I Know What I Want, Don’t I?

Posted on March 16, 2014 by spiralwoman

Have you ever noticed how kids are fine with saying, “I don’t want to.” If they don’t want to eat tilapia, play Clue, go to bed, sit on grandma’s lap… whatever it is, they will be honest. They may love tilapia and Clue might be their favorite game. They adore grandma and love their bedtime rituals, but they accept themselves as they are at this moment. They are also okay with telling the truth if they are not so crazy about grandma.

There need to be rules, for sure. The honesty of children does not have to be squelched in order to teach them how to be polite, and maybe keep the brutal truth to themselves, especially if it involves crushing someone’s soul. (Like grandma’s if she finds out little Sally thinks she is mean or smells bad.)

But the beauty of kids, when allowed to be themselves, is that they can change their minds, have moods, succumb to whims. What I especially admire is that they know what they want, recognize their moods, and are okay with operating on a whim.

Even as a kid, I wasn’t like that. I knew early on that I had to toe the line to be fully accepted by the people I should not have had to audition for… over and over again. I don’t remember a time when I “did what I wanted” without having to ask for permission. What was more likely—I would suppress what I wanted so completely that I convinced myself that whatever it was I ended up doing was what I wanted, even though it was actually what my mother wanted. If that makes sense. Anyway, it was a clever psychological trick my brain played on me but it protected me from feeling eternally unfulfilled, squelched, diminished, unseen, imprisoned.

I grew to adulthood having no fucking clue what I wanted. I couldn’t pick out clothes because I did not know what I liked. I only knew what my mom liked. I longed for love but had no idea how it was supposed to feel to be seen and loved for who I was rather than trying to be whatever everyone wanted. The only thing I knew for sure was that I loved to write, and that I wanted to get away from home.

This trick my brain learned at such a young age has gotten me into trouble. With myself, that is. I now second guess so many of my choices through life wondering… did I do that for me, or…? Example: I lived for 25 years in a town, in a part of the world where I had no particular desire to live. Could I see the practical benefit of it? That it would be easy, and affordable, to raise children there? Sure. And my husband REALLY WANTED to live there. In fact, New York City where I had grown up and where I always thought I’d return, was an absolute incontrovertible NO for him. He knew what he wanted and didn’t want. That alone was impressive to me. He felt so strongly about it, so … why not? I had a feeling it was not going to make me happy, but “it’s so practical, and he wants to so badly….” I convinced myself I wanted it too.

Maybe that was okay in that instance. We make sacrifices and choices to remain in relationships and to live within our means. And truth be told, it’s a gorgeous place and I have had countless positive outcomes from that choice. But the point is, I did not know what I wanted, and I did not know what I did not want. Not really. Or maybe I did, but I had no idea how to get what I wanted. I did not know what every 3 year old knows: how to say, “I don’t want to.” Or: “No, I won’t do that.”

How many men did I succumb to along the way because I did not realize I was allowed to say that? When I said “yes” to the first marriage proposal I ever got I did not know there were options. I mean, I would have said yes anyway, but if there was a thought in my head it was more, “I don’t want to let him down,” than it was, “I should think about this and be sure it’s what I want.”

Now my kids are basically grown. My son is a grown man who comes home rarely, due to a busy work schedule and the fact that he is in a band that has frequent gigs in and around Vermont where he lives. My daughter is in college, but not for much longer, and then the short summer visits to her childhood home will become shorter and less frequent, no matter how much I don’t want to think about it. My fledglings have fledged and now it’s my turn to become a full-fledged empty nester.

It dawns on me, gradually, that I can do whatever I want. I mean, on any given day, assuming I show up at work and pay my bills, I can do… whatever I want. I have, over the years, worked hard to become myself fully and to know what I believe in, what I love, what I don’t love. My gut knows what I want and I am getting better at making my head shut up so I can follow my gut.

I like making other people happy but I am finding out what it means to make myself happy. Some of the choices I’ve made have backfired and hurt me. But they were mine, and I did what I chose. I may come off like a toddler sometimes as I try to figure out the balance between “I don’t want to” and kindness, but I’m giving it my best shot.

Apologies are Sexy

Posted on February 1, 2014 by spiralwoman

Apologies are sexy. They are capable of melting hearts, defenses, sadness, and feelings of neglect or not being appreciated. They show strength of character, and that is always sexy, isn’t it?

