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My Body Tells Me So

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blue xmas

A few weeks ago my internal soul rhythms, for lack of a better term, grew distinctly unrhythmic. Swallowed unexpectedly by inexplicable sadness at work, or in my car navigating a holiday parking lot, or proofreading a document for the 432nd time. Not inherently sorrowful activities.

I would awaken out of an ordinary moment to the heavy darkness rising inside my chest. That feeling in my throat –tight, achy, and swollen with unuttered sound. Hot tears threatening. What the hell?

On some level, not being a complete moron, I realized it had something to do with the holidays. Holidays I truly love and holidays I am beyond excited about because this year, unlike last, I will (for one thing) have my children with me. And I have (for another thing) a sense of what the future can be, maybe, if I will make it so. That (for another thing) there is a future for me. And so much more than that.

It’s not what is, but what was. It’s not where I am, it’s where I was. The anniversary came upon me unbidden, and caught me by surprise in an unguarded moment. Repeatedly.

Every moment of our lives is an anniversary of something, if you look at it a certain way. I mean, ten years ago this minute I was doing something. If I was driving my kids to get their hair cut, then this is the anniversary of my doing that. If I was chopping carrots, this moment is a carrot anniversary. An absurd notion. An anniversary, by definition, “a date that is observed on an annual basis because it is the same date as an important event in a past year.”

Emotionally, anniversaries of happy events feel good. We honor them, at least take note of them. They involve, at the very least, a smile, a toast, a special piece of pie. At best, maybe a cruise around the Greek islands, if you’re lucky, or a nice dinner out. However, we often forget anniversaries until they are upon us. It’s not that we don’t care about them, but they don’t intrude into our consciousness. They are rarely pushy and demanding. Some people even forget anniversaries altogether. That’s why Hallmark makes so many versions of the “belated” card.

Then why is it that our bodies are capable of such treacherous, overwhelming reactions – entirely outside what is in our consciousness – to the return of seasons that mark traumatic events from the past?  Talk about pushy and demanding. Those nasty anniversaries will have their way.

Such memory lives in the body, not the mind where we think memory hangs out.

Of course I had “thought” about what a different place I’m in this year than last. Last year: the explosion of what I thought my life was, the immolation of the love I thought would comfort me till life’s end, the realization that I had screwed up badly, misjudged horribly, and neglected to take care of myself. The essential realization that I was utterly alone, unfriended, and far from home on Christmas. Total bottoming out. I spent Christmas Day packing boxes. The movers came the next day and by end of week I was flying out of Louisiana and back to the frozen north where I hoped warmth awaited me.

Despite the life-threatening pain I felt, I still could not empathize with my own predicament, choosing instead to rail against myself for getting into this mess in the first place. The one person who deserved my love and support—me – wasn’t getting it. But for right now, that stuff’s not important. The point is, sure, I “thought about it.” As this recent Thanksgiving approached, I did a mental inventory of the last year. As Thanksgiving receded, I was still, in my head, “thinking about it.” Categorized, filed, compartmentalized conveniently somewhere where I could pull it out if I wanted to. But why would I want to? Best to keep it tucked away. At least till the holidays were over.

Yeah, but as I’ve established, that’s not how that kind of memory works. Unprocessed shit, and all the terror and/or sadness it has attached to it, has a way of residing in the lining of the stomach, the muscles of the bowels, the tissue of the solar plexus, the highways and byways of the circulatory system. Since my inner organs don’t have a calendar or a clock, I can only assume that, using the circadian rhythms inherent in all life, my own body said, “Hey, it’s that time again!”

BAM.

My goal is to become whole enough… holistic enough, that different “parts” of me can’t sucker punch other “parts” of me on a whim. Not long after my second or third crying jag, I took out my journal and lifted the sluice gate. The process began to flow, or rather gush. There’s no end in sight at least for now, so it’ll take time, and in case you were worried, I am giving it the time it deserves. I promise. And it’s not like I didn’t do ANY processing during the preceding year. For a long time after fleeing (everything), the process was about emotional and psychic survival, full stop. Gradually it became about so much more. Some rooting out. Some letting in. Some getting help. Some wallowing in aloneness. Etc.

But it ain’t over, is it? My body tells me so.

Body of Gratitude

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Body of Gratitude

A year ago I was on the Alabama Gulf Coast walking on the beach with a beautiful man—a mirage of sorts– watching the dolphins play. My heart had been sewn shut around so many stones that I knew getting in the water was not an option. I’d sink to the sand and never be able to swim myself to the surface. I had believed in the mirage-man and how much I wanted him, but on Thanksgiving Day I was noticing for the first time the way my hand passed through him when I reached out to touch….

I sat for hours that weekend looking out at the sparkling waters of the Gulf.  I was so busy trying not to feel tragically sad, longing for my far away children, that I could hardly look at what I was thankful for. A year later is 365 days and twice that many lessons learned (the hard way), but as I sit in this firelit coffee house with my daughter, whiling away the afternoon with my computer, I realize something. Some people have a body of work to represent a lifetime of creation. Today, I find that I have a body of gratitude that represents a lifetime of blessings.

