Ever since Chris started graduate school at Yale, I’ve had this sticker on the back of my car. It’s a simple sticker that says, “Yale University.” At first, it was a badge of honor because I thought it was so cool to actually know someone who went to Yale. After the novelty of the school wore off, I kept it on my car because I was so proud of Chris for what he had accomplished. When he graduated and started working in New York, we kept our connection to Yale through my job there, and that sticker was no longer a symbol of Chris, but of my own ties to Yale. When we moved to Florida, I debated about taking the sticker off, but decided to leave it on for nostalgic reasons. Every time I backed my car up, I’d see that sticker in my rearview mirror and I would remember that wonderfully happy time in our lives.
I took the sticker off this weekend.
Looking in that rearview mirror every day kept me in the past. Every time I looked at that sticker, it was because I was backing up. Sometimes it was backing up my car, and sometimes it was backing up emotionally. I’d look at that sticker and think about all the things I didn’t have in my life anymore. The people who we came to love at Yale, the house that became our first home, the jobs that started out our career paths, the seasons that gave us so much happiness…all of it. Every time I saw that sticker in my rearview mirror as I backed up, I’d mentally and emotionally back up a little bit, too.
This week, I was backing my car out of my parking spot at school after a particularly rewarding day of teaching that made me both proud and happy to be a teacher. I glanced at the sticker and thought to myself, “Oh! That’s still on there?” I couldn’t remember the last time I had noticed it. Probably not for months. “I should probably take that off,” I thought.
Just like that. I should just take it off.
In the past year, we have been establishing ourselves where we wanted to be in Orlando. We’ve built a life that not only satisfies me the way that our life in Connecticut had, but goes beyond that and makes me feel complete and whole. I can’t imagine my life being anywhere but here. I know where my kids are going to go to school in a couple years. I wake up every morning and drive to a job that fulfills me in ways I didn’t even know needed fulfilling. I come home to a family that is funny and happy and energetic and exhausting and constantly keeping me on my toes. I lay down at night beside the one person in the whole entire world that could give me this life. I can honestly say that I have never been this happy in my life.
You should see my house right now. It is a disaster zone. (I say that like that’s a change from the normal, every day state of my house…) But you know what I did today? I went on a glass bottom boat tour with my mom, my best friend, my grandma, and my two kids. We came home to the hustle of bath times and bedtimes and Sunday evening chores to get ready for the week. And as I sit here now, my house is finally quiet and the rush of the day is calm and if I had to give one word to my day after all that chaos it would be “happiness.” Just pure happiness. Happiness that I got to spend the day with three generations of women, all who have inspired me in ways I don’t even think they know. Happiness even though the kids were tired and grumpy when we got home and fought bedtime hard core. Happiness even though I got absolutely nothing done that I needed to for this upcoming week. Happiness even when I’m exhausted and feel like I need another weekend to recover from this weekend. It is all just happiness to me.
Running has been an unexpected joy in my life, but I think it is really the sign of something much deeper happening to me right now. With every step I run, with each early morning I rise, with each mile I clock, I am doing something that brings me happiness. For a long time, happiness was situational for me. I was happy when things were happy around me. But something in the past four or five months has shown me how to live in a state of happiness, even during times that may not necessarily be happy. On work days when I feel ineffective in the classroom, I still feel happy in my career. On days when dinner is late to the table and kids are crying and dogs are barking and Chris texts to say he hasn’t even left the office yet, I still feel happy. I feel other things that sometimes dull that happiness – frustration or exhaustion or anger – but at the end of each day, there is always happiness.
Deep, deep down in my soul there is happiness now.
Turns out, I don’t need to be constantly reminded about specific times in my life that have made me happy. I don’t need a sticker in my rearview mirror to remind me of happy days. That happiness is inside me. It goes with me. It’s there on good days and on bad days and every day in between. And when it is that prevalent in my life, when I don’t need reminders or moments that show me how happy I am, when it just comes that naturally from inside, then it’s time to take down that sticker.
