Ear to Ear Combat

I read somewhere that we actually have a "National Listening Day" on May 16.  This annoys me for a number of reasons, but mostly because it seems to be counter-intuitive...my whine about this type of celebratory day is the same for this specific one:  we all should be working on listening to each other everyday or we will be engaged in, as my daughter called it last week, "Ear-to-Ear Combat".

As part of my nightly conversation with my daughter, we were laying in the dark meandering all around the listening subject and I asked her about her earlier comment that listening is 'ear to ear combat'...she said it's like when she's playing war with her older brother and his friends and she's always put in the corner of the yard as the "POW" so they can ignore her while saying they are playing with her...she said as the littlest person in the household her words always seem to lose out, or as she sees it, "...put in the corner", especially by her brother, and that they have to fight to be heard.

She went on to say that mostly he only hears what he wants to hear from her. 

I agree with her--not just about her brother, but in general.  We all have a problem with only hearing what we want to hear, regardless of who you are listening to. 

Sometimes it is because you want them to be saying something different, or saying it differently.  Sometimes it's because you will only hear a certain thing, no matter what they are trying to say.  Sometimes it's because you are so busy trying to figure out what to say next, you just hear what they are saying in the best context for your comment.

Regardless of why, not truly hearing what the other person is saying rarely leads to happy moments for anyone.

I am on this subject because it's summer which means the kids are thrown together a lot more than during the school year...and being 7 and 10 they each have a strength of will that would put Napolean or Ghandi to shame.  And because my husband desperately needs to be heard by an adult by the end of his day and I'm not always available as that's all I've been doing all day.  Not surprisingly, it's on his mind as well, as the post on his blog (http://carnefelize.blogspot.com/) the other day (A Parentalogue on Process), talks about it from his perspective. 

Needless to say, there is not a lot of listening happening right now so it's something we are working on..sometimes painfully.  When my son asks for the more expensive but three-row rental car for our driving vacation, I'm almost tempted to spend the money. But no, we'll get the two-row car and we'll have fun, dammit!

So ironically it's in the midst of this that I find I chose as part of my summer reading pile, to re-read for the umpteenth time "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee.  Which, at it's heart, is about a situation where people only heard and saw what they wanted to hear--Boo Radley and Tom Robinson were only known by what others said about them,  except for the children who seem to hear the truth of and behind everything. Most people say that this book is a lecture on the sin of killing people without a voice.  You can also flip the penny and say it is a sin to, as my daughter said, only listen with blinders and hear only what you want to hear.

On the lighter side of listening, I'm reading for the first time the Vish Puri mysteries by Tarquin Hall...an investigator after my own heart as he is very much the Perry Mason/Precious Ramostwe-good listening type of crime solver. They listen with their heart and head, often leading to the right, but "grey-ish" decision.  There are two books about this Indian private investigator and they are a fantastic read.

For children, a favorite book in our house is Hepcat, by William Bramhall about a musician who has 'lost his groove'.  He's told to 'cruise the scene and find his music' and while wary at first, he let's  himself go and finds his music again in the sounds around him from the thunder to wind in the trees to birds and more.  It's a fun, lyrical read and the illustrations are really groovy.  But most importantly, it's a light but impactful way to talk about the importance of listening and what you can lose if you don't.

My hope is that by the end of our driving vacation we will all have gotten over this phase in our various relationships and will have moved from Ear-to-Ear Combat to something less aggressive and in nature. 

Hmmm, maybe I should get the three-row car just to help that process out.

Me, Myself and I: A Trigger Happy Wife or Bookless in Austin

There is a giant gaping hole in my bookshelf.  Right between Truman and Tryst...right about the place books on Trust would be.  I figure that Karma, who is a big fat beeeyatch, is laughing her ass of right about now.  Har-fucking-Har.  But I digress.

Here's the deal...my husband is a recovering addict and alchoholic.  Almost 4 years clean and sober.  I'm proud of him.  I love him.  I adore him.  I crave him.  But there are many times during the week that I don't Trust him.  These moments, these seemingly tiny, insignificant moments slay me...they turn my fucking world upside down--wobbly knees, nausea and all.

It used to be, during the years sub duco, when I finally realized what was going on, or the moments of crises that followed, my famed fight or flight mechanism would be flooded with adrenaline and I would fight, fight and fight again to get him back.  The idea of, or issues of Trust, oddly enough, weren't present in those moments as it related to us as a couple....maybe as it related to him as a driver or a parent, sure...but those were moments I had to solve for...moments I could solve for very easily in fact.

