Solo in Cali Part II (Monterey)

Posted on June 22, 2016 by spiralwoman

Coming up with a strategy for the first half of my trip was a combination of getting advice from everyone I knew, browsing AirBnB listings, looking at maps despite being a little map-disabled, and then making well-informed but ultimately random snap decisions. So after my second night in San Francisco, I woke up Wednesday morning, got an early start in my trusty rented Toyota, and headed south towards Monterey.

I found parking near what seemed an interesting spot—Cannery Row of Steinbeck fame. The woman at the parking lot I chose (mostly for its location and the availability of empty spots) decided I was a potential best friend. Greta was her name and she quizzed me on my trip, exclaimed at the fact that I was on my own, said she never could do a trip to New York alone, and made me feel kinda badass. She proceeded to tell me about her kids. Her daughter’s ex-fiancé who turned out to be gay. Her horrid ex-husband who wronged her in these specific ways (she then listed them in detail). Her dogs and two jobs. Greta demanded a hug before I walked off in the direction of Cannery Row.

Despite being the setting of Steinbeck’s novel, the Row nowadays lacks cans, canning, or any evidence of seafood processing. The only seafood in evidence was on overpriced lunch menus, but my desire for a cold drink and my phone’s desire for a charge (I had not yet realized the car had a USB port that I could plug my house charger into) led me to a touristy restaurant with a view of the water.

After lunch, a quick perusal of the Row led me to walk swiftly away from it in search of a place to relax by the water. I found some tables outside a hotel about a half mile away. It was peaceful and uncrowded, unlike the clogged thoroughfares and souvenir shops of the Row, and I went back to my car to retrieve my journal and a pen. I got sucked into another long conversation with Greta who this time walked to her car to retrieve her two tiny fluff-dogs. She introduced me to them, and told me some more stories. I really wanted to go sit in the sunshine and look out at the water, but that was not to happen until some more bonding took place. I had to borrow a pen from her and on account of that, plus just because, I could not be rude to her. So we talked some more. Then she gave me the pen. A “really good pen” she said. I was grateful. She asked for another hug.

Back at the seaside table, there were now two large men leaning on the railing directly in front of me, blocking my view. I turned to the side, adjusting my seat to allow me a view, and set to catching up in my very neglected (of late) journal. The pen broke pretty darn quick but I did manage to limp along using just the skinny thing inside the pen that actually writes, but that is hard to hold onto. No biggie. I wasn’t writing a novel.

At some point my AirBnB host called to welcome me to Monterey and give me the code to retrieve the key at Clementine Cottage, possibly the cutest AirBnB accommodations ever. I eventually moseyed over there and had time to read the amazing book my host and her husband had put together with an original fictional account of guests from another planet, Oob and Oona, as well as more fun things to do around Monterey than I’d ever get to.

That relaxed and sunny evening I got dressed up, headed to Fisherman’s Wharf to see the boats in the harbor and watch the sun lowering in the sky as people fished off the pier. The sun made long stripes of light on the water and the breeze—like that in San Francisco but fishier—was a perfect reminder that it feels good to have skin on my bones. My hair flew up and over and into my face and eyes and I felt happy.

Next I drove to a nearby town—Pacific Grove (home of the butterfly parade)—recommended by my host as being home to a restaurant with okay food and great views. At this point the views were more important to me than food. I’d made a reservation, but got there early to wander Lover’s Point, a small peninsula that thrust into the water and offered more California eye candy. Pretty soon I went in to await my table at the bar, drinking a yummy basil infused cocktail. The dinner was rather mediocre and the glass of wine nothing to write home about, but I did-not-care-one-bit because I was on the California coast and it was almost sunset.

Dinner view

I sat outside after dinner, watching the sun go down and feeling the temperature drop from cool to cold. Hustling back to my car and then to my cozy Clementine Cottage I thought about Greta. She lives in a lovely part of the world. So do I. She probably won’t make it out to see my lovely corner of Earth. How lucky I am that I got to see hers.

Saw this at Monterey beach as I drove in from the north. A man in flight. That’s on my bucket list.

Solo in Cali part 1 (San Francisco)

Posted on June 21, 2016 by spiralwoman

SF skyline

California had not been on my top-ten list of places to see and I feel bad about that now. Because California is as foreign and fascinating as anything outside the borders of this country. (Well maybe not anything, but it really is very cool and has a major “wow” factor for a northeastern gal like me.)

Cali became my destination because the PSI conference was in San Diego this year and, as a board member of Postpartum Support International, I am expected to go to the conferences. And why wouldn’t I go? They are awesome! So if (I thought to myself) I was going to go all the way across the country for a three day conference, why not extend the three days to two weeks and see some stuff.

Starting the trip solo was an adventure all in itself. I had to make all my own decisions about what to do, where to go, what to see. Doing this kind of “highlight” trip was a challenge to me because I wanted to miss nothing, but knew I had to. Once I released the anxiety of “what if I do the wrong thing?” (meaning what if this choice is not going to be as awesome as that choice would have been?) I just had fun.

I saw this as I drove into SF for the first time and thought it was there just for me. My great adventure.

My first stop was New York where I was to launch early on a Monday morning. The trip started off with my Uber driver picking me up at 5:00 a.m. then proceeding to Union Square to fetch my ride share, and driving him to JFK, even though my destination was LGA. Huh? Good thing I leave nothing to chance and had given myself an hour’s wiggle room. Still, I barely made it.

My first stop in CA was San Francisco. I was destined to love it, and I did. It’s a city, for one thing. Walkable and vibrant, like the city of my childhood, NYC. It is on the water – I almost cried when, driving my rental car from the airport, I went around a slow curve and saw an expanse of blue stretching out before me. It’s the perfect temperature. I wore a light sweater and sometimes a light scarf around my neck the entire time I was there. If the sweater came off, it always went back on. Constant breeze to cool and refresh.

I sensibly parked my car in a garage for the two nights I’d be there, walked a few blocks with my absurdly heavy suitcase, giant purse, and computer bag to the AirBnB I’d booked. It was completely barebones accommodations. But the room I stayed in had furniture! And my host left me towels and a key. Why would I need more?

First off, I learned quickly that when in a city for just one day, don’t bother to learn the public transportation system. A week, yes. A day—Uber. Despite my Uber-glitch in NYC I am basically in love with it.

