My husband just left my office after a heated discussion about his current work situation.  He’s been a freelance television producer for years but now he it starting to do projects with a new company headed by one of his oldest friends.  They are working out a difference in work styles at the moment.  My husband wants to (and can) work off site (i.e.home) and make all deadlines and deliverables.  His friend believes you can’t be committed to a project if you are not putting in face time.  I recommended that Mark tell his old buddy he sounds like a corporation.  That’ll get the ex-actor’s goat.

I had a similar discussion over lunch with the director of the seminary I went to.  I was turned away by a worship community (church) where I had substituted for the minister delivering sermons several times because I was not going to be able to commit to their assignment requirements. To be assigned to them as a minister would legitimize my ordination and registration with the State of New York as a clergy person, but in exchange, they wanted me to commit to being present every Sunday for one year.  I take my commitments seriously and knew that with three children, business travel and a husband who lives for his Sunday baseball or football game, even with the best of family compromises and negotiations, I would not be able to keep an every-Sunday schedule.  I was therefore not considered because face time means commitment and clearly, I was not committed.

I wonder where this assumption has come from.  When John Adams, the second president of the US, spent time abroad before he was elected in the interests of America’s welfare, was he not committed because he could not see his colleagues face-to -face back home?  When an employee works from home and despite also doing laundry gets all deadlines met and shows up on two conference calls, are they not devoted to the matter at hand?  If the assumption that face time means commitment is true, then I am not a committed parent because I go away every now and then for business and take away face time from my kids.

What is commitment anyway?  The above scenarios sound more like obligations than commitments. Commitments are promises that mean something.  Obligations, often, are not.  So, can someone be committed to something that matters to them and demonstrate their commitment in other ways besides being shackled to a desk or a schedule?  Absolutely!

What about you?  What does commitment mean to you? How do you measure it?  How do you value face time–what do you make it mean?  Let me know.  I am committed to making you think….. be grateful I don’t have to be in your face to do that!

Two blog posts in one day!  A miracle.  But only because I had a most interesting experience just moments ago. …..

I pulled into a cheapy, local gas station and there were two cars in the lane ahead of me both hooked up to the pump.  I waited patiently with plenty of room left for the person ahead of me to back up some and get around the other car.  While waiting, I notice the bumper sticker on the mini hatchback in front of me:  ”The Holy Bible:  Don’t bring your problems to God, bring God to your problems.”  I noted it but did not realize that I was about to have a problem.

As the hatchback backed up, I made even more room for him all the time assuming he was going to go around the car in front of him.  I was waving him back at me trying to indicate that there was plenty of room.  I saw that he thought he did not have enough room to get around the car in front because the garage was to his immediate right but I kept encouraging him to do so by gesturing out my window. Finally, the very heavy-set gas station attendant stepped in and directed the man in the car to cut hard and back up.  Still, I thought he was going to exit by going forward.

The next thing I know, the attendant orders me to back up even more, gets the guy out backwards and says to me: “We can’t all be as good a driver as you!”

” What?”, I replied surprised that his tone indicated that I had done something wrong.

“You didn’t have to make fun of the guy waving your arms and shaking your head at him.”

“You think I was making fun of him?  I was trying to communicate that he could back up and get around the car.”

The guy walked towards my car again and said: ” Do you want gas or not?”

I saw there was someone else behind me now so I said that I would pull up to make room for two cars to get gas including mine.  He walked away from me.

“Just a minute”, I said, “I’d like to talk to you.”  

“I have nothing to say to you”, he said to the air in front of him. This is the part where I’ll mention that the man in the hatchback was black as was the attendant and the other two car owners who all got served before the attendant came back to me.

“G-O-D , I am bringing you to my problem” I think.  OK, I’ll reserve judgment, clear this up and be calm.

Once again, the attendant avoided me and when he eventually got around to me, I said:

“Look, I’d like to clear up where I am coming from here.  I had no intention of making fun of anyone, I thought he was backing up to go forward and I was waving him on……” he had already walked away again so I yelled: 

“Hey, I deserve the respect of being heard on this.”  

“You don’t deserve any respect”, he said from a distance without looking at me.

OK…….the title of my blog entry came to mind..”Racism in America:  A Matter of Perspective (and Communication)”.  I am a racist because I saw the situation differently than the attendant. I am a racist because I did not communicate clearly that I meant for Mr. Hatchback to back up and THEN go forward. From the attendant’s perspective, I was dissing them both.  From my perspective, I still haven’t gotten any gas because I am white and being punished for what he saw as a tresspass.  Who’s the racist?  Who wins here?  Nobody!  I consciously chose not to pursue a power play and if he was feeling good about his actions, so be it.  I knew my intentions were good so I left it at that.

When I told my husband the story, he asked why I didn’t just leave.  I didn’t want to.  I wanted to feel this through. I wanted to feel what black friends of mine have described feeling. I wanted to see how it was going to play out. Maybe my perspective was totally wrong.  I was willing for that to be true, but what I did know for sure was there was no more verbal communication to be had with this man.  

It was a twenty-minute pit stop by the time I left.  My credit card was not run through until all the cars had left the station.  When it was handed to me, I took my time signing it and handed it back all the time waiting to see if the attendant had had time to process anything.  He said thank you when I returned the signed receipt. I was surprised.  I said thank you too, for the idea for a blog entry.