Now that we are in the years tersus quod siccus I find myself trusting him less, or rather, I find myself able to trust him less.  I know, it sounds crazy, but here is the deal:   Before, when all of this was happening, I was in "fix-it" mode...get him help, sell the house, find a house, take care of the kids, work, pay the bills...the moments I had to myself to think were spent doing things or, pathetically enough, spent sobbing in the shower, yes, sometimes with ice cream (I don't recommend it...messy and unsatisfying) and feeling sorry for myself.

Now, that I have the time because I have him back full-time as a partner, I find myself studying him and being hyper aware of "the triggers".  It's incredibly complicated with all of the medical issues he has, but there are four triggers that immediately put me in "OMG HDA" mode.  They are, in no particular order:

1. Increased level of smoking:  For two reasons....he smokes when he's anxious and anxious leads to the need to medicate, and he has to smoke outside...where he would previously hide 'the bad stuff'.

2. Increased Telephone time:  When he was using he was practically giddy with talk...given that he's rarely giddy and not a really talkative guy outside a small group of people, all of those hours on the phone to my mother should have been a big frickin' clue.
3. Long Walks:  To the liquor store...but hidden by the need for exercise for his Type II diabetes. Good and Bad at the same time.  Diabolical.
4. Droopy Eyes/Asleep in the Chair: The worst...because he rarely gets enough sleep because of his chronic pain and neurological issues, and all of the meds they have him on do make him somewhat droopy...but I tell, ya, that eyelid slips a centimeter and I am on red alert.

Looking at this list I want to punch myself in the head.  He can't win.  And therein lies the rub...he can't.  Not until I've worked it all through for myself.  It so sucks to be him right now.

And here is rub number 2--there are no good books on this!  I had/have counseling and that is very helpful.  But I like to read, study, re-read...and have real life examples....and yet, nothing, nil, nada in book form.  I am, like an anchorless boat, bobbing here and there with nothing to grab onto to stablize me.

But there is a silver lining--there always is you know.  Without a book to fall back on I am forced to turn to people...my friends, my family and most of to him, my husband...where trust is being built one conversation at a time.

Living like Alice Munro writes or I am who I am Now

I found out I was a 'loud talker' in a western hat shop surrounded by quite a few hunky cowboys.  Not exactly how my imagination had things progressing at that moment, but then again, I chose to wander into the store with my husband and 7-year old daughter.  Daydreams about hunky cowboys in that situation is just wrong...and I paid for it.  At least a few of them had the courtesy not to laugh...too loud anyway.

Not that I believe I'm a 'loud talker'--and a poll of selective friends confirmed that I am not--but I was startled to find out that both husband and daughter believe me to be one.  Personally, I am blaming it on the stuffed ears I had left over after my recent bout with double pneumonia.

Anyway, this brings me in a round-a-bout way to the discussion my husband and I have been having over the past 9 months or so.   The basis of these talks is that after 16 years neither of us are the same people we fell in love with and married--instances of illness, addiction and depression combined with the joyous aspects of life like children, friends, family, as well as the normal growth we all experience have re-shaped each of us.  He's no longer just the calm, solid and thoughtful thinker and I am no longer just the energetic do-er buzzing from idea to crises to 'must get done'.  We each have work to do to be comfortable in our own singular skins, as well as in our combined skins of being a couple, lovers, parents and more.

But like a snake shedding it's skin, the changing of who we are is rarely smooth--there are wiggles, pushing, scratching and more, all interspersed with long moments of quiet repose or resting.  I think people understand the action of the changing, even people looking in from the outside.  But it's those moments of quiet or resting that are difficult for everyone...all of those involved in the change and those just viewing it.  Personally I find these moments, days, months of quiet tend to invite questions I'm unable or unwilling to answer--because mostly I feel I am resting in order to keep moving forward...the changing isn't done yet.

A friend mentioned recently that she's noticed some changes, but it was hard for her to reconcile those changes with who she knew me to be.   When she got done explaining it, I felt a bit like that painting that George and Nick discuss in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf"....a quietly noisy relaxed intensity.  After being battered with that description, the same friend said she is eager to see how I come out the other side...so am I, I told her.  So am I. 

It's after discussions like the one with friend that I find myself turning to stories by a fantastic Canadian writer, Alice Munro. She graces her work with characters struggling to live between the lives they have made and the dreams that still pull them.  Like onions, her characters are peeeled, each layer showing a new depth and complexity, which always gives me hope.  But what I like best of all is that it is never linear for her...because life isn't like that...there is meandering, wandering, pauses and jump-starts.  My favorite book, and the one that I'm currently re-reading is Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage.  It is good at reminding me to just be...too much resting on 'shoulda, woulda, coulda' often ends painfully.

In the end I come away comfortable in the 'in-between'....the time of who I am now, which is between who I was and who I will be, whenever that happens. 

And if who I am now is a loud talker, well then that's who I'll be for a bit.   I have no doubt I'll be something different down the road.