Love Means Saying "Thank You"

I watched the show Sunday Morning, well, Sunday morning, and Ben Stein closed the episode talking about saying 'thank you' to your parents.  He was visiting with women at a drug treatment facility and they were talking about how wonderful their parents had been to them; how they had never stopped loving them or fighting for them through their whole ordeal.  He asked the women if they'd ever thanked them.  They replied that they had apologized over and over again but don't ever remember saying 'thank you'.  "I don't remember but I must have at least once, right? ....no. No, I don't think I ever did."

It was a V8 moment for me.  I thought about how my last blog entry was about giving thanks and even listed a few things I was thankful for.  I even mentioned my mother but not to say that I was thankful for her, but thankful for her recovery from cancer.  Of course I'm thankful for her!  But when have I ever actually thanked her or my father?

Thanked them for just being my parents.  Thanked them for being happy I was born into an already crowded family of six children and welcoming me home as if I'd been the first.  Thanked my mom for balancing the checkbook to the penny every month while the two of them pinched said penny so we never went without (much)...the checkbook that held the money my dad made trudging off everyday to his job in NYC.  Thanked her for cooking, yes cooking me breakfast every morning of my childhood and for greeting me every day when I arrived home from grammar school.  For the beautiful home my parents made for us.  For taking care of me in sickness and in health, for better and for worse (and there was plenty o' worse!), until my adulthood released them from servitude.  However, it didn't release my then-widowed mom from saving my butt financially on more than one occasion! Thank you for that, by the way!

But it's more than just what they did for us; it's that they did it without hesitation and without including us in any of their worries.  We didn't grow up with a lot of money.  My dad made a nice living but with all those dang kids running around...well, when there was a chance to earn a bit extra working in my grandfather's office or working on income taxes for people, he jumped at the chance.  I always thought he did it just to help them out!  So thank you for allowing me to spend my youth in the bliss of financial ignorance!  I had so many other things to worry about like boys and ...boys and ...boys.

Ben Stein talked about how for decades parents are our servants and we their masters.  It made me chuckle because I'm constantly telling my kids I'm not their servant.  But we are, aren't we?  Yes, I am their mother, their teacher, their taskmaster, their nurse, their housekeeper, their cook, their seamstress, their launderer, their landscaper (well, okay, that's Dad), etc.  But we are also their confidant, their pillow, their rock.

I can assure you I don't do the grunt stuff as willingly as my parents did (or appeared to do).  Don't get me wrong, my parents were NOT Father Knows Best meets Donna Reed and there were plenty of times we thought they were cheap and unfair and downright cruel.  I'm sure there were plenty of times when they thought they were too...along with thinking we were spoiled brats!

See, here's the thing.  I never got to thank my father.  I always thought he'd be around. Period.  As a teenage it never even entered my mind to thank them for their hard work on my behalf.  Now that I've lived a good portion of my life and see the atrocities that call themselves parents, and feel the pinch and euphoria of parenthood firsthand, I regret having missed the chance.  I'm not going to wallow in guilt though; I was young and narcissistic just like many if not most teens out there.  That much hasn't changed....I'm talking today's teens, not my narcissism!

So thank you Mom.  Thank you for being there.  Thank you for loving me unconditionally.  Thank you for saying "no".  Thank you for fighting for me, for praying for me, for being genuinely happy when you answer my phone calls.  I love you.  

~Eileen Cassidy Bishop

Thankfully Giving Thanks on this Thankfully Thankful Thanksgiving

Well it's two days before Thanksgiving and Facebook is inundated with people stating all that they're thankful for this year.  It's lovely to read them.  Sometimes it's an eye-rolling good time for this closet cynic (closet?)  But even if it's corny or contrite, I think it's lovely (there's that word again) that these writers are putting themselves out there, baring their soles, making us roll our eyes...I mean making us take stock of ourselves and our lives and publicly thanking whatever greater being they offer thanks to.  Honestly, I don't know that I'd be able to come up with 28 things to be grateful for and want to put on Facebook.  I think it's cool.  Here's some of mine, 'cause I know you're waiting for them...  

I'm thankful for sore muscles; it means I've been staying on task with working out.

I'm thankful for Fridays when for the next two days the house will be filled with my favorite people.

I'm thankful for Mondays when I get my house back to myself and send my favorite people packing.

I'm thankful for Caller ID.

I'm thankful for free premium channel weekends.

I'm thankful my mom is getting past her horrific health issues faster than I certainly could have!

I'm thankful for Pinterest and all the craftier-than-I contributors.

I'm thankful for the village that helps me raise my children.

I'm thankful for my children.......and my IUD.

I'm thankful for hair dye....the really good kind that hides the gray.

I'm thankful for Spanx...not that I wear them....

I'm thankful for my Church and the people in it.

I'm thankful for the roof over my head and the food in my cupboards.

I'm thankful for sneakers.

I'm thankful for sneakers. Oh, wait...no, I'm keeping it; I'm really thankful for sneakers.

