The Finale

Between birthdays and babies and finishing my Spring season, this week felt like a grand finale. I've waited ages for these babies to pop out and they did, so I can mark that as done. I've got one more year of being in my twenties (which I thought ended two years ago so it's like I've gotten years added to my life!) so this is my grand finale year. Lastly, as of two hours ago, I setup my last wedding until September, so that's done too.

Who knows what's next. The world is my oyster! I'm feeling awfully free.

For my birthday last week I was fed lots of treats. We had family dinner the night before the Big Day at a little Italian restaurant where Dad harassed the waitstaff and said unladylike things at the table causing Mom to make faces of appalment, like this one ...

Here we all are acting right.

On my birthday morning, Brett did not pull me out bed by my ankles like he normally does. I woke up before him, just a-wiggling with excitement. I tried to pull him out bed by his ankles but he weighs a lot and I just wound up bunching the rug with my feet as they slid closer to the bed with every pull.
He went off to work and I goofed off in my workshop even though I was supposed to be working.
That evening, Brett surprised me with a swanky dinner with my beloved Ari and Nate and then we got to go over to their new house and boy is it exciting! Did I tell you they bought a house? Maybe someday I'll get over there with my camera. It's just the greatest place in West Ashley on a little peninsula island dohickey.

I spent all of Saturday in "the flower-shop" (garage) listening to juicy Podcasts while making my final centerpieces. I've been inspired by the Podcasts and if I had something to say, I'd sure love to do one.
Brett did assorted lawn care jobs and at 6:00 we took the pups over to the dock for some salty air and dolphin hunting. We showed up just in time to crash Dad's tomato themed dinner. It was delicious and homey and southern. Tomato-pie, okra stewed in tomatoes, a cucumber and tomato salad ... it just felt an awful lot like home.

Owen, Ethan, & Evan

In November we found out that Margie was expecting a little one and I thought that was awfully exciting. A few weeks later we found out it was twins and that seemed wild and exotic. In December my cousin Chelsea had a baby boy. On New Years Eve, Laurie Hon told us that Will and Katie were expecting a baby in June, and seemingly moments later, cousin Alex delivered a sweet baby girl.  

My mind got hung up on babies. I started to feel overwhelmed with pressure and deadlines. I want my kids (and lets put a pin in that) to grow up with their cousins. I grew up with mine and we were always in and out of the same classes and schools and I felt infinitely more comfy knowing that at least one of them was in the building somewhere.

If Brett and I got on it right away, all of our little children might enroll in Kindergarten in the same year. I really mulled and toiled and felt bad feelings I hadn’t prepared to feel so early in my marriage. 

Now let's talk about the pin I mentioned earlier.

I don’t like children and have never wanted to have them. Even as a child I was confused and burdened other children. I’m put-off by loud noises and stepping on something wet ruins my whole day. I do not approve of the world my child would have to grow up in. I am not strong enough to love something so much and have no control over it’s fate. I do not wish to be that vulnerable. I am selfish and lazy and would undoubtedly leave my crying baby neglected in it's crib if I was trying to enjoy my lunch. My life will not stop to serve you, you ungrateful all-consuming blob. What about me!?
I’m afraid to love something so much.

Additionally, I do not see birth as a miracle and I see no use for more humans or valid reasons to force other people to live life without having agreed to it first. I scoff at people who have children to give themselves a purpose or fulfillment. People don’t seem to have kids because life is a gift they want to share. For a while now, I’ve seen having children as a moral dilemma for many reasons I’ll outline later in life.

The point is, suddenly in January I felt pressured to rethink my thoughts which made them feel not so concrete because why did I have to rethink those thoughts at all? After two weeks of toiling and mulling and feeling bad feelings, I realized that Jordan has always been four years older than me and we have always been friends so it’s ok for "my kids” to be a few years younger than their cousins. So I stopped worrying about that.

Watching Margie’s belly grow week by week is the closest I’ve been to pregnancy. Each week we’d research to see what size piece of fruit the babies were now. They were tomatoes and then mangos and then a bottle of Sunny D which made both of us mad somehow. That’s not produce.

