Strategy or Spaghetti?

My oldest son says he wants to be a doctor. He’s been saying that for a while now so I’m guessing as he starts out college next year his intentions will be to start out on that path. Good for him. So many kids his age have no idea what they want to do when they grow up.

But what if he gets into it and finds out the doctoring thing isn’t right for him? Will there be a Plan B? Depends on how he approaches life, I guess. Maybe it’s contingent on how good he is at putting his life’s plan into place.

It’s a lot to expect from someone so young – figuring out how to set about living what’s left of (hopefully) a very long life. But I think if it’s at all possible, it’s something young people should give some thought to. I know I didn’t.

My strategic approach toward life has been minimalist at best. Really, my life plan has been pretty general – go to college, get a job, get married, have kids, keep working, retire and live happily ever after.

I guess it was something, at least. But I think my one major regret in life is my failure to map out a more detailed life plan for myself. But then, who really thinks about that during the throes of youth? You have your whole life to figure out what you’re going to do, what you’re going to achieve, how you’re going to get there, right? But I’m not young anymore. And now I’m middle-aged and still wondering.

My general plan seemed to work for me up to a point. I just carried on with my life and took advantage of opportunities as they came. It worked, until a few years ago, when I really started to ponder what I was really meant to do.

And now a couple of years later – after having had time to think about it and earn a master’s degree to boot – I’m still as clueless as ever. A life in limbo. Unfortunately, when you’re stuck in limbo, there is a tendency at times to wonder whether you’ve wasted your life. Distorted thoughts creep in and begin to tell you that you wouldn’t be in this position had you not wasted your life. Whether or not my career has been a failure is something I can’t discern at this point. Fortunately, all I have to do is look at my three beautiful children to know that my life has had some purpose.

As for my career, though, right now I’m figuratively taking spaghetti and throwing it to the wall, hoping something will stick. Each piece of pasta represents something. One piece might represent a total career change. Other pieces might represent various positions I’ve applied for. Another piece might represent my current small (very small) business. Still, other pieces might represent specific specialized niches that perhaps I should more deeply explore.

Right now I’m on the small business track, seeing where that will take me. Will it work out? At this point, I don’t know. But if you liken it to pasta, I guess it has just as much of a chance of sticking as anything else.

In the meantime, I’m watching my three precious boys continue to grow up. The oldest is a young man now – so handsome and self-confident. We took him on his first college visit last week. I can’t wait for him to enter that new, exciting stage of his life – young adulthood.

And while I know that right now he is just a kid, I hope that he will come out of a college with a plan, a roadmap, some strategy for how he wants to take on life. At least I hope he and my other two sons will be a little more focused than I was. Regardless, I’ll love them with all my heart. But I do have that wish for them.

Because slinging spaghetti ain’t where it’s at.

Sam

I remembered that morning in 1998, when the stick turned blue.

It was two days before Christmas, four weeks after me, my husband Ed and our two sons had attended my brother’s wedding over Thanksgiving weekend in Pennsylvania. Sometime during that weekend a "grand occasion" took place that resulted in me having to pee on a stick a month later.

I truly felt that our one indiscretion would have resulted in a near impossible chance of my getting pregnant. Yet as I checked the stick, it hit me that what I thought was impossible was most definitely possible. What initially was an informal precaution to check “just in case” because I knew it would be negative and then I wouldn’t have to worry about partying for the holidays, in an instant turned into a shocking realization that I was again “with child.”

As I sat in the bathroom staring at the blue stick, I’m pretty sure I didn’t breathe for a good five minutes. I broke the news to my husband later that day. Since I had a house full of relatives in from out of town for Christmas, I took him for a ride up the street to the park. It was there that I gave him the news. And then I started to cry. I guess I don’t always like surprises, especially upon suddenly finding out that a baby is on the way. My husband attempted to comfort me by offering up the possibility that this one might turn out to be the little girl that I had always wanted.