Okay, that's enough.  The rest are either too obvious to mention or too sappy to admit to.  There's so much out there that we can be thankful for it's hard to say which gets a mention and which gets a pass.  The things I listed are neither most important nor least; especially the sneakers...did I mention I'm quite thankful for sneakers?  Yes, well.

The point I'm trying to make (eventually), is that I think we should make a conscious effort to bring even the smallest of things to mind and appreciate them; even if for just a split second.  Like I just ran my fingers through my hair and thought of how thankful I am that my hairdresser gives the best shampoo massage in the world!  Just a random thought normally but this time I was thankful for it.  

So what are you thankful for?  Your stylist who gives good head?  Your trainer for kicking your ass on a daily basis?  The village in your life?  Your sneakers?  Don't make Thanksgiving the only time to really reflect.  I'm not going to keep an Oprah-inspired Grateful Journal, that's too much work.  I'm not going to list one daily on my Facebook page, that's too much pressure.  I'm just going to look daily at the things in my life and consciously be grateful for them.  It might be a juicy grapefruit that I got on sale at ACME (yeah, right, like ACME puts their grapefruit on sale EVER.)  It might be that my mom's biopsy came back clean.  Two different ends of the thankful spectrum, but both worthy of a fleeting thought I think.  And that's the key; it's what I think about MY stuff and what YOU think about YOUR stuff and NOT what YOU think about MY stuff or what I think about....okay, you get it, right?

Happy Thanksgiving all!  May you have a day, season, year, and life worthy of giving thanks for.

~Eileen Cassidy Bishop

My Father Who Art in Heaven....

I saw an old man today as I drove to the local store.  He had just gotten out of a car driven by an equally old man.  I came upon him far enough back that I was able to watch him start to walk up his driveway, stop, turn around, and go back to examine a shrub like it had called out to him.  I was immediately reminded of my father.  I don't know if it was the way he bent down to look with his hands on his thighs; something my dad always did; or just that he was an old man.

I was thinking of both the stranger and my dad as I did my light shopping and when I walked out of the store, another of the old man's contemporaries was walking in and seeing me, stopped, stepped out of the way, and held the door for me.  I smiled and thanked him "thank you, sir!" and his smiling reply was, "of course."  Like "duh, like I'm not gonna hold the door open for a lady??"  I smiled all the way to my car.

My father was a gentleman.  He was born in 1924, served in the US Army during WWII, was a loving son, husband, and father, and a true man of faith.  Though it was a quiet faith, at least from what I could see, I knew of his Irish Catholic upbringing and his time in Seminary High School. I would secretly watch him during Sunday Mass become absorbed in the Word.  We used to joke that he was sleeping, but we knew better...I think...!  But definitely a gentleman.  Not so much that he couldn't hold his own with roughnecks, but enough that he could NOT embarrass my mom when he was on his  best behavior!

He could make my friends giggle like mad without much effort.  At the dinner table, he would recite poems in Latin and Shakespeare in English; he would tell off-colored jokes and tell you to push his shirt button forcing him, if you were gullible enough to do it, burp.  All gentleman-like behavior, yes?  The thing is, he was a gentleman but wasn't a snob.  Lord knows he was no snob!!  He liked almost everyone...and if he didn't, he faked it great!

So needless to say, seeing that man sent me straight down Memory Lane.  But after I was walking a bit, I made a right onto What If Blvd.  What if he'd lived past 59?  Would if I'd gotten to watch him age?  What if he were alive today at 89?  What if he'd been alive to see that the angry, snappy, directionless daughter he loved despite her shortcomings turned into a relatively respectable middle-aged woman?  What if....

But seeing my mom and knowing that they were so in sync with one another, I don't think it's a huge mystery. I don't think a leopard changes his spots with age so the same guy I knew, I think, would have been the same guy at 89.  Slower in his gait, most likely and perhaps even slower in his sharp wit, but not by much I'd bet, but still Daddy.  Still Jim.  Still a gentleman who, like all old men, get away with flirting with younger girls because they're "so cute"!

It's been 30 years since my dad went home.  30 years since his pain ended.  30 years since seven children lost their father and 30 years since my mother lost the love of her life.  He must have been a great guy.  Why else would not a single day go by without me thinking of him?  Being 17 years old when he died, I don't think I really mourned him until I became more mature.  I was living in a kind of play when he passed; almost a fugue state.  I love that all this time has passed and I can miss him terribly yet love him immensely and not have to shed any tears.  Who knows, maybe if I'd lost him as an adult, like most of my siblings, I still would be able to accomplish this.  But I'll never know.  I only knows what I knows.  And this is what I know:

I know my father wasn't perfect.

I know my father was a gentleman who lived for his wife and children.

I know that I loved and sometimes hated my father.

I know he loved me and wanted to kick my arse at the same time.

I know he smelled like Bay Rum.

I know he wasn't perfect.

I know my mother became my mother and father upon his death.

I know he was the best Pop-Pop to his grandchildren...his own children would look on as he played with them and say to one another, "Who the hell is that guy?!"

I know he wasn't perfect.

But most of all, I know, truly and unequivocally, that he tried his best.

What else could a child ask for?

~ Eileen Cassidy Bishop