I felt Baby A kick my hand and I watched Baby B’s foot move across Margie’s belly. I visited with Will Hon twice and harassed him for every detail I could think to inquire about. I learned what not to eat and drink and how much to move around and to make sure you feel them moving more, never less. I stared at the twins' tiny noses in the ultrasound photos and worried that Baby B was too small and at some point I realized I loved them. Not the way you love a cute puppy in the park but in the way that you need these kids to be healthy and happy because you won’t recover if anything happens to them.

But I still don’t want one. The noise. The poop. The chaos. I feel no envy towards parents, strapped with worry and burdensome love. I’m happy for a woman to be a Mom and I’m happy for a woman to forgo having kids because she has her own dern life to live. I’m proud of those gals for not succumbing to peer pressure. Maybe a gal can't have kids. You’re not less of a woman. You are wild and free. I want to be wild and free. I have things I can do, contributions I can make. I don’t need to be a Mom also. There are plenty of Moms. There are Moms that really blow at being Moms and those Moms might be the reason I am not particularly in awe of Moms as a concept.

On Sunday, June 23^rd, Brett and I entered the postpartum ward of MUSC and met our tiny, three day old, twin cousins Owen and Ethan. At the same moment in Virginia Beach, Will and Katie met their dark-haired daughter for the first time, Evan Laurel Honbon. 

I touched Ethan’s tiny toe and he pulled his foot away and then I felt queasy and had to sit down. Brett made faces at him in his incubator. I’ve never seen a human so small. I’m not entirely sure how he exists. His shin was the length of my pinky. He was just under three pounds. Margie looked awfully proud. She wrapped Owen in a blanket and placed him in my sweaty hands. It was like holding a loaf of bread with the most perfect skin and tiny nose. I couldn’t stop staring at him and I’m certain I could have sat there in that chair and held him until at least his seventh birthday. What’s that all about?

We left the hospital and received pictures of baby Evan, sleeping in Katie’s arms and I thought about how Will and Katie must be feeling in that moment because I felt so insignificant in a special, parent-y kind of way and none of these babies even have anything to do with me.

I didn’t really care about grocery shopping that afternoon. I’d held one of my two marvelous baby cousins. I thought about what was coming up this week and I sighed an exhausted, indifferent sigh.

None of that crap mattered before but now it really doesn’t matter. Suddenly, I really really don’t care about all of the other people I’m supposed to tend to. Get out of my face with your wants and needs. Your statistics and innovations. I have baby cousins and they’re way more important than you.

I spent the day in a dreamy, weird sad-delighted daze. I decided Brett would be in awe of me once he saw me make a human. Men can’t do that you know.

I started to think about how I thought I loved Brett before we got married but then time passed and I love him now in a way so different and solid that I can’t believe I agreed to marry him with such retrospectively flimsy love to stand on. It’s like when you buy a new pair of shoes to replace your beloved worn-out ones and when you put your feet in them, you can’t believe you walked around so unsupported for so long. Maybe that’s a bad metaphor. Brett’s very supportive. And worn out shoes have been loved into that state they’re in anyway.

I realized this definitely has to happen again once you have kids with a person you love. You’ll jump another love valence that you couldn’t have fathomed before. So I began to pout that Brett and I won’t jump the love valence unless we have kids and I don’t want to do that whole deal so now our love will be limited.

Brett laughed at me and made mashed potatoes to make me feel better. I love mashed potatoes.

Today, a few days after meeting my nephews and seeing the next generation Hon’s face, I’ve thought about those three kids all-day- each-day since and I’m really hating being away from them. What's that all about? I also keep thinking about those two amazing Mamas. And to be honest, I’m mad that I think they’re amazing. They didn’t actively do anything to grow those babies. People grow babies by accident all the time. But I get it now. They’ve just given the world something so wonderful to believe in and I’ve never understood that before.

My contributions to life suddenly seem awfully stupid.

The Cool Kids

When I was in the fifth grade, I got invited to a cool girl’s birthday slumber party. I had been a fringe friend of hers and she made the sweet effort to invite me to her party with all of the other school’s cool girls. I do not remember how I felt going into this party but based on my feelings towards sleepovers as a whole, I was probably dreading it. We were graduating to middle school the next year, which was basically real life so it was important to consider putting effort into my status. Also, I was a fan of a Disney Channel series called Lizzie McGuire, which falsely portrayed middle school as a place full of independence and options and heaps of time between classes to have dramatic encounters near the lockers. The group of girls at this party all planned to join the cheerleading team and even I had the glimmer of interest in being a cool, pretty cheerleader with a heart of gold. 