Head. Inside my extra large head there is a brain that works well, most of the time. I have always trusted my brain to get me through. To be smart and capable. It is a quick thinker, and I’m grateful it lets me keep up. I may not be able to remember a lot of life’s details (see last blog), but I remember enough. I remember falling in love with books, acquiring my baby sisters during the dark night of childhood, feeling happiness like bubbles that would surprise me on a Friday afternoon as I boarded the crosstown bus home from school. I remember dancing on the bar, skinny dipping at dawn, road trips at midnight with the friends of the moment. I remember the people I have loved and cleaved to for life: true friends. My head has gotten me into plenty of trouble, don’t get me wrong. I can overthink, overanalyze, the usual roadblocks of a writer and reader. But my brain has always been secure for me, and my friend. I am grateful for my head and everything that goes on in there.

Eyes. Thank you, universe, for not making me blind. I am as close to it as a person can be without actually being blind at all. My vision is appallingly bad – once estimated at 20/1800 by a surprised ophthalmologist I went to. But thanks to modern technology I am corrected to about 20/35 and have seen Swan Lake and The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center. I have seen the Pacific Ocean, the Carribean and the Atlantic. I have seen a giant humpback whale staring at me from 20 feet below, as she popped up beside my boat. I have seen the faces of students look at me with disbelief, gratitude, pride, exhilaration, realization, frustration, desperation, love, joy, and the thrill of epiphany. I have read books, love letters, and the poetry of my gifted daughter. I have looked down from the top of the Eiffel Tower at the lights of Paris and have looked up at Arenal—a live volcano as it spewed truck sized globs of magma down its sides in glowing rivers. I have seen the look of love on the face of the man I married. Best of all, of course, I saw the faces of my children still smeary and blurred with the exercise of birthing. I saw them open their eyes for the first time to look at me, their mother in this beautiful lifetime. I am grateful for my eyes.

Mouth. What is life without the taste of fermented grapes, roasted coffee, or aged cheese? How can I ever describe how thankful I am for deep soft kisses?

Ears. My son is a musician. That alone gives my ears meaning. My father gave me his love by sitting me down in his study to listen to Sibelius, Brahms, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Puccini. Etc. The music of my life, from Joni to Aretha, poured through my ears and filled the spaces inside me like custard in a mold. Soon enough, the music was me. What about the sound of the surf, distant lawnmowers on a summer’s day, the swish of skis on groomed snow, the crackle of a fire, or the song of a mockingbird? Yeah, all of it.

Throat. The chakra spins. Having a voice. To speak, to be. I think with my head but I write with my body – my throat where my voice lives, and my hands that know how to get it all out. I am grateful for my throat.

Heart. There is no real explanation for why the heart works the way it does. I don’t mean why it pumps blood and oxygen to all the other parts of the body (grateful or otherwise)– scientists have that figured out. I’m talking about The Heart – the metaphorical seat of feeling. How does anyone know how to love? How can even the most damaged of souls have a heart of love inside them? I am grateful that loving has always come easy to me. Not necessarily trusting or sharing – but love, yes. My heart does not hold grudges. I loved my sisters on sight and that feeling has never waned. I love so many friends who could ask anything of me. I love my uncles, aunts, cousins galore, without reservation. I have loved a few men in my life. Not many. Enough. That love does not go away any more than any other love goes away. When someone is gone, the love just hibernates in the deep cells of the body of gratitude. I am grateful for those loves. The love a mother feels for the human beings grown in her body, fed from her body, nurtured on her body. Well, it seems obvious and effortless but I suppose it is not. Did my mother know that love? Hard to say. But I am grateful that I do.

Breasts. It took me a long time to be grateful for mine. As a young woman, I resented their asymmetry (which is remarkable and no I won’t put up a picture to prove it), their perky girlishness (was I insane?). Now I think my boobs kick all kinds of ass. They fed two very hungry babies who grew at record breaking rates. They have gained character and given me and others pleasure over the years. And at this stage in my life I am most grateful that they have retained their shape and… uh, elevation. Good job, breasts. Thank you.

Uterus. What can I say? I’m a goddess, as is every woman who contains within her the power of life. I fell in love with my body for positive sure when I grew a person inside me. And then again when I pushed it out with the power of all the love and gratitude any mere human can muster. And then I did it again.

Vagina. The magical mystery of being female. The vagina is a way out – for blood and/or life. Everyone starts life through that flowering exit. And it is the way in—to the center of a woman.  It is a mystery that everyone ponders, some fear, and some love. I am grateful for my vagina. It has given me joy, pleasure, glory, pain, and myself.

Legs. I am grateful for my legs and how pretty they have always been. How they let me dance. How they let me be tall. They ache now and then. My knees creak. But I can still boogie my ass off and hike a mountain and ride a bike and that’s awesome.

Feet. I am not always fearless. In fact fear has overcome me often in my life. (I’m afraid right now. Afraid this blog is going to be gag-worthy.) But I have guts. My feet, they walk. I do what I need to do. I go where I need to go, and work as hard as I need to work. Most of the time, my feet don’t fail me. I am grateful to my feet for carrying my body of gratitude through five decades of living. I am also grateful for pedicures.

There is not much in my life I am not grateful for, come to think of it. I even love the pain and heartbreak – how else could I be me without it? And I have food, clean water, health insurance, and a home I am not in danger of losing. I can use my head, my heart, my voice, my legs – to make a difference however small. I can go. I can come. I can say yes. I can say no. I can embrace. I can push away. I can stand tall. I can lie down. I can stay silent. But I probably won’t.

