Baggage Claim

I recently read a blog about how people exposed their innermost issues by writing them with pen on their bodies. One girl wrote "daddy issues" across her knuckles. Another woman wrote "molested age 5" and "mother age 16" and "prisoner age 27" on various parts of her body. One guy wrote "fat" on his hand. Another man wrote "accept me" across his forehead.

First of all, my heart goes out to overweight people because they don't get any sort of buffer between when people first meet them and when they really get to know them and the issues they carry. The man who wrote "fat" across his hand? Well, we already knew that. Right? Because he's fat right there in front of us. But the girl who was raped, or the one who cuts her torso, or the man who had testicular cancer or whose dad beat him or whose mom abandoned him, we don't see those issues right away the way we see fat on a person.

Let me take a side road here for a second. When the kids were little, our family went to Mexico and Katie did this thing in the airport where she'd ride on either my or Jason's suitcase because she was too little to keep up with the rush of it all. Since our divorce, I have told the kids that we all have our own suitcases of issues where we carry our pain, our sadness, our anger, our stress. That Andrew, dad and I all carry our own suitcases and that never, under any circumstance are any of our children allowed to carry our suitcases. Ever. But that they, as our children, have their own suitcases and that we are to help them carry theirs. It's a metaphor that works for us, and I've used it many times to help illustrate my point. It's a tendency for kids to see a hurting parent and want to help them out or protect them from their pain, but it's NOT OKAY. All I have to say to them is "this is not your suitcase."

So back to the fat person. Their suitcase happens to be wide open, spilling out all over the place. The girl who was raped or the guy with the mama drama? They can keep their suitcase all secretive and looking tidy. Would that be frustrating for the fat guy? I bet. But I also bet that they feel relieved, knowing that they don't have to keep anything hidden, wondering when someone is going to find out their big insecurity because it's right there in the open.

Big suitcases or small, exposed or not, we all have them. And I choose to surround myself with people who accept that fact because if we don't, we'll get stuck where we are and never get the opportunity to travel to new places.

Time Warped

Kids don't appreciate a lot of things because most of the time, whatever their hearts desire end up on their laps on a silver platter. They don't see the progression from nothing to something. They don't comprehend the work and time and energy and money that it takes to get it there. It just appears.

They keep yelping in frustration from being stuck inside young bodies that so desperately want to grow up, imagining that their lives will become much more pleasurable with each passing year. But instead, what we all know happens, is the reality they face dictates a much bleaker outcome; the older we get, the harder life becomes.

No longer can we rollerblade our summers away. Watermelon stains on our shirts are no longer cute. Work and bills replace endless free time spent building forts, jumping on trampolines, and burning ants with magnifying glasses.

We can't wait to be old enough to have sex, drink, get married, and to have children. And depending on the order of those milestones, one might end up having crossing all four off the list in the same night.

As adults, have we learned anything in our wise old years? Because it seems that we keep putting aside our life right now in hopes for the "one day when" everything will be just right. One day when we have more money. One day when we move to a bigger house. One day when I look good in a bikini. One day when we have kids/the kids are older/the kids leave the house. One day when.

But it's the right now that matters because if we keep living for one day when then we will miss out on right now. Because our older selves tell our children to enjoy the freedom of their younger years. That one day they will be actually be paying $120/hour at a day spa to be "bored", that they would kill for a nap and be counting down the minutes until bedtime. So maybe we should all take our own advice: stop waiting until "one day when" and just live for right now. Besides, it's hard to get a watermelon stain on a bikini.