I lost my sunglasses on a Tuesday morning.
I remember the day because I’d been invited to chant that morning even though the group I chant with usually meets on Wednesdays and Fridays. But this week they changed the schedule because Wednesday was Independence Day.
It was only two of us that Tuesday morning, and if I’d known that in advance, I’d probably not have gone in the first place. I’m new to chanting and I feel very self-conscious without the usually substantial number of chanters to carry me along.
The day was overcast and I took my sunglasses off as I walked up to the house where we chant. I remember sticking the glasses into a shallow pocket inside my purse, noticing that they didn’t really fit well in the space but leaving them there because my host was on her porch watering her impatiens and once we started talking I just couldn’t be bothered moving them into their proper case.
After the two of us chanted, she offered me a bouquet of white Hydrangeas – maddeningly big ones – and also a piece of her homemade mixed berry tart that was red, white and blue for July 4th. I slung my purse onto my shoulder, grabbed my goodies, walked to my car, loaded everything onto the passenger seat and then drove the two minutes home.
I realized my sunglasses were missing before I walked through my own front door. I went back to the car to see if they’d dropped on the floor (they hadn’t) and then called my host to see if they’d fallen out when I’d scooped up the flowers and dessert. She couldn’t find them in the house and even went out to the sidewalk to look for them. “I don’t see them anywhere,” she said.
So I looked around my own house again, looked in the car more thoroughly, sat down and concentrated very hard on whether I really did have them with me that morning or whether I just imagined it, and, finally, decided to shelve the whole thing for a while, go for my daily walk and clear my head. I loved my sunglasses and would typically wear them to walk, even on a cloudy day like this. I missed them already.
The chanting I do is a Buddhist prayer ritual that I’ve been doing for a few months and about which I know very little. Out of the blue, a friend called and invited me to a meeting and it was one of those odd moments where I happened to say yes to something I would typically say no to. Two days later, I found myself in a stranger’s living room, sitting before an altar, attempting to recite the Lotus Sutra, which is written in some foreign tongue and broken down for English speakers into a series of syllables and punctuation marks. Thirty-two pages of syllables and punctuation marks, few of which I could wrap my tongue around, that left me feeling very incompetent and about as far away from enlightened as a soul could possibly be.
My husband has been studying Buddhism for a few years now as part of his yoga practice. What I know from him is that Buddhism is based on the laws of cause and effect. Some people refer to this as Karma, and it appears pretty simple: whatever you put out into the world is what you’ll get back. Many teachers regard this phenomenon almost literally. They say, if you want good health, spend your time ministering to sick people. If you want wealth, give your money away to people who need it. It’s never made the least bit of sense to me, but my husband insists this is how the world works.
Perhaps it was for that reason that I found myself a little mystified by my missing sunglasses. Just days before, I’d been at the beach, walking along the shoreline, when I saw a pair of black sunglasses bobbing up and down in the surf. I walked out into the water and snatched them up. They were big, stylish, Audrey Hepburn sunglasses and I imagined how happy their owner might be to get them back. So I took them to the lifeguard and he hung them on his stand. “It’s a long shot, but maybe someone will claim them,” he said.
According to the laws of cause and effect, I figured that act alone should be enough to get me my sunglasses back. But even as I paced my kitchen again, they were not materializing.
Finally, I got in the car and drove back to the chanting house.
Because of my beach experience, I wasn’t surprised to find my sunglasses lying in the street right next to my car. But when I picked them up, I was confounded; they’d been run over and mangled. As I turned them over in my hand and assessed the damage, I cursed the thoughtless driver who ran them over and I decided unequivocally that the whole Cause and Effect thing was bullshit.
However, unlike all my many calamities that have come before, I did not spend even two minutes feeling sorry for myself about this loss. Nor did I ruminate about how I might get the sunglasses fixed for free – my typical mental calisthenics on how to cash in on what the world surely owes me.
Instead, I drove directly to Sunglass Hut, bought a new pair of the exact same glasses and felt instantly happy that I didn’t waste any time stewing about my sad misfortune.
Later, much later, I felt grateful for the opportunity to see clearly that this was a little problem with an easy solution. And even later still, it occurred to me that I may have been the one to run the sunglasses over in the first place.
I had expected my chanting to provide me with my sunglasses back, like magic. But instead, what I got was an inexplicable will and desire to move quickly from sadness to joy, rather than to sit in sadness indefinitely – a desire I hope emerges again in the face of events much more important than broken sunglasses.
The mangled glasses now sit in a drawer in the kitchen where I keep my car keys. I can’t bear to throw them away, even though they are completely unwearable. My yogi husband says I’m still missing the real essence of karma: Letting go of what’s broken and moving on. Obviously, I’m not there yet. In the meantime, I chant.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Saturday, September 15, 2012
I Haven't Been Around Much Lately
Twenty years ago, my third psychologist gave me a diagnosis of Clinical Depression. Therapists #4, 5 and 6 always wrote me up as Anxiety Disorder, but I'm pretty sure it was just to be polite. (My first psychologist never diagnosed me. Plus, she only wore purple, so I feel like she doesn’t count. And my second psychologist wasn’t actually degreed – she was sort of a yogi/shaman type who sometimes practiced talk therapy. Before you roll your eyes, please know that she has passed from this life and was one of the most helpful of the bunch.)