 

In Remembrance of Forgetting

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Nabokov titled his memoir Speak, Memory and Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past is an autobiographical “novel” in which seven volumes worth of memory flow effortlessly from a single bite of a fancy cookie. I never read it and must admit it is not on my list of “must reads.” My own relationship to memory must surely influence that fact. I do not have enough memory with which to speak. I do not have enough remembrance of things past to fill one volume, let alone seven. I’m jealous, I guess, or maybe just irked by all that ready memory that abides in the minds of so many people. I don’t ask, “Why can’t I remember?” I think I may have figured that out. But I constantly, obsessively ask, “Can I bring memory back?”

I am of sound mind, have a perfectly functional brain and no early signs of any kind of memory disorder. This memory issue is not recent, nor did it have a sudden, dramatic onset. But it is pervasive. There is not a period in my life that has been spared a sloppy wipe-down by the bar rag of my subconscious.

The metaphor is suitable. You know when the bartender runs the wet rag across the bar between drinks or customers? She often misses the corners. Or one narrow strip that does not shine wet when the rag’s been put away. That narrow dry strip, or those corners with a few crumbs left in them –that’s the stuff I remember. The rest has had a wipe down.

People have tried to reassure me about this circumstance, saying, “Memory is inaccurate anyway. What people think they remember is rarely even close to the truth.” But that’s science talking. The fact is, people who can remember what Christmas morning was like or how it felt to be infatuated with the guitarist in the house band or the trip to Lake George with two other couples in 1988—they don’t get what it’s like NOT to.

A few minutes ago I browsed the internet for some quotable brilliance on the subject of memory. I have a few things to say in response to some of these gems.

Montaigne: “Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.”

Clearly not true. Though I know a few people who have spectacular memories of all things awful, I am pretty sure I am not alone as one whose mind erases trauma. The mind wishes for the pain to stop. The pain of terror, abandonment, shame, or violence. The solution is simple: allow the memory of that bad thing to just fade to nothingness, or maybe some slight pencil outline of a general idea so that you don’t seem completely insane when someone refers to the awful thing and you have no shred left. This is where the crumbs in the corner come in handy. They are enough to hang onto and recite when needed so your friends and family don’t start looking for lobotomy scars under your eyebrows.

There was plenty in my childhood that, for whatever reason, my brain wanted to forget. The problem is, it got to be a habit. In short order, my brain forgot how to lay down memory efficiently, even if it wanted to.

Proust wrote: “There is no man, however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory.”

Somewhat related to the Montaigne quotation, this one comments knowingly on the human desire to forget.  But if it is true for Proust, and for others, it is not for me. I would gladly remember all the worst things I’ve done and said if I could also remember the certain years, or collections of years, or key months in my life that I cannot grasp no matter how hard I try. The awful truth about myself would be a small price to pay.

Tennessee Williams: “Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.”

Well, life is evidently not all memory for me. And I have my own theory about the moment– the valued now. I believe that I, and perhaps many others out there, forgot how to be in the moment. Williams is right, that moment does go quickly. All the more reason to see it for what it is, smell it and taste it for what it is and hope that your brain’s memory neurons are tuned up enough to file that moment away for a rainy day. (As Samuel Johnson said, “The true art of memory is the art of attention.”)

But I’m not sure that always works. My son has always been one to revel joyfully in the moment. Doing so has given him a rich experience of his moments, and I think I can say in truth that he loves his life. But though he does easily what comes hard to me—be present in the moment – he, like me, has a very imprecise memory. He is only 23 and I hope he will learn to retain the moments he finds so precious. I hope I can too. (It’s not too late for me!)

Elbert Hubbard is last on my list, and this one really pisses me off. I had to look up who this man was, and when I speed-scanned a Wikipedia article about him, he sounded pretty interesting, but here is what he said: “A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.”

Now at this point, if you are reading this whole blog, you know I do not agree with that. Nor do I believe its opposite. It’s not as if I think a good memory equals greatness, but why on earth would forgetfulness be great? Perhaps the context, clearly missing, would clarify. If he spoke of forgetting others’ crimes and insults against you then yes, that is a great thing. It is one of the few things about having a poor memory that I do not object to. I do not hold on to the crappy details that can so preoccupy some people. Not only do I not remember what you and I fought about, I probably don’t even remember that we had a fight. It is not important enough for my mind to remember, I suppose. I’d rather remember how much I love you.

I disagree with you, Elbert Hubbard. The ability to forget is an ability. If I could wield forgetting as an ability, I’d be okay with that. Then I could choose when to pick it up and use it. Alas, instead, forgetting wields me, or rather, it wields the sloppy bar rag all over my memory….

I don’t want it to sound as if I am a walking blank slate and I can’t remember who you are when you come out of the lady’s room when we were just having drinks together a few minutes before. I am not an amnesiac and I don’t have brain damage (as far as I know). I remember plenty. I function, after all, and I tend to recall the after-effects of the wonderful things that happen to me and that others do. I don’t forget that I am grateful or who I love, and why.

But…

I can’t remember any of my teachers in kindergarten, first grade, third grade, fifth grade, and very few from sixth through twelfth. I only have a smattering of memory of grad school and the name of only one professor there.

I do not remember Thanksgivings or Christmases. I have a vague visual memory of one Christmas at my dad’s when I was about 12, and a few flickers from the time I got my cat, Venus. I was six.

