Apparently there is such a thing as an "influential blogger," and I'm guessing, with a grand total of seven official followers signed in to this one, I am not one of them. Which means the information I disseminate won't get very far. Which means I can tell all the secrets I want.
So don't tell anybody, guys, but my brother and I are planning a surprise eightieth birthday party for my mother. I realize mom's deafness will not stop her from reading this, but my steadfast refusal to provide her with the blog site will. I have discovered, for the umpteenth time, that there really is no up side to sharing this stuff with her, as she will always detect some criticism of her between the lines. Okay, sometimes the criticism is right there in the lines -- right there in black and white -- but for the most part, really, I've been trying to behave.
We're planning a small celebration for her milestone birthday, at the same restaurant in New York where she and my father took me for my twenty-first, thirty years ago. Though it's difficult for me to remember -- or relate to -- the person I was all those years ago, the memory of that dinner is a vivid reminder for me of how hard I worked to change the course of my life, to end up where I am today. And I mean that in a good way; I am much more than the middle aged soon to be divorced narcissistic cougar saving up for a double wide.
When I turned twenty-one in the fall after I graduated from college, I was overweight, struggling with bulimia, and living with my parents. Dinner with my parents was not a secondary celebration of my birthday; it was the celebration. There was no night in a bar with friends to celebrate my majority, no twenty-one shots at the stroke of midnight. Just dinner with mom and dad in a ridiculously expensive restaurant, where I sheepishly took a few forkfuls of the signature souffle, conscious that my mother could see every fat cell in my body multiplying. I felt unqualified for everything back then.
There was nothing overtly wrong with my childhood, which is why I felt stumped, yesterday, when somebody asked me why I think I was as screwed up as I say I was in college. Those years, for me, are a blur of uncertainty and weight gain and lack of accomplishment and escalating eating disorders. They fill me with regret.
As I pondered the question, I realized that the ostensible perfection of my childhood might very well have contributed to my college struggles. I never had the chance, before I went away, to question myself or be dissatisfied or make a mess of things. And still, at twenty-one, young but already done with those four "best years of my life" (god forbid), I was protected by the strong embrace of my parents. An embrace born out of love, I know, but one that was, often, stifling and judgmental. I wanted out but I didn't, which made moving forward a bit difficult.
The best thing I have done for my children, I think, is to hug them lovingly but loosely. They've had plenty of room to screw up, and they have taken advantage of that opportunity. I look at my older two, aged twenty and twenty-one, and I marvel at how far ahead of me they are at that age -- wiser, more self-assured, scarred by mistakes but stronger as a result. And very, very aware that though I love them to death, there is not much I can do to make the road ahead easier. I can listen and I can guide, but I can't dictate. If, in pleasing themselves, they please me too, that's a windfall. But it's certainly not the goal.
When I return to that restaurant in February to celebrate my mother's eightieth (shh, don't tell), I will smile when I think of the frightened, chubby, insecure girl I was back in the day, afraid to eat my souffle. I may not be an influential blogger, or an influential anything for that matter, but, well, I've come a long way, baby, and I'll be shoveling in that souffle like nobody's business.
My kids will be there, and they may choose to eat their souffles, or they may choose -- much to my mom's chagrin -- not to order one at all. I will do nothing to influence their decisions. For them, it's just another fork in the road.
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