Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman

Lessons of the Road

Since the summer I have been teaching my younger daughter to drive. She took her first baby-driver steps driving between rows of parking spots in a huge, empty lot. Then she drove around quiet residential neighborhoods until she could confidently turn on the turn signal and steer at the same time, and I wasn’t constantly slamming on my imaginary brakes. But when we went out into the streets of the real road world, I learned more about other people than I did about my daughter’s driving ability.

In the most public of places we act as if we are in the most private of places, revealing far too much of our personalities. We’re not just surreptitiously picking our noses in our cars—on the whole, we’re selfish and mean, with only the occasional glimmer of kindness.

At first, when the 35mph speed limit was beyond her capabilities, she was constantly honked at, tailgated, cut off, and given looks-to-kill. For goodness’ sake, the girl was trying to drive carefully and all she got for that was an endless line of virtual middle fingers. The worst offenders were, no surprise here—everyone. Who made us all the Grand Patrollers of the Road? Are we all emergency room doctors about to give birth?

But worse than arrogance and impatience is the fact that my daughter no longer thinks the people of the world are law-abiding citizens. How many people has she seen break the laws she studied so thoroughly to pass the “written” test. Folks, we’re going through red lights and stop lights as if they are road spam. We speed and cut each other off and race across double yellow lines because, well, because we want to. The impression that I conveyed to my daughter that the world was, on the whole, a fair and decent place has been trampled. She now doubts everything I ever taught her, except to definitely not pick her nose.

Last week, after she had been yielding for quite some time at a busy intersection to no avail, she asked me why people speed up when they see she is trying to get in? What does a mother say to that, except the absolute truth as I have come to see from the passenger seat: People are selfish, they just care about themselves and getting whatever advantage they can, however insignificant. I had thought that the driving lessons would focus on maintaining distance from the car in front of you, always checking your mirrors, and never glancing at the cellphone, but no, this was the reality that presented itself.

But the other day, thank goodness for that day, there was hope that the world I had explained to her might exist on some streets. She was in the middle lane, signaling to get into the right lane. Three cars sped up, because, well, they could, and passed her. And then, at the light, the woman in the car to our right asked if we want to turn into that lane and that it would be okay. I will add that she was a refined-looking, long-retired woman wearing beige suede gloves. Maybe the manners of days by gone aren’t all gone. And just perhaps, after my daughter has experienced what it’s like to be at the receiving end of both possibilities she will elect to drive and live with civility.

What do we get from our behavior? According to the US Census Bureau, in 2009 there were 10.8 million road accidents and 35,900 deaths. We lose property, we lose limbs, we lose livelihoods, we lose people, we lose a sense of community.

And what are we teaching our young? Sure, it’s a pain to wait at a light when no one’s coming. And it’s annoying that you need to drive at the speed limit when you’re such a good driver and you really really need to get where you’re going. Not to mention those tailgating speed demons who force you to move over, for what? Just so you can wait behind them at a light?

When does it stop? When do we decide that all of the rules apply to each of us, all of the time? It’s not just about breaking rules, it’s about breaking the threads that hold a society together—the threads that create a society.

Have we become islands in our little pods?

Abuse In My Past, Not In My Present

Lately I haven’t had many visitors to my site, which makes sense since I am not posting very often. And many of them who do come are looking to read my post on chin hairs. It seems that many many many women the world over are suffering from midlife beards. Oy. But yesterday someone came to the site who was reading post after post on abuse. Which lead me to go to a blog on spousal abuse—something that I haven’t done for a very long time. The post I read there was about how this woman had finally left her husband after he had repeatedly been dismissive of her. I read the “straw breaking the back” post. And that brought me to a deep sense of thankfulness and almost forgetfulness that that was my life in the not-too-distant past, which, thankfully, has no relation to my life in the present.

People say that women have children after their first child only because they forget how painful childbirth is. Regarding relationships after emotional and verbal abuse: you can only have a relationship if you remember the pain—but don’t keep the pain itself alive.