As a girl, I loved to babysit. I know I loved dearly a family I lived with one summer and had full charge of the three children while the dad worked and the mom played tennis. I do not remember a single thing about that summer or the house, except that I got contacts at some point along the way. I was 16.

For years I forgot the whole day during which my mother dragged me to DC to renew her passport so she could fly overseas to marry the leader of a country in Southeast Asia who had proposed to her through mental telepathy. That is one memory that came back – I think due to the profound brilliance of a shrink I was seeing for awhile. But that’s getting off track.

I lived with a man for 3 months when I was 21. I was obsessed with him, risked much for him, and adored him. Then he hurt me. I cannot remember a single thing about the 3 months nor the heartbreak and its aftermath.

There is so much more. And how can I know what I forget if I forget it?

My honeymoon is very vague, I can’t remember much detail about Little League games, days skiing with my kids, or family gatherings in Ohio. There is a general aura of memory that lays over my life, and I can picture my children’s faces at every step and stage, and I can feel the memory in my bones of how much I loved my family and the years when we were all under one roof together. But my husband would say, “Remember that travel game in Kinderhook when….” The memory flows out with glorious specificity. I shake my head. My sister would say, “Remember that Christmas when you came and we all went to the….” She can do that for any year from 1968 to the present. I am envious and in awe. Classmates will say, “Remember in 6th grade geography class with Mrs. Southwell how we would always….” NO! Why can’t I? I want to remember.

Rita Mae Brown attested that “one of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.” I do not agree. Nor do I think having a poor memory has made me unhappy. It hasn’t. But still.

I have a recurring fantasy of hiring a hypnotist and just going for it. Knowing there is no guarantee that a single recalled memory will even be accurate or close to it. And in spite of warnings that I might “retraumatize” myself if something comes up that is not so hot. But it is a favorite fantasy. Lying there in a comfy chair in the hypnotist’s office, returning in my mind to my very own life and calling it forth into memory.

memory

Flee, Fly, Flu: A Detailed Description of Succumbing

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I’m having dinner with friends. A long lingering dinner party for four. Cocktails, wine, gourmet comfort food prepared by my gourmet quintessential hostess friend. Not a typical evening, and one I sure do want to relish. My date and I have planned it all out. We’re spending the night so we can stay later and not have to drive home. I’m even contemplating an after dinner drink option.

Somewhere in the middle of a conversation about how two Zinfandels from the same winery can taste completely different because of where the grapes were grown, I take a sip of said delicious wine. Suddenly it tastes different. Wrong.

And the tannin receptors on the back of my tongue freak out a little bit. I think, “Hm.”

Suddenly, I don’t want that anticipated cognac. I want bed. My bed 45 minutes away. But it’s late. I go ahead with the plan. After doing the dishes with my hosts, I find a stash of tissues in the guest room and crawl into bed. I lie there, sniffling a little with the early stage drips that could very well just mean “cold.”

By morning, the clotted cheese that is now clogging my throat is moaning “flu” in its dire, moist voice. Every breath pushes past the clotted cheese and makes an awesome rendition of “death rattle.”

My eyelids peel open past the grit of “not all is well” and I ignore the need for 6 more hours of sleep. Off to work. Because I spent the night, I have only a 15 minute commute instead of a 40 minute commute and I can’t even enjoy it. My hostess made me a double shot decaf redeye with her two kick-ass coffee machines and I can barely appreciate it. Coffee, like wine, taste wrong to me when I’m sick. Ironic. My two favorite drinks go to shit in my mouth. (When I’m pregnant too, but I knew that wasn’t what was going on.)

My man friend drops me at work and I refuse even an air kiss. I know for sure I’m toxic as hell.

The hot hot pressure that starts somewhere around my temples and spreads out in slow but inexorably expanding circles consumes my sinuses, my cheek cavities, my eye sockets, my non-existent tonsils, my lymph nodes, my ear canals, and all the little spaces between my big aching brain and my seemingly shrinking cranium. I sit at my computer noticing how its glow is vibrating sharply, like visual piranha teeth.

By the time my skull is as tight as bony spandex against my gray matter, so that I’m thinking about asking the maintenance guys if I can borrow their drill, it’s almost time for lunch. Will it be akin to germ warfare if I enter a dining hall full of young children? But I keep thinking, if she made chicken soup today, I’m sure to get all better after a giant mug of the perfect stuff.

I skulk into the dining room partway through lower school lunch after everyone is seated, and skirt the room in the direction of the two pots of homemade soup. No chicken soup. I feel a little bit doomed. The clearly emotional mindset of a rapidly sickening woman.

I grab a mug of the wrong kind of soup and take it back to my office, thinking… well who knows what I was thinking. Eyeballs smoking in my head, I kept at it, trying to write an article, vaguely returning emails, screwing up a mailing to the class of 2013 and being benevolently rescued by a colleague who could see Flu Brain setting in from a mile away. Somehow I got to the end of the day.

By six that evening I was shivering so hard I spilled my tea all over my bed and knocked the lamp off when I tried to turn it on.

My daughter called. “Mama?” she asked, when she heard my quavering voice. It dawned on me just as I said it out loud, “I don’t think this is a cold.”

“No shit,” she affirmed, lovingly.