So what I saw in San Francisco (in one day):

The water. Coffee on a park bench beside the water, with the Golden Gate down to my left and the breeze keeping me delightfully cool.
The Presidio. Entirely by accident. I walked for two hours or so in the vague direction of the bridge, came upon the beautifully maintained Presidio district as realization dawned: the Golden Gate Park is nowhere near Golden Gate Bridge. So I got my first Uber.
Golden Gate Park. My driver became a tour consultant and we set the agenda for my day as he drove me to the part of the largest urban park in the US that he thought I would like: Stow Lake. I chatted with some elderly Japanese American men who remembered the days of the internment camps. That was humbling. And the park is exquisitely beautiful. So I spent an hour there.
Sausalito. Next stop, the ferry terminal. The first Uber driver I called gave up. He said he could not find the boat house where I waited. So I tried again. This guy got to me and took me to the Embarcadero—a lively waterfront neighborhood—where I caught the ferry. Like the Staten Island Ferry from lower Manhattan, this ferry offered the perfect view of the SF skyline, as well as excellent views of both the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate. Sausalito is a small city built on a hillside with a gorgeous waterfront “downtown” jammed with shops and restaurants, of course. By this point I was fairly obsessed with getting the views, and from my restaurant on the water I had nothing but.
Ferry ride view.

Sausalito.

Proof.
Starbucks. While in Sausalito, I did have to stop off in a Starbucks to charge my phone for a bit, as being Uber-dependent meant I was phone-dependent and since I was taking about 300 pictures a day and texting them to my kids (and my friend Jim, of course)… well, I was using up a lot of battery. So forgive me.
Embarcadero. When I returned on the ferry I had my first encounter in CA with someone I knew. Pat Dunn, my son’s dear high school friend, lives and works out there. I had not seen him in ages and it was like seeing a long lost family member. We had a drink in the sunshine and caught up. I gave him a hug from his mom, and one from me, and we parted ways.
This is Pat! The coolest.

That night, my second in SF (I’d arrived at 7:00 the evening before), and after the epic day in which I did all of the above—I feared I was getting sick. I was flagging big time, felt clogged up and achy. I bought some empanadas at a stall in the Embarcadero, some NyQuil at a Walgreens, and headed to my AirBnB to eat in bed and put pix on Facebook. Slept a thousand hours and woke up in the morning feeling grand, ready to schlepp my not-lightly-packed belongings back to the garage and drive south.

The Case Against Kvetching OR Don’t Be a Miserable Cow

Posted on May 15, 2016 by spiralwoman

Saw the above meme today. A friend posted it on her Facebook page. It’s a reminder—perfectly humorous and perfectly true.

I’m trying to break the kvetching habit. The bitching, moaning, oh-my-god-can-you-believe-what-happened thing. It’s so easy to do and when it’s happening, for a minute or two, it seems like it feels really good. Especially if the person you are kvetching to is as outraged as you are. Or is sympathetic to the Utter Horror of the situation you are describing.

Did you ever notice that most complaining is about other people? I guess that makes sense since very few “situations” are immaculately conceived. I mean, people conceive and birth most all situations in life.

Maybe because of the fact that it’s about other people, at some point in the middle of a big kvetch-fest, it starts to feel not-so-fun. Plus you end up feeling like a total victim and that sucks.

At first, we are fascinated by the very fact that someone could be stupid or clueless or selfish or mean or insecure or bitchy enough to do whatever the Unacceptable Thing was. Or not do whatever thing we thought should have been done. We become personally insulted by this person’s actions. We are offended, shocked, hurt. We must tell someone. Now that person has to share in our fascination/hurt. If things go as planned, now both people, kvetcher and kvetchee, are caught up in the negative energy of the kvetch-fest. It builds on itself.

Even after it stops feeling good and actively feels pretty crappy, the bemoaning continues. (Have you ever eaten the last quarter of a bag of chips, even though you feel overwhelmed with salt and grease and your stomach is objecting? And you say, “They’re almost gone. It won’t be long now.” Like it’s a chore you must get through. It’s like that with complaining. “I’ll just get this off my chest and I’ll feel better,” while really you are wasting valuable time you could use to write a poem or take a walk or build with Legos.)

And p.s. you don’t feel better. Not even a little bit. Don’t kid yourself. You have just RELIVED The Horror. Whatever it was. The Unforgiveable Thing that happened/was done to you. You’ve relived it in words, which are like tiny nails that hammer that Unforgiveable Thing even more firmly into your brain and body. You now feel the hurt/insult/offense all over again.

It’s a weird thing that happens inside the human body when we wallow. And believe me, everyone has wallowed at least once. It’s like marinating a piece of meat in a balsamic and red wine mixture with lots of garlic, black pepper, and cumin. Pretty soon the meat is so infused with all those flavors that it can’t be un-infused. We are now “one” with the bad shit that happened. Why do we do this to ourselves?

I once thought we humans were naturally inclined toward kvetching, but I’m not so sure. I know people who never do it. I know people who taught themselves not to do it. I’m wanting to unlearn the habit and I feel like I’m actually making progress. So I don’t think it’s innate. I think it’s learned. We grow up surrounded by people on the subway, in line at the deli, in our own living rooms, and we hear, “You’ll never guess what insanely offensive thing HE DID NEXT!” or “Wait till I tell you this truly horrible thing that HAPPENED TO ME.” As if we can’t wait to smear our misery all over our nearest and dearest.

So here is the super-simplified list of what complaining does to us. I got this info from this very comprehensive article full of links for further study, and I recommend you read it because it’s awesome.

Repeatedly thinking negative thoughts makes it easier to think negative thoughts in the future which is all brain science and has to do with synapses and stuff. It means bumming out makes it super likely that being bummed will be your default. You can rewire your brain to be dark… or light.
Being with negative people can rewire you too. Our brains seem to be so empathetic that other people’s emotions go into us like they are our own. Who you surround yourself with really can change your life. The good news is that happy people can rewire your brain in the direction of love, love, and some of that love.
Angry and negative thoughts weaken the immune system, raise blood pressure, and increase your risk for diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. Because stress. Which is a killa.

