Pool-side Wisdom: Learning to Use Jazz Hands to Navigate My Grey World

Yesterday, I took my daughters to the public pool in our semi-home community (we don't live there, but it still feels like home to us).  Every smart mom knows that in order to have an enjoyable time at the pool, one needs to recruit an army of friends to occupy the children.  Doing so allows moms to sit on the beach chair and actually read the book ambitiously packed in the pool bag.  The kids still manage to coax me to get into the water with them for a little bit.  However, with friends there to provide most of the entertainment, I get to chant "Motor boat, motor boat, go so slow" a lot less frequently. Being a very smart mom, I invited every kid we knew to meet us at the pool knowing that only a few would be able to meet us there on a Friday afternoon.  I wound up with my three girls and three of their friends.

Basking in the sunshine while my kids are entertained by others.

This is me feeling pretty smart.

Smart moms also know that when you take kids to the pool they spend about 15% of the time actually swimming and the remaining time eating.  Okay, that might be an exaggeration, but they really do eat a ton at the pool.  Again, because I am a smart mom, I packed an entire grocery store in my cooler and another bag and encouraged the kids to help themselves whenever they wished.  During one of the many snack breaks, one of the little girls was sitting next to me and shared that when she goes to the pool with her mom, they can go for two hours.  She also described this ingenious system in which their mom does a sort of jazz hands signal to indicate when they have 20 minutes left.  She then follows up with one minute remaining and they know that when they see her starting to pack up, they need to get out of the pool and start getting ready.  

Huh.  As she was describing this my thought was, "That is pretty awesome."  

After that conversation, I realized that while I don't normally go to the pool with a timeline, I realized that maybe that wouldn't work for the parents of the kids in my charge.  I emailed this little girl's dad who would be picking them up and explained that I usually just let the kids swim until they tell me they are done and that we often wind up staying until the pool closes.  

His response: "Way to set limits"

My response: "Ouch."

[Sidebar explanation: He and I are friends, so it's okay that he was blunt.  Really.]

At pick up time, we laughed about that exchange.  He explained he was joking, I explained that I knew that.  You can't ever take anything like that personally.  Except, it did sting a little. Not because it was mean or because I thought he intended to hurt my feelings.  The sting is not due to hurt feelings at all. It turns out that the old cliche adage that "the truth hurts" is actually, well, true.  It stung because I actually do stink at setting boundaries.  A lot.  

This realization has been a bit of a surprise to me.  In a recent blog post I described myself as a force and it really is true.  I have strong beliefs and strong opinions.  I like to be in charge and be the boss or at least feel like I have a voice in how things unfold.  I get the shiznit done.  This is hardly the portrait of a laid-back, zenned out person.  You would think that someone like me would be really good at establishing boundaries.  You would think.  

Except, I am not.  I know this because on Wednesday I got my head shrunk had a therapy session and I shared a situation that had been troubling me with my therapist.  The good news was that I wasn't crazy for feeling upset about the situation (according to her and she's brilliant, so...).  The other good news was that she validated how I handled some of my response.  However, she went on to encourage me to set a hard boundary with this other person.  As she modeled what I might say in setting that boundary, I could feel myself cringing internally.  My heart began to beat faster, I felt myself sort of fold up on the couch, and I gave a weak, "Yeah, I could maybe do that" response to her suggestion.  

I may be a force, but I am also someone who gives the benefit of the doubt and gives second (and third and fourth and fifth and sometimes infinite) chances.  I always look for the exception and believe in the capacity for change.  I know my truth might be different from yours, so I will bend over backwards to accommodate your perspective.  I bend, I scoot over, and I step aside.  Over and over in my life, I have done these things.  I have spent my life taking the approach that while someone might not treat me the way I'd like to be treated, a relationship is better than no relationship so I'll just settle for what I can get.  

That is not all bad.  There is danger in having hard and fast rules in everything.  There really are exceptions to every rule and relationships do require a certain level of give and take.  

Only, it seems that I do most of the giving most of the time.  

The other problem is that I have communicated to people in my life that my needs, my desires, and my personhood are not nearly as important as anyone else's.  My world has gotten so grey and the boundaries so fuzzy that I have forgotten to allow myself a space in that world.  I just sort of blend in and let people come in, make a mess, and leave (or stay and keep making messes that I clean up).  

I've always been pretty proud of the grey-ness of my world and I don't want to totally redecorate with a black and white theme.  However, it has become clear to me that some of my grey needs to become darker in hue.  I need to practice my jazz hands and let people in my life know when they are getting near to my line.  I also need to let my people know that when I start cleaning up, I mean business.  Finally, the hardest of all, I need to let them know that if they cross the line, I'm going to keep packing up, and I might just leave the pool without them.  

I'm going to be honest.  Just typing the words "leave the pool without them" filled me with a horrible feeling of dread.  I'm not the "leave them behind" type.  How do you know when it's really time to leave?  How do you know when to move the line a little or to anchor it into the ground?  I could type on this topic for another 1,000 years because I'm just sitting here with a million questions and very few, if any, answers.  

Maybe right now it's enough to know that I am allowed to set boundaries and use that black, permanent marker from time to time.  Maybe I just need to be okay with having that awareness. Maybe I just need to hope that with time and more head shrinking therapy I will know when and how to use that permanent marker.  Maybe.