Good Enough?

Hey, did you know that everyone makes mistakes? And that nobody’s perfect? Literally NOBODY, y’all. I keep learning this lesson, over and over and over and over and over. Specifically about myself, but it’s helpful to remember that it applies to all of us.

My dad, may he rest in peace, was a perfectionist. And when I say, “May he rest in peace,” I really mean it, because it’s hard to be at peace when you think you’re supposed to be perfect. It’s hard to admit that you’re not going to get everything right. Dad was great at so many things that I suspect he thought he had to be great at everything. He would start a new project, and then see that he wasn’t going to be able to do it perfectly, and leave it to finish later . . . and sometimes, for want of perfection, later never came.

I’m starting some projects right now. I’m not going to tell you what they are, because I’m afraid they’ll suffer the same fate as my singing recital. You know, the one I was definitely going to do in January?  If you’ll recall, I canceled it when I realized how far from perfect my singing actually was. I still plan to come back to it – to “finish it later”, if you will – but for now it’s on hold, because my standards are too high for my own good.

Kinda like Dad’s.

But Dad learned from his perfectionism, and by the time he was in his sixties, he had mellowed a good bit. He had an expression, probably from his early days in the Army Corps of Engineers, that got him through most projects: “Good enough for government work.” (Only he said “gummint work”, a reference to his beloved Pogo.)

When my daughter was born, Dad wanted to help me get over my own perfectionism and enjoy motherhood. Because he had studied psychology (along with engineering, philosophy, theology, etc.), he talked to me at some length about the writings of Donald Winnicott, who proposed the theory of the Good Enough Mother. You know what’s best for your baby, Dad told me. Perfectionism will only get in the way. Your child needs you, not some Stepford Wife version of the ideal mom.

Of course, my first thought was “Oh God, Daddy, why did you tell me that? Now I have to figure out how to be Perfectly Good Enough!” When you care, when you want to do things right, when a thing isn’t worth doing unless it’s done to perfection, it can be really hard to get out of your own way.

Despite my doubts, motherhood did create a pathway to a “good enough” mindset. Every day was a new opportunity to fall short of perfection. The baby cried and I couldn’t always comfort her. She threw up on my clothes and floor. Her needs took precedence over the housework and laundry. She would not go to sleep. She got ear infections all the time, and we had to choose between making her more comfortable with antibiotics and keeping her off of antibiotics so she wouldn’t become resistant to them. There were lots of ways for my husband and me to be good parents, but there was absolutely no way to get everything right.  We did our best and got on with it.

“Good enough,” I would say to myself, at the end of a long day. And “Nobody’s perfect.” And the best phrase, the one I read in some parenting book and posted over the kitchen sink: “Nobody’s keeping score.”

Funny how things work out. Eighteen years later, my baby has been accepted at the college of her choice, and seems perfectly (that word again!) ready to leave the nest. Her “good enough” childhood has prepared her for life in an imperfect world, just as Winnicott and my dad said it would. If ever there was a moment to celebrate success, this is it.

Yet ironically, at this time when I should be resting on my laurels and breathing a sigh of relief, I am fighting the demons of perfectionism again.

Will my new projects be successful? Will my husband and I become the happy, productive empty-nesters pictured in the AARP Bulletin? Will I ever make Real Money? Will I find new ways to use my talents as I age into the next phase of my career? Or is my best work – as a parent, as an actress, as a person – behind me? There is so much I still want to do!

I can hear my dad’s voice saying, “What are you afraid of, Carolyn? Screwing up? Because you’re going to screw up. You have to get your heart broken. You have to be willing to fail. Perfectionism will only get in the way.”

It’s the voice of experience, and I know it’s speaking the hard, honest, but ultimately liberating truth. I know that my next task is to experiment my way into the future, doing my best, but not keeping score.

I was a good enough mother. Now it’s time to relax and be a good enough me.

 

Home, Again

Our house is a very very very fine house, but it’s sixty-six years old and in need of a little love.

I’ve been considering a renovation, but I have no experience fixing up a house. My mom and dad renovated their house after I’d gone off to college or gotten married; I don’ t remember exactly when. I’m sure I was still young, because I remember being disappointed to see the house change, and feeling a slight sense of betrayal even though it wasn’t my childhood home. They’d bought it just before my last year of high school, and since I was the last of their children, it was indisputably their house, the house they would grow old in. Still, I didn’t want it to change. I wanted it to feel like home.

