Every mother desparately wants her children to get along with each other. She loves each one of them, unconditionally, so she wants them to go through life, uplifting and encouraging each other.

Unfortunately, such is not always the case. Children grow into adults, and, sometimes, adults harbor grievances, real and imagined. Even if it is imagined, it is real to the one who holds it in his or her heart.

A mother errs in thinking that her children can love each other unconditionally. Unconditional love is grown through parenting. Your children didn’t parent you or each other. They will have unconditional love for their children, in most cases, but you can’t ask them to apply it to siblings because siblings grow up with some resentments and antagonism. Early on, they must compete for mom’s attention, then have to compete for toys. They are set up to compete. They must share space with a roommate they didn’t choose. We don’t compete with our children. We just love them, and it’s hard for us to accept that they don’t see as we see.

After my husband, Larry, died, I felt an intense need to gather my chicks together. I wanted more than anything for them to stick together. Perhaps I was conscious that they could lose me, too, and only have each other. Perhaps I just wanted peace and unity to come from Larry’s death. I’ve heard of families where the only thing holding them together was the mother…or father….and when they were gone, they each went their own way.

I know that splitting up with your siblings is a loss, for no one else knows the benefits and challenges of growing up in YOUR family. No one else holds the key to so many precious family memories as your siblings. My brother and I love to reminisce about our growing up, our parents and grandparents. My brother is four years older than I, so he remembers some things I never knew. His memories never cease to amaze me. I tell him that he must NEVER DIE….until after I do, at least. Did we get along as kids? Nope. Now, we treasure each other. He’s coming for a visit two days from now, and we will then vacation together for a week. Growing up was tough, but we made it. For the record, my mother, when she died, wasn’t sure that we would! She thought we’d fight over her things….but it was the easiest process ever. No fights. No arguements. Very rarely did we both want something, and, when we did, we said we’d take turns. She’d be SO HAPPY to see how we actually like each other now.

Years ago I could sense that my children did not feel about each other the way I felt about them. I have my views of them, colored by my experiences with each of them. Sadly, they have their own views of each other, colored by their own experiences with each other, and it wasn’t always good, either. That having been said, they DO get along, SO FAR. Will they after I am gone? I don’t know, but it’s not my problem. In my eyes, each of my children will always be a child to love and encourage. Not so with siblings. They make NO excuses for each other or their behaviors.  I forgive them readily, no matter what. They see each other as adults….who should know better. Perhaps I don’t see that because, if they don’t know better, it’s my fault! (That’s how a mom thinks!)

In the last few years, I have come out of my grief coma and realized that I don’t have any control about how my children see each other….or IF they see each other. It would be my WISH that they value each other and strive to keep a relationship going, but I have absolutely ZERO control over that. Oh, perhaps they could fake it for as long as I lived, then split up after I left. What would be the point of that? They ARE adults, and they must make their own decisions of who to keep in their lives and who not to keep. Some people feel that others are toxic to them. Some grown kids take more effort to get along with. They are EGR’S (Extra Grace Required). Some don’t have the extra energy it takes to foster a relationship like that. As parents, we have no control over that.

My kids seem to love each other, though each is vastly different. All require patience. Mothers are trained to have the patience. Perhaps this is why, when a mom departs, it’s so difficult for the children. No one will have the patience toward them, ever again, that their mother did.

My advice to moms (and dads) who are frustrated with adult children who don’t get along is to do your best to tell yourself that, though their days might be cloudy now, yours is all blue sky! Don’t waste precious time here on Earth trying to change grown children. If they don’t get along, they might reconcile someday after you are gone, and all that wringing of hands you did over them will be for naught. Once you go, Heaven will call you Home, and you won’t have to worry ever again about those knot heads!

We can’t control others, but we can control ourselves. You did your very best. Let it go. We are done raising our children. They now have choices to make. I remember not allowing my kids to call each other names in our home. I remember telling them, “If you want someone to call you names, just step right outside our front door and the world will be happy to oblige you. This house is a safe zone where we all can live with love and encouragement, not insults and discouragement.”  It worked while they were home, but, when they left home, it was up to them to follow my advice…or not. If they don’t, it will grieve this mother’s heart tremendously, but I know I have given it my all. They will do what they will do….

