And the Winners Are

When I was a little girl the Oscars were a very big deal. I dreamed of being a movie star and I was obsessed with seeing as many movies as my wallet and tush could handle. I couldn't imagine that celebrities were anything but happy all the time. I envied their lifestyle filled with millions of dollars in the bank and millions of fans falling at their feet. The culmination of all that fame and fortune was The Academy Award show. I used to wait anxiously for the yearly ceremony to see if my favorites would take home that golden statue and I took it much harder than I like to admit when they were robbed of their due by someone I couldn't stand.

Watching the Oscars on Sunday, I realized how much I'd changed. I still love the movies but I no longer idolize a bunch of overpaid, spoiled narcissists with nothing better to do than dress up in gowns that cost a year's salary and give themselves a well-publicized pat on the back. Oh, I still admire the good guys like George Clooney and Tom Hanks who seem to use their fame for purposes higher than acquiring a $30,000 swag bag. But I no longer wish I could change places with any of them.

What I do wish is that all of us could experience the feeling of appreciation and respect that the winners must feel walking up to that podium. My wonderful parents, my loving husband, my supportive friends, my amazing children; all of them deserve a golden statuette as much as any pampered Hollywood actor. Since I don't have connections to Price Waterhouse and I don't want to hand out a bunch of chintzy, plastic statues, I'll have to use this platform to give them their due.

I may still be crazy about the movies but it's nice to finally realize just who my real heroes are.

Thirty Days

In thirty days you can:

• enjoy a grace period before making your credit card payment
• use up the recommended monthly supply of skin cream or acne lotion you ordered from a late-nite infomercial
• purchase and wrap all your Christmas presents
• get one third of the way through any season
• serve a stint in the county jail
• save the money for your next mortgage or rent payment
• read one of those books you’ve been meaning to read
• get to the end of April, June, September or November
• return unwanted purchases to most retail stores
• enjoy another month’s .025% interest on your savings account
• enroll in a trial period with Jenny Craig or Nutri-System
• guarantee another month of Project Runway with your paid cable bill
• make it through your wardrobe without having to do laundry
• see results from that new Pilates workout

Or, if you’re really ambitious, in thirty days you can change your life. The general consensus of experts is that thirty days is the minimum amount of time it takes to replace a bad habit with a better one. It is the minimum amount of time needed to create a new routine; the minimum daily repetition that leads you to changed behaviors.

For the past month, I’ve watched my daughter dig deep. I’ve watched her struggle. I’ve watched her call out her demons and kick them to the curb. Through it all, she has been tougher than a heavyweight fighter and more courageous than a cliff diver. Today, as she celebrates thirty days of her new life, her father and I stand in awe of the person she’s become. We kneel in gratitude to God for giving us our daughter back and we look forward to being a part of her future victories.

Thirty days. It’s more than enough time for God to work miracles.

Tech Wreck

I'm one of those people who know just enough about computers, MP3 players, and cellphones to survive in this technology laden world. I can turn them all on and off, I can download information and I can even navigate through an occasional glitch in their daily operation. What I can't do is tolerate any of them not working when I need them to. Because when that happens, I'm forced to call tech support. And that is never, ever a good thing.

If you're not doomed to spend a half hour on hold, you're shipped off to India to talk to well-meaning but impossible to understand technicians who hold you hostage while they try to diagnose what is ailing your machine. Since I am unable to adequately explain most of my technological maladies, I'm at their mercy. Take my computer. For the last few days I've been struggling to download the expensive tax preparation software I've used for years. For some reason known only to the glitch gods, the CD refused to be read by my trusty computer drive. I tried my best to follow the directions on both the back of the box and the website but after one hour I was still listening to a spinning CD and no closer to actually completing my taxes.

I was forced to pick up the phone.

The first contact tried to give me a patch to make up for the fact that my computer was lacking Service Pack 3 (whatever the hell that is). Nothing. Then he directed me to the website where he threw a couple of darts at the installation troubleshooting board. Still nothing. He eventually ended up suggesting I get in my car, return the software and come back to the website to purchase another (more expensive) download of the same exact information that I now held in my hand. I tersely thanked my less-than-helpful friend across the pond and vowed to ask me husband for help.

After a tense encounter with my husband (who is only slightly higher on my help list than tech support personnel), I ended up giving another call to my friends in India. Only this time I didn't speak with with anyone in the land of the Taj Mahal. I was connected to a girl with a terrible head cold named Kelly who was based in New York. Within minutes she had provided me with a download of the product that miraculously appeared on my computer screen. She didn't charge me a thing and stayed on the line until she was sure that my problem was solved.

She almost made the whole time-sucking, hair-pulling software-loading hassle bearable. Almost.

What Goes Around . . .

Forgive me while I snap out of a major case of deja vu. Conversations with your kids will do that to you. One minute I was sprawled out on my daughter's bed listening to her concerns of the day and the next minute I was being gently reminded that my marriage was woefully lacking in the communication department. Huh? When I finished defending myself, I couldn't help laughing at the irony. Thirty-five years ago I had the exact same conversation with my own mother.

What I couldn't explain to my genuinely concerned daughter (or my twenty-three year old self) was the difficulty of anyone on the outside accurately assessing the state of someone else's marriage. It may look seriously flawed, if not completely broken, to invested onlookers but, in reality may just be going through another one of those temporary bottlenecks commonly referred to as a rough patch by us long time married folks.

