Downhill and Force Majeure, Part 1

There comes a moment in every woman's life when she realizes her husband is an idiot.

There are two reactions that men will have to that statement:

1. They will get defensive and think "I am not an idiot" or
2. They will laugh uproariously. 

The guys who do the second win.

I saw a trailer for the new Julia Louis-Dreyfus movie Downhill and I thought this is the story of my life: a pissed off ski mom discovers her husband is an idiot. 

I wonder how it ends. Does the husband get lost in an avalanche and then the wife collects a large life insurance policy and runs off with the hot young buck ski instructor, Hans? I am curious.

I read a review of the movie in Vanity Fair, and based on that, I think I'll first watch the original Force Majeure, a Swedish film. I can't believe I missed this the first time since I was living that life in full color at the time the movie was made. It was released in October 2014, and that April Jack and I had a semi-disastrous trip to Whistler with the kids. If we had been skiing in the Alps instead of Canada, we would have crossed paths with the filming. I am so curious to see a movie that so closely tags my demographic. How come the film makers didn't send me an invitation to see the movie?

#selfcare, or Retail Therapy

As you may know from yesterday's post, I was feeling blue this weekend. To perk myself up, I did a few things.

Fabric Shopping. I saw this packet of fabric and decided to add it to my stash. Now I need to figure out a new quilting project.

Fixed my favorite sweater jacket that is falling apart. The cuffs on my green Ibex are frayed. I used scrap ribbons to hide the split seams. I am halfway done. Now it has a 1970's disco/Mork and Mindy vibe going for it.

Window Shopping. I visited Isadora's, an antique and vintage jewelry store, yesterday. I spent an hour trying on rings and earrings. Yeah. Nice stuff. The sales woman was a hoot. One of the great things about retail therapy here was that I didn't need to buy anything to feel better.

This one is from circa 1920. 2.8 carats of diamonds surround the massive aquamarine stone.

I have been working hard to figure out my own behavior lately in terms of how I reacted and responded to the years of Jack being pre-occupied with work. As a result, I was left in a one-sided marriage. As I continue to excavate my feelings about this, I am grieving the loss of those years where I could have been in a mutual and reciprocating marriage or relationship. I am also working to ensure I don't end up in a similar relationship again through my own misguided attempts to try to fix things that cannot be fixed.

The challenge of codependency is that it is natural for at least half of humanity to want to be helpful, as parents and partners. The challenge comes when we overstep other's boundaries, or an addiction makes a child or partner unable to respond to insights from others. I am slowly trying to figure out balance here.

Crying

I have been crying a lot this week and last.

Last Thursday, I got the hint that the Boy will likely stay in Montana for his senior year of high school. I cried for a few hours over this. It was a good hard, cathartic cry and I felt better afterwards.

Yesterday afternoon, I got an email from the Boy's school nurse that he might have torn his ACL and he needs an MRI. As readers of my blog may know, I tore my ACL at the end of 2015. 2016 was the year of surgery and recovery. The Boy is stronger, tougher and younger than I was in 2015, so his recovery will likely be faster. Still, this teeny-tiny ligament in the knee can surprisingly mess up someone's life for a year. Mobility is important. The Boy lives for skiing. His second sport is soccer. He had just joined the school's basketball team, too, which was awesome for someone who had rarely touched a basketball. This happens in a school of thirty-five kids when they need more players. All of these sports require an ACL.

How did he tear it? Attempting a 540 spin on what I am guessing was a janky homemade jump by the boys at his school on the snowy Montana campus.

I got the email around noon and I was able to hold it together for the rest of the day at work. After lunch, I was in an intense three hour team meeting in the afternoon where we hashed out details for a project plan. I had a few other tasks I needed to work on and then I fell apart crying.

The Boy is in another state under someone else's care with an injury that would deny him access to the sport he loves the most, a sport that under his own admission kept him alive last year. A sport that probably not so healthily gave his life meaning and gave him a sense of purpose and self-esteem.

