horseshoe lessons

Close don't count in baseball. Close only counts in horseshoes and grenades. Frank Robinson

im a lucky girl. i know this.  my parents are both alive and kicking, and have been married for over 50 years.  we are extremely close - as in, we live in the same neighborhood close.  and i see them all the time.  which means i often take them for granted.  and as i get older, i am trying to not do that so much.  because what should be obvious, but isnt always, is that i the older i get, the older they get too.  which in a roundabout way leads me to this little bit of vacation wisdom.

Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life! ~Albert Einstein

we are a competitive family.  and ironically, my mother is THE most competitive.  scarily so.  and while people laugh when i say im not really competitive - i'm really NOT, comparatively :).  what
does this have to do with anything?  mostly its just an observation about evolution.  my parents played softball when i was little.  and bowled.  duck pin, no less.  they played cards and mah-jong. which somehow didnt translate into my brain as competition - it was more like socialization, right?  that is what they did with their friends and family, so somehow i missed the competitive part. but they were definitely competing.  maybe the games changed over the years, and got less physical in nature, but i can now state with absolute certainty that my mom will still slit your throat over cards, and my dad will still bust his ass to beat you in horseshoes.  pretty cool revelation about my 71 & 75 year old parents.

To remain always young, we need only do at every age what harmonises with it. ~Max Nordau 

what does this have to do with horseshoes?  well, that's our vacation game.  and i learned quite a lot from my dad this time around.  in the cosmic, big picture sense of the word.  because he is not quite the spry young man he once was.  and you can see that his age is finally catching up with him.  and yet, he still wants to play.  isnt that the fear that we all have about getting older?  one day we wont be able to do the things we love to do.  and even if we can do them, we wont be as good as we once were. 

The older you get the stronger the wind gets — and it's always in your face. ~Jack Nicklaus

to me, my dad has always been a rockstar.  he played softball with us until he was 60.  and pitched.  he coached every team we every played, and several of my kids teams.  he has always been a competitor.  and a good one.  he's the guy you always wanted on your team.  forever.  and you can see now, at 75, that is no longer the case.  even tho in his head, it still should be.  and so, here we are.  and this is what i continue to learn from my pop:

we all have to live where we are, in our own bodies.  and those bodies are aging, every single day.  age is just a number.  until its a big number. then it really DOES impact who you are.  and what you can do.  or no longer do.  and you have to find a way to be at peace with that. 

aging may not have to be done gracefully, but it requires humor.  when your 75 year old body can no longer throw a horseshoe the length of the pit over and over again, you can either cry over it, or find it funny.  and transition gracefully from the guy carrying the team, to the guy being carried.  because the good news is that you are still on the team. 

it might be hard, but we have to appreciate each stage of the life we have.  this stage for my dad involves a lot more napping, and way less playing.  but he is still here. and able to hang out at the horseshoe pit for a couple of hours.  he can have a few beers with friends and sit in the hot tub.  it may not sound super exciting, but that's ok.  because that is where he is at this moment. 

you are always YOU, but the degrees might vary.  after a few not so stellar games (and a bit of heckling), i turned the tables and dropped some coaching on pop.  definitely not our normal way of doing things.  but i could see that he was frustrated.  and rather than continue to let him BE frustrated, i suggested some modifications.  we both had a minute of "what the fuck" about it. but then he laughed, heckled back, and made some changes.  and even hit a ringer :)

accept the evolution.  my dad jokes that he is turning into an old woman.  and he kind of is.  he is super aware that his time on this earth is limited.  he is tragically concerned with safety in all of its forms.  the ne'er do well of his youth is long gone.  his hearing is not so good.  he puts up with A LOT of "what did you say" jokes.  and with all of his grandchildren calling him JOHN to get his attention.  and that is ok.  it's all just ok.  because the alternative is to not be here.  which is just awful.  or to be bitter about the changes to his person.  when there is nothing that can be done about it.  this is the commonality.  those of us that are lucky enough to get old, will in fact get OLD.  and old is good. old is life well spent.  old is being surrounded by people who love you - even when they heckle. old is the goal.

When you look at your life, the greatest happinesses are family happinesses. ~Joyce Brothers

how does this parlay to you, and to 46 year old me?  well, no matter how old you are today, or what you can do, it wont be the same next year.  for some of you, it might be better.  age does that.  it ebbs and flows what we are good at.  so ENJOY IT.  whatever IT is.  because the next time you do it, you might not be as good.  or it might not be as fun.  the good news is, then you get to change it.

