Love, Respect, and a Hardy “Screw You!”

My tolerance for humanity ebbs and flows with my moon cycle. This goes double for my tolerance and patience with my children and husband. It’s trickier now, though, since my hysterectomy a year ago. In 2008 B.H (Before Hysterectomy), I took notice of the mood changes in a way only a Mom working full time and running after five children could. The world was well and good for half the month until the people in my home turned into the most aggravating anger inspiring creatures on the planet. Then I would cry, eat chocolate, bleed like a pack mule and they would all become civilized human beings again. For about two to three weeks. Repeat.

It wasn’t until 2009 A.H. (if I have to translate stop reading now), and after a time of adjustments and healing, I realized my new and surprisingly annoying predicament. They only took my uterus, and left those little golf ball sized hormone and egg producers known as ovaries. This means that I still cycle through my moon phases, but with a BIG catch. No grand finale.

Before, there was a slow slide into the general irritables which culminated in those wonderful thoughts of murder and mayhem the true female monthlies, finalized by the gory monthly fact of life.

Now, I got no finale. It’s like an aborted sneeze. All the AHHHH with no CHOO!

To make up for this percieved slight, my hormones have doubled their effort of looking for a vent. Mostly they try and find it through holes my sanity.

Recently, and in my attempts at being a more respectful person to those around me, especially my husband, I have tried this month, to keep an eye on that cycle and give him fair warning as to when it was heading into dangerous waters. Those waters start as a slightly alarming mist and turn over the course of two weeks into a torrential downpour of doom.

Tonight was no exception. I tried to explain that it was in part hormones, and in part real feelings that needed to be addressed. To cap it off, in an attempt to find out what I would look like if I wasn’t huge, I have started on a body system plan that includes those foods like broccoli (which are nothing more than mutated, bastardized cabbage Frankenstein’s). I am trying to avoid the word ‘diet’ because as only Garfield could understand, “DIET id ‘DIE’ with a T!“

Of course, tonight GM was craving macaroni and cheese. The way I was raised, the recipe was simple. After you boil the noodles you add 1/4 of butter and 1/4 cup of milk to the sauce. After all, mac and cheese cannot be mac and cheese without the full flavor. I once read the directions on some misguided, healthy style box that called for 1/3 cup of skim milk and ONE tablespoon of margarine! As if! I guffawed, did it right and gained four pounds by the end of that meal alone.

So, in an effort to jump on the healthy lifestyle bandwagon and live long enough to be a real pain in the ass to my future grandchildren, I am making changes. Which sucks when you have to make something as yummy and mac and cheese for the rest of the horde while you get to discover the joys of instant brown rice for the first time in your life.

Perhaps it was the hormones. Perhaps it was the new meal plan. Perhaps it was the fact my kids fought constantly and loudly while GM kind of sat there with a bored look on his face doing very little to jump in and save the day and my mother, since we were at her house, ran away to hide in her bedroom, wishing she had joined a convent instead of walking down that damned aisle.

When it was 8:00 pm and I was snarling at Butterfly to get the food served up for the kids as GM hovered in the background, ever the passive voyeur, I was still working on my own lower calorie version of supper. I got to that temperamental state where my boiler was overheating, I was beginning to blow valves and I wondered if I could murder my husband and bury him in Mom’s compost heap because his apathetic attitude and actions were pissing me off THAT MUCH. We had some verbal fencing exchange and when “Oh fuck YOU!” flew out of my mouth I turned off the burner under my food and left the house.

Bird followed me outside, no doubt wondering if I was leaving for good, at which I yelled at him to get BACK in the house.

My children freak if Mom walks away. I am their safety net. I will never completely figure out, perhaps not until they are older, why they are so much more scared of their father than they are of me. Is it his capacity, in the past, to do violence on his environment that keeps this fear in them? The fact they can feel his rage battering at their sprits like a war hammer on those dwindling occasions it is unleashed. (though since I left him on the road that night, we have not seen anything close to that level of explosion come off of him). They fear him but they have no respect for him and don’t listen to him when he tells them to do something.

I have been working on the principles I have learned from a book called Love and Respect.   Written by some guy with the last name of Eggerich or something silmilar with the word ‘egg’ in it. This was recommended reading for me and GM from the couple he and I have counseled with. There is a good message in there, but I hate the guys writing style. Every other page he had these letters from women about how much his seminars had helped and yada yada. It struck me as too much “see how right I am”, though I don’t think that was the author’s intent. There was a lot of Biblical reference and scriptural quotes in there as well. Scripture seems to take a long time to pontificate a subject the Native peoples lived for centuries; Walk in a good way. I have little patience for scripture, rebellious heathen that I am. Give me a sweat lodge ceremony any day.  Too bad more medicine men and women didn’t write more couples counseling books…

The Love and Respect book basically speaks of a wife’s need for love and a husbands need for respect. The pink vs. blue difference. It has been very hard for me to act in a respectful way toward my husband in order to nurture his ability to grow. I have been trying very hard in the past weeks to do that. He has been trying in his own way to make adjustments. Like coming in to do the dishes tonight while I was still trying to make my own dinner and Butterfly was giving the younger sibs way too much macaroni and not enough green beans and pork chops. But I snapped. The jobs weren’t right. Butterfly should have been doing the dishes, not riding herd on the sibs. She was doing the parental job while my husband did the eleven year old girl job.