So here I am, 19 months in my rented apartment, 19 months after the house was finally sold, and 19 months since I lived in the same house as the man who tormented me. It is also six months since a friend from the past kindled a spark that lead to love that lead to almost three months of our living together. Three months of creating a relationship that is based on love, respect, concern, admiration, and, alright, quite a tinge of mutual attraction. Not only didn’t I think that I could be in a normal relationship after my marriage, but from the pit of despair I would hear of fairy tale endings and proclaim: “How lovely, but I know that will never be me.”

As I read the woman’s post, I found myself unable to empathize with her—it was a sad story and I was glad to read that she had overcome so much pressure (internal and external) to be her own life-saver. But letting myself sink into the details, and read past posts, and imagine what her life must have been like—and what it was at that moment—no, I didn’t go there. I couldn’t.

Perhaps I have some version of PTSD, where to relive, in any way, past horrors brings to the fore the accompanying anguish and sense of self-loss.

I didn’t feel good that I couldn’t send vibes of compassion out to this woman, that I could merely observe where she was and cheer it, but it felt safe to look from the distance—from my fortress. 

What can I say? I was abused, but it is over—it is a part of my past. Since then I have created layers of life and self that do not depend on that reality: that are independent of it. Since then I have other things, such as chin hairs, to worry about. And now I have a man by my side for whom I pluck those hairs, even if he would never comment on them in anything but an endearing way.

My my life, indeed, can be wondrous, even if once it was so very arduous.

To that blogger: May your life and all those who you wish in it sustain you and keep you fulfilled.

A Year of Mourning

For the past year I have been in mourning following the death of my father on December 21, 2009. (According to the Hebrew calendar Friday the tenth marked one year since he passed away on 4 Tevet 5770.) For this year I didn’t wear jewelry; traditionally, someone in mourning wears black, but I knew that there was no way I would be like a little Italian or Greek widow for a year (it had taken me long enough to stop wearing plain black or white as part of regaining enthusiasm for life after I exited from my marriage), but I did want to outwardly recognize my status of daughter-in-mourning. It felt good, if good can be used in this way; perhaps, appropriate as in: for me it was the appropriate thing to do to honor and commemorate my father.

One day I put on earrings in the house, just to make sure that the holes hadn’t closed up.  It felt so weird—and wrong. Once I committed to a course of action, any deviation felt wrong. I noted that the holes were open, and then immediately took the earrings out.

Yesterday my younger daughter asked me if I would start wearing jewelry now; I said that I would start again after Tuesday. I didn’t realize that she had even heard me when I told her how I would be mourning her grandfather.

I’m pleased with what I did. For a moment I wondered about not wearing jewelry again, but then I realized that that would, in some way, negate what I had done and lessen what it meant for me. So next week, when Kenny and I go to San Francisco for a few days, I plan to look for a necklace (and perhaps matching earrings) to mark the end of this official mourning period (in Judaism, the child of someone who dies is supposed to be in mourning for one year) as well as to be a different kind of reminder of my father, and my life—and how life continues even when it seems so full of tears [teers] and tears [tairs].

A year ago I was in tears curled up on my bed, unable to sleep and now, now I tear up, but that is all. It is so upsetting and unsettling how we move on with our lives. Last year I couldn’t fathom how the life around me goes on as it had before—untouched—as if nothing significant had happened, and now, now I am part of that movement of life. Granted, there is a missing part of my circle, but still I am within the flow part of the ebb and flow. Even my mother seems to be moving; while I am not sure if it is forward, because what is forward, really, when talking about living your life without the love and life of your life by your side, but she has not turned into a caricature of a widow sitting for hours on end with a cold cup of tea unable to do things for herself. After all, she did give the “looks could kill” look of a true New Yorker to a neighbor who told her to get out of the street when my mother was waiting for the Super Shuttle van to pick her up—it came an hour late—at the end of her visit here last week.

But I do feel guilty in some way because my life has progressed in such a lovely way, yet my father is not here to be a part of it. I guess that is the hardest thing about losing someone—that they aren’t a part of your life any more. Yes, I know, when you think about that person it is keeping him alive, but, really, it’s you keeping them alive, it is not them being alive. And so there is a frozenness to my memories, to my life—before my father died and after.