She talked into my ear as I cowered, vibrating with chills, under two comforters and two cats, one specifically applying her feline heat to my chest. Her own frantic purring and my chill-induced vibrations made her whiskers tremble. As my daughter prattled on, distracting me from it all, I used what was left of my brain to cross things off my mental list of everything I was going to get done that weekend.

One thing and one thing only remained on my list: be sick so I could get well.

Lots of loving and nurturing from my fellow, elderberry syrup from one friend and Chinese anti-viral herbs from another, Echinacea, zinc, and approximately a gallon of water and two pots of tea a day, sick amounts of sleep and plenty of cat comfort and voila! Three days later I was pretty sure I’d one day maybe be almost myself again. And sure enough my optimism paid off.

flu

Hanging Out at College

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Spending time with my daughter on the campus of her college inevitably floods me with a swirling jigsaw of thoughts and emotions. Despite the huge differences between her school and the university where I spent my undergrad years (not to mention the different time period, culture we live in, geographical location and a bunch of other factors) memory is a big part of what happens for me when I visit her.

Strolling the beautiful campus holding hands with my 20 year old, I remember (in that flawed way that memory works) being young. I distantly, but oddly distinctly, remember the feeling of youth. When everything worked well – from knee joints to the ability to metabolize alcohol. More than that, though. Being young, the future was absurdly enormous in front of me, as it is for both my children today. It was a giant silk scarf that stretched all the way to the horizon. Where I am now, in 2013, I am standing in the midst of the silk, more than half of which stretches out behind me, somewhat trodden on, ripped in spots and a little faded. But after all, silk is a bit fragile, and precious, and it will show the signs of wear….

I remember that, like my daughter, I loved everything about the experience of college. The grown-upness (ironic considering what children we are when we are in college). The freedom. The limitlessness. The I-make-my-own-rules thing that is seductive and treacherous and glorious indeed. The countless opportunities to encounter and learn from smart people, whether the professor-types who shed light on everything from ancient Chinese history to the poetry of Pushkin, or all the other types. The ones who introduced me to (basically) sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. And the myriad “stuff” that one finds under that rather expansive umbrella.

I remember that, though there were moments of dread, when a book had to be read or a paper written in a short period of rapidly collapsing time, or when I was (inexplicably) late turning in my applications for the next semester’s Pell grant, the sun always seemed to be shining, even on rainy days.

Walking around campus with her, I look at the students, who could not possibly be more than 12 years old, and listen to them. So smart. So sure. So articulate. So informed. So righteous. So funny. I feel a heck of a lot of hope when I think—maybe some of the folks in this generation will get us out of the mess we’re in today because of some of the jerks in my generation.

But I even find myself thinking very fondly of my parental peers. Sitting in some of the special lectures they set up for parents and alumni on this “Celebration Weekend” I listen to the incisive questions, enjoy the curiosity and endearing liveliness of “my generation.” None of these parents seem like jerks. They have produced children who love their college and their parents enough to want to bring them together for a weekend. These folks sent their kids to a progressive, arts-saturated, intellectually-liberal liberal arts school. A place where they can learn to question gender roles stamped on our culture by the patriarchy. And learn that what they see is not always what is there and that they must always question and analyze and carry grains of salt around with them. And be inspired by past generations of artists, writers, and musicians so that they can become artists, writers, and musicians who have figured out how inspiration diverges from imitation.

There is a whirlwind of almost palpable thinking happening around me, swirling in colorfully invisible spirals through the atmosphere, and I find it exciting.

I hope colleges never go away. I long for everyone who wants this experience to be able to benefit from it. Brains and hearts and bodies playing together in –yeah, sure, a hothouse of sorts –make something that is altogether new. The motto at my daughter’s school is that creative thinking matters. And it does. The creative thinking of the individual can be great indeed when the individual lives in community with the many who challenge and provoke, who can laugh like children and think like sage adults, and who enrage and soothe the savage beasts of doubt and arrogance in turn.

These young millennials really think about their roles within society. The contributions they will make. The reasons for things they refuse to simply accept as “just the way things are.” Even their sexuality. They analyze their pot-induced thoughts. They analyze their reading-induced thoughts. They even analyze their thought-induced thoughts. They wince in humility when their professors baldly praise them. And when their friends praise them, they give hugs and praise in return. And they are ridiculously adorable.

Hula-hoops are still around. And loud music on the quad. And dance parties. Which is so reassuring.

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Get Sick

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I don’t want to talk about what is going on in Washington. But I can’t justify not talking about it. So I’m going to just say some shit and then move on.

Because I do think about it. It enters my consciousness through Facebook, NPR and Jon Stewart. Seriously? How liberal middle class of me.  I read about it, diligently. I hear about it, committedly. I sign petitions, daily. But I realize – beyond my outraged intellect, it is not touching me. Which is wrong.

Why should hearing-impaired students stop receiving therapy that will let them use their voices to demand a better government? Why should government workers who live paycheck to paycheck lose their incomes, default on their rents and have to decide between gas for their cars or milk for their children? How long before they can’t afford either and have to sell their cars? Why should research about outbreaks stop at the CDC (especially while diseases prepare to spread exponentially thanks to global warming)? Why should a few white guys in Washington have the right to be petulant and why should I have the luxury of having my hair colored and cut and my nails done? I can still feed my cats—and myself. My daughter can still go to class—and to parties. The lights are still on—and the dishwasher.

