Christmas Carols and Lullabies

"Sing me to sleep,"my little one asked as I tucked her into bed tonight.

Now, anyone who has heard me sing probably wonders how even a child could ask this. The most charitable thing that can be said for my singing is that I know all of the words. I am so terribly tone deaf that when I was young the kind-hearted director of the church choir suggested that I would be an asset to the bell choir. Translation: "keep your mouth shut." I tried to join the choir in school. I was given a special role - dancer. Again, "keep your mouth shut."

So, beyond drunkenly belting out the words to any song played in a dance club in the 1980s my singing career has been somewhat limited.  In fact, when my oldest was born I realized that I didn't know any songs - except Billy Idol's White Wedding. "There is nothing fair in this world; There is nothing sure in this world; There is nothing pure in this world...." Not exactly a lullaby.

Instead, I sang my little late November baby to sleep with Jingle Bells. When Amanda was little I would put on a Christmas CD and rock her to sleep. By the time Danielle arrived eight years later I'd learned a huge library of Christmas Carols ranging from Holly Jolly Christmas to Do You Hear What I Hear? My favorites being all of the Nat "King" Cole classics and anything from Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

So, tonight, in mid-December, I was happy to oblige Danielle with a lullaby. As she drifted off to my tunelessly humming Jingle Bells, she sighed and said,"oh, my baby song..."

Fulcrums and a Full Life

This weekend I hopped the last hurdle into middle-age: bifocals. I am now officially old. Grey hair, wrinkles, expanding waistline and declining vision. So why am I so content?

Maybe it’s because I can look back and be happy about where I’ve been. I’ve made good friends. I’ve gotten a good education. I’ve had the opportunity to work for a paycheck and the luxury to volunteer for a nonprofit. I have a fantastic family, both here in my home and stretched out across the country.

Life isn’t easy. Not for anyone, even if it looks like it is from the outside. We all struggle with our personal demons and challenges. I worry too much. I don’t work out enough. I am often out of balance. But not today. Today, as I turn 47, I am perfectly balanced on the fulcrum of my life. Life can be a see saw, tipping wildly in one direction then another. Your job pulls you one way; your family pulls you another – the see saw tips out of balance. The trick is adjusting the weight of each element so you can go up and down in harmony. Never letting one side weigh you down or keep you pinned to the ground.

The past month has left me teetering. The abrupt “thump” when Amanda broke her hip. The long days and nights in the hospital following… then endless piles of paperwork for insurance, Medicaid and lawyers. But today my friends have posted messages on Facebook, I had a little party, my father called… things have tipped back up and balance has temporarily returned.

My understanding of physics is limited to a fifth grade module on Simple Machines, but I found this website demonstrating how a fulcrum works. It’s not just the weight on both ends that impacts the balance, but also the placement of the fulcrum. It occurs to me that I can impact the placement of the fulcrum, myself, and how I view the world around me. I don’t need to allow outside factors to weight me down. I can alter where I stand in relation to the people and events around me. I can influence the balance of my own life.

There is power in the placement of a fulcrum. Archimedes is attributed with saying.”Give me a lever long enough, and a prop strong enough, I can single-handed move the world.” A fulcrum is also the pivot point for any lever. Today I feel like I can move the world. Not off its orbit, but maybe nudge it into a better place somehow.

Physics can also explain the wrinkles, but that's a topic for brighter minds than mine....

Cyclical Friendships

We all have them: friends that come and go throughout your life. Maybe you chose different paths, live in different states, or don’t like each other’s chosen partner…  The reasons are myriad. Facebook and social networking sites have created new cycles for us. We are able to reconnect with people we haven’t seen in decades and reassess our friendship.

I seem to have two categories of friends in my life. The first are those rare few who have never left, who stuck with me through the bad haircuts, bad boyfriends and big glasses and are with me today, intimately involved in my life. They not only know my kids names, they know their birthdays.  They were there (at least in spirit) when my children were born and when my mother died. More than friends, they are my true family.

Then I have my “guy friends,” as Kevin calls them. They aren’t necessarily guys. It’s just that our friendship is more like that between two guys. We share a common interest or enjoy a common activity. Sometimes I have to tread lightly because all we share is this interest. In these cases I know that if a conversation strays unto religious or political topics we may be in trouble.

When that stage in our lives ends we grow apart; perhaps we’ll come together again, perhaps not. There is no animosity or a single breaking point – circumstances change for one or both of us and we move on along our individual paths.

I’ve had some wonderful “guy friends”. There was Melanie who taught me to ride horses in my early 30s. I was about ten years older than her. In fact, I took her out for her first legal drink. We were at different points in our lives. I was married with a job; she was still in college. I didn’t have any kids yet and so we spent a lot of time together, riding, teaching, and going to clinics with famous equestrians. It was fun and we truly enjoyed being together.  However, it didn’t extend comfortably outside of the barn.  I’ve had a lot of barn friendships over the years that ended when I left the barn.

Then there were the friends I made when Amanda was a baby. For the most part we all still live in the same town, but we have grown apart. It may be because Amanda has special needs and so she doesn’t attend our home school. It may be because some of them have gone back to work or simply found other interests now that their kids are in school all day. If I see them at all it’s a chance meeting at the grocery store or Target. I still like them. I’m always happy to see them and hear how their kids are doing. I also know that (for the most part) the “let’s get together soon” comments are sort of like when a guy would say “I’ll call you” at the end of a date. I’d be surprised if anything came of either.

Now I have Danielle and a whole new group of “guy friends.” These are women I like and admire. Strong, smart women balancing complex lives. However, I am 15 years (or more!) older than most of them. I know that under other circumstances they wouldn’t think to ask me out to a movie or over for drinks. We have no common frame of reference. Some of them were born the year that I started high school. Songs I grew up loving have always been “oldies” for them.  They didn’t know that Madonna was Catholic before she embraced Kabbalah (really?!?) They can’t remember a divided Germany with the Berlin Wall still standing or a united Soviet Union.

I’ve been down this road before. As we move deeper into summer I can already sense the shift – the start of the cycle. The kids will all be going to different schools in the fall. Some of the mothers are looking for jobs. Others are expecting another child. As the kids form new friendships so will we. Instead of talking to each other every day, now we talk once a week. Eventually it will taper off to once or twice a month and then several months may go by. We’ll still like each other. We’ll still have fun when we see each other, but we won’t see other often. Only time will tell whether we stay in touch or drift apart. And the cycle will start again with a whole new group of friends for each of us…