My Foot Is Too Big for the Glass Slipper: A Guide to the Less Than Perfect Life

by Gabrielle Reece

  Like them, we are high-impact people. In the office, with our partners, with our children, and in our community, we’re always involved. It may be exhausting, but it’s much richer and more fulfilling than being out in right field.

  DON’T IMPALE YOURSELF

  No matter what’s going on in your life, whether you’re a mom working at home, or a mom working at the office (or a dad working in the ocean), don’t punish yourself. Guilt not only accomplishes nothing, it often prevents us from making real changes. A friend who used to write a column for a major magazine noticed over the years that many of the questions she received were from women who lived in a state of perpetual guilt because they didn’t think they spent enough time with their kids, or they spent all their time with their kids and secretly hated it, or they worked part-time and when they were at work they felt as if they should be at home and when they were at home they felt as if they should be at work. The one thing they all had in common is that they were clobbered by guilt. But it was as if admitting to feeling guilty, they didn’t have to change anything. They were snuggled up in their guilt security blankets.

  They were also surprised that their lives were busy and challenging and full of compromises and strife. As if somehow they’d been betrayed by the movie fantasy of being married and a mother that they’d expected. Modern life is complicated, and we’re all forced to make choices. To say that you feel terrible about the choice you’ve made, and then to go ahead with it anyway—that’s not a good message to send to your kids. It’s putting blood in the water. It’s telling them, in essence, that you know you’re doing wrong by them.

  It’s similar to when your child falls down. The other day Brody was taking a nap on the couch and rolled right off and smacked her head on the floor. Boom! She rolled over and opened her mouth, but nothing came out. There was a long minute of silence, and then she howled. Laird strode over and scooped her up, but he was matter-of-fact. He checked out the bluish egg already rising on her forehead, trying to evaluate whether or not she was seriously injured. A popular saying will tell you all you need to know about the quality of medical care on Kaua’i: “When in pain, get on the plane.”

  But he kept telling her she was okay. He didn’t panic and say “Oh my god! You hit your head really hard. Are you all right?” Saying that would convey to her that maybe she wasn’t all right. (Brody was fine.)

  In the end, no matter where we find ourselves, there are lessons to be learned, and the best one might be that life offers no guarantees, and that often you just have to make the best of things. It’s no one’s fault. It’s not as if you could have done anything differently. It’s just the What Is.

  HOLIDAZED

  Sometimes I wonder if what does us in, expectationswise, are the holidays. Would we be able to accept the realities of life behind the white picket fence if we didn’t have to stage a never-ending cavalcade of precious-memory-creating holiday celebrations, year in, year out? Especially when it seems as if every year the holiday season is getting longer; these days, it seems as though it starts with Back-to-School (not a genuine holiday, but all that new clothes, backpack and school-supply shopping feels festive) and ends with Easter.

  My childhood wasn’t easy. After my father died, my mother and I bounced around a lot. So come holiday time, I’m always grateful that I’m not steeped in (imprisoned by) tradition. I don’t have to cope, every year, with the feeling that if I don’t make my mother’s prime rib and Yorkshire pudding on Christmas Eve that I’m not holding up my side of the circle of life. I have a little more familial elbow room around the holidays to do what feels right for the family, right now.

  The question should be: Do we serve the holiday, or does the holiday serve us?

  It’s lovely to have traditions, but one of them should also be the tradition of flexibility. Holidays with infants and toddlers are different from holidays with school-age children, middle schoolers, older teenagers, and college-age kids.

  Trying to enforce the same traditions year in, year out is a recipe for depression and heartbreak. We don’t force kids to continue to believe in Santa Claus, and neither should we force ourselves to continue to roll out the Hollywood-style Christmas production every year. The year will come when your daughter, who used to love spending a week making snowman cookies with you, has been cast in the winter play at school. Or, she’s playing a winter sport. Or, dum-de-dum-dum, she has a boyfriend and wants to spend every waking Christmas-y moment with him.

