A few years ago, my family and I signed up to deliver Thanksgiving meals to shut-ins. I’m not sure what prompted me to do this, as most of my community service involves writing copy or writing a check. But this was something we could do as a family and that seemed like a good idea. And, at the time, it was.
In fact, we did it the next year and the next. Last year, we didn’t do it. But this year we signed up again.
Somehow, this turned into the worst decision I’ve ever made.
Everything about yesterday's meal delivery expedition was a nightmare, and what’s worse is it was really no different than it had been years before.
Had I forgotten that when they say, “Show up at 10,” they really mean, “Show up at 10 but be prepared to wait forever until the meals are all assembled and ready for delivery”? This year, we waited until 11:30 to get our meals, which was the time I had hoped we’d be finished delivering and on our way home.
Had I forgotten that the list of turkey dinner recipients do not live in my town, but in a neighboring town … an unfamiliar neighboring town … an enormous, unfamiliar neighboring town, one that is largely poor and full of old brick apartment buildings on streets where there’s nowhere to park and you wouldn’t want to leave your car even if you could? Or that the list of 22 addresses they give you are in alphabetical order by street name, not grouped by geography, so that entering them into your GPS system might have you criss-crossing the enormous town five…seven...fourteen times before you hit every address? Why didn't I remember to bring a map?
Had I forgotten that some of the addresses don’t even show up on the GPS? As in, it has no record of them. And, yes, you’re given a phone number for each residence, but even if someone answers the phone, and speaks in an English that you can understand through a cell phone, they will probably not be able to give you directions from where you are to where they are. This has happened every time we’ve gone delivering. Why would I think this year would be different?
So after waiting 90 minutes to get our delivery meals and then spending another 30 minutes trying to get my GPS to plot the most efficient route for all the stops, we had already spent two hours on a task that I’d hoped would be finished in that amount of time. And we hadn't even started delivering yet.
When we were given our address list, the Volunteer Coordinator said to me, “Oh, this isn’t too many…should take you 30-45 minutes.” More lies. It took hours. And there was much failure along the way.
There were addresses we were never able to find. And sometimes people simply weren’t home. Once we left only one meal at an apartment that was supposed to receive four.
Besides Kvetcher, my main role was Driver. I’d send my husband and sons into the apartment buildings while I sat double-parked on the street. Sometimes it felt like an eternity for them to deliver one or two dinners. “What’s your status?” I would text them over and over. “Almost done,” they’d say. But it never felt fast enough for me.
I did not want to be here this year. We’d put our turkey in the oven at 8 in the morning and left two hours later, thinking that we could resume basting at lunchtime. I had been cranky the day before and had not done any pre-prep beyond peeling and slicing some carrots. The table wasn’t set. I hadn’t had time to have someone give me a primer on how to make gravy (something that would haunt me in the hours to come).
By 1 o’clock, my kids were hungry. (This has also happened every year…why don’t I remember to bring food along?) My husband was lamenting that he could have gone to his morning yoga class after all. We all wanted to go home, but we couldn’t. We still had over a dozen meals to deliver and every single place we went felt like there was a big obstacle to overcome.
I cursed while I drove. My older son patted my leg and told me to relax, which just made things worse. My husband gently mocked me: “How rude of all these poor people to live so far apart when we have a big Thanksgiving turkey at home that needs tending.”
His mockery was right on.
When we arrived at 404 Munn Street, I actually took the meal into the building myself while my husband and the boys went to 400 Munn Street with other meals. The building attendant let me right in, the apartment was easy to find and a woman answered the door right away. She was probably a nurse or live-in aide for the resident, who was confined to a wheelchair. The shut-in rolled herself out from the kitchen and greeted me. She was heavyset and dressed only in a thin, pink housecoat. A live parrot sat on her shoulder.
“I like your parrot,” I said, and she said something very warm and effusive in return, something that, for one split second, made me feel like this whole miserable morning was worthwhile. But the feeling disappeared as soon as I walked out of the building.
I rarely embrace Thanksgiving. Even though it’s a National Day of Gratitude, for me, it always feels like a Personal Day of Loss. A time when I’m reminded that the people I wish were with me, no longer are, and those feelings usually are too big for me to get past. It’s much easier for me to feel gratitude the other 364 days of the year. In fact, this is the main reason I was moved to start delivering Thanksgiving meals in the first place.
In past years, delivering meals felt great. It was fraught with the same frustrations, but I felt my heart grow in the process. This year, nothing grew but my temper.