Don’t give your kids’ drama your precious time. You’ve done enough of the referee thing. They are old enough to figure life out on their own….or at least they should be. When I get called Home, I am NOT going to even glance backwards to mend others’ fences. I deserve to rest in peace from my labor…and so do you. Hey, let’s practice it NOW!

I have worked on sewing contentment for MANY years, knowing that it is the bottom line in this life, to be satisfied, to stop the hunger for more. In many ways, I feel I have really come far, and, if you have read any of my blogs,  you can probably sense how much I count my blessings, my ‘diamonds’. Envy is probably my biggest challenge, and it has gotten more difficult since my husband, Larry, died of cancer at the age of 60, three months after his planned retirement date. I envy those who still have their mates. I look at them and I want to be walking around the block with Larry in the morning and evening, like they do in my little neighborhood. I want to sit at the couples’ table at neighborhood functions, taking it all for granted, belonging with no effort. It takes a bit more effort to sit at the widows’ table, which I will do, tonight, or to plan going out to dinner with them. It takes texts, calls, coordinating….. I want to go out to restaurants, just the two if us, instead of with two widow friends…but I still work hard at irradicating this, immediately grounding myself in my own abundance, not lack. It isn’t that I don’t want couples to have their blessing. I just want to have it also. Sometimes I ask myself, ‘Why can’t I?” However, I tell myself that God knows best, that he has given an incredible GIFT to both Larry and I, if we could only see from God’s perspective. He is excited about the gift he has given us. How dare I be shortsighted and think it is in any way deficient? What father, if asked for bread, will give his child a stone? God didn’t cause Larry’s death, but he figured out how he could use it for the best, for both of us, so here we are, ‘on a break.’

I am not sure of all the ramifications yet, but I know Larry got a super retirement package, and, if I will quit looking out my car’s rear window,  I will become aware that God is driving my car. I will see that I, too, have a pretty sweet life here in Georgia. The past is past, but the cool thing is that, the more I square myself to look out the front window, the closer I become to Larry, because, now, he isn’t in my past. He’s in my future. It’s going to be glorious and it’s going to be FOREVER. That’s a very, very long time. “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord FOREVER.” These are precious, RARE times I am living right now, free to learn things I couldn’t have learned without Larry.

Who knows what it will be like? Will we remember these times fondly, when God did a mighty work in us, when we were relying on God to lead us through these ‘bad neighborhoods?’ God is driving. We’re not stopping. We’re just passing through on our way to Eternity, and, with God driving, we’ll get there.  Perhaps people will sometimes share their bittersweet memories of their time on Earth, when we walked by faith, not by sight, for, in Heaven, we will be walking right INTO our faith. We will wear it like our skin. It will have become a part of us that we never take off.

Having a baby is anything but pleasant, but we manage to look back on it fondly. The times when we were young and struggled for money, we look back on that fondly, too, and, sometimes long for it, once again, because there was something precious in it that we didn’t realize at the time. These were times when we became more than we ever thought we could. God gave us a challenge and we rose to meet it.

That’s exactly what’s happening now with my singleness challenge, and, at the age of sixty-six, I have learned a lot more about trusting God than ever before. Is it because of my age? No. It’s because of those challenging circumstances God put me in. I took something very precious from each of those situations. Satan meant them for bad. Birth pains? A curse, but we know how God altered that one. Not having enough money? Satan asks us to curse God and die, but, now, we know better. God will walk us right through that bad neighborhood.

In the Bible, it says to thank God for these difficulties when they come. Who hasn’t said before, “IS HE NUTS? NOT ONLY WILL I NOT, I CAN’T!” But, hopefully, as you read this blog and these examples, at least you will be able to see why he says that….because it turns out good. In the movie, “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” Simit Patel, the Hotel Manager, has a quote that he says over and over again. “Everything will be all right in the end. It it’s not all right, it is not yet the end.”  Exactly.

I am working on this envy problem. Often, I have to change the channel, switching over from lack to abundance. I reflect on my blessings and, in faith, rely on God to keep his promises for my life. If it isn’t all right, it’s because it isn’t yet the end.