The first time I went to my Medical Intuit (I don’t really know what to call her – Energy Healer sounds so 1970s) she said that the “information” she was getting for me was that I should start taking antidepressants. This was jarring counsel for her to pass on and she said so. “Usually my work with people involves helping them get off of antidepressants. I’ve never had this kind of advice come up for a client before,” she said. And to drive her point home, she wouldn’t accept payment for the session.
Despite years (decades, really) of professionals and paraprofessionals all suggesting that drug therapy might be just what I need, I have not ever – not even once – tried antidepressants. One reason is that I’m a hypochondriac. If there are any known side effects associated with a drug, I will surely manifest them.
Another reason is that antidepressants are known to make you gain weight and suppress your sex drive, two conditions that I am absolutely positive will never help my supposed depression.
Finally, (and this might be the clincher), I was afraid of who I’d become if I were stripped of my sadness. Or my cynicism. Or even once-removed from my negativity. These characteristics feel like my calling card. I was afraid that the friends that I have liked me because I was gloomy, not in spite of it. I was afraid I would lose my sense of humor. I believed I’d no longer be able to write.
This is the point in the story where it seems natural for me to confess that I have started antidepressants and that none of those fears materialized. But that’s not at all what happened.
I remain drug-free, but I joined a chanting group about five months ago and, almost instantaneously, everything changed. I felt my sadness and my cynicism fall away and my knee jerk reaction in almost every situation is to now see my glass full and brimming. I joke with my friend Ann that it feels like I’ve turned into her mother.
The other change is that I don’t write. I was about to say, “I can’t write,” but here I am typing away, so I know that’s not true. And it’s not so much that I don’t want to write. I couldn't be happier at this moment.
I think it’s that I don’t feel like I need to write.
Which is sad to me. But in a joyous, bubbly, brimming glass kind of way.
This blog has been a great place for me to hang out for a long time; I hope I can find my way back here again soon.
The first time I went to my Medical Intuit (I don’t really know what to call her – Energy Healer sounds so 1970s) she said that the “information” she was getting for me was that I should start taking antidepressants. This was jarring counsel for her to pass on and she said so. “Usually my work with people involves helping them get off of antidepressants. I’ve never had this kind of advice come up for a client before,” she said. And to drive her point home, she wouldn’t accept payment for the session.
Despite years (decades, really) of professionals and paraprofessionals all suggesting that drug therapy might be just what I need, I have not ever – not even once – tried antidepressants. One reason is that I’m a hypochondriac. If there are any known side effects associated with a drug, I will surely manifest them.
Another reason is that antidepressants are known to make you gain weight and suppress your sex drive, two conditions that I am absolutely positive will never help my supposed depression.
Finally, (and this might be the clincher), I was afraid of who I’d become if I were stripped of my sadness. Or my cynicism. Or even once-removed from my negativity. These characteristics feel like my calling card. I was afraid that the friends that I have liked me because I was gloomy, not in spite of it. I was afraid I would lose my sense of humor. I believed I’d no longer be able to write.
This is the point in the story where it seems natural for me to confess that I have started antidepressants and that none of those fears materialized. But that’s not at all what happened.
I remain drug-free, but I joined a chanting group about five months ago and, almost instantaneously, everything changed. I felt my sadness and my cynicism fall away and my knee jerk reaction in almost every situation is to now see my glass full and brimming. I joke with my friend Ann that it feels like I’ve turned into her mother.
The other change is that I don’t write. I was about to say, “I can’t write,” but here I am typing away, so I know that’s not true. And it’s not so much that I don’t want to write. I couldn't be happier at this moment.
I think it’s that I don’t feel like I need to write.
Which is sad to me. But in a joyous, bubbly, brimming glass kind of way.
This blog has been a great place for me to hang out for a long time; I hope I can find my way back here again soon.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Letting Go More
The other day I wrote about Letting Go and I didn’t even mention its ugly stepsister, Forgiveness. I suspect that’s because, for whatever reason, forgiveness seems like a practically impossible feat. Especially if I need to forgive someone that hasn’t sprung directly from my loins. Or if it’s just someone that should have known better. And especially especially especially if what the person did was 100% wrong.
Although it happened over a decade ago, I remember, like it was yesterday, the moment that Mike Brady stole my couch. Not really a couch – a chaise longue. And not really mine – my mother in law’s. It’s not as if he came under the cloak of darkness and scurried off with it. No, it was worse. It was broad daylight and I held the door open for him and thanked him as he and his helper loaded it into their truck.