How do we navigate life while communicating and being open but avoiding the truly damaging effect of complaining? I do not have an answer to that. It has been proven that the “ya just gotta vent” theory is dead wrong, but on the other hand, you might want to casually mention to your mom/friend/husband/cat that your boss is Darth Vader in disguise…. So I’m thinking that if we

Don’t take shit personally (remember Don Miguel Ruiz and the Four Agreements?) which means we…
Understand that when people do crappy things it’s all about them, not us, which means…
It can’t “marinate” us and we can…
Do what my friend Teri suggests and say, “Isn’t that interesting?” and then let it go….

A nice buffer against the negative stuff, the kvetch-fest, the marinating in damaging emotions= gratitude. When you see how amazing and helpful and hardworking and kind most people are today, it helps you notice it tomorrow again too. Another probiotic for life is love. (The Beatles got that.) Look at a picture of your kid… or look at your kid. Or put your face against the purring furry side of your dozing cat. Or watch a blue jay flit from branch to branch outside your window (as I am doing now). Or make a call to someone who loves you as much as you love her or him. Or remember peanut butter. (Better yet, go eat a giant spoon of it.)

I’m really working on this. I’m lucky that my default mode is one of optimism. I get excited about things and I have hope for the future. I can take no credit for the way I was born. The fact that my mother was a mentally ill narcissist could well have fucked me up but good. It didn’t. Not in any ways that really matter. Plus, she was pretty badass too, and that’s the stuff I like to remember. And my brain chooses to remember the good stuff almost all the time. But we can all do better. I’m trying to figure out how to extricate myself from other people’s need to come into my space and vent. A kind and polite extrication. (Any advice? I’d be grateful.)

Baby steps. For now, I’m grateful to have a Sunday morning to write this blog and make friends with the blue jay outside.

Love Trumps Trump

Posted on March 12, 2016 by spiralwoman

Some things I know and feel no need to explain how I know them:

Complaining is not healthy, even though we really want it to be. It can be addictive. It can even feel good… at first. But it’s bad voodoo. (Although I know I don’t need to provide a citation, this is a good article on the subject.)
Love is the shit. Like, The Thing. Like… the ONLY thing. It heals. It feels good. It fixes the world.
All humans on the planet deserve all their human rights, regardless of skin color, genitalia, who they want to love, be, or become, where they live, what god, goddess, Bodhisattva, tree, or higher or lower being they worship, whether they worship anything at all, or don’t.
Generalizing may be convenient when running statistics but it sucks when you are talking about actual humans. It’s called bias. It’s called “don’t be stupid, just because a black gay Buddhist was mean to you in 6^th grade does not mean all black gay Buddhists are mean.”
The U. S. of A. has some very powerful and wonderful things about it but it’s in big trouble. Still and all, I love it. (see # 2)
The Maharishi Effect is legit. (Again, here’s a cool article about small meditation groups affecting an entire city’s crime rate!) When you get enough people focused on one idea or feeling, things change. Shifts happen. People feel different. And it affects the world beyond and outside. When people feel different, they behave in different ways.
Our thoughts do change us. Our thoughts—and the thoughts we surround ourselves with—permeate us until they change the grooves in our brain (to use an image from vinyl records) so that the needle now goes in those grooves and can’t, as easily, find the groovy grooves. The groovy grooves are where you find love and self-love, acceptance of others and acceptance of self, optimism and fortitude, joy and courage and laughter. Change your thinking, change your feelings, actions, and outcomes.

Many Americans are disappointed in the folks who hold political office right now, and also in most all of the candidates vying for their respective nominations. The majority seem to be ruled by money, and/or racist/misogynistic/reactionary agendas, and/or a lust for power. Is a single one of them ruled by love (see #2)? Maybe Bernie. But he’s pretty pissed off, too, so I’m not sure.

I started to write a blog that was veering towards complaint, anger, non-love. I was going down the path of “we’re kinda fucked” that would create a groove in my brain if I’m not careful. I could become that person. The person who lives her life from the “we’re fucked” point of view. Who wants to be that person?

Don’t want to hide my head from the facts either, though.

What I was going to write, was about how shocked I am that our country is a place where a hater like Trump has a groundswell of supporters. I guess I’ve been fooled by the veneer of civility that has (barely) covered the actions and agendas of politicians who have been spewing hate for years…just maybe not as openly as Trump does. Maybe there are a lot of folks grateful to have someone just come out and say it. Say the stuff that they want to say, hate the people they love to hate. I’m thinking they don’t like the groups of non-them people who get in the way of their special privilege—or maybe that’s what they’re scared of.

But I want to STOP complaining about the candidates—it’s not good for me. I want to acknowledge that everyone has the right to speak, even if the ideas being spoken are about taking away everyone else’s rights. I want to be part of a GREAT BIG HAPPY GROUP THINK that is about love and acceptance. Then imagine a world where the tsunami effect of love will be so huge that it will push away all the hate.

So here’s my question. If I don’t want to become the hopeless, angry person coming from a place of reaction to evil, and instead want to be the person who operates from a place of love, how do I love Trump? How do I love Cruz? How do I love all those who love them? People who, consciously or not, disrespect me for being a woman. Long to take away my rights, so painfully fought for over my lifetime by people who would not accept the oh-so absurd status quo. People who want to build walls to keep out immigrants (not unlike their own immigrant parents or grandparents who made this country what it is today). People who mostly just hate. Hate people not like them. Hate progress towards equality. Hate having to give up their privilege so the underprivileged can get a break. Hate thinking about what they don’t want to think about, like climate change, gay marriage, domestic terrorism, to name a few.

So I’m looking for a way in. A way in to love.

When my children were little and behaving badly I’d say, “I love you with all my heart and always will, but I do not like what you are doing right now.” It was easy to make that distinction. The person has my love, his or her actions do not.

I am resolved. I will send love. I’ll put it out there into the universe, directed at Trump and all the rest of the haters. I will say to myself, “I love this human being. I love this person who was born to a mother like me. Someone loves this person, so I can too.” If we can love a sister or uncle or friend who makes mistake after mistake simply because we choose to go on loving them, then I can choose to love Donald Trump. Love will be my trump card and I’ll play it every day.

(lovelovelovelovelovelove….)