I’ve seen God’s work. Here’s the bottom line: my life is in a perfect trajectory that’s going to end up exquisitely, and, now, it’s absolutely perfect for me. I am learning the lessons I need to be ready for an Eternity of joy. One day, I will see why and understand how every puzzle piece fit, and I will sit around, bragging with others about how it all fit in perfectly with God’s plan. Now, he is my life planner, right by my side. He’s in the driver’s seat. I have no worries. I’m on the right path, my future secure. I don’t have to worry about anything. Let that sink in. ANYTHING. You name it. God knows. He’s using it all to your benefit. You can bite your nails with anxiety. You can look out the rear view window as if all of your happiness lies in the past. God can drive a confident, relaxed passenger or he can drag your unwilling carcass through life with you a broken down mess. If you choose that method, your view of this world will be only the dust from whence you came. Be confident. Be assured. Look up. Enjoy the ride.

You’re just passing through.

My son and his family have gone back to Phoenix on a plane this evening. It was a great visit. We went to Norcross for their July 3rd fireworks. It was hotter than the 4th of July (because it was the 3rd, perhaps). The humidity was difficult for my son and his family to endure. They enjoyed the rain, for the most part, except when it kept cancelling things. They felt our pain here in GA. My granddaughter really wanted to just dance in the rain but you get cold when you’re wet, and sometimes we were out with no way to dry off. Not to mention that, while she was here, they took her to an express care place and found she had an ear infection.

We saw a Braves game, which the grandkids enjoyed. They are now experts in doing the tomahawk motion when that Indian chant is hummed. It’s pretty cute and funny, too, to see them do it. Kids really take their duty seriously.

Yesterday, the family took off, just the four of them, in my van for the day, for a mini-family vacation. They went to Stone Mountain but ended up at the mall….because the rain cancelled much of it. They got RAIN checks so their cousins can go for free sometime. Today, they joined their cousins at Lifetime Fitness….and ended up having to go inside because of thunder.

They left at 3, taking an Uber ride with my friend, Ed.  The first thing I did was take a nap! As each day came and went, I found myself more and more exhausted, burning the candle at both ends. I think we all felt it. Last night, I read the kids three stories. I couldn’t stop yawning! After they were in bed, I finally got a half hour to laugh and visit with my son uninterupted by duties and kids. Those are such rare times, and they are favorite for me. After they have a family of their own, time with their parents is very hard to get.

Now, the house is once again quiet and orderly. The dishes are in the dishwasher. The sheets and blankets are getting washed up. My life is resetting to routine. As I think over the past week, I think I’m just getting too old for this hosting of a young family. The noise level, the disorder, the meal planning and event planning really stretched me. It used to be a bit better when I had a live in partner who could help with the big and small tasks: grocery runs, setting the table, taking out the trash frequently, keeping an eye on the youngest who adores my small puppy, wiping up puppy pee because of her excitement every time we’d return home, making sure that she was shut out of the bathroom so she wouldn’t use the rug as a pee pad, trying to make sure that the puppy didn’t slip out or get stepped on by the feet of happy, excited little children running, entertaining the family while they’re in the house….and out….  Each day, I missed a little more sleep….and patience!

Tonight, it’s just Bijoux and I. She will miss our company. She loved them! I will miss them, too, but, tonight, we are simply content to rest and recuperate. Observing my son and his wife, I am reminded of why God gives children to the young. I get to rest after their visit, but they just take their ‘show’ on the road! I know that they will be more comfortable in their home base, not living out of a suitcase, but I hope that I gave them some time away from their usual routines and created memories that will live in their hearts for a long, long time to come.

And, now, Bijoux and I, like two elderly white haired ladies, will hobble off to bed, me with my scoliosis and her with her congenital dislocated shoulder, dreaming of when we were put to the test…..and passed.

When I was in 7th grade, I became obsessed with the Beatles. For my 8th grade graduation gift, my mom took me and two friends to see the Beatles at Shea Stadium in Chicago. It’s good for bragging rights, and it’s good to show how wonderful my mom was, but, frankly, it was the worst concert I ever went to…..because the girls in the stadium wouldn’t stop screaming. I heard one note, the entire time. They were performing Twist and Shout, and, somehow, those stadium shriekers all took a breath at the same time. I heard one note! It was terribly off key because, back then, the Beatles didn’t have the expensive sound equipment that would have allowed them to hear each other. Still, I stayed a faithful fan. I bought each of their records. I even pre-ordered some. I mean, was there ever such a sure thing as a new Beatle album? They were filled with ‘A’ side hits, both sides!

