Category: Susie Rinehart

Love & Business: Ode to Dad

Let me tell you about my Dad. I always thought he looked like Steve Austin, “The Six-Million Dollar Man.” Remember the show? He was the handsome pilot rescued from a plane crash and re-built with a bionic eye that was like a 20:1 zoom lens, one bionic arm, and two bionic legs. I was sure that my Dad had similar powers. I had a healthy fear of him, born from his ability to spot Bigfoot or me, up to no good. I hated it, but it was effective. “Don’t steal the quarters from my change jar,” he would say, and I would stare in disbelief. How did he know?

Then I was convinced that my Dad was a spy; he traveled for work for most of my childhood. He went to the airport in a dark suit and dark sunglasses, carrying only a briefcase. He would return in a few hours or in a few days. Sometimes, he parked his car in front of the terminal. Only spies did that.

I never saw my Dad just kicking it, the way some Dads do, in front of a Sunday football game on TV. My Dad was always in action mode and my brothers and I had no choice but to go along. We grew up on a lake, so my Dad built a sailboat with a friend. By the time I came along, he had traded up for a bigger boat and sailing was a regular weekend activity. This was the ‘70s, remember, so men and boys sailed, while women and girls made drinks. Eventually, I learned to sail. But mostly I preferred to sit on the bow and read while they coiled lines and worried about boat speed.

I’m sure we went out on nice, sunny days, but I only remember the slate-grey ones when a storm was brewing on the horizon. Dad would hoist the sails and steer the boat towards the darkest patches of water because “that’s where the wind is.” My eyes were glued to the horizon where lightning burned its way from sky to water and the clouds were as black and flat-bottomed as cast-iron skillets. My Dad would laugh and say, “Safety third!” then tell my brothers to unfurl the jib sail, while he waved happily to the confused captains motoring in the other direction, headed for the safe, warm harbor. And I? I was sent below to make Bloody Marys, catching bottles before they slid off the table and onto the floor. Here’s the thing: to my Dad, the storm was far away, and the lake was big. We could always choose a different heading. What was terrifying to me was exciting to him.

Another thing my Dad was never afraid of was hard work. When he was big enough to ride a bike, he got a job for the pharmacy making deliveries. In high school, he worked as a janitor after classes, mopping floors and scrubbing bathrooms. He was used to hard work and so hard work was expected of us. My brothers always had paper routes (which I usually did for them 🙂 and I worked at a dry cleaners every day after school. As a young man, my Dad tried channeling his work ethic into becoming a lumberjack, but it was no way to be a family man, so he learned sales and fell in love with the world of business.

This was where we rolled down different tracks. Dad was all about business, and I was all about books. When I graduated from university, a commencement speaker praised two words, “Love and Wisdom.” It was a long speech, and an academic one, in which he used the words love and wisdom over and over again as a refrain. I worried that my Dad might be so bored that he’d fall asleep. But when it was over, he gave me an energetic bear hug and said, “Did you hear him? There are two keys to success.” “Yes!” I said. And he quickly shot back, “Love and BUSINESS!”

And one New Year’s Eve, when my family was gathered together on a cozy night, I suggested we take a moment to reflect on the past year and write down our thoughts. My Dad immediately asked, “Fiscal year or calendar year?” I gave up and buried my head in Dickens’ Great Expectations.

It was not always smooth or easy being my father’s daughter. He had such high expectations of himself, that he passed them on to me, consciously or not. When he said, “You can do anything, run a company or a country.” I heard, “I won’t be pleased until you have the top office.” And so I tried. I worked hard to be the very best at every job I had, whether I was drying clothes, selling knives, or teaching high school. When I came home for the holidays, he would repeat, “Now, remember: you can be anything, run a company or a country.” And I grew angry towards him because he was so hard to please; it never seemed to be enough. For too long, I was staring at the dark clouds and hearing only thunder in his words. But all this time, he wasn’t talking about expectations, just possibility.

It was like that when we were out sailing, too. I looked at the horizon and saw dark, threatening clouds. But he looked at the horizon and saw this long, wide line of potential. I imagine that he thought, Why fixate on one small point where the worst is happening? Instead, he focused on the sunlight shimmering on the water just beyond that place and the plenty of non-threatening sky to the west.

So when this unexpected situation of my tumor arose and the doctors felt obligated to give us the darkest picture, it was hard for me to forget these cloudy places they described, as if they carried their own powerful electricity. But not my Dad. He looked at me and said, “Why dread what has not yet happened?” Then he got straight to work making up business slogans for my journey: “Strong as a Streetcar.” And “Just because it might rain, doesn’t mean it will.”

I watched him walk confidently towards this new horizon as if he were on bionic legs, and I knew I would follow him anywhere.