I didn’t even really like the chaise. My husband used to call it The Psychiatrist’s Couch and I usually rolled my eyes. He brought it back from his parent’s house and I was forced to find a place for it. The carved wood frame needed refinishing and the gold satin fabric was frayed in areas. The shiny gold didn’t go with anything we owned, plus it had little embroidered bees on it (bees!) and it took a year or two before I could even accept it as part of my household, then another year before I could muster the energy to have it recovered.
“It’s going to look great,” Mike Brady told me (yes, like the Brady Bunch) the first time we met. He was my age – 30-something – and bore no resemblance at all to the namesake patriarch of my favorite childhood TV family. He said he would order the fabric and call me when the chaise was ready. He took the couch, a $400 deposit, and drove off.
Weeks and weeks went by and I didn’t hear from him. His small side-street shop was always closed and his phone always went to voicemail. I started stalking him, pushing the stroller past his store every time I took my son for a walk. Finally, one day, I happened upon his landlord who told me that Mike Brady worked evenings as a waiter at a restaurant near the park.
I called the restaurant one night and got him on the phone.
“Where’s my couch?” I asked.
“Oh, it was delayed. I should have it next week,” he said.
Next week came and went, as did the weeks following. I called the town to file a complaint and they said there was nothing they could do. I took him to small claims court, but he didn’t show up for the hearing.
“Doesn’t that mean I win?” I said to the bailiff.
“Yup,” he said. But he didn’t explain that winning didn’t mean I would get my couch back.
I tracked down Mike Brady’s bank account from my cancelled deposit check. I called the police to have him arrested. I called the courts to garnish his wages. No one could do anything.
I went to the restaurant to confront him face to face and the hostess told me he was off that night. “But he’s right across the street,” she volunteered, giving me the address of his apartment, a second-floor walk up in an old stucco row house that was painted Kelly green.
I had no business doing it, but I rang the front bell and was buzzed in. The hallway was dark and musty, the stairs unlevel. There was a door at the far end that sat ajar and I walked up to it and pushed it open, not really sure what I was going to say to Mike Brady now that I was about to step into his home.
No one stood to greet me. Mike was one of three young men sitting on a couch (not mine) amid a roomful of billowy smoke and a bong (yes, like Cheech and Chong) and when he finally realized who I was he didn’t seem the least bit rattled.
“I want my couch,” I said.
“Yeah, see, I’ve run into some problems,” he said, and started in on a skimpy explanation about how he owed his upholsterer money and my couch was being held as collateral.
“It’s a family heirloom,” I said.
“No worries,” he said. “You’ll get it back. I’ve got the money for him and he’s going to drop it off next week.”
“I don’t even care about it being reupholstered,” I said, “I just want the piece returned.”
“Yeah, sure. Call me next week if you don’t hear from me.”
Of course, I didn’t hear from him.
Over the next year, I kept a dossier that listed every event that took place, notarized letters I collected from witnesses, the certified letters I sent Mike Brady that were returned as undeliverable. I met a woman who’d also had chairs “stolen” by Mike Brady and I kept a journal of her progress as well. I went back to the police. I filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau and the Department of Consumer Affairs.
One day, I brought it all to the courthouse, where I was going to file for another hearing. The woman behind the glass was eating a bag of Cheetos and I could tell I annoyed her just by being there. She handed me a stack of forms that I filled out for 30 minutes and when I brought them back to her, she brushed off the orange Cheetos dust and ripped them in two. “Sorry, those weren’t the right forms.”
I spent that year so busy being enraged, I completely forgot that I didn’t even like the couch. Finally, when my husband could listen to me rant no more, he said, “You have to let this go.”
“But I’m right,” I told him, as if that was ever going to matter to anyone.
“Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
My husband didn’t say that. Mark Twain did. Long before my couch was stolen. There’s so much I love about that sentiment, but I now know that the analogy is incomplete. Because while it captures the sheer impossibility of the gesture, it doesn’t really get to the heart of the matter, which is that the emanating fragrance is not for the heel’s benefit, or even to make the world a sweeter smelling place. The fragrance is solely for the benefit of the violet – its crushed, crumpled self – which somehow it manages to make whole again.
Although it happened over a decade ago, I remember, like it was yesterday, the moment that Mike Brady stole my couch. Not really a couch – a chaise longue. And not really mine – my mother in law’s. It’s not as if he came under the cloak of darkness and scurried off with it. No, it was worse. It was broad daylight and I held the door open for him and thanked him as he and his helper loaded it into their truck.
I didn’t even really like the chaise. My husband used to call it The Psychiatrist’s Couch and I usually rolled my eyes. He brought it back from his parent’s house and I was forced to find a place for it. The carved wood frame needed refinishing and the gold satin fabric was frayed in areas. The shiny gold didn’t go with anything we owned, plus it had little embroidered bees on it (bees!) and it took a year or two before I could even accept it as part of my household, then another year before I could muster the energy to have it recovered.