As one who has spent far too much of my life trying to “be good” – if not perfect, I of all people know it is completely impossible to be good all the time. Don’t even talk to me about perfection. I’m in favor of doing everything in my power to enhance the quality of life for those I love (though not at my own expense, I have come to understand). I love to deliver a well-timed cup of tea or make a special shopping list of everyone’s favorite foods for when the gang’s home at the holidays. I relish being met at the front door by helpful volunteers when I’ve brought home the bacon in the form of 5 bulging bags of groceries and 6 glass jugs of spring water. Remembering to leave the porch light on for after-dark travelers is a special favorite of mine, and am so grateful when the favor is returned.

But we do forget. Our best intentions, when life happens or a day is particularly sucky, do not always translate into actions. That’s when a delicious “I’m sorry, honey” can just smooth out the bumps ever so nicely. “I’m sorry I made you late for your appointment.” Or, “Shit, I forgot to replace the toilet paper, didn’t I? I’m so sorry!” Or, “I know you had a stressful day. I’m sorry I was late picking you up. I’ll make it up to you with a nice backrub.”

Wait, no. I’m going too far. Honestly, the apology is enough. No backrubs necessary. An apology all by itself shows understanding and a basic desire to make amends, for no matter how small an oversight. Somehow, the absence of an apology often feels like a defensively stubborn insistence that nothing’s wrong. It’s all about acknowledgment, isn’t it?

An apology not only acknowledges a faux pas on the part of the sorry-sayer, it also acknowledges the other person. The gal who peed only to realize there was not a square of toilet paper to be found. The guy who is exhausted and counted on a timely pick up. Just being seen and understood, after the fact, is enough to erase whatever the “thing” was.

When I see you and care about you, I notice you. I can’t unnotice you. If I have seen you, I am more likely to remember how you take your coffee, and that you like the shoes left by the door. I am also more likely to apologize if I forget and tromp mud into your kitchen. Sincerely, not grudgingly.

We remind our children to “say sorry” and often have to add… “like you mean it.” Sorry is all too meaningless when it is insincere. Sorry is oh-so-meaningful when it is real, and yes, it’s sexy.

Confident people apologize. They have nothing to prove, so “I’m sorry” is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of strength. This is not hard for a confident person who cares about you to understand: “Even though I fucked up, I know I’m not a fuck-up. I’m not perfect but I love you and feel bad that I forgot to bring you a latte from Starbucks.”

Obviously, apologies are not just for the memory lapses, careless moments, and blind spots of life. They do a world of good when true hurt has been done. Though actions are always more powerful than words, words have weight. “I’m so so so so sorry” while holding hands, hugging, or gazing sincerely into someone’s eyes is a good starting place for mending even an agonizing heart-breach or harmful betrayal.

Maybe the only bad apology, aside from the grudging little-kid kind, is the knee jerk apology. You casually bump into someone on the way to the kitchen, “I’m sorry!” You forget the forks when you set the table, “I’m sorry,” as you go get the forks. I mean, getting the forks is better than, and makes unnecessary, a meaningless apology. The food you just made for dinner burns someone’s mouth. Don’t apologize. You just made dinner. Of course it’s hot. Someone didn’t wait for it to cool down. Other than that, you can’t go wrong with a heartfelt apology, especially to the people you love, who want to know that you are paying attention.

Love Story, released in 1970, is remembered for one line, spoken at the end of the film by Ryan O’Neal: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” As a generation of movie goers sobbed its way through that movie, a terrible disservice was being done to all those people and their descendants. It got people off on the wrong track. Contrary to the hokey line of dialogue O’Neal had to deliver to tear-stained audiences everywhere, love means you are totally cool with saying “sorry.”

Cheesecloth vs. Ziploc: the Ways We Process

Posted on January 25, 2014 by spiralwoman

Have you ever known someone who can spiral down into a very dark, hopeless place… and fast? This phenomenon has its own relentless sense of inevitability, though it has never struck me as inevitable, really.

Things go wrong. My friend, driving to Vermont, got stopped three times for the same dead taillight. Maddening. He was exhausted. Got started later than he had planned. Had to wake up earlier than he’d wanted, to meet my son and help him schlep a futon into a tiny hatchback before driving another hour to Stowe to ski all day. As he lay down in the hotel bed, beyond miserable, he said, “I know I won’t be able to sleep.” Forty-five minutes of tossing later: “I’m fucked.” He gets to the point where the whole weekend is going to be ruined and he’s going to be miserable for all of it.

He does this. It’s awful for him, but it is his way. “Looking on the bright side” doesn’t work for him. Realizing that he gets to ski all day at an awesome mountain is not going to jolly him out of knowing everything’s horrible. Not now, anyway. For him, and probably plenty of others, this is about having authentic feelings. But there is more than one way to feel things authentically.