Gun-shy: Firearms and the Mentally Ill

Posted on January 28, 2016 by spiralwoman

I opened the door when she knocked. Given our last exchange–during which I had to haul her by the hand out of my place of work while she shouted about how my new boyfriend was part of The Conspiracy (corporate, federal, state, personal) against her–I was wary. But she was my mother after all. At 24, I’d been on my own for 7 years and a few months before she had moved 1800 miles to be near me. Not my idea. But she showed up just in time for me to realize something that I suspected was wrong really was seriously wrong.

The details are hazy. She pushed her way into the apartment, talking inhumanly fast—I don’t remember what she said, or what I said. I just know that within two minutes of her being there, she was so enraged at me that she had me flat on the floor and was pummeling me with her fists. My mother was about five inches shorter than I, but she was strong, and the element of surprise is a powerful strategy. But in her case this was no strategy. It was craziness, erupting, as it does. Willy-nilly.

Her inability to control what I was saying, convince me of what she was saying, or create a truth that I would be convinced by—well, the frustration was too much. She attacked the one person in the world she might actually love—in whatever way that happened for her—and the one person she could not afford to lose.

There was also the time she tried to grab the gun off the police officer’s holster. That one got her thrown in jail, and then transferred to the nearest mental hospital for an evaluation.

I’ve written about her on this blog before, but here my point is: mentally ill people cannot be held accountable for what they do. They are sick. Let’s take care of them. Let’s not throw them out on the street with no resources and no insurance.

And let’s not make it easy for them to buy guns. Can’t we all agree not to arm them with the firepower to kill themselves or someone else in an outburst of—often fleeting—rage or despair?

Fast forward thirty years to a few weeks ago. The suggestion on the table is this: “Shall we put something on our website that urges families to remove guns from the house if a mother is suffering from depression?”

I sit on the board of a remarkable organization that supports women and families dealing with maternal mental health issues, as well as educating medical practitioners and legal professionals about PMDs. When the suggestion is made, heads immediately start to nod. It makes sense. We should come out with a statement about that.

Then someone says, “We need to be careful. There are people out there who might be very offended by that. Red cape to the bull.”

Wait—REALLY?

I live in a remarkably insular world because I don’t know anyone who would think it a bad idea for a concerned family member to remove a gun from a sick woman who regularly thinks about suicide and whose death would leave a child motherless.

I believe that people don’t have the whole picture. I mean, who has the whole picture? I definitely do not have the whole picture. I could not possess it even if I read every book, blog, and bullshit tabloid 24 / 7 for the rest of my life. So let’s all agree: no one has the whole picture. I know some stuff and you know some stuff. I’ll ask you what you know about and you can ask me, if you want.

What I do know a teensy bit more than some people about is mental illness. I was highly motivated to read everything I could get my hands on about the topic and then there was my front row seat.

My schizophrenic mother never attacked me again physically after that day. (Research has shown that most psychotic people show less tendencies towards violence than the average population.) The things she did on a regular basis that made my life a hell of tormented guilt, love, and anger just took other forms from then on. But what if she’d had an elegant little pistol in her pocket that day?

Would her rage and despair at the horribleness of it all at that moment have led her to start blazing away?

She didn’t have so much as a set of brass knuckles, fortunately, and my friend Michael woke from his nap to drag my mom off me and escort her firmly, but gently, from the apartment.

I’ve read recent studies about suicide. There is strong evidence that the majority of suicide attempts are one offs. I’m not sure how they do that study since many of the study cases are dead. But it involved many many interviews with people who have survived a suicide attempt. Some have tried multiple times. Some think about suicide often. But apparently most people who have attempted suicide, according to this study, did so only once. They lived to tell the story, and never tried again. Those people did not have guns.

Okay so a background check would not pick up on the random dude whose girlfriend is going to trash his heart and he’s going to try to end it all. But the patient with a history of hospitalization for depression, or schizophrenia, or whatever it is, will be a red flag and maybe the decision to provide this person with a firearm will be tabled for the indefinite future. I would really like that.

The 2^nd Amendment was written when muskets were the extent of a citizen’s firepower. Now semi-automatic weapons and guns with exploding bullets (I’ll defer to you people out there who know about guns—I don’t) have been cleverly invented, manufactured, and put in the hands of regular people. The meek, the bold. The sane, the not-sane. The angry, the mollified. The upstanding, the ignominious. We don’t care. It’s our right to own a gun. It’s our right to protect ourselves. But it’s our right—and duty—to protect innocent people too.

Is anyone suggesting we take all guns away? I mean anyone credible? Most of the suggested legislation is about slowing things down. Background checks.

My friend Frank might have killed himself anyway. They found his body in his car with a hole in his head blown out by the shotgun he had purchased at K-Mart earlier that day. The receipt was in the bag, which was in the back seat. After that, we realized he’d been planning his exit for a while. He’d managed to say goodbye to most of us the night before, without telling us what he was doing.

But if the impulse of that moment—if his horrible confusion and sorrow about his uncertain identity, his troubling (to him) desire to wear my clothes on Halloween, and any woman’s panty-hose under his work pants on any other day of the year, his uninterested family, the homelessness he did not confide in us till someone found his sleeping bag in the storeroom at the restaurant where we both worked—if that impulse had passed in the time it took for him to be able to buy that gun, he may have lived until now. He may have been at the forefront of the LGBTQ movement, wearing green tights and flowing skirts with pride at all the parades and making drawling, sarcastic speeches that made everyone laugh. He may have come back the next night, the night after his goodbyes, flicked his hair, grinned his sad, sly grin, and picked up where he’d left off.

Frank as me for Halloween, 1981.

Do Unto Others

Posted on December 20, 2015 by spiralwoman

I am not Christian, Jewish, or Muslim. Nor am I Buddhist or Hindu. Labels seem too small and regularly shaped to accommodate my spirituality, which I came across in my own way, having been raised by atheist ideologues.

This essay is not really about spirituality, mine or anyone’s, but rather about morality. Probably because I was raised by ethical people who believed in no higher power, it never dawned on me that morality required religion to exist.

The concept still strikes me as absurd, though I know that many cannot conceive of a morality outside the very clear constraints of their religious beliefs. There are people who believe that morality is externally imposed by a doctrine or credo, and that it does not come from inside. Thus, they imagine that all the people who don’t go to their church or pray to their god cannot be moral. Many religions lay claim to specific beliefs that predate their faith by millennia.

