2015

by Cathy

2015...

This is the year that I turn 45, celebrate my 18th wedding anniversary and see my first-born enter high school.

It sounds like someone else's life; someone much older than me. Those are some serious double-digit milestones, the kind reserved for "old" people I used to hear about when I was in the prime of my youth and all of this seemed light years away. Nonetheless, this is where I am in my life right now, crazy numbers and all, so I am here to face it and yes, embrace it.

It still doesn't make sense to me that we are in the year 2015. It still sounds ridiculously futuristic, as if we are living in another dimension. It was, after all, the year Marty traveled to in Back to the Future Part II.

Back to the Future is now

Back in the day, the decades had real sounding names with now marked events and characteristics that defined them for each of us, from the 1920s through to the 1990s. Each decade felt like it meant something, like each had its own representation and weight.

Then it all started sounding strange. How do we refer to the decades after the 90s? The zeroes? The two-thousands? What about the decade we're in now? Are we in the 10s? The 2010s? You don't hear people referring to decades like they once did because there's no non-awkward sounding, all encompassing way to refer to them. They all sound futuristic, even though we've been "in the future" for now, fifteen years. And if you ask me to define the marked characteristics of the last two decades since 2000, I'd venture to say that it's one big reality television show whirred into a technologically frenzied blur. Maybe I just don't care enough to distinguish these decades and acknowledge their own weight because they don't have a cool sounding name that warrants it. That's just me.

There is something, however, about the number and year, 2015, that compelled me to write about it. It's not an even-numbered year, yet it stands out because of the milestone simplicity it represents. It falls directly in the center of this decade, neatly separating the polar (and literal) opposites of what decades start/end, bring/take for people facing, dare I say, middle age.

Writing that statement was very sobering, as were writing the statements that follow...

This year, I am at equal distance from age 30 as I am from age 60. That stark calculation was made by me after an eye-opening statement made by Bella as we sat at home on this past blistery cold New Year's Eve 2014.
"Did you know that right now, at 2015, we are at equal distance from the year 2030 as we are from the year 2000?"
She wasn't even alive in 2000. So, again, those damned numbers. Why do they represent so much?

Well, they do and it's up to us to make these number mean something. God willing, this year like always, we intend to do so. Therefore, in addition to the wedding anniversary, high school milestone and 45th birthdays my husband and I will celebrate in 2015, we've also set goals. Goals put less pressure on results as they are plans to strive towards, not non-resolute resolutions.

We have goals to grow our business, to move into a single family home if plans take us in that direction, (and then maybe get a puppy to round out that American dream altogether), to buy a second car, and to travel to a place we haven't been before. Our personal goal, besides the ever-present "aim-to-salvage-what's-left-of-our-quasi-youthful-physique" goal, is to learn a new language and constantly strive to learn more and network more (Joe's) and for me, to finally embark on my lifelong dream.

We will continue to pray for our good health and those of our friends and family, to take in every minute of the crazy rate at which our girls are blossoming, maturing, molding their personalities, smoothing their rough edges and keeping sharp the ones that should stay that way, and to spend as much time with our parents as possible. The most challenging though for me, will be to make it through Bella's grammar school graduation and high school entrance without becoming a complete blubbering, broken down mess. Kids are, after all, the barometer against which the speediness of passing years is measured.

So please, 2015, seeing as you're right smack in the middle of this unnamed decade, do us a solid and slow down to let us take it all in.

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Happy, healthy, prosperous New Year to our dedicated readers, followers, believers, supporters, fans and visitors from around the world. 

You're No Fun Anymore

by Cathy

Maybe you don't remember the breakdown that talk show host Wendy Williams had on national television early this year.  But I do.

She looked into the camera as if she was talking to her longtime girlfriend on her living room couch, and poured her heart out about the struggle she is having regarding her 13-year old son. All of this coming about while discussing how Rocco, Madonna's son, fully supports his mother. In case you missed it, here are some highlights of what she confessed:

"First of all, I want you to know, Rocco is 13 years old and Rocco is a real fan of his mother. What I discovered this weekend is that my son doesn't like me anymore."

"I discovered this a while ago, but the ball just got smacked home this weekend."

"He's all into his father — you know how 13-year-olds are. I was the same way when I was 13, but it is breaking my heart. He says things to me like, ''Why are you so pissed?!' Like I'm pissed all the time. Like I'm the one with the problem."

"He's the one that's 13, and I get it, and I know that this phase only lasts four years or something like that, but it is breaking my heart. He doesn't care about Wendy on TV — he doesn't care about any of that. She's lucky that he likes her," she said, referencing Madonna's relationship with Rocco again.

"I can't understand men who disappear from their kids' lives. Thank God he has his buddy and father, you know? He's a father, he's a buddy, they talk sneakers, they go for haircuts, they speed off in the cars," she said of husband Kevin Hunter. I'm just left there feeling like, 'Why are you so pissed?' I'm not pissed! I'm a mom!" the emotional host concluded.

And here's what it looked like:

Wendy Williams' breakdown: a mother's ugly cry never more justified

I mention this because I've had several Wendy Williams moments of my own. My 13-year old teenager, my emotional hormonally chaotic daughter, actually turned to me once and said:

"You're no fun anymore.
You're always yelling about something."

Smack! 

I barely heard that second sentence as "you're no fun anymore" ricocheted off the walls of my brain, having difficulty settling down and sinking in. Oh, she's said worse before, like "I hate you!" which also really hurt, but for some reason, this hurt more. I hate you seems like a generic response, but You're no fun anymore seems more felt and thought out.

I remember telling my own mother flat out, "I hate you!," and believe me, that was the first and last time I said that out loud. I mumbled it under my breath, I sobbed it out in my room or wrote it in my diary. Luckily, "my mom is a bitch" never made it onto those pages, but it could very well probably could have.

What I don't remember as well is probably how awful I was to my mother with my moody, rebellious, privacy-bent ways. Being "smacked" or pissed or angry is always a two-way street. There has to be a cause for the effect. What teens don't get is that their actions determine our reactions, and both sides end up the bad people in each others' eyes.

So the other day, after a heated discussion with my teen,  I unintentionally and wholeheartedly blurted out: "You're not fun to be around anymore."  I couldn't believe I actually said it to her.  Equally shocked, she gave no quick-witted response; just silence. (Which kinda scared me, truthfully.) And I just left the room. (Or slinked out, truthfully.) When it was brought up later by me, she commented on how awful that made her feel, which opened the door to another equally needed conversation.

Growing up isn't easy on any parent or child. We each do our jobs to raise the best person possible to send out into this unfair, cruel, difficult, joyous, wide world and love them throughout everything with no conditions. I can only take assurance that one day, my words will resonate with them the way my mother's words do with me now.

Until then, I must implore you to tread carefully. Shiny, happy people, we are not.