At the slumber party, I took on the role of an observational scientist researching monkeys in the wild. I was aware of how quiet I was and the fact that I was always a few paces behind the group. I’m sure I was a bit intimidated but also I was the kind of kid that never lost track of time anywhere outside of her home. At any given sleepover, I knew exactly how much time was left before Mom would pick me up and take me back home to my sanctuary of solitude.

In the early evening we went for a walk around the cool girl’s neighborhood because someone wanted to be seen by some boy that lived down the street. It was a type of reverse Sting Operation calculated by the minds of ten-year-old girls. Once we got to the cute boy’s house, she would fall down or throw up or something that might merit a White Knight. I was embarrassed for us. I didn’t associate with the kinds of people who cause scenes. But the entrapment didn’t go to plan. The cute boy was having a pre-pubescent gathering of his own so we were greeted by a gang of boys on bikes before we even got close to his house. I didn’t recognize any of the gangly boys shouting to us from their bicycles with high-pitched, screechy voices.

I found them all off-putting.

Though a cute face wasn’t lost on me, I never really had crushes on the boys in school. They were, after all, boys, which is gross. Men, sure. Boys, nope. My teenage crushes were reserved for men in their mid-tewnties at least. I recall an occasion in high school when fifteen-year-old Elizabeth broke up with sixteen-year-old Adam and she was devastated. Everyone consoled Elizabeth but I wondered what could have possibly been appealing about a teenage boy in the first place. If the stupidity wasn’t reason enough to avoid encounters with them, perhaps being larger and sturdier than him might do it. Or the lack of conversational ability. Or the general over-eagerness of a boy that age. I could have never stomached being kissed by a youth. I told Elizabeth she could move on to larger, manlier things and everyone glared at me. I was alone in my repulsion and also apparently, wrong.

I digress.

The group of spirited juveniles were on a Sting Op. of their own. One designated bully would upset a specific girl and the cute boy would come in and save her. A solid plan I thought. Though there was no telling who the cute one was. Things got murky for both sides when the two groups met in the middle of the street. While the girls were working out an impromptu Plan-B, the bully boy squirted an unexpectedly combative girl with a bottle of ink and all hell broke loose. She screamed and lunged at him and he fell off of his bike. One girl immediately started crying. Two boys laughed and one looked startled and fled the scene. Most of the girls stood with wide eyes while the ink victim shouted kid-caliber obscenities to the bully. A verbal fight carried on for a long time before all the boys ran away and the ink girl started to cry. I had removed myself from the situation when the first crier busted loose but also, I was a younger sibling. I knew all about harmless bullying and proudly owned my own bottle of disappearing ink. 

I gently pushed through the swarm of girls around the victim and politely informed her that it’s disappearing ink. 

“I saw the bottle. I have the same one. It goes away as it dries.” And it was true. The stain was already shrinking. “There’s no reason to be upset.” I told her, so kindly. I was so happy to find that her shirt wasn’t ruined and her happiness could return. But no one said anything and I found myself being pushed to the outside of the blob as the group consolation continued. Eventually, when she mustered the strength, we walked back to the house for cupcakes.

They talked about “the fight” all night long. Twelve hours until Mom gets here.  The majority of my learning opportunities came post-fight as the story was retold over and over. More details emerged as the horror of the inkblot was brought to life again and again. Fixation. Assumptions… I scribbled mental notes of their kind. Late that night, the cool girl’s older sister came home from a party. She was a high school cheerleader and once she arrived the conversation focused on her life and realities. I watched her eat an entire sleeve of Oreos while she told us about boys and classes and SAT prep courses. She had a car and boyfriend and was looking at colleges. They asked her endless questions. I wondered if I’d be allowed to eat a whole sleeve of Oreos when I was in high school. 

Then she put on a movie she wanted to see and everyone gathered around to watch. It was a movie about a forlorn pregnant woman on the run from her abusive boyfriend. She gives birth to her baby in a Wal-Mart and then has to figure out what to do with her life. I was transfixed on and traumatized by the movie. As someone who existed most frequently in her fantastical inner world, I was suddenly horrified by the possible realities of my future. The movie ended and everyone scattered for snacks and bathroom breaks and then refocused on current matters. I stared at the credit reel in horror. How could I care about middle school when real life was out there being so real and awful? I didn’t say much after that. I think I went to sleep, though I was careful not to be the first one to fall asleep for fear of being ridiculed.