The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been. ~Madeleine L'Engle

nothing is forever, as the saying goes. embrace the body you have today.  be grateful for all the things it can do. today. and understand that the best thing you can do for yourself, and the people that love you, is embrace it.  i can promise you that in the long run, the cellulite and wrinkles wont matter. whether or not you can still throw a ball or run up the stairs wont matter.  what will matter is that you are present long enough to get there.

To us, family means putting your arms around each other and being there. ~Barbara Bush

the struggle is real

Some days, we're just looking for a soft place to land. ~Dr. SunWolf

that's me.  barely getting my chin over that bar.  and when i saw the picture, all i could think of was "EXACTLY".  that is exactly how i feel right now.  i'm getting my damn chin over the bar, but by the skin of my teeth. and sometimes, by the skin of my teeth is all i've got to offer.

life is hard sometimes.  and not in a tragic, horrific kind of way.  just the everyday kind.  circumstances put you in a place where everything just seems to be harder for some reason.  you are fighting the quicksand, emotionally and physically.  and you just have to keep fighting it, hoping that one day soon, you will clear the mess.  and life will seem easier again.  maybe.

The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem. ~Theodore Rubin

expectations certainly play a part in this cycle.  this is supposed to be when it gets easier.  my kids are all independent, and require SO MUCH LESS of me.  it's normal, i think, to expect things to just suddenly get less hard.  and when that doesn't happen, you can start sinking into a bad mental headspace.  add to that some physical aches and pains, and a life challenge or two, and you have this VALLEY that you seem to have fallen in to.  weird how that happens.

Every flower must grow through dirt. ~Proverb

i feel like there are always 2 lives we live.  the one everyone outside of us sees - that is full of happy facebook posts and family pics, kids games and workouts.  the one that shows everyone that you are doing JUST FINE.  and then there is the "inside" life.  where your stress lives.  the one with insomnia, and donuts, and occasionally tears.  the one we try not to share.  who wants to see all that MESS, right?

but what i have come to discover is that THOSE parts are the parts that we NEED to share.  it's easy to share happy.  and believe me, i love to see it.  it's much, much harder to share the "i'm NOT ok" moments.  but these are the moments we need our people. burying it just makes that valley deeper.

The healthy and strong individual is the one who asks for help when he needs it. Whether he's got an abscess on his knee or in his soul. ~Rona Barrett

when i wrote about my kids, i would always say "it takes a village".  and it does.  no question.  but i think it also takes a village to make it thru your own life. isolation doesn't help anyone.  small doses, maybe.  but at the end of the day, we need our PEOPLE.  and this is where we struggle.  it is okay to ask for help?  can we admit we need it?  especially when nothing is really "wrong".   we all know it's ok to ask when there is a tragedy.  or something REALLY bad happens.  but for some reason, most of us think it's selfish to ask for help when we don't necessary NEED it - we could just use it.

In union there is strength. ~Aesop

does that make sense?  i don't  need anything specific right now.  maybe a shoulder. or a lunch date. or just a distraction.  but i have finally gotten to the place where i am okay reaching out for it.  because the longer i keep to myself, the deeper this valley gets.  and the harder it is to climb out of it.

as always, life is like the gym for me.  i do better when i work as part of a team.  when i carry the heaviest load on the parts that i'm really good at.  and i ask for help, and rely on someone else to help, with the parts i'm not as good at.  in the gym, i am totally fine not being able to handle everything.  why can't i feel that way in the rest of my life?  life IS a team sport.  we can't do it all alone.   and even if we could, do we want to?

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent. ~John Donne

i've come to realize over the last year, that every phase of life has its own awesomeness - and its own challenges.  as i've come to share recently, my kids no longer need me on the daily.  they are all independent.  i don't have a calendar of events to attend, or a weekly schedule to follow.  we are not juggling rides.  and there is SO MUCH freedom in that.  when your kids are 12, 10 & 7 and you want to pull your hair out because you are are just SO FREAKING BUSY, you can't wait to get here.  and guess what?  it IS pretty nice here.  but it's also kind of boring. and a huge adjustment.

Life is rough. If it were smooth, we'd slide right through it without noticing. A bumpy ride teaches us gratitude and perspective. ~Terri Guillemets

so keeping perspective is vital.  no place in your life is perfect.  and no one else's is perfect either.  we are all adjusting on the fly.  for me the biggest lesson has been that i don't have to be STRONG all the time.  it's just not possible.  it's okay to hand the load over when you need to.  it's okay to NOT be okay, even if nothing is actually horrible.  there is a huge distance between awesome and horrible.  and most of us exist on the teeter totter in the middle.

The only thing that's the end of the world is the end of the world. ~President Barack Obama