We finally got home at 2PM, our turkey having cooked a only smidge longer than it should have. We then whipped together an entire Thanksgiving meal – stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato fries, Brussels sprouts, sautéed carrots and (epically failed) gravy – in an hour. The meal was incredible – possibly the best we’ve ever made and if there were an unintended gift of my morning, it was that sitting and eating Thanksgiving dinner this year was the unexpected highlight of my day.
Friday, November 23, 2012
Sunday, October 28, 2012
College Schmollege
There’s a lot of talk about college here these days.
I went to a state school. Not a big state university, but a mid-size college in my own state that had a reputation as a great teacher’s college and was driving distance from my parents’ home. I chose it largely because I liked the way the buildings looked in the brochure.
Last night, after working long and hard on his essay supplements for his Early Decision application, The Teenager asked me whether I’d had a good experience at MSU. We happen to live in the same town as my Alma-mater and its reputation here is very different than when I was growing up. It's used as a generic diss that kids hurl at one another at the high school. “If you don’t take any AP classes, you’re going to end up at MSU.” The way I threaten my kids' about their laziness by promising them a life of working at Burger King.
I never considered MSU a bottom of the barrel school – not when I went there, and not afterwards – that is, until I moved back here as an adult. The kids I went to high school with were not well off and many were downright poor. Several of my friends never went to college at all and those who did went mostly to big state schools where the tuition was much more affordable. Even when I worked in Manhattan with some of the smartest people I’ve ever met – all graduates of prestigious private colleges, many of them Ivies – I was not embarrassed and never felt the need to make excuses for my education.
But here, where I live now, I am truly in the minority. Most every one of my peers has at least one degree, many several, from schools that currently boast an acceptance rate of under 20 percent. When it becomes apparent that I need to share where I went to college with a new acquaintance, I often preface it by saying that my dad died when I was a high school senior and I needed to stay close to home, but the truth is, even if he’d survived his cancer, I doubt I would have gone anywhere else.
When I was in high school, I didn’t want to go to college and my grades and behavior reflected that. I wanted to leave home, get an apartment, get a job and be independent. I didn’t care what the job was, only that I wouldn’t need to wear cowl neck sweaters or pumps.
When The Teenager asked about MSU, I began by getting all philosophical. “I believe that the education is up to the kid,” I said. “You can be a go-getter in a mediocre school and if you take advantage of all the opportunities there for you, you’ll get a really good education. Conversely, [I actually use words like that with The Teenager in informal conversation, even after SATs are behind us] you can go to a great school and if you just plod through it and don’t grab what’s available to you, you’ll get an ‘ok’ education, but probably not a great one.”
He was expecting me to tell him what a go-getter I was; I knew that by how surprised he seemed by what I said next. “I didn’t take advantage of much of anything when I was in college. I got an ok education at MSU, but it could have been much, much better. I wasn’t that interested in being a student. I was too concerned with learning how to be a grown up.”
And then, in a voice that was kinder than any he’s used with me since this whole, God-awful college process has started, he said, “Well, you’re a good grown up.”
Although I’m not entirely sure he meant it as a compliment.
I went to a state school. Not a big state university, but a mid-size college in my own state that had a reputation as a great teacher’s college and was driving distance from my parents’ home. I chose it largely because I liked the way the buildings looked in the brochure.
Last night, after working long and hard on his essay supplements for his Early Decision application, The Teenager asked me whether I’d had a good experience at MSU. We happen to live in the same town as my Alma-mater and its reputation here is very different than when I was growing up. It's used as a generic diss that kids hurl at one another at the high school. “If you don’t take any AP classes, you’re going to end up at MSU.” The way I threaten my kids' about their laziness by promising them a life of working at Burger King.
I never considered MSU a bottom of the barrel school – not when I went there, and not afterwards – that is, until I moved back here as an adult. The kids I went to high school with were not well off and many were downright poor. Several of my friends never went to college at all and those who did went mostly to big state schools where the tuition was much more affordable. Even when I worked in Manhattan with some of the smartest people I’ve ever met – all graduates of prestigious private colleges, many of them Ivies – I was not embarrassed and never felt the need to make excuses for my education.
But here, where I live now, I am truly in the minority. Most every one of my peers has at least one degree, many several, from schools that currently boast an acceptance rate of under 20 percent. When it becomes apparent that I need to share where I went to college with a new acquaintance, I often preface it by saying that my dad died when I was a high school senior and I needed to stay close to home, but the truth is, even if he’d survived his cancer, I doubt I would have gone anywhere else.