“It’s going to look great,” Mike Brady told me (yes, like the Brady Bunch) the first time we met. He was my age – 30-something – and bore no resemblance at all to the namesake patriarch of my favorite childhood TV family. He said he would order the fabric and call me when the chaise was ready. He took the couch, a $400 deposit, and drove off.
Weeks and weeks went by and I didn’t hear from him. His small side-street shop was always closed and his phone always went to voicemail. I started stalking him, pushing the stroller past his store every time I took my son for a walk. Finally, one day, I happened upon his landlord who told me that Mike Brady worked evenings as a waiter at a restaurant near the park.
I called the restaurant one night and got him on the phone.
“Where’s my couch?” I asked.
“Oh, it was delayed. I should have it next week,” he said.
Next week came and went, as did the weeks following. I called the town to file a complaint and they said there was nothing they could do. I took him to small claims court, but he didn’t show up for the hearing.
“Doesn’t that mean I win?” I said to the bailiff.
“Yup,” he said. But he didn’t explain that winning didn’t mean I would get my couch back.
I tracked down Mike Brady’s bank account from my cancelled deposit check. I called the police to have him arrested. I called the courts to garnish his wages. No one could do anything.
I went to the restaurant to confront him face to face and the hostess told me he was off that night. “But he’s right across the street,” she volunteered, giving me the address of his apartment, a second-floor walk up in an old stucco row house that was painted Kelly green.
I had no business doing it, but I rang the front bell and was buzzed in. The hallway was dark and musty, the stairs unlevel. There was a door at the far end that sat ajar and I walked up to it and pushed it open, not really sure what I was going to say to Mike Brady now that I was about to step into his home.
No one stood to greet me. Mike was one of three young men sitting on a couch (not mine) amid a roomful of billowy smoke and a bong (yes, like Cheech and Chong) and when he finally realized who I was he didn’t seem the least bit rattled.
“I want my couch,” I said.
“Yeah, see, I’ve run into some problems,” he said, and started in on a skimpy explanation about how he owed his upholsterer money and my couch was being held as collateral.
“It’s a family heirloom,” I said.
“No worries,” he said. “You’ll get it back. I’ve got the money for him and he’s going to drop it off next week.”
“I don’t even care about it being reupholstered,” I said, “I just want the piece returned.”
“Yeah, sure. Call me next week if you don’t hear from me.”
Of course, I didn’t hear from him.
Over the next year, I kept a dossier that listed every event that took place, notarized letters I collected from witnesses, the certified letters I sent Mike Brady that were returned as undeliverable. I met a woman who’d also had chairs “stolen” by Mike Brady and I kept a journal of her progress as well. I went back to the police. I filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau and the Department of Consumer Affairs.
One day, I brought it all to the courthouse, where I was going to file for another hearing. The woman behind the glass was eating a bag of Cheetos and I could tell I annoyed her just by being there. She handed me a stack of forms that I filled out for 30 minutes and when I brought them back to her, she brushed off the orange Cheetos dust and ripped them in two. “Sorry, those weren’t the right forms.”
I spent that year so busy being enraged, I completely forgot that I didn’t even like the couch. Finally, when my husband could listen to me rant no more, he said, “You have to let this go.”
“But I’m right,” I told him, as if that was ever going to matter to anyone.
“Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
My husband didn’t say that. Mark Twain did. Long before my couch was stolen. There’s so much I love about that sentiment, but I now know that the analogy is incomplete. Because while it captures the sheer impossibility of the gesture, it doesn’t really get to the heart of the matter, which is that the emanating fragrance is not for the heel’s benefit, or even to make the world a sweeter smelling place. The fragrance is solely for the benefit of the violet – its crushed, crumpled self – which somehow it manages to make whole again.
Monday, July 30, 2012
The Difference Between How Children and Grown-ups Think
Child: When is my skateboard going to be here?
Grown-up: I’m not sure. It’s coming by UPS.
Child: What time does UPS come?
Grown-up: UPS usually delivers around 10 in the morning or around 4 in the afternoon. So, expect it to come around 4.
Child: Why 4?
Grown-up: Because then if it comes at 10 you’ll be really happy.
Child: If I expect it to come at 10 and it comes at 10 I’ll be really happy.
Grown-up: I’m not sure. It’s coming by UPS.
Child: What time does UPS come?
Grown-up: UPS usually delivers around 10 in the morning or around 4 in the afternoon. So, expect it to come around 4.
Child: Why 4?
Grown-up: Because then if it comes at 10 you’ll be really happy.
