.
But instead I calmly said, “I’m having a little trouble talking right now. I lost part of my book. And I don’t want to talk because I feel very frustrated.”
“We’re sorry,” the older one said for the both of them. And then, as if they knew I needed space, they were quiet all the way to the pool. The children and I went about our day and although I was more quiet than usual, I didn’t yell and I tried my best to refrain from thinking about the book issue.
Finally, the day was almost done. I had tucked my younger child in bed and was laying beside my older daughter for nightly “Talk Time.”
“Do you think you will get your chapters back?” my daughter asked quietly.
And that’s when I started to cry — not so much about the three chapters, I knew they could be rewritten — my heartbreak was more of a release due to the exhaustion and frustration involved in writing and editing a book. I had been so close to the end. To have it suddenly ripped away was incredibly disappointing.
To my surprise, my child reached out and stroked my hair softly. She said reassuring words like, “Computers can be so frustrating,” and “I could take a look at the Time Machine to see if I can fix the backup.” And then finally, “Mama, you can do this. You’re the best writer I know,” and “I’ll help you however I can.”
In my time of “trouble,” there she was, a patient and compassionate encourager who wouldn’t think of kicking me when I was already down.
My child would not have learned this empathetic response if I had remained a yeller. Because yelling shuts down the communication; it severs the bond; it causes people to separate — instead of come closer.
The important thing is … my mom is always there for me, even when I get in trouble.
My child wrote that about me, the woman who went through a difficult period that she’s not proud of, but she learned from. And in my daughter’s words, I see hope for others.
The important thing is … it’s not too late to stop yelling.
The important thing is … children forgive — especially if they see the person they love trying to change.
The important thing is … life is too short to get upset over spilled cereal and misplaced shoes.
The important thing is … no matter what happened yesterday, today is a new day.
Today we can choose a peaceful response.
And in doing so, we can teach our children that peace builds bridges — bridges that can carry us over in times of trouble.
This post originally appeared on Hands Free Mama.
Rachel’s book, Hands Free Mama, describes exactly how she transformed her distracted, perfectionistic, hurried life into one of meaningful connection, inner peace and gratitude. Hands Free Mama is currently available for pre-order and goes on sale January 7th.
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