Connect the Dots!

I started out thinking I was going to write a follow up to my last posting… a “Life in these Great United States” if you will. Nana, as it turns out, really does not need surgery and although her arm is not 100%, it seems to be healing fine and we will fly back home to Lagos on Saturday. But more and more I have been mind writing (the words that come to me right before I fall asleep, which strangely, come in magazine layout form) about something totally different. The common theme seems to be connections.



It first started when I went to visit my friends in Tacoma. After 3 years abroad they are adjusting back to life in the US. They are actually doing way better than I think any of them expected. He got a job that does not knock his socks off but keeps him interested enough and pays the bills. She is working on a new career and the kids have adjusted well to their new school. So, they are doing pretty good. But once you work through the formalities and get back to the “realness” that made us friends in the first place the word “connecting” kept creeping back into the conversation again and again. Connecting with friends (the ones they had before they left, the ones they kept during, and the new ones they are making) seems to be a major concern. It seems so much easier abroad. With the nannies and the drivers and the “we are all in this together” support that makes Best Friends Forever such an easy concept to grasp when you live abroad. Sure we were all bored together, but at least we were connecting, on a daily basis and that enriches your life, it really does.



Then it was my Gma. My grandma Barbara is 87 years old and did not bat an eye when I asked her is she “did it” on her wedding night. We were sitting at the kitchen table…perfect because all time was suspended and we talked about all kinds of things. She worked as a stenographer (for $15 a week!) until she was married. Her uncle Carl owned a bar in Chicago during prohibition. She was a single working mom 30 years before it was “hip”. She was many, many things before she was my gma and it was great to connect with her and listen to her stories. Who knows when I will get that chance again?



Next was one of my oldest friends… the kind I knew BM (Before Marriage)! She lives in Portland, has been married for ten years and has the perfect house, with the perfect SUV, the 2 kids dressed in perfect GAP clothes… But, as she told me over lunch at the “perfect” café, she has to schedule times to connect with her husband. She admitted (a bit embarrassedly) that for the first time ever, she and her husband have to pencil in a “date night”. Didn’t we make fun of that our twenties?!? But with $8 an hour for a babysitter you have to book 3 weeks in advance… who blames her? I am actually proud of her for realizing that marriage should not just deteriorate to the “snapping at each other” that constitutes most of the daily grind each week. She told me, over a perfect $5.95 half of a Roast Beef sandwich, “We just needed to find a way to connect.”



Then it came from Nai’a. I have never spent so much time with just one kid since I had two. Nana and I have been together 24/7 for the last 4 weeks and although SHE IS DRIVING ME CRAZY, I would never give up this opportunity to connect with her. She has come alive! She dances and sings and has very strong opinions about where we should eat, what she should wear, and what music we should listen to in the car (Turpentine by Brandi Carlile?!?!). I have been able to connect with her in ways that I never thought we would, or even more interestingly, never thought we needed. Within the family structure, I often compromise one for the good of the whole. I understand why I do it (why all mothers do it?) but it was nice to be forced to change my perspective. Yesterday I bought her hair ribbons because (get this!) she wanted to look like the Chevron girls. She thanked me with a hug and a “You are only the best mommy in the world.” Talk about connecting!



So, the big lesson I am taking away from this trip (besides the fact that I am eternally grateful for being able to come and get Nana the care she needed and that Target is the easiest place IN THE WORLD to spend $100 USD on crap you don’t really need) is connections. I need to take time and connect with people. With everyone. Really, I am not kidding. My husband and I need to force ourselves to confront the go slows and go out on dates alone. I need to take time to do special things with the kids…both alone and together. I need to force my girlfriends to share a beer at the Thistle, even if I have to pry them away from their husbands and boyfriends. I need to keep Sunday Night Family Dinner sacred, no matter what. I need to share more and give more. I need to connect more.