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On Saturday night, I was thinking about what I wanted to share on Monday morning. I settled on a very sweet notion about how holidays like Mother’s Day used to be some of the most heartbreaking, obvious exhibits of my slide into active addiction.
I either didn’t show up, or I did show up… and you wished that I hadn’t. It was a time for celebration, and I was there, causing the opposite feelings from everybody. Birthdays, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Mother’s Day… it was ugly, and relentless. For family members who primarily only saw me at those big occasions, it must have been brutal to see a person five times per year, each time worse than the previous one.
So I always go into Mother’s Day now thinking a lot about how I can continue to make living amends by being there, by being engaged, by showing my appreciation for my wife and mom.
That sounds great, right? And yesterday was really good, according to the moms in my life. But I also had some rough patches.
An hour into Mother’s Day, EVERY SINGLE YEAR, I catch myself going, “Hmm, how long until it’s Father’s Day again? Everybody needs to be celebrating me—and soon!”
I catch myself now and am able to course-correct my thinking to remember that this day, of all the days of the calendar year, is not about me and cannot be about me. So crisis averted there.
But my kids are young, and kids just can’t think beyond themselves. You can tell them, “Hey, it’s Mother’s Day. We’re all going to get along with each other and express our appreciation for mom. If you need a new pair of socks from Target, it’s gonna have to wait until tomorrow. Got it?”
Everybody nods their heads… but wipes their hard drives clean the minute they’re done nodding.
Kids, it appears, are very impulsive. They want what they want, when they want it. (I, of course, have noooooooooo idea where they may have learned that from…)
So when they turn into, you know, KIDS, I have a hard time reacting calmly and patiently. I don’t think I did quite enough heading into the weekend to get myself spiritually fit this year, so a lot of that is on me. Gotta do a better job with that next year.
Around 11 am yesterday, one of my kid’s was being snarky and short with everybody in the house, including mom, when I pulled her aside and said, “Hey, it’s Mother’s Day, can we dial down the attitude?”
That obviously caused the complete opposite reaction: She yelled at me and stomped up to her room and slammed the door.
I took a few deep breaths and decided to give her a half hour to cool down (truth check: I think I may have needed 30 minutes to cool down a bit, too). Then I went up and knocked on the door.
“Hey, we’re going to give our Mother’s Day gifts to mom now, ok?” I said through the closed door.
Her response? “Good for you.”
Me: “I’m sorry, what was that?”
So she said it a little louder: “You said you were giving Mom her gifts. And I said, ‘GOOD FOR YOU.’”
That sound you may have heard yesterday right before lunch time was my blood boiling out of my body like crackling lava. But I bit my tongue and said as calmly as possible, “I need you to think about your mom and how she will feel. Can you come down in 15 minutes?”
She, miraculously, said yes, and arrived 15 minutes later with a beautiful basket of thoughtful gifts for her mom. Meltdown averted. (I’m talking about my meltdown, for the record.)
Those are the moments that really test my sobriety. It’s not that I am going to drink—I used to have difficulties with my kids and right away reach for the bottle to make it better. I don’t do that any more, and that’s a miracle. It really is.
But without booze or drugs, I have a hard time with that stuff. It can be deeply frustrating, so I do need to reach for something to help me through it. In my case yesterday, I meditated for 20 minutes, connected for a few minutes with guys in my recovery network and drank way too much caffeine. I’m not proud of that last thing, but it did give me a nice energy boost when I was dragging. I’m not sure I would recommend the Diet Mountain Dew solution as a long-term answer to spiritual growth, but it worked for one day!
It ultimately added up to a very Mother’s Day, according to my wife and my mom. It wasn’t QUITE the Hallmark Channel movie I had pre-planned on Saturday night, but that’s a good little lesson about how expectations continue to be seeds for resentments and almost never do me any good.
But overall, mission accomplished.
And hey, it’s only 41 days to Father Day’s. But who’s counting?
ALCOHOLIC JOKE OF THE DAY
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke.
One day, Marcia’s higher power knocked on her front door.
“Oh my god, you’re… God!”
God said, “Yes, I am. Nice to meet you face to face. I have come to tell you some good news and some bad news.”
Marcia: “OK, start with the good news.”
God: “Well, I’m happy to inform you that we have 12-step meetings in heaven.”
Marcia: “That’s fantastic! What is the bad news?”
God: “You’re chairing tonight’s meeting.”
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