Postcards from a Dog

Had occasion to think about the way life is turning out for me by way of thinking about how it’s going for my mother.

It being Wednesday and all.

For the past 25 years my mother phones me from Germany every Wednesday morning. (Before that I either called or wrote once a week since leaving home at 16) We have an agreed upon calling time and we talk for half an hour. You can set your watch by us.

Spontaneity is not a family trait.

I like it this way. I can mentally prepare, put on the needed armor and know it will be done in 30 minutes. Not that all conversations go bad all the time. But I’m always prepared for the zingers out of left field. Or I would like to be. Some stuff no one can prepare for.

Well back to why I am having those thoughts about life turning out.

I can’t place an exact date on it but I would say generally the last 10 years or so my mother has realized that life did not bring what she had hoped for. I don’t know what she hoped for. But there is an undercurrent of vague disappointment in the air. I could mention the end of my marriage as a starting point for her unhappiness. But then I can’t presume that the sun sets and rises for my mother on what goes on in my life. After all, I have been gone since 40 years.

But being 85 my mother realizes that what she had, she had. There is nothing great and amazing around the corner anymore.

I truly wish she would have gotten what she dreamed of in her youth. I realize with WWII and a wall going up through the middle of our family, some dreams could not happen. But I am a firm believer in lemonade making. You know the saw … life gives you lemons….

It was within her power to make life into something she wanted.

(That is of course coming from someone born into an affluent country with civil liberties all around. We are not talking about women born in Afghanistan or a country with similar attitude toward women. We are not talking about being born into grinding poverty in a 3^rd world country, a refugee camp, the wrong skin color, the wrong ethniticity.)

Then of course I have benefited from my family as bad examples. Like most teenagers I promised myself to not turn out like my parents.

I can claim success on a lot of fronts.

I have inherited my fathers quick anger. But once I realized that I was just like him, lashing out, physically no less, at other kids, I learned to put a lid on it. The lid has stayed on.

After coming back from my first vacation from my first job I sat around with some of my fellow travelers and we fantasized what it would be like to be like the hippies we had seen on the beaches of Spain. On a permanent vacation. Wouldn’t it be nice if one were to …. Right there and then I decided to never be the the person who says that and then goes about sticking with the usual routine. I was always going to at least seriously look into DOING what seems appealing.

Hence Belize.

Hence a whole slew of “adventures”.

Hence no disappointment at the end of the day.