  I realize it’s starting to seem as if Laird is the multipurpose go-to man for life lessons, but if you’ll indulge me: every morning he wakes up and plans his day according to what the weather is doing, which affects what the ocean is doing.

  Every year, take a look around. What’s the fall been like? What’s going on with everyone? What’s going on with you? Maybe you’ve had the flu or been slammed at work or there’s been a death in the family. Maybe you’re beat. Conversely, maybe you’re feeling energized. You got a raise, or a new idea for a business you’d like to start, or your sister who lives in Rome is in town.

  Also, there’s nothing that says you have to buy your tree the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and have your holiday party the first weekend in December, etc., etc. Some years you might be feelin’ it as you plow through those Thanksgiving leftovers and some years it might not hit you until December 15.

  These are supposed to be holidays. You know, like, joyous.

  Celebrate accordingly.

  I’ve pinned Christmas on the dartboard here, but you can substitute any holiday.

  Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I love to have a big meal with a lot of people around the table, say a prayer, and hear what people are thankful for. The occasion is both the holiday and the gift. Perfect.

  THE ANTIRESENTMENT DIET

  No one forced us to get married and have children. It’s the twenty-first century; we can more or less do whatever we want: stay single, or live in a community with a roommate or two. We could simply have lovers, or be one of those women devoted to her agility dogs.

  But even if you are someone who gets it, who fully understands that you’re going to be working like a merchant marine on a shorthanded ship, putting away every toy in the house at 9:45 p.m., stepping on a doll shoe in your bare feet, which gives you a limp for a week, washing the dinner dishes by hand because the dishwasher is broken and you only remember to call the repairman at three a.m. when you can’t sleep because you drank seven cups of coffee during the day. Even if you know all this, and accept it, and embrace it, and even enjoy it most of the time—does anything feel better than pouring yourself a glass of wine and putting up your feet at ten-thirty, after the kids are sound asleep?—the day will come when something happens and you completely, absolutely, and simply lose your shit.

  What causes a total meltdown? Never anything that warrants it. Never anything reasonable. Usually it’s something that you’ve said at least five hundred times before. You’ve said it five hundred times, and the people to whom you’ve said it—generally the kids, but sometimes the husband—look at you as if whatever it is you’re saying is merely contributing to the ambient room noise. It’s like you’re the TV left on for company, or the sound of rain on the roof, or the air-conditioning switching on. Nothing anyone needs to acknowledge.

  When my girls get ready for their day, all I ask is that they brush their hair, brush their teeth, and wash their hands. This is all I insist upon. Hair, teeth, hands.

  Reece and Brody are good about their hair, good about their hands, but they aren’t very interested in brushing their teeth. They lie to me and say they’ve brushed, but then I make them come over and I do a breath check and they have bad little kid breath and we go back and forth, endlessly, about whether they did or whether they didn’t brush their teeth. Sometimes Reece complies by brushing her teeth for five seconds, just long enough so her breath smells minty.

  Then one day, I discovered that Brody was putting a dab of toothpaste on her tongu
e to give her breath that minty smell.

  I. Went. Crazy.

  “You went to all that effort of getting out the toothpaste and squirting some on your tongue but you won’t brush your teeth! You’re already opening the toothpaste! You’re already putting it in your mouth! Can’t you just brush your teeth! What would it kill you to brush your teeth! You know what? Fine. Fine fine fine. Do I care if your teeth turn black and fall out of your head? No I do not! And when they do, by the way, don’t think I’m taking you to the dentist. Don’t think I’m doing one thing to prevent you from becoming toothless and sad, never able to bite into another apple as long as you live. And if you think I’m giving you one sweet treat today, you are mistaken. No chocolate, no candy, not even a stick of gum. Not even Pirate’s Booty. You get nothing. Why can’t you just brush your teeth! How many times do I have to ask you to brush your teeth!”

  Everything that comes into my head I say. I stomp around the house like a lunatic.

  Reece and Brody just look at me, live reality TV, the part where Crazy Mom Loses Her Mind, right before their very eyes. They watch me and when I demand a response, they shrug and go t’huh.