Child: If I expect it to come at 10 and it comes at 10 I’ll be really happy.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Everything I Believe About Shopping (In A Single Sentence)
I was recently asked whether I prefer to shop for clothes online than in stores and in some ways I do because clothes shopping seems like a completely frivolous activity that I never have time for (even though I regularly need clothes, and they do need to somehow be acquired) so if I’m looking for something in particular, I might go online and check out several different sources for the single item, or, like my recent Zappos experience, where I thought it would be more efficient to find a pair of summer sandals by ordering 40 pair of shoes in varying sizes and colors and having them spread out all over my living room (a phenomenon my husband described as a shoegasm) so I could walk around the house in them and try them on with some of my clothes and get the opinions of visiting friends (one of whom needed to return multiple times because my head was reeling with too many shoe choices and I was beginning to have an identity crisis), and then send back whatever I didn’t want (which was all but one pair – shoes that changed my life for a few weeks but that now feel a little too stretched out and which I may send back as well), a process that, at it’s completion, proved to be wholly inefficient and stressful in a different way than shopping in a store, where, yes, you can touch things and see true colors in real time, but where you also have the opportunity to be struck by a certain something that you may not have been looking for at all, a prospect that scares me because I spend so little of my life browsing that the sheer act of visually taking in all that’s available in the world sends me into a kind of manic state and I end up buying far more than what I was looking for – far more than what I need – and, like any kind of mania, leaves me feeling exhausted and blue after the climax has passed, so that, for me, any in-store clothes shopping is best accomplished the way I did it yesterday, which was like this: I wandered into a clothing boutique at the Jersey Shore (looking for something more interesting to wear over my bathing suit than the cargo shorts I currently had on) and quickly eyed all the racks for a starting point, landing on a long, flowy, blue-and-green batik slipover dress that was cut in a way that would accentuate my lean torso and de-accentuate my child-bearing-hips; I pulled it off the rack, took it into the dressing room, slipped off my shorts, slid the dress over my bathing suit, looked in the mirror, stepped out of the dressing room to look in another mirror and also to give a sales clerk or another customer the opportunity to see me in the dress and spontaneously offer that it was the perfect dress for me (which no one did), returned to the dressing room and into my regular clothes and headed for the cashier, dress over arm, quickly scanning the rest of the store, not so much to find a different dress, but in the way that some old philosopher I’d once read (Sartre? Kierkegaard?) described the act of looking for a friend in a coffee shop – how you see everyone’s face not for what it is, but only to determine that it’s not who you’re looking for – and then, after that brief 30-second scan, satisfied that there were no other contenders, I paid for the dress and left the store, the whole process taking under five minutes, and had only a slight amount of buyer’s remorse as I walked up the boardwalk, remorse that completely dissipated later when I put the dress on and my husband told me how awesome I looked, which is really all we’re looking for as the fruit of our shopping sprees – aren’t we – someone to think that we’re awesome.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Letting Go
I’m wondering why, on my morning walk, I even started thinking about a certain exclusive pre-school that sat atop a certain bluff in a certain riverfront town. A preschool that, 14 years ago, decided that my then-three-year-old wasn’t advanced enough to join all of his friends that September in their hand-picked, crunchy granola classroom and benefit from the finest progressive pre-k education a co-op could offer. I hadn’t thought about that school, or that incident, in over a decade – I had certainly stopped ruminating about it long before that. But this morning, as I leaned down to pick up some discarded frozen yogurt cups on the corner – cups that I’d noticed on my walk the day before and now realized were not going to get into a trash container any other way – I felt very sorry for myself because it was so hard for me to bend forward to retrieve them.
My stiff midsection made me think about calling my friend Suzanne, who happens to live in that certain riverfront town, and tell her about my body woes, because she is a massage therapist and acupuncturist and also because she understands my particular lot in life, which is that I hold my emotions so tightly in check that they wreck havoc on my musculoskeletal system. If I called Suzanne, I would have told her about the woman I’ve been seeing who does “energy work” and how, after two sessions with her, having embarked on a process of (in her words) unfurling all the tension and stress within, I can now barely bend forward and do not feel in the least bit unfurled, but rather achy and stiff, as if I’ve aged 15 years in the last four weeks.
But as I continued to walk, my mind quickly jumped from that Suzanne to a different Suzanne, one who also lives in that certain riverfront town, and whom I happened to run into a few weeks ago on a train ride into Manhattan. I hadn’t seen This Other Suzanne for almost as long as the preschool incident, because her daughter was one of my son’s friends who did get accepted to that certain exclusive pre-school and not long after that, we moved. This Other Suzanne’s daughter just finished her senior year in high school and was off to college somewhere, I forget where, but I’m sure it’s someplace fabulous, because This Other Suzanne’s daughter was fluent in two languages by age three and has a rather unusual name (after the wife of a famous painter), but most importantly, she attended a certain very exclusive preschool.
I didn’t spend a minute of my walk trying to remember the name of the daughter’s college or the name of the painter for whose wife she was named, but instead turned my attention quickly to a certain exclusive college that The Teenager wants to apply to Early Decision, in the hopes that it might better the chance of his acceptance from under 10% to perhaps 12 or 13 percent. This is exactly the type of college I have not wanted The Teenager to apply to at all because I have developed, over the years, a reverse prejudice about Schools Like That, and have deemed them, in my mind, haughty and elitist and basically just institutions that manufacture assholes. I hold this opinion strongly and deeply, even though many, many of my close friends went to Schools Like That and not a one of them is an asshole.
