Alison Hodgson

Expert on the etiquette of perilous times.

We Get to Carry Each Other

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“I’m almost stopped by your house this morning to cry.” A friend told me the other day as we waited to pick up our daughters after school.

“You should have,” I said without thinking, “what’s going on?”

My friend has another child with a multiplicity of special needs who is struggling to make a big transition at school. My friend had a meeting scheduled that day with the principal, but right before it she discovered something else that concerned her and decided to schedule a meeting with the school counselor too.

After these back-to-back meetings she was exhausted and feeling overwhelmed. Raising a kid with special needs can be so arduous. The school is just around the corner from my house and she thought about stopping by to tell me all about it and have a good cry.

“Why didn’t you?” I asked.

The short story is she talked herself out of it because she wanted to save me for a real emergency. I mean you can’t just show up at your friend’s fixing to cry willy nilly, can you?

The funny thing is, with me you can and I’m really good at it.

Years ago a friend stopped by and I winced when I saw her car because her home is always immaculate and mine is not but I opened the door with a smile and was surprised to see her face wet with tears.

“What’s wrong!” I asked.

“I GAINED TEN POUNDS!” She was in the later days of her first pregnancy and had just been to the O.B.

Without a word I opened my arms wide and she fell into them, sobbing.

I was pregnant too, with our second child, Lydia, and managing to keep my weight gain at the lower end of normal. But with my firstborn, Christopher, I gained more than 50 pounds and had one devastating month towards the end where I gained nine pounds alone. This was the month after I told my midwife I was probably going to have this baby early because I couldn’t imagine getting any bigger.

She just smiled and nodded but now I know she was almost certainly thinking, “You sweet, simple thing.”

I was aghast when I gained nine pounds the next month and my friend remembered this when confronted by her own horrific weigh-in two years later. She knew I would understand. And, of course, I did. Soon I had her laughing and she went back to work feeling so much better.

I don’t want to simplify this: my house may not be perfect, but I’m open and friendly: so there! I’m not always open and I struggle with keeping my house as tidy as I’d like, although it’s not the burden that it was. I have some projects I need to do, but most of the time my house is organized and clean “enough.”

Our new house is beautiful and pretty much in shape, but I’m tired.   Except with family and friends I find the hospitality part of the equation to be the heavier one right now. I’m thinking about this summer and what I want to do. Paul has a lot of travel coming up so that needs to be taken into consideration.

But drive-by crying? Yeah, I’m up for that.

This week on Houzz, I’m talking about not allowing the imperfections of your home hold you back from opening it to others.

Where do you fall on the entertaining/hospitality/good times spectrum?

How Siri Can Help You Grieve

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I recently joined the 21st century and bought the iphone 4s. My kids were elated. Christopher immediately set up Siri  and had her address me as “Alpha Mama.” He thought that was hilarious. I made him change it to my first name.

I enjoy having a smart phone but I’ve only taken advantage of a few things. I rarely use Siri but I do like her measured, unflappable tone. Years ago, when I worshipped my idea of the perfect mother, I think she would have sounded a bit like Siri.

Eden was with me in the car a couple weeks ago when I asked Siri to look something up and she couldn’t.

“Ugh!” I said.

“Frankly, Alison, I feel the same way.”

Eden laughed.

“This is stupid!” I said. It was ridiculous that this program could respond with humor but couldn’t fulfill this simple request.

“You’re certainly entitled to that opinion.”  Siri said.

I put that phrase in my back pocket. With two teens, and an almost tween, that was gold.

The other day I said, “Call home.”                                                                                                              

“Which home?” Siri asked. ‘Home’ or ‘Harmon Home’?”

“Home.” I repeated.

“You have two phone numbers for contacts named ‘Home.’ Which one should I use?

I glanced down and saw the numbers to the two rental houses we lived in after the fire. I haven’t written about the first rental that we lived in for just three months. I’ll get there eventually, just know that things didn’t go well.

The numbers themselves are a bad memory. After the fire, we forwarded our calls to Paul’s sister’s house, where we stayed the first six weeks. When we moved to the first rental I tried to transfer the number. Our kids had lost everything and it became important to me to keep that number, to maintain one, literal line of consistency for them. I spent hours on the phone, I talked to so many people at Comcast, for nothing. They couldn’t or wouldn’t let us keep the number.

In protest I never used our landline. Up until the fire, I rarely gave out my cell number, it was for my use, but afterwards, I used it exclusively and gave it out freely. And yet I thought, once we moved back to the new house, I had entered our home number, but I clearly hadn’t and I’d never bothered to remove either of the rentals.

It is strange what triggers sorrow. Regardless of how far down the road we might be, how over something we think we are, there are still the small things that flare and, if for only a moment, flame and then burn out.

I saw these numbers and was surprised. I felt the visceral pain in my stomach and a lump formed in my throat.

“I couldn’t understand what you said, Alison.”

I swallowed.

“Call Paul.” I said.

And she did—without a question—as if she knew that Paul is, first and always, home for me.

Home and still moving

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 Photo: Tanner Wolfe

We’re back at the new house.

How strange it is to be back at something entirely new.

“Are you loving the house?”  We are asked a lot.  I actually worked out an answer with our therapist, because the short one for me: “No” leads to a really long one that most people wouldn’t want to hear and I don’t want to tell, over and over.

Most of the time I say, “We’re so thankful to be home”  circumventing the actual question and yet answering it succinctly and truly, which is important to me. And then I ask, “But how are you?”  It’s not all about us – this took me years to figure out – and I don’t want to forget it just because something extraordinary happened.  It’s so easy for me to go on and on.

Here is where I get to and I think I’m finally ready to tell you the rest.  As far as the story goes, I left us on the path watching our house burn.  To be honest, up until a few weeks ago, I was stuck there emotionally too.

You can deny or minimize trauma but that won’t heal it…so I’ve learned.

Thankfully we’re all moving forward and finding our way home.