  Nothing, of course, has been solved.

  It’s okay.

  This was a tough one for me to absorb. Even though I’m a blond beachy-looking girl, I’m not hang loose. I like to be in control, and since I’ve had my kids I no longer feel in control, ever. Maybe this was a function of being single and childless, but in my twenties, I felt organized.

  But now? What a laugh. When I close my eyes and think of myself on an average day, I imagine a dog chasing her tail in the bed of a truck without brakes on a mountain road. My long life in sports has trained me not to react, outwardly, to stress. I go about my tail-chasing business. Maybe my eyes look a little buggy from the pressure I feel behind them. But some days, without warning, I lose it.

  And sometimes it just feels good to let it out.

  Not only does it feel good, it’s imperative. I’m not suggesting that you bathe in the drama of a situation. I’m not saying that you should belabor the point after you’ve had a fit. You shouldn’t.

  But do honor and enjoy your hissy fit. Even if you’ve acted irrationally, it’s never good to eat your rage. Counselors and shrinks generally frown on acting out, but if not acting out is going to result in growing resentment of your situation, then throw a dish. A broken dish can be swept up, and you can apologize. It’s much more difficult to eradicate resentment once it’s taken hold.

  Resentment is the kudzu of the heart. It’s black mold and head lice and every other nasty thing that’s nearly impossible to get rid of. What’s worse, it leads to contempt, and contempt for your life, your partner/husband, even your children (it happens) leads to one thing only: game over. Contempt is defined as feeling something is worthless, or beneath one, and once it has grabbed ahold of you, it’s almost impossible to recover from.

  So, don’t feel guilty or bad for blowing off steam; you really are doing it for the good of yourself, your marriage, and your family.

  After I had my meltdown, I calmed myself down by taking a step back and asking myself how I could better deal with things.

  It all came down to exercise.

  Movement equips you with the ability to gain perspective.

  I realized that if I didn’t get up first thing in the morning and exercise, it would be more difficult to get things done and maintain my perspective as the day progressed. Some mornings I just get up, throw on my gym clothes, and go. A mere thirty minutes is all it takes. (If you’re worried that you don’t have time, just think of how much time and emotional energy a meltdown consumes.) Jogging is good, but so is walking meditation. Some people talk to God on their morning hustles. Whatever. The point is: exercising and eating well is armor against the chaos that is our lives.

  The other thing I did after my freak-out was to make a list of what’s important. Everyone has their own list; it really does help to write it down because once it’s written you know: everything that’s not on the list should be immaterial to you, water off a duck’s back. Who cares? Not you.

  My list:

  1. Be thankful for everything, even the hard stuff.

  2. Take care of my health (eat well and exercise).

  3. Be the best mom and wife I can for my family.

  4. Try to be kind.

  5. Work hard and stand up for what I believe.

  If things fall under one of those umbrellas, then I’m dead serious. Everything else, I’m going to try to keep it in perspective. And if I blow it, that’s cool. The next morning I’ll have another opportunity to cope with unnecessary crap, reminding myself that the only time you fail is when you stop trying.

  11

  BE THE QUEEN

  In Kaua’i Laird does his inventing, building, reworking, and noodling around in a barn, but in Malibu his workshop is the garage. Last June he went to France as part of his duties as the spokesman for Oxbow World Surfwear Company. Before leaving for the airport he stood in the driveway with his hands on his hips, stared into the disarray in the garage, and said, “I have to get everything out of here, clean it, and edit it. Everything.”

  I had what I thought was a brilliant idea. For Father’s Day I would clean out the garage, and over the next week, while he was away, I dragged everything out, had the walls and the floor repainted, and ordered new cabinets. His bikes, boards, and tools sat in the driveway beneath a huge blue tarp, awaiting his return. I was proud of this present. We have everything; there’s not one more thing on earth that we need. Helping Laird get his workshop in order could not have been a better gift.