When I was in high school, I didn’t want to go to college and my grades and behavior reflected that. I wanted to leave home, get an apartment, get a job and be independent. I didn’t care what the job was, only that I wouldn’t need to wear cowl neck sweaters or pumps.
When The Teenager asked about MSU, I began by getting all philosophical. “I believe that the education is up to the kid,” I said. “You can be a go-getter in a mediocre school and if you take advantage of all the opportunities there for you, you’ll get a really good education. Conversely, [I actually use words like that with The Teenager in informal conversation, even after SATs are behind us] you can go to a great school and if you just plod through it and don’t grab what’s available to you, you’ll get an ‘ok’ education, but probably not a great one.”
He was expecting me to tell him what a go-getter I was; I knew that by how surprised he seemed by what I said next. “I didn’t take advantage of much of anything when I was in college. I got an ok education at MSU, but it could have been much, much better. I wasn’t that interested in being a student. I was too concerned with learning how to be a grown up.”
And then, in a voice that was kinder than any he’s used with me since this whole, God-awful college process has started, he said, “Well, you’re a good grown up.”
Although I’m not entirely sure he meant it as a compliment.
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Hello, Muddah...
This summer, my 12-year-old went to Skateboard Camp for a week, an institution that should have its own Parent Support Group. There’s a 100-page waiver you need to sign before they’ll accept your child and every time you call the camp, the person answering your questions sounds like she’s 15.
“The counselors are all 16-year-old skaters that drink Red Bull all day,” my friend told me after I sent in my deposit. Her son went there last year. “He said it was the best week of his life.”
I thought she was exaggerating, but when I told a neighbor where my son was going, she said, “Oh, is that the place that serves Coco-Puffs and Red Bull for breakfast?”
My 12-year-old had never been to sleep-away camp, indeed he rarely leaves the house altogether. Like me, I think he does a quick cost/benefit analysis of the types of compromises necessary once you step out your front door and opts for the only sane choice: stay home. So when he told me he wanted to go to this camp – begged me, actually – I felt almost morally obligated to say yes. This could break the agoraphobia chain, I thought, ever hopeful that my offspring do not end up like me.
It’s not as if I keep my family on lockdown, but I do feel more at ease when everyone is in the house. The 12-year-old, usually happy to oblige, was really throwing me with this newfound adventurism of his. In the weeks leading up to his departure, I managed my anxiety in my usual way – denial. I simply pretended he wasn’t going anywhere. Then, the night before he left, I quickly wrote his name on all his clothes, jammed them into a bag and fanatically began to hope for the best.
The camp was three-and-a-half hours away, and he and his friends arranged to take the chartered camp bus from a nearby shopping mall. We arrived at the designated spot in the parking lot – Area 8 between Sears and Macy’s – and I stood, slack-jawed, as my 4’11” skater boarded the bus with all manner of riffraff and ne’er-do-wells, many of them hovering near 6’ tall.
As it happened, my best friend’s son was also at his first time sleep-away experience at a different camp that same week. That boy is younger than my 12-year-old and he went to a Jewish camp that my friend attended when she was a girl. Aside from receiving incessant online postings of photographs and emails throughout the week, my friend also managed to extract specific information about her son’s experience through several calls to the camp’s main office.
“He’s having a great time,” she reported to me. I envied not only her information gathering skills, but also that she was able to sleep easily at night, knowing that her son was being well cared for.
I was a part of no such info-loop. I called the camp to check on him. "I'm sure he's doing fine," said the 15-year-old.
"I didn't even tell you his name," I said.
"If he'd gotten hurt, you would have been contacted." Click.
I had let my son take his cell phone to camp with the promise that he’d text me each night and let me know he was ok. “If you could let me know whether you like it there, too, I'd be grateful,” I’d said, knowing he was a man of few words when it comes to texting.
I received one text from him on his second night at camp (“I’m still alive”). Then, another, days later (“Not dead”), but only after I’d called the camp office again and beseeched them to have my son contact me.
After seven days had elapsed, I returned to the Area 8 drop off spot at the mall. The first kid off the bus had his casted arm in a blue sling. I was prepared for the rest of the passengers to look like the walking wounded, but they didn’t…they just looked scrappy and tired.
I never did learn much about my son’s first week away from home (I guess, what happens at skateboard camp stays at skateboard camp), but what I did learn was this:
• Save for a few eating breaks, all they did was skate from 9 in the morning until 10 at night.
• There was only one counselor for a bunk of 15 boys. He was 18 years old and the boys considered him “an adult.”
• The highly touted air-conditioning in the cabins barely worked.
• The highly touted swimming pool was “gross.”