By the time I married Larry, I still loved the Beatles. I even told Larry that it had to be in our marriage contract that, should Paul ever come for me, I’d be going with him, and Larry better know it. He was my marital exclusion! Larry took it good naturedly. Over the years, he told me that he always looked at the flight manifest to make sure Sir Paul wasn’t on his plane. I could just SEE him finally showing up on the plane. I’d be on it, too, and Larry would make a big thing of it, totally embarrassing me….but Paul never came  for me.

Meanwhile, I believe it was the year I graduated from high school that he married his wife, Linda. They had a long marriage. It was a happy one that lasted, against all odds. Then came the day when she died of cancer. I was still happily married. By that time, I knew that Paul and I were at opposite sides of many things and would never match up, but it was still fun to think about it. Paul then married Heather Mills. It was a bad marriage that ended ugly. Meanwhile, Larry and I soared along.

Then, in July of 2010, Larry died of cancer. In 2011, Paul married his new wife, Nancy, who, now, is 58. Funny: when I first fell for Paul, he was 23 and I was 14, clearly too young for him. Now, at 66, I guess I’m too old for him, even though he is now 75. That’s how it is when you are famous with money. They are doing well, though. She is wealthy on her own, so they have a level playing field.

A few years ago, a Russian friend invited me to go see Paul McCartney with him in Lubbock, TX, home of Buddy Holly (who’d inspired Paul greatly.) I was so excited! I bought airline tickets and was ready to go, but Paul canceled our ‘date.’ He’d been ill. So I went out to Lubbock, visited my friend and his family and saw the Buddy Holly museum.  It was very nice, but still…..  Paul stood me up. Would Paul and I ever meet up? Signs were pointing to no….

But, all along, God was smiling. He knew, from the very beginning, with each twist and turn, how it would play out, for you see, in a twist of fate, this time, Paul is coming to ME! He is playing in Duluth, Georgia! (The mail service says my address is in Duluth, not Johns Creek.) After all these years, after my mom driving my friends and I up to Chicago, after buying an airline ticket to Lubbock, Texas, Paul is giving a concert FIFTEEN MINUTES AWAY FROM ME! This time I’m ready. My oldest child, my daughter, is coming with me. I have VIP tickets. I never go to concerts, but this one is important to me. It’s been so long in the making. It’s just time. It’s fate. It’s kismet. Call it what you will. I am finally going to see Paul McCartney perform…and hear him, too. Both he and I are medicare age now, but that’s okay. I need to see him before either one of us dies and it becomes impossible. He needs to know that I release him from my marital contract….that he has no idea I have. You know, it seems so strange to me that I have known him since 1964. I know all about his childhood, his time in Germany, his being left-handed. I know all about his kids, his wives, his ex-wife…..and yet, he knows nothing at all about me. How can that be? How can he not even identify me? I know way too much about him and he knows way too little about me.

None of that will change on July 13th but I will have fulfilled a dream that started when I was thirteen years old. On Valentine’s Day that year, I took my babysitting money I earned and had my mom take me to KMart where I bought the first Beatles album released in America: Meet the Beatles. Yeah, Paul and I go WAY BACK…but only one of us knows it. It’s unrequited love at its best. I consider him to be the best musician of the 20th and, so far, the 21st Century, so seeing him live in concert will be so historic…but, in my heart, it means even more. It is the formal completion of a very important chapter in my life.

Around 2011, I wrote a story about all of this, and our meeting at a concert. Being the author, I could do whatever I wanted to in the story…so, in my story, I wrote to Paul and told him this tale, and he then wrote me back, sent me a backstage pass and tickets to his show, plus invited me out to dinner afterwards, like the old friends I felt like we were! I sent my story in to Faithwriters and created a bit of a stir with the judges. They wanted to know if the story was true. I told them I wished, but that I had taken artistic license.