That being said, I've watched the X Games and Olympic Freestyle skiing enough to remember the lists of broken bones and torn ligaments these skiers have had. Some have had multiple ACL tears. Could the Boy get a brace to make it through the season? I have a ski brace and it is awesome.

Still, I cried over his knee. Once I started crying, the tears kept coming. This morning I woke up a little blue, so I continued reading There the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owen. Kya is a girl who raised herself in the marshes of North Carolina. She lived alone for almost all of her life.

I realized I am alone.

Jack and I had an argument last week. He was reading a book that I told him I was reading, Codependent No More by Melody Beattie. He read it and said he understood how I felt--that he took care of his co-workers more than he took care of the family. He told me a story of Marcia, a physician who never remembered to renew her medical license. He would send her texts and remind her to do this paperwork.

This is from a guy who couldn't remember to put gas in either of our cars. He could take care of Laura, Erica and Marcia, but not me and the kids. A guy who was ticked off, annoyed and resentful when I ask him for his work schedule and when I asked him not to train for another marathon so he could spend more time with me and the kids. I didn't even care about myself at that point: I just wanted him to be a father.

I lost my shit when he told me the story of Marcia. Then in our usual dysfunctional marriage standard, he got mad at me for being upset. I was mad because he kept going on about Marcia and never got to the point of how it related to me. He says he never got to that end of the story because I lost my shit in the middle.

A few months ago, I attended a wedding of an Indian colleague. The bride--also Indian--came up to me and showed me the henna on her hands.

"If the henna is bright, it means your husband will love you," she said. She looked down at her hands, kind of sad, and "but it is always bright."

In arranged marriages, brides hope their husbands will love them. In American marriages, love is a given: that is why you are getting married.

My anniversary was last Monday, and Jack and I have been married for a long time. Here I am now, realizing that he doesn't love me the way I want to be loved. There was love at the start, but it got lost along the way. Somewhere in his heart, I am sure Jack has fondness and affection for me, but it is so buried behind his job and work and taking care of other people I don't often enough see it demonstrated to me. He gives more attention to Laura, Erica and Marcia and everyone else than he does to me and the kids. When I asked for his time and attention, he'd get annoyed, like I was a bother, that I was interrupting him.

And so I cry.

I cry because it has taken me so long to figure this out, even though he has basically telling me this all along. I just never figured out how to listen.

Workaholic v Alcoholic, or Vomit

Jack, while he is reluctant to admit it, is a workaholic. As I have been attending Al-Anon, I've been busy trying to figure out the differences between alcoholism and workaholism.

What are the differences?

The short answer is vomit. Alcoholism has it. Workaholism does not.

The long answer is more complicated.

"By the time I was ready to divorce him, I found him repulsive," said more than one friend who was married to an alcoholic. In some cases with alcoholism there are job or money problems. Other cases, there is lying or abusive behavior. Sometimes there are chronic or major health issues. Sometimes there is socially embarrassing behavior, like have to deal with a drunk spouse in public.

A therapist told me any thing you do to avoid your feelings is an addiction, therefore working too much can be an addiction. Workaholism has fewer negative or disruptive downsides to it compared to other addictions, but there are two main similarities: both alcoholics and workaholics lose themselves in their addiction, and their families are negatively impacted.

The upside of workaholism is financial success and security, even though the person working those long, obsessive hours might not feel secure. They may live in fear of losing their job.

Most alcoholics have periods of sobriety. Some workaholics do not. If they are continually thinking about work when they are not working, then they are not "sober." The family is impacted by their emotional unavailability.

Jack, like other workaholics, has a respectable job and is admired at work by his colleagues. His work brings him a sense of accomplishment and meaning, which makes it harder for him to recognize the negative parts of his relationship to his job.

The insidious parts of workaholism are the upsides. It isn't as ugly as alcoholism. The drunk can realize they are tired of waking up in a pool of their own vomit and decide to change. For a workaholic, instead of waking up in a pool of puke, they and their family gets a nice paycheck. The workaholic isn't going to want to give up the success, money and praise. Why should they? Instead of being embarrassed by drunken behavior, the family can bask in the reflected glow of the workaholic's success.

