First annual ladies beach weekend

Tags

being yourself, change, friends, Jane Butler, play

Years ago I tried something like this and it just didn’t work. I didn’t have real friends and I didn’t know how to treat them well. But today I am letting go of past fears. I am at the beach house my parents left me for the first annual ladies beach weekend, encouraging us all to enjoy ourselves and relax and share. Hard to believe there is a rule in my head that suggests I cannot do these things, but that’s the truth.

Enjoying myself, using the house for fun, these are not part of the history of my life. This time we are cooking for one another, talking about our families, learning about how brave we each have been in our lives, and so many other things.

I am proud of myself for getting this right. Once, years ago when I had friends stay with me, I got it all wrong. I was so afraid of my parents, who owned the house at the time, that I worried everything I did would upset them. They had many rules and I put them on my friends who visited. I insisted to my friend, who had three kids and a husband along, that she clean the shower stall top to bottom since they had used it once! I could see that she thought this a little extreme. But that’s how it was…since we rented the house it always had to be in ‘show’ condition.

It goes with out saying that this took away from the fun of the trip, worrying about the state of the house.
I passed on the issues I had with my parents to my friends. My relationship with my parents included me being afraid of them. Having to do everything to please them with no regard for how absurd it might be, or how degrading it might be. I was too afraid to stand up to them. Now I am valuing the fun of being together and putting that on a higher priority than whether the house is clean. It feels so much better to invest in the friendships than it does to invest in the property. Both have to be done, but I like the way friends talk back and show appreciation for our time together.

Thank goodness I have finally gotten this right. Using this house for fun and for friendship, for laughing and growing. Holding it as a museum to my past, to my parents who bought it, and to ideas that I have outgrown is over now.

Tonight we will have fun together and before we go, unlike last time, we will make plans to do this again.

Minus the sexy parts, again

Tags

being yourself, boyfriends, change, dreams coming true, express feelings, Jane Butler, joy, listening, mother, relationship, words

I posted this a few years ago but not much has changed in terms of my teenage boy challenging me.

I just started in cataloging all the boys and men I’d ever dated. We were alone in the car with 90 minutes in front of us, just my teenage boy and myself, so I started in. I knew of no other way to impress upon him the concerns I had about his relationship with his current girlfriend. You don’t tell teenagers directly what you want because they in turn, in keeping with their job in life to separate from you after a childhood of deliberate bonding, reject it. So the next best thing is to open myself up and share my personal experiences.

Turns out my litany of boyfriends, and there were not that many really, seemed a little interesting. And I say that not because of anything my son said, instead it was because of what he didn’t say. He didn’t say a word. For over an hour he said nothing as I detailed the reasons why one guy was good and another not, from my perspective as as teen and young adult, back in the day. I explained about the one who dropped cigarette ash on my rug, the one who was a high school dropout but doted on me like I was a queen so I stayed with him for five years, the one who had tons of money and a Porsche but his friends didn’t like him, the one who couldn’t ever find time for me, and those that had only one thing on their minds. I told him the entire experience of meeting his father and how we developed our relationship and why I liked him better than the others even though at first it was not so clear. I told it all minus the sexy parts. And he remained silent. But I could tell he was listening, and he even had a few questions, particularly about his father and me. He said it was cool that Dad really liked me even though I wasn’t that sure at first. He liked that part. The tenacity of his father, in love. Hmmmm.

The point is I needed him to know that staying with a girl for years, because it is easier than breaking up, is not that great an idea, and why. I threw in some examples amidst the smokescreen.

A few months later he broke up with his girlfriend. I was surprised, that is, until he pointed out that it was me who told him to do it.

I come back victorious riding a horse

Tags

change, dreams coming true, friends, going home, Jane Butler, joy

Today I am doing a happy dance because I just came back from a visit with the folks who live in the house I grew up in. They welcomed us to see all that they have done in the way of changes. My kids and husband came, all of us delighted at the notion of a family there breathing a new life into the place.

We brought Mom’s famous spare ribs and cole slaw dinner and sat on Mom and Dad’s old picnic table in the yard with our new friends who grilled corn in the smoker/grill they built in the yard, and served a divine gingerbread with whipped cream. All the kids trekked to the creek while the adults got to know each other in the garden and hen house. And through it all I walked around feeling free. Because so much has changed.

I wanted to do all this to help me see the changes that time has allowed. In this setting, with my kids and husband around me it is easy to see my life in perspective. I can be in this old home now with a self-awareness I never had before, an understanding of what it is to be alive and to be present in time appreciating what I have and who I am with. I am old enough and experienced enough to consciously share my love with my family and my new friends. To get to do so in this gorgeous setting filled with memories of much less clear days, creating new memories in precisely the same place, is priceless.