Change is hard.

I’ve been planning to update my own house – specifically, my kitchen – for nearly twenty years now. I talk about it with friends, check remodeling books out of the library, click around the internet to look at designs, take pictures at friend’s houses when I see something I like. But I never do anything about it. The job just feels too huge, the cost too high, and the result too uncertain. I don’t know what I want. I feel like we’ve nested, settled in. The house feels right. A little shabby, but right.

When my daughter was little, I was gung-ho to get the work done, and I told her we were finally going to update our crappy kitchen. She said, “But Mom, I love our crappy kitchen!” And she did. For her, the pattern in the hideous burnt orange vinyl floor was an elaborate system of roads for her toy cars, or a place to make designs with spilled flour, or a stage for the drum kit she made from pots and pans and chopsticks. There was no point in fancying up a space that served her imagination so well.

This month she’ll turn eighteen. Next fall she’ll most likely be off at college. My husband and I will inhabit this house, the one we plan to grow old in. I’m ready to renovate, but I’m keenly aware that this is my daughter’s childhood home. She was conceived, nurtured, and raised in this place, and I don’t want any renovation – no matter how beautiful or badly needed – to erase the evidence of that precious time.  I want this to feel like home.

Oh well. At least now I know what I want. I’m just not sure how to get it. How do you tell a contractor to tear up your very old (but very fine) house and rebuild it so that it feels exactly the same?

Seeing with New Eyes

It’s been remarkably easy for me to spend time with Mom lately. Last week my sister and I took her to Dalton, Georgia, her home of forty years, and she got to visit colleagues and friends from her career as a college professor. She was her old self, chatting with people, hugging everyone she saw, basking in the comfort of familiar surroundings.

I loved seeing her in her element. Moving to Atlanta was Mom’s choice, but it came with a downside. She left a community rich in shared experiences, a community of people who knew her in her prime and who still adore her.

I don’t say this lightly. Mom had a gift for reaching out to people and helping them over life’s hurdles with grace, dignity and humor. She taught math, tutored struggling math students, led a book study group on spiritual topics, and participated meaningfully in her church. If you needed help, any kind of help, she was there for you. The local chapter of Habitat for Humanity got a street named for her, okay? She was that kind of person.

She still is that kind of person. She just has dementia, so it’s harder for her to express her generous spirit. She can’t drive to the group foster home to help teenage girls conquer math. She can’t deliver Meals on Wheels or volunteer at the Food Bank. She can’t even host a bridge club.

And she’s living far from the people who remember her most vital days. In Atlanta, she’s one of many old people who have moved here to be closer to their children. In Dalton, she’s a matriarch.

It was good to be reminded of her old self. The trip back home put a sparkle in her eye and a new vision in mine. I see more clearly that she’s still in there, despite her cognitive setbacks. Dementia can seem like a second childhood, but my mother is still an adult, loved and honored by the community she served. Nice to see you, Mom.

Crafting Sanity

Mom and I like to make stuff.

I am convinced that sewing helps keep my mother relatively sane. As her brain slowly succumbs to dementia, her hands remain busy, stitching away on baby blankets that she will donate to charity. She feels active, creative, and useful – and she is. Handwork is good medicine.

Making things certainly helps keep me sane. I’m not a highly skilled crafter, but I love to make little animals out of fleece and stuffing.

Once I’ve cut them out and stitched them up, Mom fills them with polyester batting. She likes to engage them in light conversation. “Would you like some stuffing in your tummy, little bear?”

“Yes, please!” I answer for them in my best squeaky-puppet voice. It’s a silly game, but we like it. We are easily amused.

Perhaps we are not entirely sane, after all.  But our hands are busy, and for a time, our hearts are light.

Lazy Sunday

(I’m trying to blog daily for seven days. This is day three.)

I wrote a blog post for today, but it turned out to be too personal and self-involved, so I didn’t post it. (You’re welcome.)

Instead, here’s the view from the living room rug, where I spent most of the day curled up with a good book.  May your Monday morning be as warm and comforting as my Sunday afternoon . . . .

 

QWERTY

It’s Electronic Recycling Day! We’ve been scouring the house for old equipment that shouldn’t be here but definitely shouldn’t go to the landfill. My husband unearthed enough relics to fill a respectable cardboard box or two, and in the process he turned up an old-fashioned computer keyboard and set it beside my laptop. I just found it. OMG. Christmas!