The cost of the workaholism is still high: Loneliness for both the workaholic and the family. The family suffers from not having an emotionally present partner or parent, and the workaholic misses the connection of family.

The Boy -- Next Steps

I am mildly freaking out.

We talked to the Boy's school and they want to start talking about next steps for the Boy: what happens when he finishes his round of therapy where he is now. This will likely end in August of 2020 and he still will have a year of high school to finish.

I am strongly guessing they are going to recommend him staying in Montana for an extra year until he finishes high school. His school has a step down, transition program where the kids live in town in a house with a few other kids who graduated from the boarding school. The kids can either go to community college in town, or the local high school. When the kids are "home," they will be in a therapeutically supported, supervised and sober environment where all of the kids have to take care of themselves and each other, like make meals, clean and do laundry. Like adults.

Until now, I was in mild denial about what was going to happen next. I hadn't really thought about it. The reality is that the Boy likely can't come back to Seattle for numerous reasons.

1. He can't go back to his local, pressure-cooker, public high school and have everyone ask "Dude--where ya been?" No. And senior year everyone will be trying to get into Yale, Stanford or Caltech. He will happily be going to Montana State or UBC where he can ski and mountain bike.
2. He could do Running Start where he could finish high school with community college credit. Claire-Adele's high school boyfriend, Tommy, did that. There is no community for these kids who do Running Start, as far as I can tell. Tommy was an outgoing and gregarious guy, and even he was adrift. I can't bring the Boy back to a place where he will have no community.
3. He could attend a private school, if we could get him in. I don't know how many private high schools will have space for a new senior. He would have to break into a new social structure that has been in place for three (or more) years. That will be rough. Plus, private schools => rich kids = > weed, alcohol and other substances. Nope.
4. Speaking of weed and alcohol, I don't want to be the prison warden and police for the Boy, doing urine tests and the like. Not fun for anyone.
5. Homework. I've been the nag bag for homework for a few years before the Boy landed in therapy. I don't want to take a trip on that train again.

This transition program will likely be the best place for him, unless we can find a different boarding school. This transition program, though, will be the easiest transition socially and academically. Plus there is epic skiing in the region. He will close to large mountains.

All of that is my brain talking. 

My heart is saying "I want him home."

I want to be there when he applies to college. I want to go to his soccer games and orchestra concerts. I want to take pictures for prom and help him get ready for graduation. I want to have him home for dinner. I want to hear about the books he is reading for English, and hear his thoughts on history and politics. I wonder if he'll start a rocket club or participate in a First Robotics program.

Claire-Adele's senior year was full of drama. Lots and lots of drama, which is fine. It supposed to be that way. Kids soil the nest before they launch.

I want that for the Boy. I want him to come back and live at home before he launches. He might not come back and live at home, which means I am done being a mom and I am not ready for that.

"You will be a parent until you die, Lauren," said my hairdresser today. 

He has a point, but I still want the Boy home.

But then my heart comes back again: I want him better, healthy and healed more than I want him home. I don't want him to come home not fully healed, and slide back into his old and easy habits. I don't want him to come home until he is fully baked. My heart knows this, too. My friend Ellen's daughter was away for the last three years of high school and now she is thriving. She is confident and cheerful and is working her butt off at college. Most importantly, she appears to be profoundly grateful for where she is at. That is really what I want for the Boy.

"You will be fine with this when you attend his wedding," said my hairdresser.

"In twenty years, you will be glad you did this," said my friend Leslie.

I hope so. In the meantime, my heart is breaking, but I'd rather have short-term heartbreak than long-term.

