Whack

 May 5, 2018

Today, I’m laughing.  Laughing because it’s all so crazy.  Cinco de Mayo is not a Mexican holiday.  It’s an American holiday.  Because people need to drink cerveza.  Especially here in Texas.  Which is a little ridiculous because lots of these people drink beer 24-7.  But today, they have a holiday they can claim in order to up the consumption.  But that’s not why I’m laughing.

I’m laughing because my life is seriously so whack.  Like, I mean it’s actually Out of Whack.  Whatever Whack is.  I don’t even know anymore because I don’t know what’s typical or normal or average or regular… I just know that all of those words are not, in any way, representative of my life.

Yesterday my husband was “forced” to join the NRA.  My Husband, the Pacifist, is a card-carrying member of the National Rifle Association.  Long, complicated, messy, family story, but he has never wanted to be a member of that organization.  And today, he is.  I don’t know whether I’m appalled, surprised, bewildered, or just okay.  Husband has never carried a gun in his whole life.  He is totally anti-gun.  Well, not anti-Second Amendment, but anti-war and anti-killing anything kind of guns.  He doesn’t like hunting, even though he’s never been hunting.  He’s a software engineer.  Not an outdoor guy.  His idea of outside time is a baseball game watching the Dodgers at home.  Or any (all) of his kids’ soccer/baseball/football practices.  He doesn’t like to fish, camp, hike or even ski.  He’s a suburban screen guy.  But not movies.  Episodic television.  The older the better.  He has recorded Series 1 Episode 1 of Gilligan’s Island, Green Acres, Star Trek and a host of others.  No guns.  Tasers, yes, but no guns.  And yet… the NRA counts him as theirs.

This is in direct opposition to our last-born child (the one he produced and didn’t adopt because I had the other three when he asked me to marry him.  Really.). Our son and his wife are feminists – far more left than the bra-burning generation of the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment for the not-so-old).  I was that girl.  Equality for Women!  But I still had to make dinner and check on the homework and get the kids’ teeth brushed and make sure they prayed and get the them to bed and do the dishes…. My feminist son and DIL are card-carrying members of the ACLU.  The American Civil Liberties Union.  That rages against the NRA and vice versa.  And here am I, a voter not affiliated with any party because I think they’re all corrupt, but not on the conspiracy space craft either.  I believe the earth is round, even though I’ve never been in outer space.  I have enough to think about right here on this round-ish earth.  And, the more I think, the more I just… laugh.

I guess it’s really not so much laughing as it is accepting the fact that life is so vastly different than I ever thought it would be.  It seems so out of control.  Like control is the very last part; the smallest aspect of my life.  It seems like there isn’t any.  At least not the kind of control that I had as a mom of little kids.  Not that I’ve given up being a mom – because even though I’m 65 those 30-40 yos are still my kids.  I don’t feed them anymore, unless we’re going to a restaurant that they can’t afford.  And I don’t do their homework with them anymore, unless they’re trying to figure out if they’re in the right career, or if they’re house is in the right location or if their budget is in disarray…. Speaking of budgetary considerations: It’s crazy to me that our ACLU kids ask their NRA dad to pay for their iPhones.  And he does.  HE DOES!!!  See – we’re definitely not typical.

I’m not really sure what “typical” looks like in families.  Husband and I have been married for 31 years this month. (Remember I had those other three kids when I married him.  Divorce can honestly be a blessing sometimes).  In all of that time, we’ve owned our home in the suburbs, been employed, driven cars that ran well, sent the kids to good public schools, had regular dental check-ups, fixed any and all broken limbs, attended graduations, went to church, served in the community, paid for college – all of the things that it seems that “typical” American families do.  Our kids were team members of athletic programs, were above-average students, had friends, went to school dances, and sometimes even ate dinner at the dinner table.  And yet, we are now all So Different.

All those Sundays in church?  One of my children is as devout as I am.  Another attends with his wife and kids and is involved and faithful.  Another is an atheist.  Another is… maybe… agnostic?  Not sure.  He’s uncomfortable discussing this with me because he doesn’t want to “hurt” me.  Like spirituality is a weapon or something.  So, sometimes I shake my head and sometimes I laugh and sometimes I pray and sometimes we talk a little bit and sometimes I just choose to think of something else.  Because I’ve lived long enough to know that many philosophies and attitudes and circumstances are temporary.  Some things are binding, but many times we just flow.  It might be friends, or location or professors or timing that create the flow that we choose to go with, and we might stay with the flow for a while… but inevitably something comes up and we divert to a little different direction and that takes us someplace we just never thought we’d go.  That’s where I am now.  So, I just have to laugh.