Bushwhacking the same old trail

Tags

change, Jane Butler

I have been shown six times how to download photos from my camera to my computer so I might post them on this blog. But I just spent too much time at it this morning and am giving it up for the moment, unable to remember what to do. I have some really cool pictures of giant outdoor sculptures from Storm King Art Center in upstate New York I know you’d want to see.

That is how learning is though. I can only absorb so much at a time before my brain shuts down and says it’s had enough. Those two-hour classes where you learn how to operate your iPhone are too much for me because after the first ten minutes I have heard all I can hear without confusion setting in.

So when I am in the classroom or in front of my piano students I try to remember that learning is not linear. You do not hear something new once and forever after know it. If that were the case you would be looking at Maya Lin’s Storm King Wavefield right now!

Learning is the result of building new highways among the neurons, retreading the same paths so frequently that one can skip along them instead of repeatedly bushwhacking the new trail.

Wish me luck, I’ll be asking again how to post photos. Maybe next time.

 

My dog is smarter than anyone

Tags

beach, change, God, Jane Butler

I am loved, no more worthy and no less worthy than any other person.The breezes of the beach are unconditional. They wash over me and I bask in these winds that gently caress.

My real life, the one where I have to think and do and decide and care, is far away now. I get up early to walk along the sand while people are sleeping, but I am in the loving arms of God down by the shore.

Sometimes I ask why it has to be the way it is and he says it does not. Go change it. But today I ask why things have to be the way they are and he says because it is best. I have to let my sister, who has left me, go, because it is best.

And I know he is right.

My dog who is beautiful and perfect sits by me while I talk to God. And she says that whatever I think is right, is right.

The rule of three

Tags

change, control, Jane Butler

When our boys were teens they were in an after school music program whose leader used to say that kids don’t know what they cannot do until you tell them. In other words, if the grownups stay out of it the kids will just keep going, unaware that what they are doing may be unusually hard. Our kids learned difficult music at that program, and both our boys suddenly wanted to sing on stage in front of crowds that included there parents! They were teenage boys, for Pete’s sake, and this is what they wanted to do?

I just love the idea of believing kids can do more, now. Maybe they can and maybe they cannot, but if you decide ahead of time that they cannot, you end things before they are even started.

You never know, today may be the day. After all, at some point in our lives we decide to like spinach. What day did that happen? It could have been today, or tomorrow, or in six years, but you don’t know. So on any particular day you have to at least consider trying the new thing. Maybe today is the day your baby falls asleep without a bottle first, or finally sleeps through the night. Since you never know, being the grownup means being the one who decides that today is the day we try. And when we try we have to do things the kids don’t like. Like try. That means that there may be a few sleepless nights on the way to the one where the kiddo sleeps all the way through.

My rule of three says that only after three serious attempts to get our child to take on whatever new challenge we are presenting, do we give up. Maybe after three attempts he is showing us that he is not ready for whatever I thought he could do. But three serious tries means setting a timer and deciding to sit out the tantrum, or continue to persevere when the separations yield tears. But I always challenge myself to try three times before throwing in the towel. I have learned that it is far more likely that some time after that first difficult night the child is going to reconsider his decision to scream for hours on end and just go to sleep, if you have been steadfast in your resolve. When our kids were little if we didn’t have three solid attempts, three nights in a row, I knew something else was wrong like an ear infection I missed, if my child didn’t decide it was time to lose the battle.

Kids want to be successful and they want to please us, and they want to grow. The more we challenge them to try new things and give it a go even when it seems too hard, the more they are likely to show us even more cool things they can do.

Life is scary but so what

Tags

change, going back to work, mother, security, separation from mom

Yesterday my little friend, who is three months old, screamed bloody murder the entire time I held her. Last we visited I thought we were friends and she settled perfectly when I impressively walked her to the mirror to see the baby there. Then again she settled when I showed her my cool clock that plays music and splits into fractions that roll and turn and do acrobatics every hour (a weird modern cuckoo clock-ish kind of thing). But yesterday the minute her mom headed to the bathroom her little head swiveled and she panicked at the vision. Her world was ending and I could see the sudden separation was too much for her. As soon as her mom took her back and told her everything was great she agreed and laughed and didn’t care at all that she’d just snubbed me!

So, funny thing, her mom asked me today if I might visit next week and stay with the babe while she exits some more. We’ll try a bottle which the little one has resolutely announced is not for her, and we will enjoy being together while mom is away. It is all in preparation for her mother’s return to work in just a few weeks and for her to be able to be with others in her mom’s absence.

It is pressure on the family to have to do this. To have to get her to take a bottle, and to go to stranger-like people (she’s known me her whole life!) and to have to be without mom during ten hours of the day. But so it is, and it isn’t necessarily so bad. Life if full of pressures and these are not terrible.