Micro versus Macro Stress

Today was a hectic and busy day. For those of you who don't know, I am an information analyst, which means I help analyze and structure data for a database. Yesterday and today, I was in brainstorming meetings all day. It might sound like fun, but my usual work week is about 50% meetings and 50% analysis time, give or take 20%. A few days in a row that are all meetings is a major change. I felt stressed because I was getting behind on my regular work. Instead of doing analysis, I was planning projects that would require analysis. Plus, these meetings are technical meetings where three developers are bouncing ideas off of each other, and I need to be in the room listening to programmers to talk about things I don't understand in case there is something out there where they might impact data and I would have to speak up. And I have to pay super close attention so I don't miss something important and then they mess up the data. One or two hours a day of this is fine. Eight to nine is exhausting. Plus, everyone on the team is using their maximum brain power, not just me. Everyone is in the same boat.

Yay!

Seriously. Me kvetching about my job is awesome.

Why?

This is the first time I've felt stressed about my job in months, and that is a good thing. Of course, my own private Pax Romana on the job was nice, but it reflects something else: I was too stressed about my personal life to feel stressed about work. Before, I was coasting along. Other people would be stressed about upcoming project plans or other stuff and I'd think "What are you whining about? This is easy compared to what I am dealing with at home." And it was easy compared to home. (Caveat: I don't recommend blowing up your personal life to make your job seem relatively easy. That is not the point.)

This week's work issue is micro stress, not macro stress. The Boy in boarding school for anxiety and depression is macro stress. My marriage imploding is macro stress. Not that work blip isn't important, but this stretch of a week with all meetings isn't permanent. This will last for a few days and then it will settle down, in one way or another.

The fact that I am settling down into micro stress is good. I means I am healing from my macro stress. The distracting injury is calming down, and I can feel other parts of my body.

Or maybe micro stress is like hair on your toes. Hairy toes aren't pretty, but read somewhere that it means you are healthy.

Good Things, Part 2

My daughter Claire-Adele used to be an avid reader of my blog (mainly to see if I was writing about her) but she stopped reading it because she said it was too "angsty." This is coming from a teenager. My dictionary's definition of angst has adolescent angst as an example. If teenager thinks my blog is angsty, it must be off the charts. But then, Claire-Adele isn't on the Facebook group of parents whose kids are in treatment for anxiety and depression where every single person's kid is either currently in crisis or has just gotten out of the woods of a crisis. You know how social media gets a bad rap for people showing all of the superficial, happy crap in their lives? This group is the opposite as it is full of raw, honest emotions, from the agonizing pain of child who is lost to the joyous relief of seeing that lost kid find their way back to civilization.

So my blog has been a little angsty, I agree, but the angsty-ness reflects the state of my life in general.

In the middle of all of this chaos mess, there are a few good things.

• I am reading a really good book: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owen. It is about a young girl who is abandoned first by her mother then my her alcoholic father and is left to fend for herself in the marsh is North Carolina. I read this article about it in the New York Times and decided to read it. 

• In addition to reading popular literature, I also found a high brow show* (not) on Netflix from reading the New York Times. Schitt's Creek stars Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara (who I swear I saw walking in my neighborhood a few weeks ago.) I've seen the name of the show on airplanes, but I never watched an episode until last night. It was so good to laugh so hard. This is The Beverly Hillbillies in reverse where a vacuous, wealthy family loses its fortune and moves to the middle of nowhere. All they left from their former lives are their clothes. Eugene Levy's character has the best dress shirts. I wish the Boy were here to watch it with me.

• Ferries at night are good things. I love watching them crawl along the Sound like a glowing snail. My friend Laura had suggested we take a ride on the ferry in the evening in the winter where we can see the city lights. It is so hard to get a good picture of the ferry with my phone at night. It doesn't do justice to how wonderful I think they are.

* My friend Laura recommended Chernobyl. I think I'll take a pass. I couldn't get through the trailer.

Pausing

I have a good friend who suffers from anxiety and depression and he has heard me talk about the Boy extensively. Unlike a teenage boy, this friend of mine is able to sort through and articulate his experiences with anxiety and depression. I have learned so much about the Boy through this friend. This friend really needs a fake name. Let me try Anderson, like Anderson Cooper, except I don't think my friend is gay.