An old-fashioned keyboard! The kind with sticky-up keys! So that I can actually feel the keys when I type! And hear them go clickety, clickety, clack!

I am suddenly transported back to 11th grade typing class, where we all learned to type on manual typewriters before we could graduate to the sleek new IBM Selectrics at the front of the room. Clickety, clickety, clack, an hour a day – perfect preparation for either (A) a college career typing term papers (and possibly getting paid to type other people’s term papers, because not everybody could type) or (B) a secretarial job that would tide you over until Mr. Right came along. Or both!!

I did both, by which I mean, I (A) went to college and typed my own papers (many of which were in French, and required me to go over them with a ball-point pen, adding accents and cedillas because there were no foreign-language characters on my keyboard), and (B) supported my acting career by working as a secretary, office assistant, receptionist, and many other jobs that required typing (on a sleek new IBM Selectric, always), until personal computers took over the world and typing for a living became obsolete.

Obsolete. Like this lovely old-fashioned Dell keyboard that is now hooked up via USB to my Toshiba laptop. I love it. Next thing you know, I’ll be asking Santa for Liquid Paper . . . .

Something You Don’t Need

(I’ve decided to blog daily for at least a week and see what happens. This is day one.)

For months now, Mom’s been on a new tear: almost every time I see her, she says, “I have a need. I need to take you somewhere and buy you something you don’t need. Something pretty. Something just for you.” My sister gets the same line. It’s deeply endearing. But I simply can’t let Mom buy me a new blouse or knickknack every single day. I don’t have the room, and she doesn’t have the money.

But one day last week I hit on a solution. It may only work once. But here it is. Something I don’t need. Something I just want. Something that makes me happy. Thanks, Mom.

My House Runneth Over

There is so much stuff in this house. So. Much. Stuff. And it’s not because I’m a hoarder. I am not a hoarder. The five cutting boards currently residing on my kitchen counter are there for a reason.

See, one of them was my mother’s, and another one was . . . my mother’s. One was a wedding gift to us three decades ago, and another was a present from my husband when he thought maybe we could get rid of the wedding gift, which really is falling apart. And the little bendy plastic one that makes it easy to slide the diced onions into the frying pan is just so convenient, and it goes in the dishwasher, and anyway . . . it was my mother’s.

For the last five years I’ve been filling my house with things that came from my mother’s. We downsized her twice, first from her four-bedroom home to a two-bedroom apartment, and then from that apartment to a one-bedroom suite in assisted living. Every move involved decisions with my sister about what to sell, what to give away, what to put in storage, what to save for the grandchildren, and what to bring into our homes.

I haven’t always been good at letting things go. I learned the value of simplicity the hard way, by filling my house with things I loved and then not being able to find them. I hired a professional organizer to teach me the art of putting things in a box and taking them to Goodwill. I am still working on this. (To my credit, I’ve made measurable progress. I let go of a tremendous amount in both moves.)

Mother, by contrast, was brilliant at organizing the things she loved and passing along the rest. Even though her house was full of treasures, it never felt cluttered. Her home opened its arms wide and made space for you among the bookshelves and antiques.

I want my home to be like that. I want to learn from my mother’s excellent example. I like a certain amount of clutter as evidence that life is being lived enthusiastically here, but otherwise I’m in favor of clean lines and open spaces. So why am I holding onto all this stuff?

I don’t have a good answer, but here’s a serviceable one: my mother is still alive. I don’t yet know which of her things will mean the most to me when she dies. Will it be the big wooden board she used to knead her bread dough? Or the rocking chair she rocked me to sleep in when I was a baby? Do I need all these photo albums, or will a few portraits and candid snapshots bring her back to me when she’s gone? How much time do I want to spend right now sorting her things, when I could be hanging out with her, helping her live with dementia, storing up the hugs and laughter that no box in the attic will ever contain? And anyway, doesn’t every memento have a story to tell, a story I’ll want to remember later?

So the boxes pile up. Meanwhile, Mom’s favorite activity these days is shopping. With us. For us. My sister, my daughter, and I are the lucky recipients of every whimsical trinket or attractive sweater Mom can fit into a thrift-store shopping cart. She buys us gifts because it’s the one thing she can still do for us. Even with dementia, she knows what we are doing for her, and she feels a need to reciprocate. Who are we to deny that need?

So. Much. Stuff.

I am not a hoarder. But I do have five cutting boards. And quite a few sets of table linens. And a little carved wooden turtle from the Galapagos Islands. Oh, I never told you about Mom’s trip to the Galapagos Islands? See, I’m glad I kept this . . . .