No one would argue that being a parent brings a lot of meaning to walking the labyrinth of life.  Similarly, I doubt anyone would fight the fact that parenting is one of the hardest jobs, ever.  I am extremely hard on myself in judging my performance as a parent.  I don’t expect perfection from myself but I do get very down on myself if my wounds come into play in my relationship with my children.  I have a tremendous need to be appreciated by them and that is just setting myself up for failure and disappointment.  As Erma Bombeck once said: “Our only mistake is expecting them to love us back.”

With that said, I had a crowning moment of glory the other night with my moody pre-teen Skyler.  ’Dude’, as we often call him, has a budding acting career.  There is not a lot of ambition behind it from him or us, the parents, but he has certainly had some serious luck. He’s been doing commercials since he’s five and last year he appeared in “American Gangster” with Russell Crowe.  Just two days ago, we found out at 7am that he was cast in a movie called “Every Day” with Helen Hunt and Liev Schriber.  With a few hours notice, I had to have him in Manhattan to meet his pretend mom and dad and his brother in the movie, Ezra Miller.  

As we arrived at the appointed location, it became instantly clear that I was just the chauffeur and I had to get lost for two hours.  Skyler seemed cool about it, but as anxiety filled my body cavity, I had to let my son go off with the director and his new family.

I strolled around the city freezing my butt off on the first cold day of the season, browsing in store windows and eating unnecessarily just to have something to do. Finally, I just gave up out of boredom and showed up about ten minutes early at the bowling alley where they were.  I stayed several lanes away knowing that they were not done with the ‘bonding’ exercise.

My moment of joy came when Skyler happened to see me and I actually saw his face light up!  He came running to me and shared his excitement about his evening.  I sent him back to his castmates and after a minute he came back over and said:  ”You seem so left out over here, come be close to us.”  This was HUGE! This is the kid who behaves as if he wished I would just disappear in a cloud of smoke. This is the kid who bites the hand that feeds him several times a day.  To have a moment where he not only SAW me but needed me to be near bye during this big, grown up experience was worth every rolled eye, fib and nasty tone of voice.

I sound like a terribly needy wimp, but any parent will agree that we live for these sweet moments when our children reciprocate the way they did when they were babies.  I completely understand why parents treat their children as ‘babies’ for decades upon decades.  We never quite give up on those moments that make it all worth it and bring meaning to the sacrifices we make for them.

The next day he went right back to normal but since we’ll be working on this film for the next month or more….stay tuned….there may be more love on the way!

After a few days of travel, it was nice to come home to news that Wyatt’s seizures have been less frequent in my absence. I often wonder if that happens in my absence because no one is counting, but considering he was improving when I left, I am optimistic. We are two weeks into a new treatment and we are seeing improvement but as always, I am only cautiously optimistic because his M.O. is to have a brief honeymoon and return to ‘normal’.

My first day back also included taking Miss Maya to a feis. She placed 2nd and 3rd in two of her four competitions. That was cool. (Despite her looking at me in a panic just as she went on stage with her group of co-competitors and declared that she did not know her steps. I darted out of the area like a madwoman, found her teacher, memorized the lingo and ran back to her in time for her to go on and win 2nd place–what we won’t do for our kids!) My resistance to her hobby is waning day by day.

Otherwise, today was just another Monday…….is there such a thing?

When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.  However, I’ve sworn off shopping since August!  As the economy got worse, I got very conscious about my purchases for myself and my family.  It wasn’t because money was necessarily tight, but because I was scrutinizing what is true NEED and what is habitual WANT as a massively consuming American.  It’s been really sobering to see just how truly unnecessary about 1/3 of my spending had been.

With all that said, I have been waiting for the first big blow to show up from the financial crisis.  Sure, I’ve been watching spending and I’ve felt the pain of gas prices and especially food prices, but the first real tough blow came in the mail on Monday.  Our home-equity line of credit was cut off.  Our bank said that housing values are down so they have estimated the worth of our home and said we can draw no more money from our life line.  WHAT?  That hurt.  We are two self-employed folks that often need to float ourselves some cash until the slow-paying behemoth corporations pay us for our services.  THIS is truly bad news for us.

Agreed, a problem of an upper middle class family that pales in comparison to those facing full foreclosure, bankruptcy, full loss of income or crippling health care bills, BUT it’s still scary.

There is no question that the bank is mistaken as to the value of our home since they are using some analyst comparing median house prices and not being specific to our area.  Our immediate county has seen lower home-value declines because of its proximity to New York City.  How convenient of them to not research our particular street’s home sales no less.  If they did, they’d find that smaller houses in my neighborhood (one less bedroom and bathroom) sell for what they are saying my house is worth!

They allow appeals.  We’ll see how that goes.  LOL.

Where’s the meaning in all this?  When I’m in my right mind, I know that I can only control that which is in my control, so I’ll raise my consciousness even further where my money is concerned.  And when I do, I also see how we (my husband and I) still have opportunities with potential to pull us through this tough time.  I think of those that don’t.  Instead of shopping, I’ll do what I have practiced for years.  When the going gets tough, the tough help someone else who has it tougher.