I woke up at six the next morning. Three hours until Mom gets here. I have no recollection of the next morning. It was a countdown. Survival. Just get to 9:00. I realized I had nothing in common with these girls. I realized I could never share a cheerleading team with a group of girls who could get so much mileage out of the ink blot story. I certainly did not have school spirit, or a loud voice for that matter, and perhaps being popular meant I would be the victim of a reverse engineered Sting Operation. The Wal-Mart birth made me realize that the world had bigger problems than the things that went on on James Island. I suddenly knew that the world was a big, complex place and that I knew nothing about it. I realized being around boring people that you hope to impress is just the worst. 

Mom was four minutes late.

I did not go on to join the middle school cheerleading team. Actually, I did not go on to remain friends with any of the girls from that night, though the initial cool girl and I were always genuinely polite passersby in the hallway. She goes on to marry a military fella after high school and they now live in Germany. Three girls, including the inkblot girl, will transfer schools a few years later and disappear into the scary, complex world. One goes on to a brief and embarrassing stint in the adult entertainment world before bearing three children by different men, entering rehab, and moving to Florida.  

I go on to think about that dern Wal-Mart birth at least twice each year. 

I do not go on to become cool.

Popples

Today is Dad's birthday which really makes me smile.
I spend a lot of time thinking about Popples. He is so simple that it's complicated. You don't think much about your parents having personalities when you're a kid. It's not until much later, when they finally relax, that you find out who they are. Sometimes I feel like I've only just gotten tickets to the show. Has he been like this the whole time? How did I miss so much?

Shock, outrage, and delight are feelings I experience often and still as Dad and I age along and watch each other move through a day. He and I are very different people. My squirrelly, gentle behavior is confusing to him, while his fearless, booming motivation is marvelously frightening to me.
While most people anxiously follow the protocol, overthink their emails, wait in line to to talk to the
Big Wig's assistant and then second-guess whether or not they should make their suggestion, Dad just goes and finds the Big Wig, taps him on the shoulder and asks him for exactly what he wants. Who does that?

I don't know how Chris Union fooled his young, artsy daughter into thinking he totally understood her, but he managed to do that everyday and that's the sign of flawless fathering.

Now, as his age has set forth the liberation of his fatherly behavior (as if he needed to feel more liberated) he slings around phrases like, "froo-froo art crap" and "you mean people actually think about stuff like that?"
Who is this irreverent person?
Coming up on close to a year of working in the office with him, I've learned even more about him. He is shockingly unphased by disaster or confrontation. He has a limited number of craps to give each day. He laughs at other peoples inconveniences (but don't you dare inconvenience him), and he never passes up the opportunity to make a joke which, even when missed by the audience, will still earn a hearty and inappropriate guffaw from himself. He's delighted by the things he thinks.

I wish I was more like him. As Brett has gotten to know Dad over the years, he has pointed out so many observations of Dad that I have never seen. Brett likes Dad's laugh, which has a very distinct sound when it's first getting going. Brett mimics how Dad stands when he's thinking and can anticipate with precision, what will be Dad's reaction to different requests. At first, I worried about Dad's more obnoxious traits coming on too strong for Brett. Brett is deliberate and introspective and like me, he likes to mull over decisions long before he makes them. I wondered if Action Dad would inadvertently push Brett along faster that he'd want to go. In turn, Brett found Dad strangely exhilarating and as time has passed, Brett eagerly anticipates watching Dad react to life. Having a husband that can see what makes your own Pops so unique and fun is an extra special gift. I've enjoyed getting to know my own Dad through Brett's experience.

Sometimes, when Brett and I talk about him, we wheeze and giggle the way you do when you think about your beloved dog doing something adorable. I wish I was more like him. Brett says I have his mustache. He says we have the same chuckle and people skills. And as I've gotten older, I find myself sitting with my hands laced together behind my head, just like he does before he falls asleep. Most notably, I am also a bit too delighted by the things I think.
Recently at the office, I blurted out, "Isn't he adorable!" when Dad did some rudimentary task. His office manager looked at him and said, "You know Chris, never-mind you being capable of running successful businesses and all of your professional accomplishments, your daughters think it's cute when you send an email." And it's true. When I see Dad do something simple, it tickles me. Because in my mind, he's off somewhere fighting crime and soaring over cities with his cape flapping in the wind behind him. He doesn't know about the mundane tasks of civilian life because he's never been one.