When I taught Eastern religions for a few years I learned a lot. I learned that the phenomenon of “there is only one true religion” is somewhat unique to the Judeo-Christian world. I am no expert and there is much I don’t know, but I know that the Bhagavad Gita teaches that people can find their enlightenment in their own way, and need not adhere to Hindu ideas or believe in the Hindu “source” to end up there. I know that Muhammad respected Jesus as well as the prophets of the Old Testament and considered himself a latecomer to the Axial Age.

But the interesting thing to me is that the religions that arose around the time of Christianity (the aforementioned Axial Age) were responding quite specifically to social injustice.

‘Tis the season of political campaigns being led by men (mainly) who loudly proclaim their devotion to Christianity, and so I am inspired to peek at a few of the more basic tenets of that religion.

Love thy neighbor. Most everyone living and learning within the Western tradition has heard this moral teaching and most people know that the whole sentence reads: “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” (King James Bible) And the greater context is (to paraphrase): Love God with your entire heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as you love yourself and P.S. there are no teachings ANYWHERE more important than these. Which means that loving God and loving your neighbor trump anything from Leviticus that requires stoning your wife, burning a bull in your yard, or calling homosexuality an abomination. This teaching seems pretty simple. Don’t act out of hatred, but out of love.

Love your enemy. Related to the above, but interestingly different. I guess someone who is loving his or her neighbor won’t have any enemies. So maybe Jesus thought, “Well, if they slip, and end up with enemies, I’ll teach them to love their enemies and then we’ll be back to ‘it’s all about love.’” Seems a logical line of reasoning for him, since he wanted to teach love. So he said, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” There are many who claim Jesus had the copyright on this teaching, but two thousand years before him, a Babylonian council was on record with this: “Do not return evil to your adversary. Requite with kindness the one who does evil to you. Maintain justice to your enemy and be friendly to him,” proving religion has no corner on morality and that government councils can teach loving kindness. There is a Buddhist teaching that is similar, that I won’t fully quote here but I love this part: “Let us live happily, not hating those who hate us.”

Turn the other cheek. The quote goes like this (again King James, my favorite translation): “But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” This always bothered me because I thought it was about passive acquiescence to evil. But then I learned something important from a scholar and social historian who explained to me that Jesus in that teaching is advocating political resistance –the non-violent kind. According to the customs of the time, the left hand can only be used for personal and unseemly uses, so any blows to the right cheek must be made backhanded—it’s just an anatomical thing. If you use your right hand on the right cheek—it’s gotta be that way. And a backhanded blow is the way superiors struck peasants. Thus Jesus is addressing a theoretical peasant who is being beaten and he is saying, “Give that asshole your left cheek and make him hit you with the flat of his palm as if you were an equal.” So… either the beating stops (unlikely), or he treats you as a peer, which is almost better. The result is a delicious awkwardness and a way to deal with social injustice without violence. (For a very cool explanation of this, including the part of the passage about walking the extra mile and giving the cloak AND the coat, check out this link: turn the other cheek.)

The Golden Rule. Hugely popular with parents and teachers everywhere. My atheist parents used this dictum as the cornerstone of their ethical teachings. I knew the quote—“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”— long before I read the Bible (in middle school English classes). It made perfect sense to me. Where does this genius bit of ethical absolutism originate? Matthew 7:12, you say? Sure. But it was around waaaaaaaaaaaaaay before Jesus explained it to his flock. Also known as the ethic of reciprocity, it can appear in either the positive or prohibitive form. Jesus used the positive: do. The prohibitive, used for example by the ancient Chinese, is more like this: Don’t. Aka, don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you. Like when your mom said, “Do you want Johnny to push you down? No? Then don’t push him!”

Around 2000 BCE, the Egyptians had a thing that went like this: “Now this is the command: Do to the doer to make him do.” It goes along with the concept of sacrifice—give a gift to the gods so they will bestow gifts upon you. Later, around 675 BCE the Egyptians had a negative or prohibitive form of the Golden Rule: “That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another.”

Then there is Confucius and Lao Tse in ancient China, each of whom has a version. The Hindu precept, “Make dharma (right conduct) your main focus, treat others as you treat yourself,” is another very ancient example. Then there’s ancient Greece, and ancient Persia… and finally—FINALLY—we get to the Judeo-Christian tradition which chimes in on the Golden Rule.

Where am I going with this? Jesus was a good teacher and his precepts hit at a good time, but he did not make most of this stuff up from scratch. There were people teaching moral behavior before he cast his light upon the Middle East and, eventually (thanks to some great marketing strategies and a few wars credited to his followers), the rest of the planet. But the ancient Egyptians or Chinese from several millennia BCE were not sending messages via bottle or smoke signal halfway across the planet and into the future. The ideas of love, reciprocity, and peaceful co-existence arose independently across the globe over time. Morality is not linked to any particular political or religious system, location, skin color, gender, class, sexual orientation, or social strata. It is simply human.

The social injustice of Jesus’s world created a system ripe for change. His followers, Jews and pagans, managed to incorporate his wisdom into their own religious traditions. It did not seem particularly odd to do so as many of his messages were considered more political than religious.

How many religions have fought holy wars in order to wipe out the non-believers? No history is bloodier than that of a church founded on the teachings of a simple carpenter who taught universal love and peaceful resistance.

How many nations have been founded on religious teachings and turned around and banished, exterminated, or forcibly converted anyone who believed differently? Jesus was a Jew, but I’m pretty sure he did not ask for an identity card when people followed after him to hear what he had to say.

Every president of the United States – a nation that in its founding separated church from state—has to swear an oath on the Judeo-Christian Bible. So how did it come to be that “devout” candidates are allowed to wage holy wars on women’s rights, religious freedoms, and the poor? Their guru, Jesus himself, honored the poor above all (remember the thing about a rich man getting into heaven being harder than a camel’s transit through the eye of a needle?), preached unconditional love (that means no conditions, yo), and accepted independent women among his closest followers. Some believe Mary Magdalene was his first and most important disciple and it is a matter of historical fact that she was not a prostitute at all, but an independent and sexual woman, which the Christian fathers had to translate into “prostitute” to justify their patriarchal religion and its systematic debasement of women. (For more on that check out my blog titled “Scarlet Words—How Women’s History and Power was (partly) Stolen by Changing the Language.”)