What will be the breaking point when people like me have to turn on NPR to be reminded that poor losers in Washington would rather pout and shut down the government than accept a law that has been legally passed and vetted by the highest court in the union? When does “government shutdown” start to hurt everyone? Enough for the shift to happen. The masses to rise up. The enemy to retreat.

We need to feel the fingernails corkscrewing our upper arms for a wicked pinch. We need to choke on the vinegar forced down our throats. We have to wake up to the flea bites from fleas we cannot repel no matter how hard we try. We need to be sick of it. Just plain sick of it.

http://action.johntierney.com/page/s/shutdown?source=fb_auto_share_shutdown

Doohickey and Other Forms of Intelli-talk

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There’s a scene in When Harry Met Sally, I’m pretty sure, where Harry and Sally are on the phone planning to meet. They’re in a hurry and one of them says something along the lines of: “So let’s meet at the place near that thing,” and the other is like, “Yeah okay, bye.” They know. The whole point is that their intimacy is such that they “get” what each other means even when what is spoken is entirely devoid of content.

When I was growing up, my step-mother used words like “majigger” to indicate the particular thingamabob she wanted me to fetch from the place upstairs where it was usually kept. I usually knew what she meant, which led me to understand on a very fundamental level that, in families, at least, specificity is not necessary when haste, distraction and intimacy all come together to make the need for words obsolete. At least temporarily.

“Can you bring me the thingamabob from the closet when you come back?” – called to a family member getting up for a snack.

“Where is that damned whosiewhatist I got last summer at that place? Remember? Where the hell did I put it?” – angrily muttered to anyone within earshot while tearing the house apart.

“Did you get the stuff like you said?” –asked when a husband/wife/mother/sibling/child walks in the door after doing errands.

All of these seem obvious and clear in the moment.

I have always had a little bit of a delay when it comes to recalling nouns in particular. I found out not too many years ago that the human brain stores words of different parts of speech in different sections of the brain. That blew my mind. I mean, why wouldn’t words all hang out in the same place, neatly alphabetized in little file boxes? Why would we keep adjectives in one corner and nouns in another, with adverbs and pronouns, verbs and conjunctions all squirreled away in their own little hidey holes? But it makes me think maybe I have a little problem in the noun-storage space in this brain of mine. I usually think of it, but have been known to make random replacements, such as asking someone to get the milk out of the telephone or put the gloves away in the fridge or answer the doorknob when it rings.  But in any case, the convenience of doohickey, majigger, thingamabob and whatchamacallit has not gone unnoticed in my daily life.

And I’m a word person, in the end. I love words. I teach words. I write words and read words and have a close, romantic relationship with them. I do love the convenience of intelli-talk and also…there is nothing sexier than when you say: “Do you remember that thing we saw at the place when we were doing that thing and then the guy showed us the whatchamacallit that you bought for me and I cried?” and your significant other answers, “Oh yes, honey. How could I forget that?”

The Genius of Community

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In Walter Isaacson’s book Einstein: His Life and Universe it’s not clear to me which part of the mind-blowing story of Albert Einstein is the most mind blowing. I know how difficult it is to rethink my own inner universe, throw out entrenched ideas and preconceptions and false realities in order to usher in something closer to the truth, knowing all the time that the truth may elude me until I die, and maybe even beyond that. And that’s just one middle class, middle aged white woman. So how did Einstein have the chutzpah, brainpower and vision to do all that for the ACTUAL universe? He didn’t just blow his own mind, he blew everybody’s minds. And with a few exceptions, people loved him for it.

But as fun as it would be to draw analogies straight down the line between Einstein’s breakthroughs in theoretical physics and the path to understanding one’s self, it would be forced and silly and not that revealing.

But there is something about his process that keeps coming back to me. Einstein was a loner in many ways, in that he worked for large stretches of time in solitude, doing thought experiments and re-seeing everything from atoms to distant stars in a totally unique way. But he always came out of his genius cave to interact with others. He had genius friends –tons of them—who could pretty much keep up with him when he’d run his cool ideas past them. They’d sit around, or ride the trolleys, or write letters, discussing and debating and sharing. A lot of the time, when Einstein did that, he came up with even better ideas about his ideas. He understood something in a new way or figured out what the roadblock was that had been pestering him. He had lots of “aha” moments when he was by himself, but it seems pretty clear that he had lots of “aha” moments when he was in profound communication and dialogue with other people. I don’t think he would have gone as far, realized as much, redirected our understanding of the universe as completely, had he kept to himself.

I find this fact comforting and validating and not at all surprising. I guess I could have assumed that someone of Einstein’s capabilities might not need a sounding board the way normal (non-scary-genius) people do. But I would have been wrong, as it turned out. He did need it, and so do we.

As both a former student and educator, I always got such a kick out of the way the sparks fly in a classroom where people are talking. A lively dialogue will take everyone to that “new place” in their learning far faster, and more thoroughly, than reading, listening or memorizing will. Even Einstein would admit that reading, listening and even some pesky memorizing are all important pieces too, but those things do not a mind create. Without playing mental catch with someone, it’s just not the same.

My son learned a lot about pitching from throwing a rubber ball at the chimney outside, on which he drew a square out of chalk. He’d go out there all by himself and throw it and throw it and throw it till his accuracy was incredible. But what made him a damned good baseball player was … yeah, you get the picture. Playing baseball. With other people.