Yet, on my walk, I began to have a fantasy of The Teenager receiving an acceptance letter from a certain exclusive college and rather than worrying about whether or not he would turn into an asshole, I immediately imagined taking a picture of that acceptance letter and mailing it to a certain exclusive preschool along with a simple handwritten note containing only a certain vulgar two-word phrase that is meant to convey both disdain and superiority.
And the prospect of that made me smile.
As I was replaying my fantasy over and over, imagining my note being read by the self-same woman who, 14 years ago, thought it was reasonable to judge three-year-old children on their “potential,” I found myself becoming really excited by the prospect of The Teenager getting into that certain exclusive college, largely so I could thumb my nose at a woman whose name I will never remember and whose face I wouldn’t recognize in a million years.
And then I wondered whether, maybe, just maybe, the Energy Healer’s work isn’t working because I have a tendency to hold on so tightly to old resentments and wrongdoings. Whether I can’t bend forward because there are too many things my muscles won’t let go of; that perhaps they’re forever tethered by my every longstanding rebuff.
I had to wonder whether the frozen yogurt cups were left on my corner for A Reason. Whether some cosmic force knew I would lean down to pick them up and they would remind me how easy it is to get rid of garbage that’s not your own, and how it really shouldn’t be any harder to get rid of your own garbage, but, damn, it sure is.
And how letting go of something that’s been a part of you for a long time, even something that you know doesn’t belong there anymore, feels a little like being broken.
My stiff midsection made me think about calling my friend Suzanne, who happens to live in that certain riverfront town, and tell her about my body woes, because she is a massage therapist and acupuncturist and also because she understands my particular lot in life, which is that I hold my emotions so tightly in check that they wreck havoc on my musculoskeletal system. If I called Suzanne, I would have told her about the woman I’ve been seeing who does “energy work” and how, after two sessions with her, having embarked on a process of (in her words) unfurling all the tension and stress within, I can now barely bend forward and do not feel in the least bit unfurled, but rather achy and stiff, as if I’ve aged 15 years in the last four weeks.
But as I continued to walk, my mind quickly jumped from that Suzanne to a different Suzanne, one who also lives in that certain riverfront town, and whom I happened to run into a few weeks ago on a train ride into Manhattan. I hadn’t seen This Other Suzanne for almost as long as the preschool incident, because her daughter was one of my son’s friends who did get accepted to that certain exclusive pre-school and not long after that, we moved. This Other Suzanne’s daughter just finished her senior year in high school and was off to college somewhere, I forget where, but I’m sure it’s someplace fabulous, because This Other Suzanne’s daughter was fluent in two languages by age three and has a rather unusual name (after the wife of a famous painter), but most importantly, she attended a certain very exclusive preschool.
I didn’t spend a minute of my walk trying to remember the name of the daughter’s college or the name of the painter for whose wife she was named, but instead turned my attention quickly to a certain exclusive college that The Teenager wants to apply to Early Decision, in the hopes that it might better the chance of his acceptance from under 10% to perhaps 12 or 13 percent. This is exactly the type of college I have not wanted The Teenager to apply to at all because I have developed, over the years, a reverse prejudice about Schools Like That, and have deemed them, in my mind, haughty and elitist and basically just institutions that manufacture assholes. I hold this opinion strongly and deeply, even though many, many of my close friends went to Schools Like That and not a one of them is an asshole.
Yet, on my walk, I began to have a fantasy of The Teenager receiving an acceptance letter from a certain exclusive college and rather than worrying about whether or not he would turn into an asshole, I immediately imagined taking a picture of that acceptance letter and mailing it to a certain exclusive preschool along with a simple handwritten note containing only a certain vulgar two-word phrase that is meant to convey both disdain and superiority.
And the prospect of that made me smile.
As I was replaying my fantasy over and over, imagining my note being read by the self-same woman who, 14 years ago, thought it was reasonable to judge three-year-old children on their “potential,” I found myself becoming really excited by the prospect of The Teenager getting into that certain exclusive college, largely so I could thumb my nose at a woman whose name I will never remember and whose face I wouldn’t recognize in a million years.
And then I wondered whether, maybe, just maybe, the Energy Healer’s work isn’t working because I have a tendency to hold on so tightly to old resentments and wrongdoings. Whether I can’t bend forward because there are too many things my muscles won’t let go of; that perhaps they’re forever tethered by my every longstanding rebuff.
I had to wonder whether the frozen yogurt cups were left on my corner for A Reason. Whether some cosmic force knew I would lean down to pick them up and they would remind me how easy it is to get rid of garbage that’s not your own, and how it really shouldn’t be any harder to get rid of your own garbage, but, damn, it sure is.