I had the luxury of staying home with my kids and wallowing in every wonderful and miraculous thing they did for their entire childhoods, and I loved it. Seeing the separation between mom and babe so early, and seeing the need or desire to be at work every day instead is a curiosity to me since I did it differently. But it is all good and I am thrilled to be part of the team helping this little girl learn about her world and how it is. Glad to help.

It is corny to say I felt the love at the Philadelphia Writer’s Conference?

Tags

change, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, love, Philadelphia Writer's Conference, psychotherapy, writing

Here’s something I don’t understand so help me out and tell me. I know how I got out of being an unhappy person unable to connect and engage rationally with others, it was psychotherapy and lots of it. I have often thought that it is a form of love, sold for those who can pay and whose hearts are not clamped shut so tight they cannot be methodically and incrementally pried open by a professional. In general, in life, I’ve noticed other people who seem to know, claim that love is the power that matters.

It is the most powerful force on earth. I don’t understand how the prolific writer Jonathan Maberry got out of his issues, and he mentions a few, to share love freely as he does today. Or how anyone changes for the better. A profound transformation has to occur. It’s not casual, you don’t just think, oh I’ll embrace the concept of love now. Something more provocative has to occur. It must have for him, and for the others at the Philadelphia Writer’s Conference last month, because love is indeed what I felt there. The leaders were tossing it out so I snagged some and carried it home.

It is a powerful thing that finds its way to hurt and injured folks and changes them into people who extend themselves and who care and who try to make love grow. Maybe I am always just in the mood for love, but whatever it is I am struck by the power of the idea that benevolence, generosity, kindness, patience, understanding and the like can move mountains in me.

My marriage must be really boring

Tags

change, control, fear, Hershey Park, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, roller coasters

Sometimes when we’re out together with our daughter like we were today at Hershey Park, my husband and I pretend we’re cast members on the The Bachelor, a junk TV show we indulge in as a family. It can be a little instructive, and, it gives us the added benefit of being able to say silly things like, “I hope you can tell I am trying to open up and be vulnerable so you can get to know me”.

So, while killing time in the long lines at the park, I imagine impressing my ‘date’ with my bravery, facing my fear of roller coasters which I feel sure I would do if we hadn’t already been married thirty years and I wanted him to think I was a real catch, just like the ladies on The Bachelor seem to do. On The Bachelor women are repelling down the sides of buildings with no more than five minutes notice for such outrageous dates, hauling out all their bravery to impress the potential life mate the producers have picked out for them. Why shouldn’t I do the same, here at Hershey Park, even though technically my husband and I are already committed to another fifty years regardless of whether we scream bloody murder together with our daughter for 90 seconds on The Great Bear today or not? Oh, it’s all rather complicated isn’t it? Just trying to distract myself since I was about to get on a scary roller coaster, something I had only done once before and that was when I was nineteen.

By the end of the day we’d forgotten all about The Bachelor, after we spilled the beans to our daughter on the outcome of the alleged ‘Rose Ceremony’ (I got a rose!), and we’d happily ridden on four roller coasters. In the end, despite my fears, I even kind of liked them. A little. Maybe.

More than that though, we’d all had a really fun day.

Junk TV accidentally models civility!!

Tags

change, dreams coming true, goals, higher power, inspire, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, love, marriage, mother, parents, relationship, security, trust

My daughter and I watched the entire season of The Bachelor on television this Spring, and I am so excited about how it ended. It ended with a decent guy finding a decent girl, jilting a decent other girl who was quite classy in her reaction to being dismissed, seeking to learn more about herself and wishing the happy couple well, and thus highlighting the possibility that this junk TV show could serve to inform millions on how decent people behave. I was most impressed by the father of the bachelor who said he welcomed either of the two possible young ladies his son might select, and that he’d be that girl’s biggest advocate once she joined the family. The turmoil of having to pick a bride on national television, on a timeline, when two outstanding choices were at hand, was managed with prayer, the bachelor told us. Now prayer is a loaded term if you ask me, but I see it as a code word for any kind of soul searching, introspective, meditation or reverence that includes rationally considering many options and waiting to sense clarity after doing so. Argue with me if you want to on that, but that is how I am interpreting what the young man said.

I love the idea that possibly many households across America, mine included, will learn by watching what it is to be loving and kind. This family highlighted support for one another, and as one of the young women said, everyone knew what was going on and everyone was trying to help. In an impressive conversation we see the bachelor tell his mother he values her opinion and will weigh it, but more than anything he wishes for her support whatever he chooses to do. It was the model of loving civility and both of the girls he was considering looked at this family and were delighted at the prospect of joining such a seemingly healthy group of people.

Now who knows what the truth is. We do not know what goes on behind closed doors, or what miracles are generated through skilled editing, but regardless of the validity of the scenes with which we were presented, they represented to me a wholesomeness I wish for all families on earth.