Community is so irreplaceable and joyful. A bunch of people sitting around a table drinking wine and discussing politics. Close friends exploring spiritual beliefs gathered together under a full moon on a summer’s night. Parents with their children having dinner together and letting the topics of life unfold among them. Kids leaning forward at their desks as they listen and wait their turn to share an insight or epiphany, and then as they sit there, someone else says something and inside their head, everything gets notched up another level. The hand that was raised suddenly reaches five inches higher and the look of ecstatic awareness on the face of that student is unmatchable. An idea looks like pure joy on the face of someone in the process of thinking. Or learning. Which go together, don’t they?

I get nervous about distance learning, and on-line courses, and the ways education is adjusting to trends, financial reality and the needs of the consumer. The community of the classroom is such a big thing to lose. The very fact that we don’t live within a few blocks of our extended families, to share and pass down the wisdom of the generations that way, as people used to do, saddens me. Where was the red tent when I needed it? When I think of all that I had to reinvent and figure out for myself about being a woman, being a wife, being a mother, taking care of myself, seeking fulfillment, and juggling the things we all juggle, it’s a shame. Will my wisdom be lost among the interstates and computer wires that have replaced, in many ways, the connective tissue of community?

Being connected to other people is one of the best things about being a person and that connection gives me a chance to tap into my genius self. I learn so much about life through the example and sharing of others, and about myself by bouncing me off of people and letting them bounce themselves off of me. We need time to ferment in solitude and a chance to bounce and share. There are times in our lives when we have less time to ourselves, and other times when we have fewer chances to connect with others. It’s a balancing act. Einstein had to figure it out. We all do.

 

Community

Summer vs. Autumn – an Irrefutable Argument in Favor of the Latter

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So what is it about the summer that I just don’t love as much as the season that comes next—despite a beach vacation, garden vegetables, music festivals, more time with family and all the glories of the hot season? And don’t get me wrong. I’m big on all the clichés of summer. I love the smell of cut grass. I mean, who doesn’t? And fresh herbs outside my window? I could bathe in basil and wear marjoram perfume and never tire. The long days of light are magical, especially when I eat dinner at nine and still have time to go for a walk before the sky is all-the-way black. But there is something about the fall that gets me every time.

Let’s start with the practical issues. Like sweat vs. a cold nose. Give me a cold nose over pointless perspiration any time. (Pointless means you don’t exercise one iota and you are sopping wet.) I’ve never loved the sticky season. But as I’ve matured my body no longer can cool itself off. My internal thermostats behave randomly and hormonally, capricious and difficult in the extreme.

If the autumn weather proves nippy, however, the clever application of a cozy sweater, a throw blanket or a fleece robe and fuzzy slippers does the trick. Snap.  Additional warming items include: cats draped across various body parts, a fire in the firepit, hot tea with honey and warm milk, flannel lined jeans, the company of a man who smolders at a high temperature. And so forth.

More practical concerns. Body image. Though fairly comfortable with my physical self in many ways, I am not a big fan of flaunting certain aspects of my imperfection.  So I sort of HATE skimpy, low cut, sleeveless shirts that expose soft upper arms and the non-perfect neck.

The clothes of autumn are glorious. The layers of autumn include camisoles and gauzy shirts and flowing sweaters and silky scarves. In fact, a gorgeous pashmina strategically draped around the previously-mentioned neck does wonders for my sense of style and self-worth.

Take a hike in the summer and pray for death halfway to the summit. Take a hike in the fall and stand like a goddess at the top, pleasantly warm from exertion, glowing with health (not streaming with ghastly sweat), and the freshly picked apples are still cool in your pack. Sit reading a book in the summer and you either have to go into the air conditioning (which sucks) or you can’t turn the pages because they are damp with humidity, or you start to blister. Sit outside with a good book on a fall day, blanket over your lap, fleece zipped up tidily, and you can enjoy the sun for all it has to offer, instead of taking out a restraining order on it.

But to hell with all these profoundly practical reasons to love autumn. I am sure you are convinced already. But the real beauty of this season is its power to embody both endings and beginnings with grace. The rebirthing that takes place in the springtime is exquisite indeed. But it is the poignancy of autumn— things dying off while so much feels brand new. Even the flowers that bloom or simply linger deep into the season, like the cheerful mum or the effusive hydrangea, are eloquent reminders that goodbye must happen. The cooling of the air is the cooling that precedes every death. From abundant garden to heavy harvest to blackened stalks in mere weeks. The blanket of fallen leaves tries to warm the embittered soil of the final days, only to succumb at last to winds, rakes, bonfires and compost heaps.

During all this, the children return to school. People of all ages return to classrooms in elementary schools, high schools, colleges across the country and progress another year, another grade, which is about growth, anticipation, and blossoming. As the windows darken earlier and earlier in the day, minds re-engage.

I realize I am not objective, having been a teacher for so long. But I think a lot of folks would admit that they sense a reawakening with the start of school and the commencement of autumn. Lounging, poolside beer drinkers become coffee sipping multi-taskers, hanging their professional jackets on the backs of their professional desk chairs in offices across the nation. Sluggish baristas or grocery baggers become intellectually dynamic college juniors discussing the structure of philosophical argument, co-authoring physics papers with their professors or writing erudite rants about social anthropology’s latest theories. Tiny children in tiny sweatshirts explore the edges of playgrounds across the nation, searching for a stick in the shape of the letter Y, or maybe L. They are truly thrilled to be a step closer to the Promised Land called reading.