24Apr
I can’t remember a time when my life has been this orderly. For the past two weeks, I get to work early like always, ready to tackle my to-do list, but I end up sitting there trying to come up with a to-do list. When I come home, I get dinner going and then begin to look around for the chores that always need to be done, and I find there’s just not that much to do. It’s the first time I can ever remember being this caught up both at work and at home. It is really freeing up some of my time. Now at school, instead of busying myself with paperwork, I am able to pay more direct attention to my students and I’m enjoying them more than ever. At home, instead of doing endless tasks, I’m sitting on the floor more playing with the kids. Life’s been pretty good lately.
While I’ve been going through this time of less stress and more free time, Chris has been going through a period of more stress and less free time. Work has been stressful for him these past couple months, and I think he’s bringing that stress home. He’s been picking at things here, complaining about things here, and stressing about things here that just aren’t that important in the grand scheme. I think when real stress hits, it infects all other areas of your life and that is definitely what’s happening with him.
Quite frankly, I’m getting kind of tired of it.
I feel bad saying that because I know how patient Chris always is with me when I’m the one with a stressful load. But the thing is, I HAVE been patient. This has been going on for about a month or more and I’ve been so supportive about it. SO SUPPORTIVE. Everything that he has said stresses him out, I’ve worked to relieve if I can. But nothing has changed. He comes home from work every day barely talking to anyone, and brooding everywhere he goes, no matter how much I try to help make things better.
The other night, he came home from work in that mood again and the minute he walked in the door I wanted to scrape my nails down a chalkboard and scream. I couldn’t handle it anymore. So, I sat on the couch as he moped around and I thought to myself, “I need a new approach.” He continued to complain and mope and pout and point out the chores that weren’t done and the things that we needed to do, blah, blah, blah, and finally I interrupted him.
“IF YOU DON’T LIKE THINGS THE WAY THEY ARE, THEN CHANGE THEM OR SHUT UP!”
And that pretty much began the strangest fight/tense discussion we’ve ever had. Everything I said to Chris was brutally honest, to the point of being harsh, and every argument he shot back at me was piercing, and yet we never raised our voices. We got frustrated and one of us would walk out of the room for a few minutes to cool down and think things over, but then we’d come back and keep on talking.
The thing is, I wasn’t being mean. I was just being honest and leaving the fluffy love stuff out of it. I basically told Chris he had to suck it up. I told him that this was our life right now – laundry piles and dishes and sick babies. It was just the way things were. And, you know, that wasn’t the worst thing in the world. Our life was pretty darn great, and I thought that the stress he was feeling at work was making it hard for him to see that. I told him that I was tired of hearing about how hard his days were because, quite frankly, so are mine, but I come home to escape those stresses, not to rehash them or live in them. I said that happiness was not something that came and went randomly, it was a choice we had to make every day and there wasn’t anything that was going to change in our lives to make him any happier. If he wanted to be happy, he was going to have to decide to be happy.
When it was over, we sat next to each other on the couch and watched TV, occasionally talking or point out random things, just like nothing had happened. But the next morning, Chris woke up in a much better mood. And that afternoon, I came home to find him fixing the pool pump (the bane of his homeowner existence). This past weekend when Chris was home with the kids while I was in Atlanta, he spent some good, quality time with the kids. They ran errands together, played together, and did chores together. When I came home, the house was cleaned, the laundry was done, dinner was on the stove, and Chris looked happier than I had seen him in weeks.
I don’t know what sort of nugget of marital insight this has provided me. Maybe that honesty is the best policy? Or that your spouse is your mirror of truth? Or maybe even happiness is a choice? Could I even tie it into my favorite, “Bloom where you are planted” saying? I’m not really sure. Maybe I’ll think about it some more and find some kind of philosophical meaning to this.
But more than likely, I think this is just part of being married. Sometimes in my marriage, Chris and I are soft places to land in the midst of really hard times, and sometimes we’re the very honest pep talk that we need to get up and make a change. Chris has been the one to tell me before that there’s nothing to do but buck up and move forward, and now I’ve had to tell him the same. I think that’s the side of marriage where friendship really becomes crucial because good friends can guide without judging, and a good spouse can, too. Like a good friend, a good spouse can give you a warm, supportive place for you to hide for a while, and they can also be the one to push you a little bit, even when you don’t want to hear it. I’m glad that Chris has been both those things to me in my life, and I’m glad that I can be that for him, too.
