Sometimes, love doesn't make sense

Me: "There's this new online newspaper and they say I can write for them."
Husband: "Are they going to pay you?"
Me: "Uhhhh, no."
Husband: "Why would you want to do it, then?"
Why, indeed.
Why, when I couldn't find a newspaper job right after college, did I feel so blessed to land an internship at a small, N.H. weekly that didn't pay, but compensated me with gas money and a nice tote with the paper's name on it?
Why was I thrilled when this same internship bestowed on me the awesome authority of writing up obituaries AND the police log?
Why, when I finally landed my first real newspaper job, was I so excited that I accepted without asking how much I would be paid?
Why didn't I even think about being paid until I called my father with the tremendous news and HE asked me how much I was being paid?
Why, when I found out that the weekly pay was $180 (this was 1984), did I still happily report to work the first day and pretty much every day for two years?
Why did I (and others) withstand the all-consuming fear of not making deadline, missing a story, getting something wrong, all in exchange for writing up whatever occurred in the course of daily life in our readership area?
Oh, I could go on. Working in newspapers for 17 years was, in some ways, an abusive, dysfunctional relationship. But, unlike real abusive, dysfunctional relationships, newspaper work used to be amazing fun.
I left the ink-stained world in 2000, before the technological explosion of online media, when the burden of being an editor of a small, daily paper in South Dakota became too much to juggle with a family of four young children and a husband who traveled for his job.
Since then, I've freelanced for anyone who would pay and print me. I wrote about stuff I knew (kids and families) and stuff I didn't (soybeans and stadiums — yes, there are markets for both). I wrote a book about South Dakota State University.
But, a blossoming second career as a yoga instructor (at a whopping hourly rate of $12) sidetracked my writing ... until this new opportunity arose at http://www.thepostsd.com/, thanks to the creativity and tech-saviness of people much younger than me.
So, here I am, with a new lease on my former newspaper self, writing and in love all over again. Sure, it's early in the relationship and the job doesn't pay much at the moment, but minor detail.
I told the son about this new venture and how I broke a story on H1N1 on the SDSU campus.
"Mom!" he exclaimed. "You've got your mojo back."
Indeed, I do.

There's nothing good about saying bye

I wake up this morning with dread churning in the gut. The mind pings back and forth in emotional upheaval.
Our oldest daughter is returning to college.
Sure, I should have gotten used to this. She was gone all last year, coming home only for holidays and the summer break.
But, here we are again, saying good-bye and sending her off for what seems like forever — to a first apartment. This means she will stay there next summer.
It is so final. So ending. So done. Nineteen years together and that's it. From this point on, she will only visit, not live here.
At the same time, on the other end of life's spectrum, there is my 86-year-old father, coping with the inhumanity and unfairness of aging. Worn out body parts. Forgetfulness. Falls.
There again, is the finality. A winding down of what has been.
And, with both the 19-year-old and the 86-year-old, there lies a huge, roiling vat of uncertainty. What will they do? How will they cope? Will they be safe?
Letting go means worrying every time the phone rings or every time it doesn't.
I tell each one about the need to — please — think things through. Make good choices. Be aware of unintended consequences.
Neither one has a convincing, solid grasp of common sense — she hasn't gained it fully, yet, and he's kind of lost it. Both are stubborn, too.
How crazy that at 48, I am the fulcrum of wisdom? In the void of knowing what is right and good and best, I emerge as the knowledge source?
Those who have traveled this path before me have said this is what it would be like as the family landscape shifts. But, like labor and childbirth, you never fully understand it until you experience it firsthand.
The cell phone rings and jars me out of this deep, disturbing contemplation. It is the daughter.
"Dad is freaked out," she reports. "He wants me to get pepper spray and mace."
Hmmm. The thought of a viable, protective force helps settle my unhinged mental state about life beyond control.
I'll take that spray in a plastic shield, please. And, make it a double.