All this happens – eyes opening a little wider – as the Earth shuts its eyes for the impending winter. It is glorious!

A demonstration of 3 of the warming techniques mentioned--blanket, cozy slipper and cats.

A demonstration of 3 of the warming techniques mentioned–blanket, cozy slipper and cats.

 

 

And Then There’s Me

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I’m up at 2 a.m. Exhausted after a gratifying day of hauling suitcases and boxes from two cars into my daughter’s brand new on-campus apartment as she begins her junior year at college. But I can’t sleep. The coffee I drank at 8 p.m. so I could stay awake on the highway is doing its job all too well. The highway is far behind me but the coffee is the gift that keeps on giving.

Instead of lying in bed cursing the goddess of caffeine, I will use this gift of time. Moments stolen from the 24 hours of a typical day. Moments when I can do something for me.

The day was beautiful and mostly about her, my daughter. It was about her and that is as it should be. It was also about us and the bond we are so lucky to share. A joyful day full of simple expressions of love. Unpacking, talking, planning, laughing.

But for me it was also a strange anniversary, and I cannot help remembering last year at this time and how different it all was. When I dropped her off on Labor Day weekend 2012, I was in the middle of a serious upheaval and only a few weeks away from the start of a huge adventure of my own. I had taken a leave of absence from my job, and was setting out to learn how I fit into the new world I had made. A world where I was no longer married, and, for a year at least, no longer a teacher. A world full of an unknown, untested passion and new love. A business I was going to try to support myself with. I was leaving literally everything I knew behind me for things all new.

That move-in day was a normal, if exciting, stepping stone in the life of my second born who was also creating her own world and her place in it. I was painfully aware that my pursuit of a life different from the one she had always known me to live was an excruciating upheaval for her and she was scared, angry, and sad. And yet she, too, was venturing out. She wanted me to stay in place, and be there, familiar and close. But it was not to be.

As full as I am of the mother-urge and as natural as that role has always been for me, the last year of my life has taken me deep inside myself. Truly an epic journey into what I needed, wanted, craved, and even feared. I never forgot my children, gave up my responsibility to them or altered so much as a molecule of my love for them, but I let myself sit in the front row of my own life for the first time, maybe ever.

My children (my college age daughter plus my son who lives in Vermont), adults now themselves, faced a world in which the mother was, for once, distracted by a life of her own. Tumult and change, divorce and distance, love and sorrow, anguish and renewal. Do our children automatically believe these to be the provenance of the young? Certainly having the truth—that there is no age limit on… well, anything, really—smack them upside the head is a cold splash of water for kids cradled in a world eternally made safe and warm for them.

Today’s college return was much less fraught than last year’s. Last year our goodbye had many faultlines of uncertainty. When would we see each other again? Instead of my being within a car ride for a lunch date or a visit home, I would be over a thousand miles away. My daughter felt abandoned. As much as I was compelled from within to do this thing, I also felt very sad, and very guilty. Mama was being unpredictable. Mama was taking chances. Mama was adventuring. What was happening to the predictable world?

We expect our children to be unpredictable, take chances, adventure. When my son ventured off to Rome or to ski in the Alps with people we barely knew, we were simply excited for him. Thrilled that he could experience such a thing. When my daughter threw herself into a first love that ended in agonizing hurt, I ached for her all the time knowing that, hoping that, she would heal. As much as I bite my proverbial fingernails at the crazy uncertainty of their lives, I know it to be right and suitable and healthy.

But it was (and I understand this) very difficult for my children to see me veering off the path I had been on so long. Reinventing myself and the future that might be out there for me. Throwing caution to the winds and trusting the universe—just as they do. Trusting life to give me what I need, whether joy, suffering, or simply a lesson to be learned.

I wish I could say that all my risks paid off. That my leap of faith was justified by a joyful happy ending. But no. In crucial ways, I crashed and burned. Yeah, pretty much. The balloon of hope pricked by the needle of harsh truth. A big fat lot of harsh truth.

My business was a gratifyingly successful endeavor, considering it was just the first year. But in the realm of the heart, I was, at least temporarily, road kill.

But you know, I can only hope that the lesson for my children is not: “Oh, well, of course it ended badly. Whenever a woman her age stirs the pot or tries something so unexpected, it is bound to fail. It’s good she’s back and come to her senses.”

Because I have not come to my senses. Not a bit. I am devoted to my choices and the path I am standing on right this minute, tonight, in the black hours before dawn, caffeine coursing through my system. I have learned more in a year about me, them, life, love, art, courage, pain, beginnings, endings, failure, success, attachment, clarity, heartbreak, independence, fear, passion, forgiveness, trust, anger, and humility than I had learned in the twenty preceding years. Though I have regrets, I regret nothing.

I want my children to love me because of—and in spite of—the fact that I had the guts to blow up my life (and, to an extent, theirs) and reconfigure it in a way that seems much more like life. They did know, have known, still know and know again that no matter what happens, they are the golden threads that tie my heart to this lifetime of mine. Nothing can come between me and them—not even me. Not even them. But they live for them. I live for me and them. “Don’t forget me,” my learning reminds me.

So today was a beautiful day. A young woman stirs herself back into the rich syrup that is college life. I return to the ongoing journey that is an examined life. I miss her. And then there’s me.

maggie and me