And how letting go of something that’s been a part of you for a long time, even something that you know doesn’t belong there anymore, feels a little like being broken.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Meta Physics
Yesterday I learned that The Teenager has a seemingly irreparable conflict in his schedule for senior year. Two classes that he really wants to take meet only during the same period. One of the classes is AP Physics C Part 2. I’d certainly like him to get the classes he wants, but if I never have to know about another physics project for the rest of my life, I may possibly die a happy woman.
Physics projects have aged me. Is that a Law of Physics?
The Teenager is driving home from the beach right now with a full sized catapult in the back of the car. The catapult that was due last Friday and built, for the most part, Thursday night. The catapult that needed to be designed and constructed to hurl an egg an unknown distance to hit the instructor. A distance that could be anywhere from 20 to 50 feet.
The catapult was the final exam for AP Physics C Part 1. The students had already spent the year designing and building other irksome projects. A balsa wood tower that had to adhere to height, weight and girth requirements and also be able to sustain 30 lbs. A mechanical helicopter that needed to fly and remain airborne for at least 60 seconds.
Both feats were miraculously accomplished by boys who, I’m fairly certain, have no idea how to make a bed.
I try not to get involved in these projects, but when the assemblage takes place in my home, the stress permeates the premises. I am a sponge, and I absorb any and all angst within my purview.
Unlike the tower, where I was called upon to fetch more balsa wood, replenish glue-gun glue and procure Venti Lattes, or, in the case of the helicopter, order a sanctioned building kit (replete with 23-page instruction manual) to be delivered overnight and secure three different types of modeling glue, I was not asked for any assistance at all with the catapult – a shame, really, because the project reeked of Monty Python to me, and, as a result, warmed my heart. In fact, when The Teenager’s lab partner jokingly intimated that they were just going to buy a catapult and call it a day, I didn’t even try and dissuade them. “I don’t want to spend countless hours building this thing . What a colossal waste of time,” he said. And I was like, Yeah, I could think of better things to do.
So, wasn’t I surprised when, two weeks ago, they came lumbering in with two-by-fours (sorry, bad pun) and rope, and headed to the basement workbench? They spent a chunk of time building the base that night and, once complete, left it, in typical teenager fashion, untouched for nine days until the eve of its due date.
“It’s almost halfway built,” said The Teenager. “We’ll be able to bang out the rest of it really fast.”
I won’t bore you with their hapless setbacks, I will just say this: The whole point (it seems) of a physics project, is to give yourself time to make the types of modifications necessary when you can’t get your egg to sail more than 18 feet. Time that simply does not exist when you begin the project in earnest at 7 o’clock the night before it’s due.
“Is it the torque or the trajectory?” I asked, pacing the basement and trying to sound helpful but, in truth, barely knowing what either of those things mean. By this time it was almost 11 o’clock and I wanted to go to sleep.
Unfortunately, one of my many shortcomings is that I can’t sleep when a catapult is being built in my midst.
Every time they needed to test the catapult, they had to haul it up the narrow basement stairway and around the island in the kitchen, and out the back door to the yard. They'd set it up on the driveway and let it rip. The egg would barely make 20 feet. They’d then haul it back down to the basement again to make adjustments.
The Teenager and his lab partner argue a lot. They’ve been friends for years and they’re like two old men on a park bench with nothing in the world better to do than contradict each other. Much of the building session was spent this way, with both of them taking seats on the patio, trying to reason and cajole each other to modify this way instead of that.
“We need a longer throwing arm. We need to get to a lumber yard,” one of them finally declared.
“There are no lumber yards open at this time of night,” I told them. “You’ll have to use what you can find around the house.”
They texted other classmates to check on their progress. They replaced their wooden arm with a lacrosse stick. They barreled through my ($5.99/dozen organic!) eggs.
Splat, splat, splat. My driveway was full of yolk. None of it landing further than 22 feet.
“Forget it,” said The Teenager. “Twenty-two feet will have to be good enough. I’m going to bed.”
But his lab partner talked him into further adjustments and modifications while I lay tossing and turning on what may as well have been a bed of nails. Is there anything in the medicine cabinet for a Catapult-Induced Sleep Disorder?
Eventually, they too called it quits.
Bleary the next morning, I asked him how it went. My past experience with The Teenager is that things always seem to work out. I somehow let sleep overtake me and when I wake up, the thousand page paper has been written or the minutia-laden architecture model has been constructed. I don’t ever believe these elfin surprises will materialize, but they always do.
“The egg never landed beyond 22 feet,” he said in his gloomy voice, a situation we both knew would not bode well for his grade.
Yet, six hours, eight two-by-fours, two bungee cords, one lacrosse stick and two fresh eggs later, catapult magic happened. An egg was launched and landed inches before the teacher, a distance of over 49 feet.
There is no scientific explanation as to how this was possible. How someone can repeat a process dozens of times and get the same lousy outcome every time, and then, finally, that one time that it counts, everything falls into place. Is that a Law of Physics, too? Or is it something bigger, like a blessing, or just good old-fashioned grace?