Anderson wanted to get the Boy a gift for Christmas. I emailed the school to see if it was okay. The school only allows family members at first to send kids gifts. Friends can come in the second wave after the kids figure out who are their real friends versus ones they need to reconsider. The school doesn't want to have to sort through the friends--which ones were nice, which ones were bullies, which ones were drug dealers--so they make a "no contact with friends" policy. Anyway, Anderson is my friend more than the Boy's, and Anderson is an adult, not some potentially douchy high schooler. And since my family is really small, I suppose I have to count my friends as family otherwise there are three people outside of my dad.

I digress.

This week, I was on the weekly call with the Boy when he said he got a t-shirt from his friend Andy. The Boy and Andy have been friends since third grade when they both transferred from the neighborhood school to the gifted program across town. In high school, they both played the same instrument in the band.

"I can't believe Andy found out where I was staying," the Boy said. "He must have asked Dan or Connor where I am and then looked up the school address online. That was so amazing."

"What kind of t-shirt?" I asked.

"It says 'I paused my game for this,'" he said. "It was kind of unnerving since that is why I am here."

I started to think. "I think that present was from Anderson," I said. At work, he mostly goes by Anderson. A few people call him Andy, but I am not one of them. 

"Why?" asked the Boy.

"He wanted to get you a gift and he asked for your address," I said. "He must have used his nickname to order it. Plus is makes sense." Occam's razor says the simplest solution is often correct.

Plus, it was right on point that Anderson would send this. I thought more about the t-shirt and its multiple meanings. Before the Boy went to Wilderness, he and I went to lunch with Anderson where the two of them talked about anxiety and depression. Both of them escape into screens to avoid their feelings. Both have watched Breaking Bad several times. Anderson is more into Netflix, whereas the Boy would also play games, look up memes, hangout on SnapChat and watch random YouTube videos.

"I paused my game for this" is something the Boy rarely did. I'd call him for dinner and he could never stop a game because he would then automatically lose to some random person and his point total would go down. Nevermind I'd call him ten minutes before dinner. Nevermind that we eat dinner every night and he should expect that he'd have to turn his game off.

The Boy paused his game to get into treatment, even if it wasn't because of his own volition. But what is "this"? I hope the Boy figures that out. 

• I hope he is pausing his game for hobbies and adventure in real life, or working with his hands not just his thumbs.
• I hope he is pausing his game for fresh air and exercise.
• I hope he is pausing his game for human connection.

Hopefully, he finds a new game, one that doesn't involve escaping from his feelings and life.

Yesterday and Small Things and Candide

Yesterday was a good day.

Monday, I was busy at work--I had my first actual deadline that was less than a few hours. It was crazy, as in I am so lucky to have a job that typically has "milestones," not deadlines. I didn't mind the deadline at all. It was kind of refreshing and it gets the adrenaline flowing a bit. I still need to confirm my data, but that is okay.

I had my first swim lesson last night, and I felt like a million bucks afterwards. I was in such a good mood. I love my health club. It has so many resources, like swim coaches and trainers and massage therapists. After my swim lesson, I took a shower and went in the sauna. It was awesome.

Sunday was a good day, too, and I think that bled into Monday. I met my new friend Lydia for breakfast and then we went shopping. At breakfast, I told Lydia how I put up a bunch of posters in my condo. While I was doing that, I felt kind of weird. Here I have this fancy condo downtown and I am taping up my Pacific Northwest Ballet posters on the walls like a sloppy college student. I really didn't feel like spending a thousand dollars getting them all framed. Even though I was conflicted (I want something fun on the walls but I don't want to break the budget), I managed to get them on the walls anyway, and it felt good. It was better to have the posters on the wall instead of on the top shelf of my closet wrapped in plastic which is where I had been keeping them for a long time.

"It is great that you got those posters on the wall," Lydia told me. She also lives in a downtown condo, so I felt like I was confessing a sin to her, that I violated the sanctity of an unspoken city code: All art work must be hung appropriately for the media: watercolors must be framed, oils must not. Posters? Seriously? Are you 23? Aren't you old enough to own real artwork?