15Apr
I’m reading this book called “Mile Markers,” by Lance Armstrong’s ex-wife, Kristin Armstrong. She is a runner who has a blog on the Runner’s World website and who has written several books about life through the eyes of a runner. This particular book is about the “26.2 reasons that women run.” Sarah gave it to me to read. I was a little skeptical at first because while I am continuing to run five to six days out of the week, I still wouldn’t call myself a runner and so I felt a little bit like an outsider reading a “runner’s” book. But, as Sarah promised, it isn’t a runner’s book at all. It is more about women and friendship and life, and, I have to say, it is so uplifting to read. Not only does it make me proud of all the running I’ve been doing, but, more importantly, it makes me more aware of the kind of person I want to be.
Actually, running in general has done this for me. In the past few months that I have been getting up early and running, I’ve seen real differences in my life in areas other than my health and waistline. The biggest change I have seen in myself is that I am simplifying my choices. It started as a simple question I’d ask myself at 5:00am when I found myself wide awake in my bed, trying to decide if I was going to get up and go run. I am the Queen of Excuses. I’m pretty sure I’ve held that title since I was little. I can come up with an excuse for anything. But at 5:00am, it’s hard to come up with creative excuses. It really just boiled down to one statement: I could go running, or not. It was as simple as that. I could choose to get up or not. There was no excuse, no reason, no explanation that mattered. I could do it or not.
And so, I’d sigh and grumbled, “Fine!” to myself and I’d get up out of bed and go for a run. Which I never regretted.
Gradually, I stared applying that simple choice to all kinds of things. When presented with cupcakes in the teachers lounge, it became, “I can eat that cupcake or not.” And I walked away without those empty calories.
After flopping into bed one night without taking off my make up and washing my face, it became, “I can wash my face or not.” And I’d get up, wash my face, and sleep better.
When faced with sending a scary email that I had been avoiding for a couple days, it became, “I can send that email or not.” And I cranked out that email in three minutes and it was over.
When I got home from work and school and the kids were crying and I could either put on a movie to entertain them or I could get us all up and moving, it became, “I can either go for a walk or not.” And I loaded the kids up in the wagon and we got out for a while, all feeling better for doing something active rather than sitting on the couch.
When deciding if I was going to go to a meeting after work one day on the other side of town even though I didn’t feel too good, it became, “I can either go or not.” And I went and felt really great for being involved.
When extended an invitation to something that I might normally have not attended, it became, “I can either go or not.” And I ended up going and having a really great time.
When thinking about my Grandma one night this week in the middle of the mad dinner dash at my house, it became, “I can either call her or not.” And I called her, had a sweet conversation, and realized no one was going to die if dinner was a few minutes late.
When standing on one side of a hanging bridge or next to a tiny airplane in Costa Rica, it became, “I can either do this or not.” And I walked across that bridge or up into that airplane and (though I thought I was going to die both times…) I never looked back.
When I felt myself getting really mad at Chris over something this week, it became, “I can pick a fight about that or not.” And I decided to call my sister instead, blow off some steam, and Chris and I ended up having a civil conversation about it later instead of a fight right then.
I know that not all things in life are black and white, yes or no. But after a month or so of boiling things down to a yes or no decision, I haven’t found too many things that can’t be applied to my decision-making statement. I use it to make 95% of the decisions I make these days, and I find that not only am I making better choices, but I am doing a lot more things than I normally would do. I’m more active and more proactive. I complain less and feel guilty less because I know that I’ve made every decision deliberately and intentionally. I am more content and satisfied, even on days when things are crazy busy and hectic. It certainly doesn’t eliminate all my problems or stresses, but it does make me feel more in control of the things I do have a choice in.
I’m finding that life without excuses feels a lot better than a life built on excuses.
08Mar
I get asked a lot about the trip to Costa Rica that Chris and I are taking at the end of March. We were recipients of the “Gift of Happiness,” which is an eight-day stay in Costa Rica at beautiful hotels, doing adventurous activities, in exotic locations. Sounds pretty darn happy to me.
