Tribute to a Former Mother-in-Law

Estred with my infant daughter

The funeral is today.

I am sad but not grieved.  I feel more nostalgic for the passing of an era in my life.  She lived long enough to see the passing of both her parents, her sister, her husband, her brother-in law, sister-in-law and her youngest son.  She also lived long enough to see the birth of four grandchildren and to be able to attend the marriage of my daughter two years ago. She did not live long enough to see the birth of her first great-grandson.  My daughter will bring a son into this world come March.  Cue the Circle of Life music.

This woman taught me many things.  She was the one that taught me to cook, vegetable garden, preserve food and in many ways what a family should look like.  We all lived on the coast in the Northwest of California, each weekend the collective family would head to the cabin inland.  They had a small orchard and a huge vegetable garden.  Grandma, aunt, uncle, in-laws, and my husband and I would convene here.  They were Swedish stock and we broke for coffee morning and afternoon.  We had lunch and cocktails before dinner.  We spent hours on the deck shelling peas from the garden and preserving and freezing in the hot kitchen.  In August we stood under the cover of the carport and packed crate after crate of peaches the men would bring to us from the orchard.  They sold the good peaches, we canned the culls.

The cabin is now gone as is the last member of that time and place.  All things change but a large part of me is nostalgic for that time in the garden, at the tables of the packing shed and on the deck with the women of the family shelling peas and gossiping.

She will always have a special place in my heart.  

The Just World Theory

I once wrote that people would be a lot happier if they stopped worrying about what other people should do for them and thought about what they could do for others. 

The golden rule is: One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself. That's it; no subtext, except we always seem to hold an unconscious addition or expectation that others will treat us in like kind. When this doesn't happen we often feel resentment, used, and somewhat betrayed.   I used to see this in relationships all the time.

The Just World Theory is a rather technical and complex theory in Psychology, but on a simpler level I think it is a belief there is a certain karmic tit for tat in the game of life; meaning if I am nice, nice things will happen to me.  In reality, bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people.  Now there is a certain karmic kickback - if you are a complete jerk and need a helping hand your not likely to get it from all the people you have really, really irritated recently. On the other hand you are more likely to get help if you've been nice.   I know I have consciously gone out of my to avoid someone I find a complete PITA* and don't spend any more time with than absolutely necessary.  I'm just not available, polite - but not available.


This subject came up as I listened to an individual tell me about all the ways they go out of their way for their friends and how their friends don't reciprocate in equal fashion, how stressed, put upon and resentful they were feeling after doing all these nice things that no one was thanking them for.  I felt like saying set some boundaries or get new friends, but I didn't.   On some level I think this complaint is really arrogant  Friends may ask, but we have the right to say no.  A friend's world doesn't revolve around making sure we have the energy, time or money for what they ask.  On the other hand, once we commit to a request we should see it through and not try and bail because it suddenly got inconvenient, like house sitting a friend's animals. 

I think making things special for others is wonderful - but not if your expecting some kind of payoff down the road.  It's not a bank account.  There is a certain martyrdom in always saying yes and then resenting when your friends are always asking you for stuff. If you can't accommodate a friend's request, just say so you will get greater respect.  Just because someone asks doesn't mean we have to agree.  We teach people how to treat us.  Boundaries are hard to set sometimes, but they can be learned with practice.   Finding the balance is the tricky part, be kind and generous to others, but also to ourselves.

Some people are just jerks, some are bottomless pits of needs, some are professional victims who's lives are crisis driven and are always needing a helping hand, but there are a whole lot of people who are really very nice - not perfect, but a very nice balance of goodness and imperfection.  I'll take this last group thank you very much. 

To use a gardening metaphor - pull the weeds and keep the good stuff, there isn't room to have everything in the garden plot and someone beside the weeds should be making the decisions; and it seems really dumb to then complain that the weeds are...well.....acting like weeds.

*PITA - pain in the ass

A Rose By Any Other Name

I was gently taken to task several weeks ago by a friend who had been avoiding my blog because of the title.  She was afraid that it would be all anger and sarcasm which was something she didn't really want invited into her life.  She gently suggested that maybe it was time in my journey to perhaps change the name of my blog, because she found my title and content so energetically counter-intuitive.  Basically she felt I was a nice person with a not very nice name for my musings and it gave the wrong impression.  On one level she is correct, the current blog title might be better served by being changed to Dilettante At Large or something similar.