"Sometimes it is the small accomplishments that make us feel the best, that keep us moving forward. Everyday we do something small that moves our lives in a direction, up or down."

Wow. That was cool.

Another small thing I am doing is heating and then icing my shoulder, which has been the best thing ever. I have to take a half an hour twice a day to simply sit and take care of myself. I can't do much while tending to my shoulder other than watch "The Crown," read the newspaper, or write in my blog, which are some of my favorite things to do.

I have a hard time finding the positive outcomes in bad things. Maybe it was because in high school I studied Candide, where he believes everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. He says this as he witnesses horrors of humanity, like starvation, slavery, genocide, people living in squalid conditions. It has been a long time since I've read Candide, so maybe I need to go back and read it again. It is very likely I missed the point, or the finer details. Maybe the point isn't to be Pollyanna (a book I've never read, but probably should) and say everything is good when it isn't, but rather to say this situation is bad, but life isn't.

My Right Shoulder or Distracting Injury

I hurt my right should recently. It might be arthritis I acquired years ago when I would carry the Boy on my right hip when he was a toddler. When Claire-Adele was in kindergarten, she would have to catch the bus to school at 8:05 a.m. every morning, and we'd race to the corner to catch it. I ran up the hill schlepping a thirty pound kiddo every day for a year until I had a yoga instructor tell me to stop after I complained about my sore shoulder.

This sucks. When the Boy went to Wilderness therapy, my right heel was sore for no apparent reason. Maybe I wasn't stretching it properly. Anyhow, a few weeks into the Boy's treatment, the heel ache went away and I felt fine. In fact, I felt physically great, better than I had in years. I had no aches or pains, no stiffness. Nothing. I was flexible, limber, no limitations. I felt like I did in my twenties. It was awesome.

Now my right shoulder is sore again. I knew I was right handed, but I didn't know I how much I used my right arm versus my left. It aches when I

• Stretch to reach my alarm clock
• Get out of bed
• Close the toilet seat
• Wash my hair
• Towel dry my hair
• Get food out of the oven 
• Reach to get my coat out of the closet
• Vacuum
• Carry the dog because he is having trouble walking
• Open cabinets

So why now? Why did this old ache and injury come back to haunt me now? Is it something physical, like I might have banged it up when I fell skiing in December? Carrying the dog? Is the cold, damp weather aggravating it? Is one of my emotions trying to get my get my attention?

Or, did I have a distracting injury that prevented me from feeling this in the first place? Jack told me once that when someone is suffering from major physical trauma, like a broken femur or abdominal  injury, the pain is so great that the person might not notice their broken collar bone until a few days later when immediate and larger pain subsides. 

Was the emotional toll of the Boy being in therapy distracting me from my own body? 

Saturday I got a massage for my shoulder. This was not a peaceful, relaxing massage, but an almost  physical therapy level of torture massage where she was working out the knots and kinks.

"Moms can't rest until they know their kids are safe and taken care of," the masseuse said.

She is right. Airlines tell us to put our oxygen masks on first because they have to: not to take care of your kid first is counter-intuitive. It goes against nature.

Perhaps now the Boy is going better, my loose ends--the things I didn't take care of before--are becoming apparent. Maybe, now that I can stop emotionally carrying the Boy, and my shoulder is telling me it is okay to rest. The Boy will be okay. Now you need to take care of you.

My Wish

The Boy has a medium chance of being able to return home in March, assuming his therapy progresses. Our family therapy has to progress as well, which means Jack and I are on the hook for the Boy to come home. March is an ambitious goal whereas May is more realistic. The Boy's school has scheduled breaks, so he doesn't get to come home when he wants to, or when we want.