****

The mother I wanted; the mother I got

When I was younger, I wanted a mother who was sweet and nurturing, who baked cookies, and who welcomed my friends with cheerful holiday decorations. What I got was a mother who raised us well, but without softness, and who baked so rarely that she kept a heavy chair in front of our oven door. On Halloween, she turned off the lights and left a bowl of toothbrushes on the front step. At Christmas, she hung a tangled strand of lights on a house plant and called it a day.

My favorite picture book was “Are You My Mother?” It’s about a bird who falls out of the nest and goes looking for its mother, asking the cow, the hen, even a bulldozer if they are her mother. Growing up, the book was an inside joke between my mom and me, because I always felt so different from her, and she knew it. I was a little hippie girl and she was more like a Spice Girl. I lay on the floor and listened to Bob Dylan while she moonwalked to Michael Jackson. She was messy and I organized everything. She seemed to be care free. I worried constantly. She had clear boundaries, I ran ragged trying to keep everyone happy. When I read that the legendary folk singer, Joni Mitchell, had given up a daughter about my age for adoption, I fantasized that she was my real mother. I imagined the warm embrace when we finally met, and the cover story in the newspaper. There would be a picture; Joni with her guitar, Susie with her ukulele, and we’d be sitting under a tree, smiling. The headline, “Mother and Child Reunion.” Basically, I just wanted my mother to be different than she was. Doesn’t everybody?

Now that I am a wife and a mother myself, I appreciate that my mother was never conventional and always 100% herself. One of my mom’s best friend’s described her as, “often wrong, never in doubt.” And my mom laughed. That is the thing about my mother: she can laugh at herself easily, joyfully. Just last week we were trying to carry a suitcase down a flight of stairs and when we realized that we only had 1 good arm and 3 good legs between us, she started to laugh, and then I laughed, until the two of us were laughing so hard that I peed—just a little—right there on Boston’s South Station steps.

The first time she came to see me post-surgery in Boston, I wanted her to help me prepare meals, do laundry, clean up. When she arrived, she set down her hot pink bag and declared, “I don’t cook. I don’t do dishes. Never have. Never will.” Instead, she made me swallow monster gummy multivitamins, get my hair styled, and do exercises that she had seen the Olympic rugby teams do on TV. I was frustrated; I kept wanting her to be better at this nurse stuff, and know exactly what to say and do. I wanted her to be different.

It was the same as when I was a teenager in the house. While I raged at her shouting, “Why can’t you be more like other moms?” I missed what she was demonstrating to me every single day: how to be authentic and real. Be yourself! Her actions screamed. And I missed and missed and missed the memo. When my parents divorced, I was just a baby. I never knew what it was like to have two parents under one roof. Somehow, I blamed my mother for the divorce. If she had only been a little more like the other moms, I reasoned, he would still be around. I vowed to be different when I grew up. And by different, I meant the same as others. I reasoned that if I acted a little less myself and more like other women, my prince wouldn’t leave. But the consequence was that I gave up my uniqueness in order to fit in and not rock the boat. Even when I realized that I was holding my mom to impossible standards, I didn’t realize it enough to stop holding myself to those same impossible standards. I worked to maintain my status as the good daughter, the good wife, the good spouse, the good mother. I managed others’ needs and feelings to the detriment of my own to the point where when my husband asked me what I needed one day, I had nothing to say. I had no idea.

When my mom came to visit me last week during my radiation treatments, we had wonderful days together. This time, instead of just wishing she were different, I spoke up and asked her directly for what I needed. She listened and responded. When I wanted privacy, she took my phone and guarded my door. When I wanted to go for a walk, she strapped on her squeaky running shoes and led the way. When I was hungry for breakfast, but too tired to get out of bed, she made me porridge. And this time, she only destroyed my host’s stovetop once. All week, I was relaxed and able to appreciate my mother for who she is, bold and brave. I was also able to appreciate myself for who I am, curious and courageous. We are more similar than I thought. This helped me to finally accept that Joni Mitchell is taken; the tabloids say she is reunited with her daughter in a California suburb. That’s OK. I hate suburbs. Plus, I think I am the lucky one. My mom may never be a great nurse or maid, but she can lift me out of my negative cycle of thoughts with her undying sense of adventure. And she can always make me laugh.

Love,

Susie

*****

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by Susie Rinehart

Dear Cole on your 13th birthday

*written the day I went into 36-hours of surgery including 2 craniotomies. I came out of surgery the night of my son’s birthday.