Her comments sent me to the dictionary to look up the meaning of "nice".  Agreeable, pleasing, accommodating (ok, this last one is a personal definition).  The title of the blog came during a difficult time of divorce, breast cancer and death of the father of my children and a bunch of other nasty things that caused a couple of friends to offer to do a black cloud exorcism for me.  I had moved through life trying to be agreeable, pleasing and accommodating, it just wasn't working.  I was tired of being nice and doing what others wanted or trying to live to someone else's desires.  Call it boundaries or setting limits (as a retired therapist I hate terms like boundaries and issues but that is a different story), but I think it is about having the confidence and the courage to say "no" or "no thank you".  I seemed to be really good about helping others define themselves and establish a life they wanted but no so good at helping myself do the same thing.  I'm not looking to pick a fight, but I am tired of colluding with others in my personal life regarding fictions of behavior, responsibility, and actions.  I think too often women have been taught to keep quiet, go along, be nice, accommodate.  We are rewarded for these appeasement behaviors and called nasty names when we say "no thank you or I don't think I agree with that",  bitch and ball breaker come to mind. 

I'm reminded of the Emperor has no clothes tale.  This idjit is parading down the street starkers and everyone is admiring his clothes except for the little boy that says "Look, the Emperor has no clothes."  Now I'm sure every woman in the crowd knew he didn't have any clothes on because woman are genetically designed with a clothes/shopping gene which notices these kinds of things, but they were to nice to say anything or didn't want to be called bad names for speaking up.  But the little boy, being a man in training, doesn't have to watch his mouth and probably grew up to be a gay male fashion designer since he actually noticed the emperor wasn't wearing anything.

 I am a huge fan of civility and wonder where its gone these days and I don't like the cult of rudeness that has grown up in social media and conversations, however, this doesn't mean I don't have voice and a backbone, and sometimes I'm tired of being nice - "Dude your naked!"

The Second Half of Life - A book review (sort of)

I'm reading a book that is irritating the crap out of me.  The Second Half of Life by Angeles Arrien.  I am seeing a disturbing trend in the self help book arena. As the writers in this field age they have begun to write about how American culture doesn't honor elders like other cultures around the world do and that "We can no longer ignore the wisdom that is irrevocably lost to future generations when our elders are marginalised or rendered invisible."  She goes on to say that .."we live in a society that has lost many traditional initiation rituals"...Really, I think this is a case of the cultural 'grass is greener' on the other side.  We have lots of rituals.  Graduation from High School, College, weddings, baby showers, divorce, retirement and funerals.  How the hell do you over look the ritual of divorce - you will spend enough money and time in court that you have to be stupid as a rock not to get that this is a major transition. 

Frankly, this sounds like a case of " Holy Cow, I'm getting older and I'm having a really hard time with it so I will write books about how much personal work I have done and how I am now a "Wise Elder" and let me show you how to be wise like me.  Yea, so???  Sounds a little like trying to prove to one self and others how important you are.  If you are wise, others will see it or they won't.  That's the sad truth of it, people need to find their own inner wisdom.  You might be wise but that doesn't mean others will appreciate that fact, actually they might resent it. Wisdom is or should be pursued for it's own sake not because it is a licence to call your self a "Wise Elder" and graciously start bestowing your opinions on others or write books about how no one in our culture appreciates how much we could do for them it they just paid attention to you.

Wisdom is hard won and many do not chose to follow it's path.  I can see that, personally I think ignorance is bliss. I sometimes think the truly clueless are the happiest.  The path to wisdom is through the valley of sorrow.  It requires deep spelunking and a willingness to take responsibility for what you may have contributed to your life's outcome.  Nothing new here.  Erik Erickson said it almost 70 years ago when he proposed that life was a developmental task.  His last stage was Ego integrity vs. Despair.  Retirement was a time of retrospection.  He also viewed the life stages as a cycle: the end of one generation was the beginning of the next. Seen in its social context, the life stages were linear for an individual but circular for societal development.  (Wikipedia).

Each of us has our own wisdom path, I sometimes think true wisdom is learning to keep our mouths shut and allowing others to learn on their own.  If they wanted our opinion they would ask for it.

Side note:  The book does have some amazing photos of hands - truly beautiful.