I realize that I sometimes lay on the bright side too thickly. Maybe in reaction to people who dwell in the dark side. But if a little bit of optimism isn’t going to work, a lot is not going to work either. It’s just going to piss people off and lead me down the path of denial.

I had to realize it is not my job to jolly someone out of a dark place. And that I have to protect myself from the darkness entering me, while remaining empathetic, kind, and helpful. To a point. On the other hand, I usually can allow my own authentic feelings, the ups and downs of life, to come for awhile, and then pass through me.

But what about the really dark places – the genuinely bad moments/days/months… even years of life when grief, fear, spiritual and emotional anguish, are unavoidable and obdurate.

I mean, feelings are unavoidable. No one can or should deny a feeling. But as I thought about all this in the middle of the night last night (typically) an analogy popped into my mind that works for me. People operate, I decided, either like a cheesecloth or like a Ziploc bag. The feelings come, as they must. The frustration at being exhausted, overworked, and persecuted by the state police for a measly taillight. The incipient rage at a machine that is malfunctioning. (Is the computer ruining your life? Is it out to get you? Is it going to cost you the promotion because it has “lost” your report? Or is it a damned machine that malfunctions and you have to just get mad and move the hell on?)

If you have a fair amount of cheesecloth in your makeup, the feelings come, and they pass through you. Some feelings are thin and watery and pass quickly. Others are thick and full of particles and it takes time, so we need to be patient. And forgiving.

If you are more of a Ziploc type of person, the emotions flow into you and sit. They pile up and get sealed off. They can fester and even rot if you don’t remember or figure out how to unzip and pour that shit out.

With cheesecloth, you can probably look at a situation and say to yourself, “Wow, this situation is fucked.” With Ziploc, you are more likely to say, “I’m fucked. You’re fucked. Everything is fucked.” Because you can’t move through the emotions or let them move through you.

A year ao, I was in the middle of a very dark time. It was a time of shifting so profound that new continents were being formed by my tectonic plates. Grief, fear, and depression sum up the basic categories my emotions fell into. Some days it was hard to remember feeling different and for an extended period of time my condition had all the earmarks of a permanent state. But I knew, somehow, in the last flickering, threadbare tag of non-fucked me left inside somewhere, that it was not permanent. I told myself, every day, what I needed to hear. I comforted myself with reminders. I am a good person. I am worthy. I will feel joy again. I will feel love again. I will be okay. I will move through this. I did not have to tell myself it would not be easy or that it might take awhile. I already knew that, big time. The cheesecloth had a shit-ton of stuff to process, but it was processing.

At a time like that, a cheesecloth person and a Ziploc person look very similar. When life’s challenges add up to more than just a bad day or a sad week, they both bend under the strain. A Ziploc person, probably honorable and forthright, wants to accept the horribleness head on, and maybe feels that taking steps to see past it is a kind of denial. I don’t think it is. I don’t buy into the mindset that accepting horribleness is enough.

So what does someone who aspires to cheesecloth do? Accept—that is for sure. Don’t deny – that is the opposite of cheesecloth. Denial is like letting life run off a drop cloth and never touch you.

Accept and let go—that’s good, but for me, there’s more. Accept, and tell yourself what you need to hear so you can let go and feel the nearness of love and joy once again. What do you need to hear from yourself? What you would tell your own shattered child: “It’s going to be okay. I know it will. You’ll get there. I love you and am here for you.”

New Year’s Revolution

Posted on December 31, 2013 by spiralwoman

I’m digging the double entendre inherent in the title of this blog. The year, like the planetary movements that ultimately control the way we measure and understand time, revolves from one December 31^st to the next. A revolution. Another kind of revolution is contained in our ability to reinvent ourselves on New Year’s Day. We make resolutions that might revolutionize… us.

Living in the northeast allows me to feel with tremendous immediacy the pattern of the revolving year. Slick, grayly invisible ice appearing on driveways and roadways in January is familiar because I’ve seen it again and again, on the roadways of my life. Furred infant leaves appearing overnight on the branches of early spring put me in mind of past springs, and the feelings that come with all that rebirthing. The purple sunset on a humid summer’s evening fills me to the brim with familiar wonder, and the warm spectrum of an autumn afternoon when sideways sunshine explodes a hillside with color is as part of my internal rhythms as menses, or sleep.

Circles, and spirals for that matter, are nature’s way of returning to the beginning as we continue on the path to the future. These shapes symbolize unity, wholeness, and infinity. Don’t you love that? If something is whole it is complete, but a circle (or spiral) can be complete and yet still go on and on into infinity, in eternal revolution.

