Life on rewind

We have all heard quotes  or old adages such as “Youth is wasted on the young,”(George Bernard Shaw) or “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards,” (Soren Kierkegaard) or one of my favorites,“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans,” (Allen Saunders).

In the past, I jotted these in a “things to remember” notebook or shared them in a card to a friend.  I thought if I read them often enough, I might understand them well enough to avoid the pain of their inherent truths.

But alas, I have lived long enough to realize that good advice only sheds light on a mistake after you make it, and emotions trump sound sense or wisdom in most human contact.  So in a fit of self-disclosure and seeking some sort of catharsis, I thought I would share a few of my pivital life moments I wish I could push rewind and relive. You know, the “if only we could do it over again, I would do it so differently” moments when you open your mouth and the wrong words fly out.  And the moment is gone and the regrettable thoughts hang in the air like the smoke of a bad cigar.

So in no particular order some of my moments would be :

My first born telling me she was thinking of naming her first child Declan.

Wish I had said:  Oh that’s lovely.  Isn’t it Irish? So creative of you to be thinking outside the box.

My real answer:  Declan.  Did you say Declan?  Like we’re Irish or something?  Isn’t it in the top ten most trendy, overused names this year?  What’s wrong with Jack?

My youngest showing me a small heart tattoo she had just had permanently inked on her left wrist.

Wish I had said:  A tattoo? How perfect for you.  Sweet, subtle, delicate.   Just like you to wear your heart on your sleeve. I so admire your self-expression. Love it!

My real response:  Is that thing real?!  You did it?  Without telling me?  Why don’t you just move out to LA with Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan and all the other trailer trash with ink all over their skin. (No surprise she soon moved to LA with Britney and Lindsay…)

Arriving home from church on a snowy Christmas Eve, three children in tow, to smell my brother’s arrival by the trail of smoke from his Winstons over-powering the heavenly scent my evergreen boughs draped throughout the house.

Wish I had said:  You’re here safely!  Merry Christmas!  How was your drive? Thanks for having a cigarette in the basement where we agreed you could  smoke…How about some eggnog?

What I really said loosely translated to keep this PG:  Why does your smoke always have to precede you? What’s wrong with smoking outside?  (It was probably 30 below with the chill factor.) It’s Chrismas Eve, for God’s sake. Can’t you take a night off??? Oh, my babies’ little lungs…full of carcinogens…Blah, blah blah…

And on a lighter note, I’ll share a moment in which I have no regets about my mouth working faster than my brain. As I mentioned in my last entry, my left foot is once again either fractured or has a gaggle of torn tendons. I say “once again” because after dragging around a walking bootie  for several months after surgery two years ago, I spent last winter in a walking cast for a stress fracture and now have something again impairing my stride and making me miserable.  The doctor told me to R-I-C-E:  rest, ice, compress and “eat whatever I want with the added bonus of doing nothing and not gaining a pound” (really it’s ‘elevate’) and come back in two weeks. I dutifully “RICED” and waited and laid on the couch as much as possible and returned with the same swollen, red, aching foot. I stood in front of her, painfully balancing on both sets of toes and she said matter of factly, “Well, it’s still swollen.”  And I responded, “Well, duh!!”  Luckily she had a sense of humor.

Perhaps my sometimes too honest tongue is an over-reaction to my mother’s motto, “If you have nothing good to say about someone, say nothing at all.”

We are all some mixture of what we intrinsically are–were born to be–and what our parents tried to mold us into. And I feel certain, none of us say what we should at all moments and more of us think of the perfect response to many encounters as we drive away or rethink the day’s interactions in the shower.

I think Ralph Waldo Emerson may have said it best. Duh!!

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”