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The Midlife Second Wife ™

~ The Real and True Adventures of Remarriage at Life's Midpoint

The Midlife Second Wife ™

Tag Archives: Wisdom

12 Things to Tell My Son Before His Wedding Day

26 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by themidlifesecondwife in Love, Relationships and Family Life, Transitions

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Love, Marriage, Relationships, Wedding, Wisdom

Roger Mastroianni photo

Roger Mastroianni photo

Having an only child is the maternal equivalent of putting all your eggs in one basket, so to speak. Additional children give you the chance for a do-over or two; with only one, that’s exactly how many chances you get to get the whole parenting thing right. I look back on the trail I embarked upon 32 years ago, and I see it littered with the weeds and stones of my mistakes and missteps. Occasionally I’ll spot a bit of something shiny. I hope it’s a marker for a good decision made, or the right thing said at the right time. Yet, in spite of my occasional impatience and bursts of short-temper, the young man standing at the edge of this path—my son—is the brightest thing shining there. He’s a terrific person with a great good heart, and he’s at a crossroads. He’s getting married soon to a beautiful young woman with a great good heart of her own. I have just one chance to get this whole mother-of-the-groom thing right. Over the years, through trial-and-error, I’ve learned a thing or 11 about what it takes to make a relationship work. I’d like to share these bits of wisdom with him now—12 things he should know before his wedding day.

  1. Never take her—or anything—for granted. Be grateful every day for the life you have and the love you’ve found.
  2. Do something nice for her every day, and thank her for something at least once a day.
  3. Remember that marriage is not a competition except for this one thing: try to out-love one another.
  4. Embrace her neuroses. That is, should she have any.
  5. Respect her. Respect her. Respect her.
  6. Communicate with one another clearly, calmly, and constantly.
  7. Listen to what she has to say, and put yourself in her shoes while she’s saying it.
  8. Make time for each other.
  9. Be in the moment when you’re together. Concentrate on one another, not on your work or your smart phone.
  10. Hold hands every chance you get.
  11. Make love with one another as often as you can.
  12. Put the toilet seat down and pick up your clothes from the floor.

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Moving to Encourage Good Fortune

23 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by themidlifesecondwife in Transitions

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Good Luck, Life, Life Changes, Love, moving, Poetry, Relationships, William Stafford, Wisdom

MorgueFile Image

MorgueFile Image

You’d be forgiven for thinking I’ve fallen off the map. I haven’t been blogging much lately because my life is about to change in a whopping big way. After two-and-a-half years in the fascinating city of Richmond, Virginia, my husband and I are preparing for our return to Northeast Ohio. Or, as I like to call it, the Land Where I Met the Love of my Life.

You’d be right in thinking: “My goodness! Didn’t she just uproot herself to move from Ohio to Virginia? I remember reading all about it on her blog.”

Well yes. Welcome to life in the 21st-century, where job changes occur with greater frequency than they did in our parents’ generation. My husband’s new job—a really terrific one—is the magnet pulling us back, and it’s a good move for many reasons, although we’ll discuss the frigid climate another time. My son is getting married this fall, John’s oldest son is receiving his doctoral degree in May, and we will be much closer to his younger boy. Our boys, I should say. Our sons. None of this “his” or “mine.” John and I believe that our blended family feels very much like an “ours,” although, sometimes, old speech habits are slow to catch up with the heart.

As for myself and this move? Well, I can write and blog anywhere—from the top of Mount Rainier, if I have to—as long as there’s Internet access and I don’t have to climb to get there.

But for now, I’m here, chipping away at the slow deconstruction of my tiny office in our Richmond townhouse. I’ve just removed the artifacts and “familiars” that adorn my bulletin board, and at present I have on my desk a great treasure. It is a poem, yellowed with age and riddled with pinholes. I will carefully tuck it away in a file for the move to Ohio, where it will resume its rightful place—I want to say like a talisman, but that’s not quite right and you’ll see why in a moment—in my new office. I also want to say I hope it will bring me luck, but again—habits of speech tend not to catch up with the heart. The poem is about anti-luck, or, as the late American poet William Stafford called it,

The Little Ways that Encourage Good Fortune

Wisdom is having things right in your life
and knowing why.
If you do not have things right in your life,
you will simply be overwhelmed.
You may be heroic, but you will not be wise.
If you have things right in your life, and you
do not know why, you are just lucky,
And you will not move in the little ways that
encourage good fortune.
The saddest of all are those who are not right
in their own lives who are acting to make
things right for others.
They act only from the self, and that
self will never be right;
No luck, no help, no wisdom.

—William Stafford
(1914-1993)
©  1960, 1998 The Estate of William Stafford
Used with Permission of the Executor, Kim Stafford

When I emailed the poet’s son, Kim Stafford, asking for permission to reproduce this gem of a poem, I wrote that this is likely to be one of the poems I’d like read at my funeral. His reply?

“Perhaps the poem is more useful in the midst of life, when one can act so as to encourage the little ways …?”

And of course it is, which is why I’m sharing it with you here, thanks to Kim Stafford’s good offices, and why I’ve always kept it close to my heart, where old speech habits—even reflexively wishing someone good luck—sometimes lag behind.

Kim also shared something his father once said: “I must be willingly fallible to deserve a place in the realm where miracles happen.”

So I won’t wish good luck for myself, or for my husband or our boys. I shall will myself—and them—to be fallible in order to reside in the realm where miracles happen.

I wish that for you, too.

Note: Kim Stafford is an associate professor at the Lewis & Clark Graduate School of Education and Counseling in Portland, Oregon, where he directs the Northwest Writing Institute. He tells me that he and his colleagues are at work planning “The William Stafford Centennial, 2014: 100 Years of Poetry and Peace.”

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The Huffington Post Features the Midlife Second Wife

09 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by themidlifesecondwife in Midpoints, The Writing Life, What's the Buzz?

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Baby Boomers, Facebook, Huffington Post, HuffPost, Life, midlife, Wisdom, Women

What a week this has been! You might recall that on Monday, I posted an essay called “To Marci, On Your 20th Birthday,” which I wrote as part of a “blog hop” sponsored by Generation Fabulous, an amazing Facebook group to which I’m honored to belong. (We lovingly call it GenFab.) If you haven’t had a chance to read that post yet, please do, and please check out the posts by my GenFab compatriots. There’s a lot of collected wisdom there, and it seems that the Huffington Post agrees. Three Huffington Post sections—HuffPost Women, HuffPost50, and HuffPost Healthy Living—as well as HuffPostLiving’s Facebook page, featured 14 of us in an article about our blog hop. (You can find my quote on the second panel of the Huffington Post slideshow.)

My deepest thanks to the GenFab troika: Chloe Jeffreys of “The Chloe Chronicles,” Sharon Greenthal, who writes “Empty Nest, Full Mind,” and Anne Parris, the voice behind “Not A Supermom.”

The question—”What Advice Would You Give Your 20-Year-old Self?”—is really striking a chord with readers: people all over are sharing and commenting. I’d love to give readers of “The Midlife Second Wife” a chance to weigh in on the topic. So tell me:

What would you say to your 20-year-old self?

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