I'll just never get over him. 

Lying

I recently read a book about lying. It’s called Lying by Sam Harris. The writer argues that there is never any need to lie, even those polite little ones you say just make sure you don’t send someone into a body-image tailspin or some other kind of fruitless discontentment. As a generally kind person, I wouldn't lie to you but I’d also wholeheartedly withhold the truth if it was the kind of truth that would be unconstructive to it's given audience. 
"You know Zoe, you can choose your self-worth yourself. It really is that simple."
"But like, do you think guys will think I'm worth talking to if I wear this dress?"
In this case you just say, "sure" and move on. I can't speak for every guy.

Moreover, do you know how many pity-dates I went on because I didn’t have the heart to discourage some sweet fella who worked up the nerve to ask me out? That could be damaging to his confidence. So I’d go on the date just for them to use it as practice. In case you’re worried, I have plenty of self-respect and had no trouble turning down creeps and bros and strangers. It was the shy, kindhearted fellas I didn’t want to spend time with that I couldn’t let down. 

Sam Harris would probably think I’m an idiot. I also feel I have more bones to pick on account of being a lady that was brought up in The South. Politeness is one of our most abundant natural resources and even when it’s not genuine, it never runs dry. I’m sure the I’m doing great!’s that I get when I ask someone how they’re doing, is not the whole truth and I appreciate them for withholding it from me. Is there anything worse than a passing stranger that responds to you with their woes? The awkwardness consumes me. I would lie about my feelings if it meant not putting someone in that position. So you see, I lie to benefit others. It's selflessness.
I feel I should acknowledge that my thoughts here change on a case by case basis and in the case of chatting with someone I know well and/or love, I really do want to know how they're doing. I'm not a monster.

The Lying book came around because Brett has a solid “no lying” stance in life and he tries hard to be polite about his honesty. He picked up the book for fun and read most of it out loud one afternoon on the back deck and once he dozed off, I finished it.

I’d like to point out that I don’t believe one should be trigger-happy with the white lies for the sake of avoiding all confrontations. I believe in doing your best to communicate genuinely and when you do that, you shouldn’t need to lie. Sam Harris would say that you can simply opt out of sharing your thoughts if you think they will upset a person and I do that awfully often. I call it “evasive conversation” and I'm very good at it. The ways I can skirt around an answer is otherworldly. I’ve even had people complain about and praise me for my skills there, I’m that good!

If I don’t like someone’s haircut, I’ll tell them they look “fresh” or “dapper” or some other thing besides, “I like it!”

If I hate something a bride suggests, I say, “That makes sense. Suppose we did this though…” It’s actually quite easy to not lie even when you’re secretly a disagreeable, opinionated jerk.

Afternoon deck-nap coming in T-minus six minutes.

While I don't have the active thought of “don’t lie” when I'm in an icky situation, I am quite aware of responding to someone thoughtfully and gently and with the awareness of us both being humans. I’m happy to point out my mustache to a friend asking if I see a hair on their lip. 
“Oh you know, I do see a lil sprout. It’s got nothing on my Selleck-stach. You know what I do to eradicate those…?

I'm happy to throw myself under the bus so that people have some company up under there. Other benefits to being caught being honest even when it’s icky, is that people will trust that you are being honest with them also and in some ways, that makes your thoughts more valuable to your friends.

All that said, I can think of many instances where I’d prefer to be lied to. 
-If we’re running late to a party and we're riding along in the car and I say, “Hey Brett, can you see my slip under this?” I need him to say no for two reasons. 1) Punctuality is more important to me than the peeking hem of slip. 2) I get to enjoy the outing instead of worrying and fidgeting with my mismatched hemlines.  
-If in a few weeks I’m scheduled for a painful surgery, I need the doctor to assure me that it won’t be painful or else I’ll expire of agonizing anticipatory anxiety well before my surgery date. 
-If I’m an old widow with Alzheimer’s and everyday I ask where Brett is and everyday finding out that he died 10 years ago breaks my little heart and ruins my day, I'd much rather you tell me he’s out in the garage.