I am learning to voice what I need and do it in a good way, not a cutting way. My hormones make my tongue have edges and I am spoiling for a fight so I took off on a walk through the town after I told him what I wrote just above. I left the house and walked. I had no destination in mind just away.

Dark. My favorite time. Quieter time. Lesser people time. People turn on their lights and leave their curtains wide open not able to think outside the circle of their own electric lights and solid walls. It’s like free cable. Not a lot of activity, a lot of people sitting in front of televisions or at the dining room tables. I stare in fascination as I walk by, trying out the passive voyeur style myself.

I walked and overflowed with anger and tears tried to follow but nothing came out. I hadn’t drunk water since that morning. I had no moisture to give. Walked past Norby’s and wondered if he had forgotten me again with that damned brain tumor growing. Put off going to see him again in my selfish anger. Wondered if I would ever see him again. Felt my body breaking a weak, dehydrated sweat and went to the grocery store for a bottle of water. I had my cd player stuffed into the shoulder strap of my sports bra under my shirt, ipods costing too much on my budget. I had my recently acquired Mumford and Sons Sigh No More cd playing on continuous replay. I could block out the store’s canned music and surf through on a wave of my own choosing. Large bottle of Montaqua and four Lindt truffles. Diet be damned.  Paused in the check-out line to tease the guy in front of me…a guy whose brother I dated in high school. He got carded by the 20 something cashier for the cigarettes he was buying. He’s in his 40s but looks a lot older. We laughed and bantered and reminisced about the 70s when we could go into the stores to buy cigarettes for our folks and older siblings at age ten and they wouldn’t bat an eye. Three of us plus the cashier laughing and I noticed when I walked out that there was a long line of people behind us at that checkout. They were all smiling.

Unintentional gift shared. My heart was too stingy when I walked in to want to share a communal moment with anyone. Somewhere kindness and laughter slipped in, otter-like to offer a piece of healing. Four Lindt chocolate truffles, one for the spirits, three for me. Water to rehydrate.

Walked home to find Bunny outside in the dark, by Mom’s car, Copper beside her. I heard her before I saw her because I walked in through the alley. She was singing, in her high, clear, five year old voice. The ‘I Love You’ lyrics she stole from Barney, but turned to her own tune and mixed with other words. She was singing a come home soon song for me. For herself. Her prayer song. Worried where Mommy might be and wanting to see her home. She turned when Copper noticed me. I spoke to her about not going outside at night in case of strangers. I spoke this as I realized these were the same quiet streets that had whispered for me to come out in the night when I was a child. Relatively secure area, two and a half small town blocks from the police station. Copper would have protected her. But I am a Mom and can’t bear the thought of anything happening to my babies. I told her what a beautiful song she was singing. We held hands on the way into Grammy’s house together.

GM and I spoke a bit. I was firm, but tried to steer away from accusations about his need to step up and be the disciplinarian of the family.   What I wanted to say to him would have incited a war.  Being the disciplinarian is a job he really doesn’t want. Doesn’t want to be the ‘bad guy’. Knows and hates the fact his kids have no respect for him, but is so hung up on his idea that discipline means being the bad guy he can’t see it is his own inconsistencies and lack of action bringing out his kids contempt. I try to be firm but loving in what I say. I don’t take pass offs or excuses and manage it in a mostly respectful attitude while letting him know I am upset.

We part in relative peace, hugging even. I still feeling like kicking him hard in tender areas, but I realize it does our unity no good to voice or act this out. 

He takes the kids with him to stay at his sister’s house with his father while his sister and family are out of town. I stay at Mom’s with Butterfly because she is being picked up for ski lessons tomorrow.

Tomorrow is the first Saturday of this month. Sweat lodge time. I will leave in the morning after seeing Butterfly off. Tomorrow will be a day for healing.

I did not bleed off my anger. I can’t do that anymore. I can only let it leave on the otter-tail of laughter, or the bitter seep of tears. I try my very best to walk in a good way. Tomorrow I will pray humbly for calmness, careful words and good wisdom. Tonight I will pray for guidance in my dreams, and for an open and receptive heart. For a way to use that pent up energy to let it come out of me in acts of love and kindness instead of anger.

Tonight I go to a sleep that will not be awakened at 5 a.m. to the piping voice arguments that only children who are morning people can come up with. Tomorrow I will get to hug them and tell them how much I love them.

Well, until they turn into those annoying anger inspiring people…but they’ll only be that way for about four more days…