  Laird came home the day before Father’s Day. Oxbow was celebrating its twenty-fifth birthday, and he’d spent the entire week going from meet-and-greet to interview to party and back. The meetings, receptions, appearances, and interviews began at seven a.m. and lasted until midnight. For a guy who spends most of his days either alone tinkering, or out on the ocean with a friend or two, nothing is more exhausting for him than all this face time and interacting with other humans.

  The moment I saw him I could tell he was in a Mood. The Weatherman was experiencing a tropical storm of discontent. He had that heavy look he gets, his brow lowered, his mouth a straight line. I had expected him to be wiped out, but I wasn’t expecting this. Nevertheless, I pressed on with my plans, stopping at Whole Foods on the way home to pick up a few things. He sat in the passenger seat with his arms folded, scowling. Was I really going to drag him to a busy grocery store?

  Yes, yes I was.

  The minute we pulled into the driveway and he saw the tarp-covered mound of stuff, the rear wheels of his bikes poking out, he sat bolt upright. “What’s all that stuff doing out there?”

  “Happy Father’s Day!” I said, opening the garage door. The space was clean and empty, the walls covered with a fresh coat of white paint.

  “Now I have to put all this stuff back in,” he snapped. “And it’s been raining.”

  “It’s under a tarp,” I said.

  “This is unbelievable. You stuck my stuff out in the rain.”

  I turned on my heel and walked into the house. I could hear him grumbling to himself outside.

  “Well, that went over well,” I said to Bela.

  “He’s probably just tired,” she said.

  He’s probably just an asshole, I thought, but didn’t say.

  I thought, briefly, of going to a hotel. I wanted to be in a hotel. I imagined the huge empty bed, the solitude, the merciful absence of a big, angry big-wave surfer stomping around and swearing under his breath.

  Instead, I went to bed. But the next morning I stayed in bed. This is unlike me. We’re an early-to-bed, early-to-rise kind of family. By six-thirty I’m usually in the kitchen whipping up a smoothie. Not today. Today I lay there and remembered how, when he’d seen his girls, he wrapped them up in a big hug, how he’d kissed the tops of their heads. He’d been gone only a week. They were like puppies, al
l so happy to see one another. I stood there and watched. The wife.

  I wondered whether this was the end. Maybe we’d been together too long.

  The next day was interesting. Naturally we hadn’t had sex in a week, and under other circumstances I’d grab him for a little nap date, but I was livid. We passed each other in the kitchen.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “Phooey,” I said.

  “Can we just forget about the way I behaved yesterday?” he said.

  I wound up forgiving him—he really was trashed from his long week and thirteen-hour flight from Paris. It was one of the many times I’ve tried to manifest the best advice I’ve ever heard about making marriage work: be short on memory, long on forgiveness.

  • • •

  Losing my marriage to Laird isn’t a happy thought. I’d be heartbroken if we divorced, but my human existence wouldn’t be threatened. Still, the idea of splitting up doesn’t leave me panic-stricken. I never think: I better do whatever it takes to make this work because otherwise I’ll be living out of a shopping cart under a bridge. I have enough skills and enough faith in my ability to stand on my own two feet; I’m completely confident I could feed and clothe myself and my kids.

  Once, Laird said to me, “If I left tomorrow, your life would barely change.”

  And I thought, “Isn’t it great?”

  Laird’s love of freedom and spontaneity is legendary. I wouldn’t have it any other way; I orchestrate our lives so that Laird can be Laird. Still, there are many nights when I roll over and look at his head on the pillow and think, You could be gone tomorrow.

  I rarely dwell on the risky nature of Laird’s profession—in part because he’s always alert and prepared. He doesn’t get too comfortable, thinking, Oh, this is only a fifteen-foot wave, yawn. He’s neither cavalier nor foolhardy. He’s truly humbled by the ocean. Still, the day always comes when he gets word there’s a swell off the coast of Maui or Tahiti or Indonesia or New Zealand, and he’s up before the sun, rushing around in preparation. I can feel the anticipation coming off him in waves.