Not only does the current crop of talking heads in the Republican debates not advocate loving their neighbor, let alone their enemies, they in fact demand anger, hatred, and retribution. They incite us all to carry our guns and shun non-white, non-Christian people fleeing from tyranny. There are even hate groups out there (I can’t help wondering what Jesus, Buddha, or Muhammad would have to say about the very CONCEPT of a hate group) who believe that we should torture and destroy the children of our enemies. They also insist that citizens who love “the wrong people” or identify as “the wrong gender” or, an old favorite, have “the wrong color skin” or religion—that those people should be tormented, banished, killed. The large majority of these hate groups identify strongly as Christians. I want to ask them: “Have you met Jesus?”

What happened? A planetary evolution of millennia upon millennia, a species with no end of wise teachers to guide us and we are still in this place?

Many people may not love themselves enough to love their neighbors and enemies. Yet there are plenty of people out there living good lives, motivated by love and acceptance, guided by the Golden Rule. Spreading love starts at home. A challenge for me and mine this New Year.

No disrespect intended to anyone. This cartoon just fits too darned well with my blog.

Bubbling Gratitude

Posted on November 22, 2015 by spiralwoman

When I was a little girl, happiness would visit me in the form of bubbles. That’s what it felt like to me, anyway. Bubbles inside my chest.

They did not come often, but I was always dazzled and delighted when those bubbles tickled my heart behind my small ribs.

I know I have felt lots sadness in my life, but that’s not what I actually remember.

I remember this. A sunny afternoon—any one of many. I left school to walk to the crosstown bus stop. The East River glittered, and the leaves – green with spring—rustled secrets to me. At such a precise moment, a profound feeling would seep through my body. I could feel it, like juice mixing with my blood and changing every cell.

I realize now what that was. I called the bubbles happiness. But now I believe they were about gratitude.

My daughter likes to tease me about the time I burst into tears in the car when a bobcat was loping along in the long grass beside the road one morning. I felt I’d been slapped in the heart, hard, by the extraordinary beauty of that sight. It hurt—in a good way. I could not believe how lucky I was to be there in that moment, and see such a thing. My reaction may have been a little over-the-top, but it was the real thing.

Right now, the cat sits in a trapezoidal pool of sunlight that is just her size. Or rather, she fits her tiny body into the small shape of that puddle of warmth. Her eyes are half closed and her sigh of contentment comes out in a rumbling purr. She is not thinking about what might be, what has been, or what she wants or doesn’t want. And I believe she is more than just content. She is grateful. Warmth and light are, in that moment, enough. They are more than she could have hoped for. They are perfect and life is perfect.

An exhausted refugee fleeing horrors feels, I believe, gratitude when a bowl of broth or rice is passed to her hungry child. In that moment, the juice of thanks floods her blood and her head lightens, for a moment. Gratitude for that moment and others that may come is what keeps her going, not fear.

In one of my favorite books, Night, Elie Wiesel describes a moment when he and fellow prisoners at Birkenau hear the plaintive violin played by a fellow prisoner who managed to keep his instrument through it all. The horrors of that moment, the hunger, pain, fear, degradation, all vanish for Wiesel as he experiences a perfect moment with gratitude. Surrounded by death, his focus is on life, or the hope of life. Reading that book I understood a tiny fraction about what survival was about. Those who feared they would not survive were not as lucky as those who saw each day as a chance for life.

How do we make our brains feel gratitude for one small beauty, instead of bitterness and anger at all the injustice? Is this a gift some people are born with? The gift of gratitude?

For some, the bad stuff is just more real. They can easily remember the slight, the horror, the terrible misfortune of yesterday but struggle to feel the beauty of right now. They see it, they know it is there, but they are sad, because it doesn’t permeate them.

I believe in the power of belief. I have read the science which confirms the anecdotal evidence we see every day. It says that reframing our thoughts will reframe our emotions and our very beliefs. Those reframed beliefs subtly and not-so-subtly shift how we act and behave in such a way that our experience of every moment can be different and the weight can be lifted.

The bubbles behind my chest are not something I can control. I have to allow them to be. The perfect moment of sitting down at my desk in the morning with a hot cup of coffee. The perfect moment of hilarity on the phone with my sister when laughter erupts from my belly. The perfect moment that will be, when both my children sit down with me for Thanksgiving. The perfect moments, all of them, when with all my blessings I can live in hope and without fear.

I am grateful.

I Remember You, Girl

Posted on October 17, 2015 by spiralwoman

When I started teaching in 1988 I was 27. Despite being a grown up and the veteran of an entirely different career, I was utterly unprepared for the emotional and psychological toll the first year of teaching was going to take on me. And physical, too. Within a month I had pneumonia so bad I missed two weeks of school.

I kept my head up by keeping it down. Down, as in hard at work 18 hours a day. Ask my new husband at the time who forgot what everything but the part on the top of my head looked like.

Liz had a classroom down the hall. She taught math to the same students I had for English. She was older, a veteran teacher, a mother of three middle-school-aged kids, someone who juggled 10 balls in one hand while smoking a cigarette and checking her manicure.

Somehow, Liz took me under her wing immediately without my realizing it. Somehow, I poured my heart out to her before I consciously realized I needed to do that. Somehow, she always knew what stage of disbelief/stress/excitement/anxiety/overwhelm/enthusiasm/celebration/love I was in during that first year of school. I ended up sitting at her kitchen table with some regularity, after school, sometimes even before school. Her humor and very non-cloying warmth, combined with her experience as a teacher, her unromantic appreciation of the job, and her being what I considered a “real” grown-up, all came together in one irresistible package. I was grateful to her every day.

Unsurprisingly, when I had pneumonia during those first weeks, she brought food over more than once to help me and my husband keep our shit together.

I learned a lot from Liz during the few years we were colleagues. She was a true friend. Our paths diverged at some point and yet she never really left me. I went to her funeral about fifteen years ago, truly shocked in some deep recess that anyone that feisty and full of grit could ever die. I’m sure her sassy self is ruling the roost in the afterlife. Just a few days ago, one of Liz’s daughters wrote to me (and I’m sure hundreds of others who loved Liz), asking for memories, anecdotes, snippets. I was brought back, immediately and easily, to a time when Liz was large and in charge, and very much alive.

So I got through that first teaching year, triumph outweighing the occasional sense of disaster, partly due to my stubbornness, determination, and general refusal to succumb to despair, partly due to the fact that I actually did kind of love the job, and in very large part thanks to Liz’s (oh-so-unobtrusively constant) supportive presence and love.