But whenever people would ask me about it, I sort of avoided the topic. There were two reasons. First, there was this tiiiiiiiny little problem with my passport. Like, the fact that I didn’t have one. Years ago, when I was in my teens, I had a passport, but who the heck knows where it is now. When I needed one for my honeymoon, it was during the time when you could still use a certified birth certificate to fly with, so that’s how I got out of the country then. But now, I needed a real passport and mine was no where to be found. I decided not to tell our lovely travel agent this minor detail in the planning (sorry, if you’re reading right now!!!). I figured I’d apply for a new passport, on the hunch that since I now needed an adult passport, it technically WAS the first time I was applying. But as the plans were formed for our trip and as plane tickets and hotel reservations arrived, I kept this horrible pit in my stomach. What if they sent the passport application back to me and said it would be a more complicated process since I had lost my first? I wouldn’t have time for that before our trip! I was up all night long some nights, worrying about my passport.
But then… IT CAME!!!!!!
I was so excited I could hardly speak! Now I was legal and ready to roll! But even with that huge weight off my chest, I still found it hard to get really excited. And, actually, I feel that way about a lot of things these days.
In the past few years, I’ve become a lot more hesitant about celebrating things too far into the future. We made a lot of plans for the past two years – a move across country, a new life for our family, great jobs, and an easy transition. And a lot of stuff disappointed me and, at time, downright hurt me, when I expected one thing and another thing happened instead. I guess that happens to you as you get older. In fact, it probably happens to people a lot younger than me, but I just hadn’t experienced it yet. For the most part, whatever I wanted to happen in my life, had happened. I’d worked really hard to accomplish goals and follow my plans, and so I just got used to things always working out for me. So, when I went through those few years where everything sucked, it was a really big wake up call for me that sometimes in life, things just don’t go like you want them to. I’m glad I learned that lesson, but learning it did cause me to shy away a bit from celebrating things a bit too early.
The downside to that hard life lesson is that you can sometimes lose your optimism. I remember when we finally found our house and were under contract to buy, everyone around me was so excited and wanted me to be excited, too. But I had just come off the heels of a two year period where everything seemed to fall apart at the last minute, and I wasn’t too eager to get all excited. I basically waited for the other shoe to drop through the whole buying process. And that’s pretty normal, I guess. Buying a house is tense and stressful. But even after we got into the house, I never really had a big celebration moment. It was always just a “I’m going to get by until something bad happens,” kind of feeling. I think that’s why I’ve been so slow on the renovations to our house. I haven’t really sat around dreaming of paint samples and fabric swatches or anything. And I think that’s all because I’ve lost a bit of my excitement about major events in life because I got burned so bad during that two year period of time.
I worried for a while that it was depression that kept me from being excited about things. Whenever something major would happen and I wouldn’t be as excited as I used to get, I’d secretly stop and wonder if life was always going to be this way. Would I always expect bad things to happen now? Would I ever be completely, totally happy again? And if I wasn’t, would it be because I’d grown wiser with age, or would it be because I had pieces of depression still in my mind, planted like tiny emotional landmines that always went off whenever happy things happened to me? But I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately, and I don’t think it is remnants of depression. I think that as we get older, we learn the hard lesson that life sometimes doesn’t go as planned. The upside to all of that is that I’m also learning that it’s often in the unplanned situations that you find real happiness. Deeper happiness.
And so, I think it’s strangely (and divinely, I must say) ironic that Chris and I are getting ready for our “Gift of Happiness” trip. Because if I’ve learned anything about happiness, it’s that it really is a gift that is given out of experiences and moments created by us, for us, and with us by the people we really love in our lives.
We leave in three weeks, and for the first time since we heard we were going, I got excited this morning. Really, truly excited. Giddy even. I was riding in my car on the way to work and a song came on the radio. It was about a couple packing their bags and getting away from it all for a while. And I thought about sitting on the beach with Chris, laughing with him, spending entire days with him without having to share our attention between kids or dogs or jobs or family. An entire week of having plans, but also of having the luxury of knowing that the absolute worst that could happen is our plans would fall through and we’d end up sitting on a beach all day. And I thought to myself, “You know, who couldn’t use a little gift of happiness every now and then?”
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