How do you envelope mourning into your life after the intense ache of surprise and loss is over? And is it mourning or is it something else? Is it sorrow? Is there a word that covers this here and not here quality that one experiences when a loved one dies? I don’t want to check the thesaurus because this is not a word hunt—it is a feeling hunt.

Surprisingly, there is also a fullness to how I feel since there is a sense that I am living or experiencing my life for myself as well as for him—acknowledging what he might have thought or said or reacted or hoped for. There is also, though, a sense of guilt that my life has moved on, that it has changed. I know it is wrong to feel that way, but that pricking is still there, calling my attention to my here and now, as well as my then, when he was still here as a shoulder and a counsel.

It is such a complicated business this respect for self and this respect for those we mourn. 

During my year of mourning a friend’s father passed away, an acquaintance’s mother-in-law passed away, and my father’s older sister was operated on for having the same kind of cancer that he had (esophageal). And my father’s younger sister was in a car accident. And my older daughter no longer speaks to her father since he insulted her and hurt her in ways I thought were only reserved for me. And a kind and loving man has entered my life so that he sits round the dining room table with me every night, and wakes up with me every morning. And I have lost weight and am finally pleased or settled with how I look and where my life is. And I have had students respect and not respect me. And my younger daughter has been sweet and bitter towards me. And I no longer talk to my brother because I got tired of always calling him and I got hurt beyond the desire to invite more hurts that he didn’t find it in himself to see me as a part of his life.

So my life is big and little, as it was before.

And the world is still on its axis, spinning and rotating and circling.

My father died last year on December 21st; it is now December 18th. The week before he died he and my mother called to say that “it’s not good,” so my younger daughter and I flew down to Florida to be with him. We were with him for three days, leaving the day before he died.

We cried in the chapel during the funeral service; and we cried in the cemetery as we shoveled and threw in fistfuls of dirt over him within his pine box coffin; and we cried during the Shiva service; and we cried in private.

You mourn the passing of a loved one by doing the rituals and by creating rituals and by receiving his presence within the forward path of your life. 

You mourn someone by still loving him within the newness that comes from living.

Facing a Wall

I’m not sure why we need to confront all of our fears and overcome them. And I’m also not sure, on the flip side, why we always have to be upbeat and why everything needs to be seen through pink lenses. I wonder if this is similar to anti-bacterial soap? We think it’s good to get rid of all the germs that might have come upon us, only to discover that we have now weakened our defenses so that we can be felled by the slightest of germs.

Yesterday I went to a park to see a waterfall (after a marvelous feast of Maryland blue crabs at a picnic bench covered with newspapers in a slight rain). I had thought that there would be a walk through the woods, and then the waterfall to marvel at, and then back to the car. Lovely. But no, there was a waterfall, but, it turns out, this waterfall was supposed to be climbed. There was a narrow band of water cascading down a wall of rocks and boulders that people climb up to reach the top of the waterfall. People, as in people other than myself.

Jon (the man I have been dating for about six weeks), who happens to be six feet tall with rather long legs, stood atop the first boulder before I could even grasp the fact that I was expected to climb this boulder, and then innumerable other boulders in order to what?—get to the top and say I did.

But no, I am no rock climber. It could be my rather earthbound build, or it could be my discomfort at the notion of climbing a smooth faced object, notwithstanding the “foot holds” in it. Or it could be my not trusting myself to haul up my not delicate self from hold to hold. Or it could be that as I thought about conquering the task and getting up to where those other people were, way up there, that I would need to get down as well. The joy of the day faded to the gray color of the boulders. I could feel the fun leave and a dread enter.

Dread. Why should I do something that I dread? And on my day off, too.

So I said no.

Jon tried to encourage me, and then he tried to get me to overcome my fear. But I was having none of it. I would not be talked into doing something that I didn’t want to do, that I didn’t feel comfortable doing. Is this giving into my fear or is this being realistic? Why can’t a mountain of boulders be just that and not something that represents a fear that I need to overcome? Why can’t I keep within this fear—protecting me?

