Cold Showers: They're not just for breakfast anymore

I was having a good week for a change. Thanks to some creative money-wrangling, I'd managed to keep the family alive and well during our monthly mortgage-imposed Two-Week Period of Impossible Austerity.

While the other weeks of the month are financially tough for us, those first two, when our mortgage is due, are especially difficult. Every dollar of our income for that time goes toward paying a mortgage that did not used to be oppressive but which has become, due to higher prices and diminished wages, a bank account-draining monster.

There's no such thing as buying food or gas or kids' shoes or toothpaste during that first half of the month. There simply isn't anything leftover. This week, though, finding ourselves on the other side of the mortgage payment, at least until next month, felt liberating.

I felt better mentally, too. I decided to accept that our current state of affairs was probably the new reality for us. After dealing with the financial fallout from the never-ending Great Recession for so many years without a break in sight, a future without struggle seems unlikely. For my own sanity, it makes sense to make peace with the struggle rather than continue to fling myself at an unmovable wall.

If life was going to be hard, it was going to be that way whether or not I moped or fret or railed on and on about the unfairness of it all. The outcome was beyond my control, so why continue to worry about it?

I thought of my daily To-Do List as I turned on the shower in preparation of the day ahead. Everyone else had already left for work or school so the shower was finally mine.

As I stood under the water, I noticed that it just didn't seem to be warming up. In fact, the longer I stood there, the water grew noticeably colder.

Some days my brain behaves like an obsolete computer, incapable of booting up those neurons with anything resembling speed. It took several moments of enduring the increasingly cold shower before my brain seemed ready to dismiss the To-Do List in favor of solving this current problem.
And then, the terrible realization: we had run out of heating oil.

Indeed, it had been a couple of months since we last purchased it, and even then, we'd only bought the minimum of 125 gallons. We'd had to drain the remainder of our savings account in order to pay for it. At nearly four dollars a gallon, the price of home heating oil equals the cost of a car payment. And that's just to buy the minimum amount. Fill the entire 275 gallon tank and the cost easily exceeds that of our mortgage payment.

These days, we do not have the cash equivalent of a car - or mortgage - payment just lying around.
Although we've run out of oil, we've also run out of the money to buy more of it.

No oil means no hot water and no heat during a cold January in Pennsylvania.

So much for acceptance and going with the flow. Just when I think I've found peace with my situation, and that there may finally be a healthy way of dealing with it, the Universe is there to remind me of exactly how badly we're still screwed.

Facing relentless financial struggles has a way of forcing you to lose all inhibitions. Suddenly, selling off possessions or taking an odd job or asking other people for help isn't nearly as intimidating as it used to be. You do it for survival. You do it for your kids.

When all of the pain and uncertainty and embarrassment is removed, our days of challenge have a way of showing us the best in ourselves and in other people. I know that our family would not have survived this long if it weren't for the small kindnesses of friends, arriving at just the right time, at that exact moment when we needed it most, and for that I am overwhelmingly grateful.

As unlikely as it feels right now, I'm doing my best to believe that things will work themselves out this time, too.

"Everything is alright in the end. If it's not alright? It's not yet the end." - from the movie Best Exotic Marigold Hotel


(originally published on phillyburbs.com on 1/21/2013)

Enlightenment? Maybe tomorrow

Even though much of my life these days feels out of my control, I'm trying to be a better human being.  Stop snickering - it's true.  I realized that once in a while - OK,  maybe a lot in a while - I'm not as loving toward my fellow earthlings as I should be.  I often lose my patience when others behave stupidly, I can't handle narrow mindedness, and rudeness makes me crazy. 

Choosing to be tolerant when what I'd really like to do is smack the stupid right out of someone doesn't always come easy to me.  While I may not always be successful, I've gotten to the point where I don't immediately criticize or react to someone else's behavior.  Instead, I try to understand where they might be coming from:  are they having a bad day?  facing a difficult challenge?  just visiting from Cleveland?

So, as part of my quest to be more accepting of others, I've begun to imagine everyone I encounter as helpless infants.  Everyone loves babies, right?  They're innocent, adorable, and absolutely incapable of hurting anyone.   A baby's spirit exudes nothing but pure love until the cynicism of adulthood erodes it away. 

I'm trying to honor the fact that everyone doesn't start out as difficult or curmudgeonly as they appear to be in the checkout line at the grocery store or while shopping the aisles of Costco. 

I'm also trying to set a good example for my kids.  I tell them that everyone they meet was once someone's precious baby, deserving of our love and respect even if we don't feel like loving or respecting them in that particular moment.

The kids don't always buy it.

Recently, while running errands with Evan, we seemed to encounter an overwhelming abundance of challenging drivers.  I'm sure you know the ones:  braking for no apparent reason, applying make-up while driving, and - my personal favorite - weaving so much you expect they must be making a sweater.

Through all of these frustrations, I didn't react, choosing instead to remind myself that each of these drivers used to be someone's precious baby.

I felt pretty smug about my new enlightened attitude, thinking that my son Evan must surely admire my patient and serene attitude. 

And then, out of nowhere, a car cut in front of us and abruptly stopped, causing me to slam on the brakes in order to avoid a collision.  Evan and I flew forward against our seatbelts. We stopped short of hitting the other car by mere inches. "Whoa!" Evan exclaimed. "What was that guy trying to do?"

I was shaken, but did my best to remain calm.  "He probably didn't see us," I reasoned, as we resumed driving with Someone's Precious Baby in front of us.

Soon, the driver began swerving erratically from one side of the lane to the other.  I could see the profile of his head turn to the right and then drop below the level of his seat headrest.  He appeared to be searching for something under his seat. 

            "What's he doing?" Evan asked.

            "I don't know," I said.  "Maybe he dropped something and is trying to find it."

Someone's Precious Baby was quickly turning into Someone's Dangerous Nightmare as he continued to pay more attention to whatever was on the floor of his car and less attention to his driving.  A few times, his inattention caused oncoming cars to swerve out of the way when he failed to keep his car from drifting into the other lane of traffic.

            "Shouldn't he pull over if he dropped something?" asked Evan, already exhibiting more sense about road safety than the driver in front of us.

We continued to follow the distracted driver, although now allowing a much greater distance between our car and his.  If this guy was going to drive this erratically, I didn't want to become involved in an accident with him.

Both of our cars stopped at a traffic light.  Suddenly the driver's side door flew open on the car in front of us, and a young man in his twenties jumped out.  With the traffic light still red, he ran to his trunk and opened it.  He pulled two small torpedo-like things out and slammed the trunk lid shut.  Evan and I looked at each other, too stunned to voice the obvious questions:  what are those things and why did he suddenly need to retrieve them from his trunk?

            "Well, maybe now that he has his torpedoes with him, he'll be able to concentrate on his driving," I offered.

Not a chance.  The light turned green and Torpedo-man was once again back to fussing around on the seat of his car.  I could no longer find empathy or excuses for this man who drove so carelessly.  I felt helpless and afraid as I watched him swerve from right to left and back again, into the lane of oncoming traffic. 

            "For crying out loud, this crazy jerk is going to kill someone!" I screamed, having reached my limit of frustration.

So much for my plan to be a role model of tolerance for Evan.  I tried to correct myself.  "What I mean is, I hope that Someone's Precious Baby gets where he's going safely."

            "It's OK, Mom," said Evan.  "I think that even Someone's Precious Baby knows he's a terrible driver."

Evan was right.  Instead of tolerating everything, maybe the wisest thing for us to do is to recognize trouble when we see it.  The next best thing after that is probably to take a different route home, away from the crazyflakes.

We can always try this tolerance stuff tomorrow.