Second Time's a Charm?

I'm lucky enough to say I'm locked into a happy, loving, fun marriage with two cherubs as a result.  So many are not so lucky.  Some perhaps didn't try hard enough when the going got rough or were the victim of an extra-marital affair or drug use, etc. So many reasons to break up and when they out-number the reasons to stay together, well, then that's that.  I know I would get a tut-tut from many a mature reader who held fast to "death do us part" no matter, but I wonder had they to do it all over again, they wouldn't have chosen a different path for themselves and their children or their friends and their children.  I know too many people who would have benefited from their parents breaking up, but 30 and 40+ years ago, "it just wasn't done"...or at least not very often.  Yes, it's much more acceptable now and that may not be so great, but again, when efforts have been made to no avail...

I have a high school friend who married her high school sweetheart.  They had two beautiful kids together but a rough marriage.  Finally enough was enough and the marriage ended.  I don't think either one of them took the divorce lightly with children involved, but you do what you have to do, even if it's hard, for the sake of the kids' well-being.  I don't have a lot of details but I don't think it was pretty.  But it's over and though she still sees him from time to time and sometimes, when he's behaving exceptionally well, she's reminded of why she married him in the first place and perhaps beats herself up a little less.

She's definitely not the only friend that I've watched end a marriage.  Too many, to be sure, have decided to end it but none that I can call to mind did it without incredible difficulty, guilt, shame, and pain.  Most have children, even though some are grown, and some take complete blame for the breakup to protect not their spouse, but to keep their children's hearts from breaking over what really happened.   When a friend of mine told me this was the path she was going to take I was angry that she was taking the fall and, as predicted, her kids were so upset with her that one even turned his back on her and "sided" with his father.  She said even though they were both grown and leading their own lives, it wasn't fair to shatter what they had and have with their father; that they could reach their own conclusions in time.  Well, she was right and both her children are back in the fold and love and respect her even more than they did before...who says Mama don't know best?!

So back to my first friend, she is now happily divorced with one grown child and one just about to graduate high school.  She is still stunningly beautiful (I'm guessing even more so since she doesn't have a stress monkey riding on her back any longer) and has been lucky enough to find love again.  She managed to find a great guy who shares the same passion that she has...if I mention said passion she'll be found out immediately and she might get mad at me so I ain't sayin' nothin'!!  Suffice it to say, he lives and breathes it probably more than she does...if that's even possible!  He loves her, he tries to take care of her (as much as she'll let him), and he's great looking to boot.  I take it back, it's not luck, it's fate.

As for the second friend mentioned, she's still struggling to find real happiness again.  I think it will come but patience, as they say, is a virtue and must be practiced.  That, and you've got to kiss a lot of toads before you find Prince (or Princess) Charming.  

Happy searching! According to my husband, there's a lid to every pot.  And to further that sage wisdom, sometimes I think you find out the lid you've been using all this time belonged to some other pot in the cabinet and never really fit right in the first place.

~ Eileen Cassidy Bishop

VOTE (revisited)

I wrote this four years ago before the last Presidential Election.  I reread it today and decided I still feel the same way...probably even stronger now that my kids are getting old enough to kind of understand what's going on and who's doing what.  I'm hoping it stood the test of time!

VOTE

So did you all get the email that’s been passed around about Women’s Suffrage movement and what they went through to get to vote?  Or read up on what black Americans went through, including murder, when they tried to exercise their right to vote as late as 1965 (and probably later in some places)?  Frightening.  Truly.

I think what’s more frightening to me is that so many people, especially women, DON’T VOTE!!  I don’t get it.  I am apathetic about sooooo many things, but not voting.  From town council to the White House, I pine over who I’m going to try to help get in or sometimes, help NOT to get in.  I read and re-read my sample ballots and after I get my head to stop spinning after reading the constitutional amendments or the questions,  I read the “translation for idiots” at the bottom to make sure I know what they’re asking me!

My very first voting experience was the Presidential Election 1984 when Reagan was running for his second term against Mondale.  I was so excited I wanted my mom to take my picture going in and coming out of the booth.  She refused.  Killjoy!  S’okay, I remember like it was yesterday…truly one of my proudest moments. 

I don’t talk heavy politics with people.  I think it is an incredibly personal topic.   I have cocktail party political conversations with people.  You know, enough to let a person know which direction I lean without taking the chance of saying too much and offending someone who totally disagrees with my leaning.  (I kinda sound like a politician, don’t I?)  If someone does bring up politics in my house I welcome what they have to say as long as there’s no fist banging or extended soapbox standing and, most importantly, that they are voters.  My husband and I have a rule in our world; we’ll listen to your complaints (may even share a few) and counter or commiserate, whichever the case may be, as long as you VOTED!  Before we let you get too far, we stop you, ask if you’re a voter and if you say “no”, we don’t let you talk.  Isn’t that rude?  I mean really.  It’s my rule and I think it’s rude!  But there it is.  More people voted in the American Idol contest last year (myself included) than for the last Presidential election (like 80% more).  I totally understand though.  I mean, come on, I don’t have time to fill out less than 10 lines on a postage paid Voter Registration postcard that I can drop in any mailbox!  I do, however, have time to dial my phone 4,000 times until the busy signal at AI is replaced with a computer voice thanking me for my vote and disconnecting me.

Look, I don’t care who you vote for (well, not really, but hey, this is America, right?) just get out and VOTE!!  Do it for our kids’ futures.  Do it for OUR futures as senior citizens.  Do it to start changing things you want changed.  Just DO IT!!  Don’t think your vote doesn’t matter.  Don’t pull the electoral vote card out and say your one vote doesn’t matter.  It does it does it does.

That’s it.  I have to get down.  The air’s way too thin up here at the top of my soapbox!!

~Eileen Bishop (written 9/14/08 for October 2008 MOMS Club Newsletter and published in the November 2008 South Jersey MOM Magazine as a Letter to the Editor)