• No one showered.
• My son wore a single pair of socks all week long.
• The toilet in the cabin didn’t work, yet that didn’t stop most of the boys from taking a dump in it anyway.
And, yes…it was the best week he’d ever had.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Happy Birthday, Teenager
As a tribute to The Teenager's 18th birthday, I am reposting what might be my favorite blog post about him. It was my 10th blog post, written way back in 2009, and even though Facebook has gone through a half dozen redesigns and incarnations since then, he still refuses to re-accept me as a Facebook Friend. Which is probably for the best.
This was written during what I consider Facebook's heyday, when all status updates appeared in the third person:
I was just banned from Facebook. Not from the whole site, but from anything even remotely interesting on my son’s page. I didn’t even know he could do that, but he did, right before my eyes, and he narrated his withholdings in an onscreen chat.
It started when he took issue with my Status Line. Jessica was just mocked by her 14-year-old for not knowing the name of The Immigrant Song, I wrote.
He said that event wasn’t a big enough deal to warrant a “stat.”
“Oh? Since when are you the boss of my status lines?” I typed to him.
“Since now,” he typed. And then, “I’m blocking you from all of my stat lines.”
“Why?”
“AND I’m blocking you from all of my Wall Notes.”
“Because you don’t like my status line?”
“I just blocked you from seeing anything about me,” he typed. Then added this:
=)
And then the remarkable happened. He left the screen of his laptop and came marching in to my office to have an actual face-to-face conversation. “Your status lines are SO STUPID!” he said, nudging me out of the way of my own keyboard. He scrolled down my Profile Page. “Look! Look at this!”
Jessica experiences an inexplicable glee when she sees the geese just standing on top of a frozen Edgemont Pond.
“Why don’t you just say: Jessica likes geese?”
Jessica is taking the new popcorn maker for a test drive.
“This should say: Jessica is eating popcorn.”
Jessica is worried that the gecko is depressed.
“This is so stupid it shouldn’t even be up there at all!”
I guess I’d have to agree with that.
Jessica loves discussing minutiae...it is her downfall.
"Just write, 'Jessica loves to use words that no one can pronounce,'” he said. "That’s what you’re really saying."
Is this my comeuppance for making my mother walk three car lengths behind me for my entire adolescence? (Everyone can pronounce minutiae – it’s just hard to spell.)
Have I mentioned that I was in labor with him for 23 hours and it ended in a C-Section?
Finally, he cut me a little slack.
Jessica hates wind.
“This one’s ok,” he said. “But it’s still stupid.”
This was written during what I consider Facebook's heyday, when all status updates appeared in the third person:
I was just banned from Facebook. Not from the whole site, but from anything even remotely interesting on my son’s page. I didn’t even know he could do that, but he did, right before my eyes, and he narrated his withholdings in an onscreen chat.
It started when he took issue with my Status Line. Jessica was just mocked by her 14-year-old for not knowing the name of The Immigrant Song, I wrote.He said that event wasn’t a big enough deal to warrant a “stat.”
“Oh? Since when are you the boss of my status lines?” I typed to him.
“Since now,” he typed. And then, “I’m blocking you from all of my stat lines.”
“Why?”
“AND I’m blocking you from all of my Wall Notes.”
“Because you don’t like my status line?”
“I just blocked you from seeing anything about me,” he typed. Then added this:
=)
And then the remarkable happened. He left the screen of his laptop and came marching in to my office to have an actual face-to-face conversation. “Your status lines are SO STUPID!” he said, nudging me out of the way of my own keyboard. He scrolled down my Profile Page. “Look! Look at this!”
Jessica experiences an inexplicable glee when she sees the geese just standing on top of a frozen Edgemont Pond.
“Why don’t you just say: Jessica likes geese?”
Jessica is taking the new popcorn maker for a test drive.
“This should say: Jessica is eating popcorn.”
Jessica is worried that the gecko is depressed.
“This is so stupid it shouldn’t even be up there at all!”
I guess I’d have to agree with that.
Jessica loves discussing minutiae...it is her downfall.
"Just write, 'Jessica loves to use words that no one can pronounce,'” he said. "That’s what you’re really saying."
Is this my comeuppance for making my mother walk three car lengths behind me for my entire adolescence? (Everyone can pronounce minutiae – it’s just hard to spell.)
Have I mentioned that I was in labor with him for 23 hours and it ended in a C-Section?
Finally, he cut me a little slack.
Jessica hates wind.
“This one’s ok,” he said. “But it’s still stupid.”
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Why I Chant
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.
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.
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.
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