Part of me—a big part—thinks I’m stronger for not letting someone else’s cajoling push me past what I felt comfortable doing. Did I get to where I am to believe someone else say which fears I need to overcome, or did I get to where I am so that I could listen to myself—and have a self to hear and trust.

Tomorrow I have another wall to face. Another wall that I have not faced before, but this time I have decided to push through the fear and trepidation and—paint it! Yes, tomorrow, all on my own, I will paint the wall opposite my bed in Blue Bayou. I will not get a sample and paint a three inch block to be sure that it’s really the color I want. No. I put up at least thirty paint sample sheets on my wall for about a week and narrowed it down to this color. It is the color. A decision has been made.

And I have not painted since I was about eight and my parent’s painted their bedroom chocolate brown. I was assigned the bottom molding. But I will do it. And it will be as perfect as I am capable of painting a wall.

This is a wall that I want to encounter—and climb.

Isn’t life about encountering walls, some to be walked around, some to turn away from, and some to walk right through?

May 16, 2010

In five days we will be without my father for five months.

In two days my older daughter will be 19. (She just found out that she got into the college of her choice—and with a substantial scholarship!)

Bitter sweet.

On this day I have been moved to write again.

Was I silent because I needed to stay in place long enough to be comforted by the stillness?

Was I silent because I could find no path to take?

Was I silent because sometimes silence shows more movement than movement itself?

I’m not sure what I will write about, but that’s okay—that’s what I want. I have no agenda or mission. I feel liberated. I am liberated.

I will be as the peonies that I love in full bloom: bold, open and layered.

More Thoughts on People

I’m still mulling people’s reactions to each other, or perhaps I am still mulling how people live their lives so separate from each other. Or maybe I’m mulling how I’m still disappointed in people, but I'm coming out of that into a disappointed acceptance.

The other day I received in the mail a condolence card from my colleagues. I cried as I read through their comments, touched that were sending out their thoughts to me and that they had made this gesture. But then I caught myself: so, they all knew that my father had passed away and yet they hadn’t said anything to me face-to-face. At first they got a sort of pass because it was possible that they hadn’t known that he had died, but now I know that they had known and yet they thought that “I’m sorry for your loss” on a card was sentiment enough. Maybe it is—in their worlds—but not in mine.

Yes, I know. My father died and your life goes on unaffected. Well, if my father hadn’t led by example never to curse I would say “f%#* you” to all those who are so callous. I’m in an angry mood, maybe it’s a stage of reacting to people’s reactions when called to rise to the occasion. First, disappointment, then anger. What comes next? Maybe, as a few of you suggested, cut the dead wood. Forget about those people who don’t want their lives to intersect with mine or who don’t know how to intersect with other people.

Yes, I should focus on my one colleague who gave to me a bottle of wine with a smiley face on it—Happy Wine—because she knew I’d “been having a tough time.”

I am going to resist retreating again from people. And I am going to try not to absorb the lesson “not to expect anything from people.” I am going to try to continue living my life according to the rule “What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man,” because I prefer some tears of disappointment in others over tears of disappointment in myself.

Life lessons. Is that what life is all about? Is life like a billboard on a busy road? We keep passing the signs displaying the lessons, but only after we’ve driven by them countless times do we finally understand what they’re saying. Unfortunately, there are lots of drivers who are so focused or distracted or inept that they never look around, and so they never see the signs.

The latest sign: I’m going to stay focused (and not feel bad about it) of comprehending the signs and not letting the sign-less distract me.

Pillars, Crutches, and Other Manner of Support Systems

As I lay in bed the other night trying to fall asleep with used tissues littering the floor, it occurred to me that beyond the pain of my father’s death, his loss was not just the loss of a father who could be counted on to exhibit and act on his concern for me on a daily basis but it was the loss of any remnant of being the beloved daughter as she was cared for in childhood. Not childhood in a child’s sense, but in the sense that in some families a child knows that her problems can be shared with her parents throughout her life (shared as in expressed, which somehow shifts the burden).

