Tangled

This is birthday month around our house.  My daughter turns 16, my son turns 21 and I step right over the line into the 50's (51).  It doesn't scare me!  HA!  My daughter however told me that she has been 16 for a year since a birthday actually marks the END of a certain year and the day after her 16th birthday she will be embarking on her 17th year of life.  At her age that matters to be older.  At my age not so much.  Once you hit 40 it never matters again. *sigh*

I have found out that my son is actually learning something in college.  He has learned how Donkey Kong got its name and why Mario is named Mario and why he is a plumber.  He also laughingly told me that his first writing assignment for his Tech Writing class is to describe a penny.  This being funny becuz my favorite writing assignment in a graduate class for teachers to get published was to describe a penny in 500 words or less.  :/  I told him that most of the 'writers' in my class did just that...described what the penny looked like, literally.  I told him that if his instructor wanted something more than technical (never mind the name of the course) then he should do as I did...concentrate on the significance/insignificance placed on the value of the penny/how its appearance differs from our other coins we use/the significance of the profile on it/the significance of the words and other information it has on it.  He just nodded.  He is a really imaginitive and fluent writer.  My daughter is too.  They both struggle with their math, though.  They didn't used to but somewhere along the way, one side of the brain took over and squelched the other side of the brain. 

As I relayed to a friend today, it has taken me a very long time to understand something that had I understood it a decade and a half ago, it might have made married life a bit easier. 

I was able to understand my kids having severe anxiety problems and what it does to them...how they react...what they do to cope.  But I listened to my husband and believed him when he said he didn't have such problems. 

He does.  He just doesn't want to admit to it.  If I had just really thought about things he told me about his life growing up/things he did/how he reacted in certain situations I would have understood. 

He bugs me when he wants to try and control everything...he goes into a micro-management kinda mood.  He tells me what I should do and how I should do...and I want to whump him.  But I finally realized that he is only at his 'worst' when he is anxious about something...and that something usually has to do with his job.  It makes it easier to take it when he is trying to give me 'orders' or a list of things to do, etc.  I find it preferable to him trying to dull his anxiety with drugs.  

Life isn't such a big tangle unless you ignore the fact that things are twisting in the wind.