My daughter, unmarried as of yet as I was when I had my infamous "let me help your marriage" talk with my own mother, was just trying to help. I know her intentions were completely noble and driven by love for both her wayward parents. Believe me, I can relate. But there's no way she will ever be able to fully comprehend the complexities of marriage until she has one of those rings on her finger for a very long time. No one can.

How can I explain to her that it's okay that we're in a little bit of a rut? It's okay that we're on a little togetherness hiatus. It's even okay that we haven't connected in the romance department for a little while. I know that it's not going to stay this way. I know it's just another one of those breaks in the dance. Like all roads leading to Rome, our mated-for life paths are destined to reconverge sooner rather than later. I just have to give myself the necessary kick in the pants (which isn't even remotely possible with my bad knees) to jump start the process.

I wonder if it's too late to make dinner reservations?

Wasted Blessings

This weekend we got the news of another celebrity death that looks to be tied to substance abuse. When you hear about a superbly talented person, blessed beyond belief, unable to break free from the stranglehold of addiction, you realize what a powerful force it is. And even though the news wasn't particularly shocking, you couldn't help but feel a profound sense of sadness over the waste of such talent; over the loss of a young girl's mother. But that's the thing about addiction. It doesn't care how rich you are, how smart you are, or how loved you are. It's an equal opportunity destroyer.

As someone who's watched a loved one struggle with similar behavior, I sympathize with what Whitney Houston's family must be going through. It's the hardest thing in the world to watch someone you love reject a way out, convinced they can "handle" it. You can beg, plead, cry, and yell; you can try to reason and inform but none of it will do a damn bit of good until the addict is ready; until they are sick and tired of being sick and tired. Then, you might have a fighting chance to get through.

Watching the news coverage this weekend made me more grateful than ever that our family is getting that chance.

If Your Friends Are There . . .

When the going gets tough . . . you better have a couple of good friends standing by with a pitcher of margaritas. (Did you really think I was going to say ‘the tough get going’?) Not a chance. Friends (and margaritas, come to think of it) are one of the miracles in life. So any time I spend more than a couple of minutes thinking about how blessed I am, one of the blessings that consistently floats to the top of the list is the amazing group of friends that God has given me. If trials and struggles have any saving grace, it’s that going through them have a way of weeding out the casual acquaintances from the call-me-in-the-middle-of-the-night-if-you-need-me true friends. Sometimes those special people are friends that have been with you from the second grade; other times they turn out to be relative newcomers to your address book (sorry, I mean iPhone) who surprisingly step up to the plate just when you need them the most.

Today, I had lunch with someone who’s been around through many of my life’s ups and downs. Like me she married a type-A engineer; like me, she moved overseas to accommodate her husband’s career. We had our kids at approximately the same times in our lives and we’ve lived in the same town for the last fifteen years. We don’t see each other as often as we should but every time we do get together, we pick up right where we left off. That’s one of the best things about a true friend. There’s a shorthand between them that is as comforting as a jelly doughnut and not nearly as fattening.

I’m lucky enough to have a nice house, a decent car and a few bucks in the bank but as I get older, I value my friendships with all the wonderful women in my life more than just about anything. I know it’s asking a lot, but I hope everyone who reads this has friends half as wonderful as MaryAnn, Janet, Donna, Lynda, Susan, Debbie, Katie, Linda, Kirsten, Rene, Lori, and Karyn.

I appreciate all of you more than you’ll ever know.

Bumps in the Road

It would be nice if getting from Point A to Point B was as easy as it sounds; if a magic carpet could swoop in and transport you from the spot you're standing to the distant place you want to be. Unfortunately, that mode of transportation is limited to Disney characters so the rest of us have to stumble our way through difficult times as best we can. Decades of dealing with life's ups and downs have a way of showing you that trials, though certainly unwelcome, are often the gateway to wisdom and growth but helping your child come to terms with that reality has proven even more difficult than learning it firsthand.

As I've previously written, our family has been riding a positive wave the past couple of weeks as we've watched our eldest child make great strides in a personal struggle. Though we all wanted to believe that the progress would continue in a straight line, we were realistic enough to know that that was unlikely. All we could do as parents was to be prepared when our child hit that inevitable pothole; to be there with the right words, the right encouragement to help her keep her eye on the prize.

Today, we had to do just that.

When our child's fragile confidence took a momentary nosedive we had to be ready with the support she needed. I'm happy to say that within a couple of hours, the worst of the storm had passed. But we know we're far from home free. We know there will be other challenges in the days ahead but we are united in our goal We're going to have to take one day at a time.

And we're going to keep an eye out for those potholes.

Answered Prayers

Watching your child struggle is the hardest thing a parent has to do. Having the strength and conviction not to step in and make it all better is the second hardest thing. Being there with support and encouragement as she figures it out for herself, well, as Master Card so aptly put it, that's priceless.

Patience is not my thing. Ask anyone who knows me. I'm definitely not one of those 'measure twice, cut once' kind of gals. One of the worst side effects of that character flaw is that I can be prone to dropping boatloads of subtle hints and reminders (otherwise known as nagging) if the people I live with aren't doing something fast enough for my taste. Finding out that no amount of pleading, cajoling, bribing, etc. could help my child turn her car out of a dead end street any faster has been a tough lesson to learn. When I finally accepted that, I had to do what I thought was impossible.

I had to turn everything over to a higher power.

The past seven days have been nothing short of a miracle. In all honesty, I can't say that I prayed and the next day everything was better but I am convinced that months of prayer from multiple sources have brought the people, resources and strength needed to bring my child to the place she's standing today.

Call it whatever you want but, seeing what's happened to my family over the last week, I'm calling it a divine intervention.