I know it’s too much to hope that the schedule conflict magically resolves itself in a similar way. I mean, it’s just not possible. Everyone has already told me so.
Physics projects have aged me. Is that a Law of Physics?
The Teenager is driving home from the beach right now with a full sized catapult in the back of the car. The catapult that was due last Friday and built, for the most part, Thursday night. The catapult that needed to be designed and constructed to hurl an egg an unknown distance to hit the instructor. A distance that could be anywhere from 20 to 50 feet.
The catapult was the final exam for AP Physics C Part 1. The students had already spent the year designing and building other irksome projects. A balsa wood tower that had to adhere to height, weight and girth requirements and also be able to sustain 30 lbs. A mechanical helicopter that needed to fly and remain airborne for at least 60 seconds.
Both feats were miraculously accomplished by boys who, I’m fairly certain, have no idea how to make a bed.
I try not to get involved in these projects, but when the assemblage takes place in my home, the stress permeates the premises. I am a sponge, and I absorb any and all angst within my purview.
Unlike the tower, where I was called upon to fetch more balsa wood, replenish glue-gun glue and procure Venti Lattes, or, in the case of the helicopter, order a sanctioned building kit (replete with 23-page instruction manual) to be delivered overnight and secure three different types of modeling glue, I was not asked for any assistance at all with the catapult – a shame, really, because the project reeked of Monty Python to me, and, as a result, warmed my heart. In fact, when The Teenager’s lab partner jokingly intimated that they were just going to buy a catapult and call it a day, I didn’t even try and dissuade them. “I don’t want to spend countless hours building this thing . What a colossal waste of time,” he said. And I was like, Yeah, I could think of better things to do.
So, wasn’t I surprised when, two weeks ago, they came lumbering in with two-by-fours (sorry, bad pun) and rope, and headed to the basement workbench? They spent a chunk of time building the base that night and, once complete, left it, in typical teenager fashion, untouched for nine days until the eve of its due date.
“It’s almost halfway built,” said The Teenager. “We’ll be able to bang out the rest of it really fast.”
I won’t bore you with their hapless setbacks, I will just say this: The whole point (it seems) of a physics project, is to give yourself time to make the types of modifications necessary when you can’t get your egg to sail more than 18 feet. Time that simply does not exist when you begin the project in earnest at 7 o’clock the night before it’s due.
“Is it the torque or the trajectory?” I asked, pacing the basement and trying to sound helpful but, in truth, barely knowing what either of those things mean. By this time it was almost 11 o’clock and I wanted to go to sleep.
Unfortunately, one of my many shortcomings is that I can’t sleep when a catapult is being built in my midst.
Every time they needed to test the catapult, they had to haul it up the narrow basement stairway and around the island in the kitchen, and out the back door to the yard. They'd set it up on the driveway and let it rip. The egg would barely make 20 feet. They’d then haul it back down to the basement again to make adjustments.
The Teenager and his lab partner argue a lot. They’ve been friends for years and they’re like two old men on a park bench with nothing in the world better to do than contradict each other. Much of the building session was spent this way, with both of them taking seats on the patio, trying to reason and cajole each other to modify this way instead of that.
“We need a longer throwing arm. We need to get to a lumber yard,” one of them finally declared.
“There are no lumber yards open at this time of night,” I told them. “You’ll have to use what you can find around the house.”
They texted other classmates to check on their progress. They replaced their wooden arm with a lacrosse stick. They barreled through my ($5.99/dozen organic!) eggs.
Splat, splat, splat. My driveway was full of yolk. None of it landing further than 22 feet.
“Forget it,” said The Teenager. “Twenty-two feet will have to be good enough. I’m going to bed.”
But his lab partner talked him into further adjustments and modifications while I lay tossing and turning on what may as well have been a bed of nails. Is there anything in the medicine cabinet for a Catapult-Induced Sleep Disorder?
Eventually, they too called it quits.
Bleary the next morning, I asked him how it went. My past experience with The Teenager is that things always seem to work out. I somehow let sleep overtake me and when I wake up, the thousand page paper has been written or the minutia-laden architecture model has been constructed. I don’t ever believe these elfin surprises will materialize, but they always do.
“The egg never landed beyond 22 feet,” he said in his gloomy voice, a situation we both knew would not bode well for his grade.
Yet, six hours, eight two-by-fours, two bungee cords, one lacrosse stick and two fresh eggs later, catapult magic happened. An egg was launched and landed inches before the teacher, a distance of over 49 feet.
There is no scientific explanation as to how this was possible. How someone can repeat a process dozens of times and get the same lousy outcome every time, and then, finally, that one time that it counts, everything falls into place. Is that a Law of Physics, too? Or is it something bigger, like a blessing, or just good old-fashioned grace?
I know it’s too much to hope that the schedule conflict magically resolves itself in a similar way. I mean, it’s just not possible. Everyone has already told me so.
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