Will I get to shake his hand? Will I get to have him sign something? I don’t know, but I hope that, if I do, I will have it together. I remember, many years ago, my mom met Jimmy Dean, the singer (and also of sausage fame). All she could do is gaze up at him with her mouth open. I have the photo to prove it! She was simply speechless.  Would I be like Ralphie in A Christmas Story and finally eek out, “Yes, a football”?

You know what I’ve decided? I’ve invested fifty-two years on this relationship, and it has been decidedly one-sided. If he doesn’t at least properly greet me by my name, well, then, IT’S OVER!

I’ve been thinking again….. I don’t know why I am always mulling things around in my head. Perhaps it’s because my head is so big that ideas just rattle around in it. I’ve always thought that my big head helps me not to have headaches, but it’s a head full of musings. I look at things that others don’t think about. Not only that, I sometimes examine things and see them differently than others.

Now that my ‘kids’ are in their 30’s and 40’s, I have finally given up trying to change them. They are who they are. I think most people would agree with me on that. However, the grandkids? I feel that they are still moldable. I’ve got a chance to influence them for the better, but you know what? I think that, deep down, we can’t change them, either. We just don’t know that yet. Hope springs eternal, though. We have to try with the grandkids, don’t we? They’re still listening to us. It’s a golden opportunity before their ears close up in the teen years!

Here’s the thing: all of us just keep repeating the same learning curve. We need our mom when we are little. We look to her for wisdom. We get to be teenagers and see all the frustrating faults (the things she won’t let us do, and, gosh, she just doesn’t understand!) When we get older, we sometimes think that we are more enlightened than the ‘older generation’. They seem to be positively provincial. We wonder, “How can she think that?” or we think that she’s slipping or that her ideas and beliefs no longer have merit…..until she is gone.

If you could see your mom once again, what would you say to her? I have so much I’d like to share with mine! I want to tell her, “You were EXACTLY RIGHT!” I want to tell her that, now that I am older, I have walked right into her words, her views and opinions and actually have found them to be a perfect fit. I want to scream up to heaven, “I GET IT!” I want to tell her how I now understand so much more about her repeatedly asking me to come and get my boxes of things out of her garage. “What’s the rush?” I thought. “Why does she care? They’re just in the garage!” I thought. I’d tell her, “Yeah, I know. I’m just so busy right now……” I never had a square on my calendar that I wanted to label, ‘Pick up boxes at mom’s.’ Ironically, one day, it flip flopped. I, then, had to go to her house and clear out not just my boxes, but hers, too. Now I understand why mom didn’t want to put up a Christmas tree. I remember trying to shame her into it. “The grandkids expect it!” Ugh. Now, I understand her loneliness. I understand her needing help and how slow we were to give it. When you are older and you sit in your home, day after day, you have many hours in which to clearly see the broken things. You have time to notice hours, days and months passing without repairs being done,  but grown children are in another phase of time: they are living life in warp speed…..just like we were.

It happens generation after generation. Our kids will never learn because we never learned either….but I can tell them a lot about how it works, if they’d listen, which they won’t. They think they don’t have time, but, one day, they will have plenty of time, and that is where the regret will enter in. I know that they are incapable of understanding it now, no matter how hard they try.

This world has been turning and turning for many centuries. Yet, every generation makes the same mistakes. You can read a comment from Aristotle about teens and you would think it was written today. We keep making the same mistakes. We never learn. Each generation repeats them. Why? Is that what we call human nature? I think so. Adam and Eve were impulsive when they were young, but, when they were old, they had gained much wisdom.

Isn’t this what we are here for ? To learn and to grow? I guess that looks a lot the same on each generation, but here’s what I’ve discovered: it is now our turn to be patient and forgiving with our children. We model that behavior for them so that they can use it on their children, and so, one day, they, too, can look up to Heaven and yell, “I SO get it!”

….and, up in the celestial realm, there will be another reason for joy, as a sound, a strange fluttering, almost like a muffled clapping, will be heard. For, then, the generations that went before will gather and there will be high fives all around! Too late you say? Hardly. We’ll have all of Eternity to cherish it, and, before long, there will be more hands to high five! It’s gonna be SO SWEET when we all finally get wise TOGETHER!