Now, I share my mother’s problems. I am her ears and shoulders when she needs to have someone listen to what she did that day and how she is feeling or doing that day. It is not right, or I don’t feel that it is right, to seriously share with her my thoughts and concerns. It’s not that she doesn’t ask me how I am doing and wants to honestly hear, but for once I realize that she just doesn’t need my unburdening. No, I need to be her vessel. Maybe this is a step in the maturity of a child, a bit late, but such was the relationship that I had with my parents.

During most of my marriage and before the divorce, when things were getting bad but not bad enough yet to act on them, I held all counsel within. Then, when it reached the point that I would drive away, week after week, from the house in tears and fear for my life, I finally broke down and called my parents. They became my pillars. They gave me money to hire a divorce lawyer. They listened to me as stories tumbled out about their “son”-in-law’s fierce nastiness. To them I could unendingly vent as I couldn’t with friends. What friend could really listen to the unbroken story of a broken heart as she is trying to live through the dramas of her own life?

Was it selfish that I unburdened on my parents? I don’t know. I know that it was too hard to deal with the pain of my life on my own and they were there to levitate the pain as much as possible.

And now, now I need to be here to help shift the burden of my mother’s pain and emptiness, and fears.

For my daughters I need to remain chief booster and boaster. That is what they need and deserve. That is what I have been trained to be.

Perhaps the time has finally come for me stand firm. Maybe I don’t need anyone to hold my tissue box for me. At first I thought that I still needed to be propped up, but now I am starting to feel like one of those blocks that stays in place even when the blocks around it have been removed. I stay in place only because those blocks transferred their power and strength to me.

“Oh, Yeah, Sorry about Your Father”

My mother has found the outpouring of grieving reactions from people about my father’s death to be moving and comforting. She keeps saying how surprised my father would be—so many people have touched her by saying such nice things about a man who was always nice. Me, well, on the whole I have found that I need to reconfigure what I think of people. Granted, none of the people who have, unbeknownst to them, hurt me ever knew my father, but I had thought that on the whole people were kind and caring and were able to take a moment out of their lives to console a friend/colleague/acquaintance. My mother said I should just leave it, but how can I? How can I let the uncaring, or unaware, or thoughtless not impinge just a bit into my vision of the village?

Maybe I was like them before, not aware of how much a word, however brief, just acknowledging someone’s grief means to that person. But does that really excuse a colleague who I laugh with on a daily basis in the English teacher lunchroom to say to me the other day, as I was telling something that happened while we were sitting shiva at my parent’s house, “Oh, yeah, sorry about your father.” Speak of cutting to the quick with insensitivity. A few years ago, when I barely knew her, I went to her sister’s funeral. So she knows of grief. The casual way she addressed me just doesn’t leave me.

And then there is another teacher, her room is next to mine and we talk on occasion, but she is much older than me and she keeps to herself most of the time because she’s busy being the overworked theatre teacher. Granted, this summer we ran into each other in the records room of the courthouse when she was there with her daughter who was going through a divorce and I was there in the continual ache of divorce proceedings, which, perhaps, made some kind of outside-of-school bond. And I did tell her that I was flying down to Florida because my father was sick. When she saw me in the hall the other day, she gave me the warmest hug and said how sorry she was for my loss. Then, after we talked for a few minutes, as she was walking away she turned and said “Love ya,” which worked to bring tears again to my eyes, this time not in memory of my father or her parents who had passed away, but from the kindness of some people and the connections that we create that hold us to each other—and up.

There was an email announcement at school and at temple about my father’s passing. At school, one person sent an email and one person sent a card, and I received a plant from the school administration. I did tell three school friends about his passing before the announcement was made and they were kind, but each of them, I believe, should have contacted me over the break to see how my father was, which they did not do. At temple, there were calls and emails from a few people, and a donation made in honor of my father. At temple there were also genuine hugs when people saw me, and there was an honest sense of caring.

I don’t know what to think. Is it an age thing, being able to acknowledge someone’s grief and be able to reach out to a person who is grieving? Is it a work-relationship thing? Is it me and my ability or inability to connect at a deep enough level with people for them to reach out to me? Is it that at temple, a place created for, to a great degree, dealing with the hurts of life, people find it easier to connect? I have no idea.