Dear Cole,

When you were three years old, we went for a walk along the muddy banks of the Connecticut River in Lyme, New Hampshire. It was raining and we watched the swallows feed off the recently-hatched bugs on the surface of the water. You identified raccoon tracks in the mud and said, “They look like tiny hands, Mama.” Walking along the water’s edge with your hand in mine is a happy memory that I can feel even now, ten years later, on the eve of your 13th birthday. You were curious about the swallows and you wanted to get close to them, so you made up something you called the “quiet walk” where you crouched down low, spoke in loud whispers that weren’t that quiet, and lifted your legs high then put them down firmly until you put your right foot down so hard that it got stuck in the thick mud. We both laughed so hard that the swallows hid from us.

I have always loved walking with you and paying attention to the world as we go. Even if you and I often get stuck in the mud when we’re together. Your first sentence was “Mama in mud” and your second was, “Toad peed on Mama.” These were your very first stories, born in the adventures of us heading out, no matter the weather, and exploring. I picked flowers and mushrooms, you collected sticks. We usually found bugs or frogs that we wanted to bring home, but never did successfully.

And now you are turning 13 and we still we walk together. Well, I walk, and you skateboard. We head up the hill to see the view of the Flatirons and the clouds over the mountains and just how much sky there is to see in Colorado. Then I hold my breath while you turn away and ride down the steep section of Alpine Ave. You carve wide turns like you are on GS skis, picking up speed and arching your back to feel the rhythm and create balance as you lean into the hill and away from it. You look like a surfer or a dancer when you read the ground with your body.

I’m thinking about you and our walks together because we’re kind of on a walk now as we face this unknown of my surgeries, meant to save my life from this tumor. We’ve had to head out without any idea of what’s going to happen or how it’s going to turn out and that’s easy to do if you’re just going out for a walk from the house to look at tracks in the mud, but it’s a lot harder when you’re hurtling down a steep hill on a piece of wood with wheels or saying yes to someone to hold your open skull in their hands.

And yet – from the moment I knew I was pregnant with you until now, it’s always been unknown. When I was pregnant, I was sure you were a girl, for example, and I had zero idea of how to be a parent. I am way more comfortable when I am in control of what’s happening, so it was really challenging for me to let go of control and just trust that my body knew exactly what to do to bring a baby into this world and how to be a parent. I used to talk to you when you were still just the size of a lima bean inside me. I’d say, “We are in this together. It’s going to work out fine. It always has.” I remember once watching a doe immediately after she gave birth. She just stood up in the ripe red light of sunrise and listened. I thought, if I listen well enough, I’ll know what to do.

It feels important for me to tell you how perfect you are, as you are. From the moment you were born, you had already won our hearts. There is nothing you can do to make me love you more or love you less. You and I have been walking together since the beginning and we will keep walking together, no matter what distance separates us. Right now, you are waking up on the edge of a northern lake in Ontario and I am in Boston, and I feel you as if you were sitting next to me. It’s not a connection that lives only in the physical world; it’s much wider and deeper than that, like the lake itself.

I also want to thank you, Cole, for giving me so much joy. When you were little, you were really into forts – which were often just sheets and couch pillows and maybe a broom and some rope for stability. Sometimes you built forts, but sometimes you built spaceships. You were captain and gave us responsibilities. I remember once you told us that Papa was in charge of checking the ship and making everything work. Hazel was in charge of the water. And I was in charge of making sure the animals stayed in their part of the spaceship. We played under a striped sheet; I tossed “escaping” stuffed animals over cushions and you made all kinds of engine noises while Hazel kept bringing us tea cups filled with water and Papa banged on pretend dials. You still bring out the part of me that just loves to play. Thank you for forts and spaceships and sledding and skiing and making up games with tennis balls off roof tops. Thank you for making me laugh all the time – your quick wit is one of your many gifts. Please give of your humor generously because you can change a mood from dark to light in a heartbeat with it.

And now you are a teenager. The thing about the teenage years that you are now entering is that these are the years when you practice making and keeping friends. Practice is the key word here – there isn’t a shortcut to figuring our relationships – you kind of have to go through it all. One minute you’ll feel like you belong, the next, rejected, the next betrayed, the next, accepted. It’s all very confusing. My advice is to make friends with lots of different kinds of people, girls, too. It takes more effort, but it’s worth it. People who are different from you teach you the most. Remember, when you feel left out, it’s not because your friends got together and planned to ignore you – but rather because they’re a bunch of human beings swimming around in their own emotional soup. The trick is to give people the benefit of the doubt because then you can actually get somewhere: learn, grow, move on, go deeper into what it means to be a good friend. It’s also worth giving others the benefit of the doubt because you’re going to ditch someone a few times too and it’s not because you’re a jerk. It’s because you’re still just a dumb kid learning and growing: a work in progress.

As a work in progress, be kind to yourself. I wasted too much energy on trying to make everyone happy and trying to make everything come out a certain way and then blaming myself for not being good enough when it didn’t. The reason it’s important not to give in to those negative thoughts is because you cannot be kind to others if you are not kind to yourself. It’s like trying to dance with someone without moving your feet.