On graduation day, I remember waking up that morning hugely relieved that the year was over. I was looking forward to stripping wallpaper and paint in my newly purchased house and mulling over the year and all the things I’d do differently starting in September. After the ceremony and luncheon, Liz suggested I come over to her house for a while, just to hang. I gladly agreed, looking forward to celebrating a successful completion of the schoolyear. She did not seem at all surprised when, about fifteen minutes after I sat down next to her on a porch chair, I burst into tears. She put her hand on my shoulder, then stood up and gave me a one-armed hug. She whipped some tissues from somewhere, shoved them at me, and let me cry.

When I started blubbering about how much I loved the students, how much I’d miss the 8^th graders-now-graduates, how hard the year was but-I-didn’t-care-it-was-amazing, and finally how surprised I was at the flood of grief that was washing over me—Liz was not fazed in the slightest. She murmured, “I know,” and “That’s normal” and other soothing words until I stopped sobbing, no doubt with a few ignominious hiccups or slurpy snorts.

We talked for a long time about each of the students, about some of the things that had happened, about our indomitable colleagues, and the backroom drama of the administrative offices. I felt so free and easy in her company. I knew she would not judge me. She was incapable of that. She cracked me up with her sarcastic side-comments, and impressed me with the comfy, competent way she parented her children as they passed through the room, despite having me and my ridiculous mess to deal with.

The rest of the afternoon was full of laughter and silliness, as I recall. I went home eventually, exhausted, purged, renewed.

Liz at my 30th birthday, about to say something super sarcastic.

Identity Crossroads

Posted on September 5, 2015 by spiralwoman

I sat in a beautiful rural church on a recent warm Saturday. A woman who once lived, had died. I remember her very clearly. She was big of personality, voice, and opinion. She seemed to care not one whit about what anyone thought of her. I admired that. When I knew her, I was in my late 20s, she was maybe 25 years older—old enough to be my mother. But she wasn’t.

Although Katherine was being honored that day, she was not the reason I was there. I was there to honor someone else.

The year I met Katherine was my first year of teaching 6-8^th grade English. My 6^th grade that year had only 7 students in it. One of them was Katherine’s daughter, Kit.

Teaching was, like babysitting or nannying, both of which I’d also done, a precursor to parenthood. I found out, almost by surprise, how much love is involved. I discovered how much a group of 7 kids in a classroom every day can worm its way in. By the time they were in 8^th grade, we were sitting around discussing The Scarlet Letter while everyone took turns feeling my first baby thump around under my sweater.

I taught Kit and her classmates for 3 years. I knew at the time that she would always be a powerful memory for me. There was something about her. She knew herself, I could see. Or was on the way to knowing herself. And she was only 11.

Kit grew up, moved away, began a career as a midwife, married, had children. I stayed in the background, like a good former teacher, proud and admiring, happy for her growing and achieving, but mostly for her happiness. All this thanks to the power of social media, where I walk a fine line between stalking and benevolent awareness. (Thankfully, I have a busy, rich life so stalking is not really an option for me. But I am alertly and fondly cognizant of many, many of my former students, and in touch with them at appropriate interludes, thanks to Facebook and other cyber-land “realities.”)

In the intervening years, between Kit’s 8^th grade graduation, at which I cried (I always cry), and the memorial of her mother, I lost mine.

Mother-daughter—it’s a complicated bond. Teacher-student—less so, but also multi-layered, very lasting, and potentially very rich. Kit and I shared what I recently described as a “history of entanglement/anguish/difficulty” with our mothers. The loss of a parent is always hard. The loss of a mother has its own layers of complexity. The loss of a mother with whom the relationship has been fraught, painful, guilty, or in other ways complicated… well, it’s the worst, or at least the most difficult to navigate.

Fast forward 25 years from graduation day for Kit and her 6 classmates, and I received a message. Kit stretching out a hand in my direction and saying, well, lots of things. Part of it was just this: “I find myself wanting to reach out again all these years later and for your support . Although I am no longer a child and need so much less than the 11 to 13 year old me needed. It feels comforting to know you are out there, regardless. Thank you for helping me find my way all those years ago. I will be in the dark for awhile with this grief but less scared knowing you are there if I feel the need to call out.”

When Kit lost her mother. When she reached out to me. When the memories of my own mother’s death in 2004 resurfaced during that exchange with Kit. When I sat in the small church listening to the carefully worded eulogies about a woman—a force of nature who was hard to love but easy to admire (so like my mother). When I heard Kit speak of, and to, her mother, back stiff and eyes dry, her complicated pain a stunning echo of mine, 11 years before. When I saw Kit in the flesh for the first time since 1990, holding her two babies close, a boy and a girl (like mine). When her smiling face reminded me of the eternal grace I always saw in her, even in those awkward adolescent years, and that lovely soul that shines out to this day. When her beautiful face brought back those first years of teaching and all the hard work and the crazy impossible aspirations and the valiant heroism of kids and the bond that forms and the teacherlove.

Sitting in the church I was briefly in a powerful crosswind—a very real moment when several pasts intersected with the present and an idea of the future in which Kit-as-mother, me-as-mother, Kit-as-daughter, me-as-daughter, Kit-as-student, me-as-teacher, sparkled like the facets on a universe-sized crystal.

Not all intersections are where clandestine meetings take place. Sometimes they are just moments in time when our different identities intersect unexpectedly, and immediately stop mattering. When the only thing that does matter is love.

The Family Thing (it’s the thing)

Posted on August 17, 2015 by spiralwoman

Cozy reunion house.

Family has been a lifelong journey for me. When I was two, my mother removed me from my father. Life was now rearranged into “regular”—in New York City with my mother—and “visits” –in the summer, to my dad. Though I often spent 4 months a year with him, my mother’s terminology had its intended effect. “Home” was with her, not him. But I felt more “at home” with him. Which meant I was homesick no matter where I was.

Those precious visits to my father invariably involved forays from his home in western PA to northern Ohio and our extended family there—including 13 first cousins. I lived for those visits.

On my mother’s side, it was like we were in witness protection. As I grew up, I knew she had a sister and five brothers, aunts and uncles, two parents— but I’d never seen them, except once when I was three months old. By the time I met them all (my mom finally got over being mad at her mom), when I was about eight, I acquired 13 more cousins. Jackpot!