Family therapy is a large part of the remaining work. The Boy's Christmas visit in Montana went better than the fall one so #progress. The visit was very nice, so nice in fact that I might be slipping into thinking that he is fine, even though I know that is not fully the case. The Boy's stable and confident behavior, thoughts and mood need to get baked in before they can let him back out into the real world. The fact that he is doing well makes me miss him even more. Is that ironic? I don't think so. It was easy to be glad he was in treatment when he was falling apart because I knew I couldn't take care of him. Now? I don't know. And I am scared to find out.

So I cry, but I am not sure what kind of tears they are. Relief that he is getting better? Sadness that he is gone and not going to Ski Bus tonight? 

Maybe it is just love, and love sometimes makes us cry. As I was crying, I had a daydream about a fifteen years from now, when the Boy has his own child, and how I will cry, thinking that this imaginary future day might never have come if he hadn't gotten help.

My wish for the Boy

Is that he learns to laugh

At himself 

and

At the world.

My wish for the Boy

Is that is he isn't afraid to cry and holler

When the world is unfair and unjust

and

When he is stricken with grief,

For grief is the ashes of a love

That once burned bright.

My wish for the Boy

Is that he learns to love

and 

Be loved in return.

I wish the same for me, too.

Dear Girls v Dear Claire-Adele, or Salt and Pepper Shakers v Sugar Bowls

My dear friend Ellen gave me a copy of Dear Girls by Ali Wong for Christmas. It is memoir dressed up as letters to her daughters. When I finished reading it, I gave it to my daughter Claire-Adele to read. Not that she will read it--she is busy reading books about things like political crises in Myanmar (formerly Burma.) Hopefully, she'll find time for some serious frivolity and read this book. Wong is a feminist and a mom, which made me like it.

There is one point of Ali's that I may beg to differ on: Marry your own kind. Since I gave the book to Claire-Adele, I don't have it in front of me so I can't find the exact passage and wording where she says this. I am flying by memory. Here is what I would tell Claire-Adele.

Dear Claire-Adele,

Ali Wong in her books tells her daughters to marry their own kind. Before Ali met her husband, she dated lots of guys that might be called...inappropriate. Ali is first generation Asian, as is her husband. Ali went to private school, as did her husband. Her point is to find someone that understands your background and culture, nevermind the collective set of four parents of Ali and her husband are from four different Asian countries: Japan, China, Vietnam and the Philippines.

As you know, your own heritage is mixed and did not follow Ali's recommendation. Your Thai-Chinese grandmother married an Irish American. Your adopted Italian-American mother married a straight up American. I am sure my father has some kind of ethnicity in him somewhere -- English, German, Swedish or whatever--but it is a few generations back. I can see where marrying her own kind worked for Ali, but it is not a formula for everyone.

This makes me think of the difference between salt and pepper shakers versus sugar bowls. Should people marry people who are the same on the outside but different on the inside, i.e., salt and pepper shakers, or should they marry people who are like each other on the inside, but different on the outside, i.e., sugar bowls?

I have several friends from India, and I am learning about arranged marriages. For anyone to marry for love outside of their caste, region or religion, they need to convincing to the other members of their family and community, which is no small feat. To marry inside means they share a language, food, beliefs and status.

I can see that this could very easily make sense. Similarities make an easy and comfortable foundation. It doesn't mean that it should be done that way as there will always be differences between people. Ali is from the West Coast, her husband from the East. He has an MBA and she is a comic. Those are big differences, but not a deal breaker for Wong. Urban versus rural can also be a big difference. Sober versus not. Republican versus Democrat. Shopper versus camper. You get the idea.

The similarities give a foundations, but the differences are what could give you an opportunity to grow--if they are the right differences. A bookworm marrying a jock? It could be a disaster if neither party is willing to change. Or, it could be great the reader to get some exercise fresh air and the athlete to acquire a rich inner life. Figure out what differences you can or can't live with, and go from there.

Human connection is as necessary as air, water and food. Strive for a healthy connection, whether you find a pepper shakers to match your salt, or if you find another sugar bowl.

Love,
Mom

P.S. Just don't be co-dependent. That sucks. Being needed doesn't equal love or make for a healthy relationship.