Working Girl

I am coming to the end of a long period of under-employment, which is good news for my household. Around here, a working Mommy is a happy Mommy, and a happy Mommy actually enjoys keeping house.

Though I’ve worked as an acting teacher and dialect coach for various theaters this summer, I haven’t been on stage since February. For me, going that long without a show is like crossing the Sahara in flip flops: blistering. In more ways than one.

Let’s skip the professional blisters for now and focus on the domestic ones. Without stimulating work to pull me away from home, my housework loses its urgency. It’s always there, and I always have time for it, so it never gets done, or it gets done begrudgingly.  I love hearth and home, but I don’t love vacuuming.

Now, though, with acting work on the near horizon, I suddenly have energy for housework and cooking. Saturday night I made a delicious dinner of grilled chicken, corn on the cob, and tomatoes fresh from the garden – a southern feast that should by rights have ended with peach ice cream or blueberry cobbler, or both. (Alas, I wasn’t feeling that domestic.)

I am motivated to cook dinner and tidy up the house because my domicile is about to be restored to its rightful purpose: workshop, studio, creative cocoon, home for character study and line learning, blessed retreat after long days of rehearsal. Artistic home base.

The transformation is already underway. My daughter and her best friend are furiously preparing for Dragon Con, so the dining room table is covered with patterns, fabric, paint, stencils, serger, and sewing machine. When I sit there to study my script, I feel like I’ve stumbled upon a fantastical tailor’s shop, or an altar to the gods of cosplay. Meals have moved to the back porch. Thank goodness for mild weather.

This is our home. For me, as for most people I suppose, the impulse to keep house is bound up with the lifestyle that house is meant to nurture. As long as I’m maintaining my home as a haven for creative work, the tasks get done. But the minute I start playing Suzy Homemaker, keeping house for duty’s sake, I’m doomed. I will sabotage myself at every turn, because the role does not fit me the way it fit, say, my mother (emotional baggage, anyone?).

Still, I’m conflicted. I want a nice house, yet I resist having one.  I love to look at the pictures in Better Homes and Gardens magazine, but I am wary of those Better Homes. I fear entrapment in a personal hell of gracious (but empty) living. I even resent the title. Better Homes than whose? Mine? Really? By what standard?

I’ve realized that I want a beautiful home, a home that nurtures all who live in it, a home that welcomes visitors and fosters lively conversation. But I don’t want the creation of that home to be my life’s work, as it was for so many women in the past. I keep coming back to a sense of entwined priorities, where the work I do outside the home invigorates my home life, and vice versa.

In other words, I gotta get out of this place and into a theater, or I will surely die. And that won’t help anyone.  Dead women don’t keep house.

Here Today, Gone Today

I took a walk with Mom last night on the little path behind her building. She made it around the circle three times and then needed to sit down, so we rested in a pair of rocking chairs tucked under the porch roof. There was a nice breeze from the ceiling fan above us. Mom said, “That breeze feels so good!” I didn’t point upward at the fan; I think she thought it was the wind.

And that made me sad. I don’t know why that should be the thing that made me sad, after two visits and lots of interaction yesterday. But it did. She couldn’t take in her surroundings enough to notice a ceiling fan, or if she could, she forgot about the fan almost as soon as she noticed it. This isn’t new, it’s just a reminder that her cognitive skills are slipping away.

I asked myself as I rocked, “What do you want, Carolyn? What do you want with her that you don’t have?”

My answer came fast and clear: I want a meaningful relationship with my mom. I want a relationship that’s still growing, that feeds both of us, instead of draining me and barely sustaining her. She is receding, sliding deeper into her own reality. Today she can’t acknowledge the fan. One day, she won’t acknowledge me.

I miss our old relationship. I like(d) my mom. She’s sitting right beside me, and she’s gone; both of those statements are true. I hold those opposing realities in my heart every time I see her. The person I know now is still kind, generous, and compassionate. She is still, in her essence, my mother. But the sharp edges are wearing down.

She nailed me last week, though, when she was over at my house looking through old photographs. We emptied a big box of family photos on the dining room table and lost ourselves in four generations of family portraits and vacation shots. When it was time to clean off the table I said, “Mom, how are we going to organize all this and put it away?”

She looked at me with a sly grin and said, “I don’t know. That’s your problem.”

Oh, Mommy. You are still there!