I want to think of this new year, 2014, as a revolution.

I want to return, as always, to my core self, looking inward to the center of my own personal spiral and stay true to that me.
I want to continue rolling forward on the path of change and growth that has accelerated for me over the last decade and really sped the hell up over the last couple of years. (I just this minute realized that the word “revolve” contains the word “evolve.” Wow. That is so perfect.)
I want to do some things so differently that they become as new as they are old. Like how to see myself. How to have a fight. How to be and stay attached to a life partner.
I want to revolutionize my self-image at this midpoint+ of my life and finally actually realize how beautiful and amazing I am, so that it does not feel stupid and weird to write those words.

I guess I’m a New Year’s Revolutionary.

Intention

Posted on December 27, 2013 by spiralwoman

I used to teach my 6^th graders about the 8-fold path of the Buddha when we were investigating Eastern religions. Together, we practiced meditation, and discussed profound precepts such as Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Intention. I wonder if you would predict how these privileged, well-educated (up till this point) children reacted to such lessons?

Well, not only did they instinctively grasp the concepts, they eagerly embraced the practices, at least to the extent that they gladly meditated before tests, after recess, before performances, and closely monitored themselves and each other in the pursuit of the 8-fold path… as they understood it. Even they grasped what Buddha reassured us of – that no one is perfect and that we can only try our hardest. Being exposed to these ideas, even on a rather rudimentary level, it was as if they suddenly had a new lens with which to view the world of middle school. If a classmate said, “I’m so stupid,” 6 voices would chime in: “RIGHT SPEECH!” Why is that important, I would ask? Someone would explain, “Say what is true. You are not stupid, you are smart.” Or: “Your words have a lot of power, you know.”

What about intentions? How do we know if we are living in positive, healthy intention? What if our “best intentions” come to nothing? Is that possible if we are “doing it right?” I had a student tell me once, “As long as everyone truly intends what is good and what comes out of love, how can they really hurt anyone?” I believe that is true, oh wise 11 year old. If my intention for myself (I can’t actually have an intention for anyone else – and trying to is just about control or manipulation, isn’t it?) aligns with my true values and comes from a place of love (including self-love), I will be in a good place. In the words of Phillip Moffitt, my happiness “will come from the strength of my internal experience of intention.”

A client of mine recently sent me an awesome article by the guy I quoted in the last paragraph — Phillip Moffitt — the founder of the Life Balance Institute. I’d never heard of Phillip Moffitt before, but I’d heard and/or absorbed and/or been exposed to the concepts he explores in his piece – about the difference between intentions and goals. He said what my student said, only not quite as well: “You set your intentions based on understanding what matters most to you and make a commitment to align your worldly actions with your inner values.”

So yeah. Whether I’m throwing the Tarot or blowing intentions into sticks to burn in a ritual fire, or simply lying in bed focusing on a way of being in this moment and the next and the next, somewhere along the line I became a person aware, at least on an intellectual level, of the value of setting intentions, and how doing so helps create my desired reality (both inner and outer). Easy? No. A valuable exercise? Yup.

Maybe kids, unadulterated and pure, understand instinctively that living inside intention is a “practice that is focused on how you are ‘being’ in the present moment” and that when you do, “your attention is on the ever-present ‘now’ in the constantly changing flow of life” (Moffitt again). Children are all about the “now” and no one can be in the flow like they can.

I want to live by “right intention” and I want to live with abandon, joy, and love. (I’m not at all ambitious.) So one thing I started trying to do a few years ago is this: I look into the eyes of everyone I meet, even if briefly in a check-out line. As a native New Yorker this is something I had to teach myself, for sure, having been taught that avoiding eye contact preserves a stranger’s privacy. Screw that! The results of this exercise are inevitably incredible. People can open like flowers or shut down like vaults when faced with a stranger’s open, seeing eyes. But I do try to see each person as a person. I think about the lives that stretch out behind all these people whose paths cross mine. It is not that hard to love them—on some level—and have compassion for them, their unknown plights, their unrevealed gifts. If I can look at everyone and myself with this kind of intention and love, every day, I will be a little closer to something meaningful.

My Body Tells Me So

Posted on December 20, 2013 by spiralwoman

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 432^nd 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

Posted on November 30, 2013 by spiralwoman

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

Posted on November 10, 2013 by spiralwoman

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 6^th 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.

Flee, Fly, Flu: A Detailed Description of Succumbing

Posted on November 1, 2013 by spiralwoman

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.

Hanging Out at College

Posted on October 20, 2013 by spiralwoman

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.