Nine months later, I delivered my third child – my third son who we named Samuel. Sam must have had some inkling in the womb about his mother’s ambivalence toward the pregnancy. Because as soon as he wiggled his way through the final stretch of the birth canal, he made sure that I knew who he was. To this day, I tell him that of the three, he was the baby that was most likely to drive me insane. From the very first week, he was as clingy as a sock and a slip joined together by static electricity.

Sam would never sleep in his crib – only in his mother’s arms. Many nights I would sit in the rocking chair next to the crib, holding him as he would sleep soundly, waiting for the perfect, discreet moment to gently place him in the crib. But it didn’t matter how long I would wait. As soon as I would put him down, a trigger would go off in his body – one that said, “she’s putting me in that dreaded crib now.” His body would go stiff, he would wake up and start to cry. Sometimes I would just let him cry. And cry. And cry. For hours. Until he wore me down, because he never did wear down. Needless to say, crib use during the next couple of years was negligible. He ended up sleeping with me and my husband. It was the only way we could get some sleep. His waking hours were challenging, also. To take more than three steps away from him was a travesty for him. I recall one trip to visit relatives in Michigan when he wasn’t quite a year old. I couldn’t even get away from him long enough to eat a meal without him screaming. He wanted to be held all the time, and not by anybody else – only me. I finally put him into preschool when he was two years old, just to try to cure him of his separation anxiety. The first six months when I would drop him off I would have to pull him off me and he would scream and cry as I left. But eventually, he started to get the hang of it and realize that Mom didn’t have to be there all the time.

So what does this all have to do with now? Sam is now 11 years old, and he has managed to become a little more independent since his crib days. But make no mistake, he’s still my baby boy. Maybe it was the clinginess of his early life that contributed to this. Whatever it is, I must concede that the boy knows me. He is attuned to my moods and thoughts. When I’m sad, no matter how well I hide it, he sees it. I am one who tends to internalize my stress, particularly my frustrations and my sadness. I am inclined to suffer in silence, and manage to do so without much detection from others in my family, including my husband and other two sons. But Sam is way too perceptive. One day last spring Sam asked his dad to take him out so that he could spend his own money to buy me flowers because I “looked sad” that day. And every day, several times a day, he comes up to me, kisses me and tells me he loves me.

Wow. Maybe I look really sad lately. Truth is, the last year has been challenging, wrought with a few personal and professional setbacks. So sometimes when I least expect it, I will find myself getting teary-eyed at the spur of the moment. I wonder if I have failed, and if my life has been a waste up to this point. I fight feelings of guilt, brought on by worries that I have not done justice to my sons as their mother. And in these fleeting moments of self-pity, tears start to well up in my eyes. I try to rub them before they roll down my cheeks, as I don’t want my family to see me that vulnerable. I want to present a strong front before my family. But Sam knows how I feel.

It happened just the other day. I was involved in a rather mundane task – preparing dinner. And then one of many depressing thoughts creeped into my psyche – one that left me drained of self-confidence and questioning my ability to take care of my family. I sniffed, then dabbed at my eyes, all the while trying to keep my feelings under the radar. Sam was at the kitchen table doing his homework and must have figured out what was going on. He got up from doing his homework and walked over to me. “I love you, Mom,” he said. And then he embraced me with one of his big old teddy bear hugs. For once I didn’t try to hide my feelings. I was sad and I stood there in the kitchen, locked in an embrace with my son for more than five minutes, crying softly and letting the tears flow. How very much I needed a shoulder to cry on at that moment, and to know that I was loved. Sam knew that.

I remembered the day that the stick turned blue, and my initial half-hearted enthusiasm about the third baby’s imminent arrival. I always joked that God must have planned for Sam to be here on this earth, because I certainly didn’t plan for him to be here. While there were a few times during that pregnancy that I may have questioned God’s plan, I think the full  revelation came that few days ago, as I was crying into my youngest son’s shoulder. “Thank you, God, for sending me Sam. I now know why it is that you sent him to me.”