The only other thing I want to tell you right now is that none of what is happening to me is your responsibility. And what I mean is that you may feel the need to be strong for Hazel or for Papa. Or you may feel really sad or angry. You may feel nothing at all. I have felt all of these ways, sometimes in the space of 5 minutes. But everyone is going to respond differently and that is not just normal, it is necessary. Be patient with yourself. There is nothing you can do to change what is and I believe there is a deeper, loving intelligence at play that will make sure that all will be well.

I am not afraid right now. I feel so loved and held. And I feel so connected to you, so in love and grateful for our amazing family. I really do. You and I have many more walks together and I can’t wait to explore the world with you. You’re such good company, Cole – and you make me so happy.

Happy Birthday, Cole. Papa and I love you, unconditionally. Go into the world knowing that and watch the way the world responds back with love.

Xoxo Mama

by Susie Rinehart

Feeling Edgy, Full of Rage

Recently, I woke up full of rage and I had no idea what to do with it. I angry-cleaned the coffee grounds out of the sink. (Angry-cleaning. Verb. To make loud, banging noises and grumble bad words under your breath while scrubbing or vacuuming or generally tidying up.) I yelled at our son to get out of the bathroom so I could get in. Then I sulked around my husband because he didn’t understand a point I was trying to make. I felt lonely in the room with his rational mind and his sharp, straight sentences. I wanted him to immediately understand my non-linear thoughts and the emotional colors that fly out of me. I scolded our daughter for using my iPad. All of this before 9 am.

I poured myself a super strong cup of tea and, like a good girl, took my morning vitamins, and went down to the guest room to write. My throat burned. Since the surgeries, my throat often hurts because the tumor damaged the nerves around my vocal chords and along my tongue. But this feeling was different; I was afraid of what words might come out if I opened my mouth again. I had no idea what to do with these powerful emotions. So I hid downstairs and wrote in my journal. My hand shook, but I could not stop scribbling angry words on the page. This is what I wrote:

Sometimes there is a rage inside me that is not merely mine, but ours. Rage for the damage done to my throat and how hard I have to work to be heard. Rage for generations of voiceless and silenced people. Rage for living in fear of what my future holds. Rage for those who live in fear just for attending school. Rage for the privilege that I was born into. Rage for the poverty that too many are born into. Rage for the feeling of helplessness. Rage that I am not angrier, not doing more.

The fire behind my throat felt hotter and I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I needed water. I stood up to get a glass, but my legs buckled under me. Then, next to the laundry, I threw up into our trash can. The vomit was green from all those multivitamins and tea. I had no other symptoms, no fever, no stomachache. After throwing up, I felt better. In fact, I never felt sick after that one, strange moment. There was nothing wrong with me, except that I took some strong pills on an empty stomach. But was it a coincidence that I threw up after feeling all that rage?

I don’t think so. I have spent my whole life being a good girl, doing what I needed to do to belong and to be successful. It’s no wonder that I have no idea what to do with the anger that consumes me sometimes. I stared into the trash can and thought with the clearest mind I’d had all day; if I don’t figure out what to do with all this rage, I will throw up all over the people closest to me.

In this case, it happened to be our ten year old daughter. I turned on her even after I had the epiphany that I was figuratively retching on the people I loved the most. When dinner was over, she skipped over to me, clutching her newly-created birthday list, dancing with excitement. I was immediately frustrated because she was holding my iPad. Apparently, she had been online, creating a long list of things she wanted for her birthday. I looked at the list. I knew that she had never heard of these toys before, but because they were big and shiny on the screen, she wanted them all. My reaction? I lectured her on consumerism and marketing. My words might have been green vomit, they were so gross. The impact of my throwing up all over her with my misplaced rage was that she crumbled. She lay on the couch crying that she was a bad person. She twisted and sobbed in an anxious, depressed state. I was now raging at myself for being a bad mom.

Finally, I walked into my room and sat down in the corner, on a pile of pillows. I lit a single white candle. I thought again: If I don’t figure out a way to process and express the rage I feel, I am going to burn others up and burn myself out instead of igniting a lasting flame. I pushed play on a guided meditation. I closed my eyes and listened to the recorded voice:

Center yourself. Let go of your day. Now, what is the vision of the future that you can imagine? What is the story that you want to live?

Instead of whipping around the house, spreading anxiety and anger with my lectures and tirades, I needed to ground myself. It helped to imagine a bright future that has us working together to create change. I don’t know what I’ll do with my powerful emotions, but I will figure it out. Whatever the answer is for me, it’s got to include quiet moments like this. They may feel passive, but taking care of myself and processing what I feel might be the most radical thing I can do.

When I opened my eyes, our daughter was sitting right next to me, inhaling and exhaling calmly.

Love,

Susie

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