There was something so powerful in knowing I had people. Every day I spent with my cousins and other extended family was about creating and discovering history. That shared history—of DNA, generational memory, and memories forged in cousins’ back yards— has sustained me in many ways over the years.

I’ve since realized that DNA, and even fond memories, are not always enough to carry a relationship into maturity. But sometimes, you just get lucky.

Partial group shot 2015

What are the odds, I wonder, that the 14 offspring of 4 people born in the 1920s + spouses, the chosen life partners of said 14 offspring, and a combined 22 from the next generation (and even their spouses, girlfriends, boyfriends), would like each other enough to spend 3 days together on an island in a big house? Like…24 hours a day. Did I mention: on an island. (AKA no easy escape route.) And not just once, but over and over again? I don’t know. Maybe it happens a lot. But that’s what we do—my dad’s genome pool—the Park clan.

Richard Bach (remember him?) wrote: “The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life.” I’ll go with that. But what a blessing when the two converge, and the respect and joy and the blood go together?

There are 5 basic things that cement this bond, every few years when we gather together on an island in Lake Erie. 1. PLAY 2. FOOD 3. WORK 4. TALK 5. LAUGHTER.

Play

A deck of cards, a baseball bat, a volleyball, a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle (or three in one weekend, one done twice). A massive game of trivia played by all 45 of us, in teams with ludicrous names. Who cares? To play is the thing. (Apologies for a faulty reference to a famous quote by Shakespeare that has nothing to do with playing.) How often do we play in life? If you are not under 10 or on a team of some sort, you probably do not play as much as you should.

#puzzlemadness

65 year old cousins and 50 year old aunts, and cousins-in-law, 20 something second cousins– a collection of sorts, all tiptoeing into the expansive, sea-like Lake Erie with floatation devices and water shoes, to swim, or just hang—literally—on noodles, and chat, laugh, wash their hair. Play and the time to play.

Talk and walk and swim.

I’d sit willingly for 3 hours straight on a blanket under the trees beside the lake, playing Spades or Hearts with any and all comers, from my 10 year old niece (not to be underestimated) to my 30-something first cousin once removed who calls me “Aunt Vanessa” because he can and I love him so.

Cards, cards, and more cards (with talk, talk, and more talk).

This year there was a bit of edgy competition in some of the contests, but balanced nicely with those willing to poke fun at a slight overabundance of wanting-to-win when half the people on a team are either under 12, over 60, or never played volleyball/baseball/trivia/spades before. Laugh, wink, fade to sunset, a glass of wine, and arms around shoulders.

Volleyball in the hot sun.

Food

Never underestimate the power and influence of good food. We bring a truckload of fresh groceries over on the ferry to stock the house’s 2 refrigerators. Pre-arranged teams comprised of 5-7 family members of multiple generations, and none of them from the same nuclear unit—each team is responsible for one meal from preparation and presentation through clean-up. One. That’s it. The menu is prepared ahead, but the inspiration, timing, insouciant je-ne-sais-quoi-mystery of the meal’s creation is a magic that happens within the team itself….

Meal time is happy time.

And the food. Is. So. Good. It probably helps that everyone has worked up an appetite swimming or hitting balls with a bat or laughing so hard the tummy ache of laugh-muscles just fades into hungry belly. It also helps that the few foodies in the family plan the menus (my sisters and me, basically). And that smart people (and this family does have smart going for it) make good decisions. And then there’s my bro-in-law-aka-secret-weapon Joe who can grill or smoke anything and is willing to wake up at 6 a.m. to do it. But whatever. 45 people finding a seat on one of two porches, the living room, or the kitchen to talk and eat and groan with satisfaction. Feeding and being fed. That’s a family thing, right?

Work

A happy, gorgeous cog in a meal team wheel. #vital #worthit

For our reunion weekends, food and work go together. Those meal teams work hard. Knowing this is their one responsibility, and that the rest of the food will be made by other teams, releases all kinds of motivation, not to mention team spirit and lots of creative problem solving. Over the years (we’ve been doing this since the mid-90s), I’ve noticed that the work binds us together. Pride and accomplishment and camaraderie all go together with getting-the-job-done focus.

Bacon gets made on the porch. #itsarule

Whether it’s making or stripping beds, cleaning a bathroom, or doing laundry, we benefit from the fact that we are NOT in a hotel, at a resort, or on a cruise. The tasks are few enough, and the rewards of being part of it all… are many.

Early birds make beds!

Talk

Porch schmoozing. #cousins

Like minds. That’s part of it. And the fact that we like each others’ minds. Talk is a major part of the mirepoix that makes those family weekends so delicious. A bunch of curious, thoughtful, and articulate (not to mention funny) people who manage to be great listeners (recipe for conversation Nirvana?) with loads of time to spend just plain schmoozing.

Blanket schmoozing #auntandniece

Where shall we go to have our next in-depth convo? This is not a question we ask ourselves. In the hallway outside the bathroom is a good place. Standing in front of the stove while one or more of us is flipping pancakes. In two or a few of the 8 zillion rocking chairs on one of two porches. On a blanket by the lake. In the lake. In a hammock. Standing at the edge of the grove as the sun blinks below the horizon. I even had one cousin call me at home a week before the reunion to get a head start on conversation. He was worried we might not have enough time when we got there.

Under-a-tree schmoozing. #brothersinlaw

Sometimes no words are necessary. #secondcousinsrock

Laughter

As good as the food is, if I had to give it up to keep the amount of laughter that happens in 3 days, I would.

Best laughter pic from any reunion. 1996, my sister and my dad. #outofcontrol #laughtillyoucry

Family is worth any effort. I have a cousin who flies in from Texas every time. One from Colorado and another from Georgia. We start talking about the “next time” before the weekend ends.

My niece, Jane, was in tears on the last night of our weekend. She is 12. She doesn’t want to wait two or three years for the next family reunion. She wants one every year. (The practical issues and expense for people was not factoring in to her calculation. Nor should it.) Time’s passage is as vivid to Jane—if not more so—than to those of us on the other side of 50. Change happens. It happens to her (probably daily) and there are no guarantees, no promises, no sure things. “Please, Aunt Vanessa. I don’t want to wait.”

Neither do I.

#LakeErieSunset