What I sense is that we are so entrenched in our lives that we don’t take the time to reach out to each other, at least not in meaningful ways. What I sense, too, is that we are so very tribal and the tribe is so very very small: one’s own nuclear family and the few friends who are admitted into that circle. Social networking. Is that just another way to pretend that we engage with people when, really, we are further closing into the smallest family unit. Do we know how to create meaningful relationships? Do I?

The saving grace was my real friends, who showed that they are, indeed, real friends. Am I too naïve or deluded to hope/ think/expect that more of the people whose lives intersect with mine will care enough about me to extend a word, a gesture, an acknowledgement? Pain. Yes, it’s painful that my father passed away. But it’s also painful to realize that we are not intersecting with each other, we are simply in parallel paths.

Will this knowledge stop me from expressing my concern for others? No. There is a difference in understanding the way most people work and in succumbing to that. Are my real friends my real friends because they share the same characteristics as me? Maybe it’s not our circumstances that invites closeness but rather our personalities.

I don’t know. It’s all so painful. Is it really so hard to show that you care, that someone else’s life can divert from yours for just a moment?  

What I Learned this Thanksgiving

This year, as in the past four years, I went to New York to celebrate Thanksgiving with my brother and his wife’s family. It has become a wonderful opportunity for me to become a part of her family and for her family to become my family, as well as to meet up with my New York friends.

In past years the sympathy factor has been in my direction because I was still in the throes of the bitterness of my life/divorce. But now I have been in my own lovely apartment for six months, and the most visible remnant of the bitter divorce is the court case that's coming up in a week and a half (I haven’t given up on getting from him the $14,000 he owes me), all of which means that I am basically on par with everyone else in the “dealing with life” aspect of things. Which brings me to what I have uncovered or acknowledged: that we are all simply dealing with life. It doesn’t seem that we are enjoying it, rather we are simply handling the things that keep coming at us and we just keep going at it. I wonder, then, if we need to adjust our expectations so that the “dealing with” becomes less of an intrusion into what should be our unending happiness and instead we should understand that life as it’s lived is not just an intrusion but life itself. Would we feel better about our lives and ourselves if we expected the complications and not the beaches?

Most of those gathered round the table are in our forties and fifties, and we are all in the midst of lives that we have found to be ours—none of us can claim that this is the life he or she expected when we were the ages that our mostly teenage children are now. None of us was complaining in the “woe is me” way of the world, but we are all dissatisfied or still hoping for better times ahead or at least times that aren’t so full of pains, and exhaustion, and concerns.

Happiness. What is it? Is it sitting around a table passing plates and platters or is it being untouched on a pedestal? Is it sharing words spoken and heard, or unending attention? Is it sharing stories of aches or being free from compassion? I wonder.

I wonder if now that my house is as in order as it’s ever going to be the time has come to reassess what being thankful means.

Thankful. Full of thanks.

Thanksgiving. Giving thanks.

Thanks, not for what could have been or should have been, but for what is. Is that a new, working definition of happiness?

601 Posts on the Blog, 601 Posts on the Blog

Yes, there are 601 posts on the blog. And unlike bottles of beer on the wall, these stay, and are even added to. I started blogging in April 2008; the need to express myself was so great then that there were days when I made two or even three posts. Now, here it is four days since my last post. The anguish and frustration which fueled me in the beginning are still there, but transformed into a more manageable self-awareness and understanding. Perhaps, too, I have been transformed from writing the pain, to being a writer of pain--and happiness (occasionally).

I cannot express how thankful I am for those of you who have come by and read my posts, whether you have left comments or not, because it is what makes me realize that I am communicating, that what has seared me is being heard and contemplated, and, perhaps, has helped someone else.

As always, welcome and thank you.  

Safe Driving

Maybe it’s because I don’t have long legs that I can’t understand this phenomenon, but even so, it does seem incredibly odd and unsafe. Why would a person drive a car with his left foot sticking out the window like it’s a turn signal? What is with that? How can you possibly drive safely with your body so contorted? Of course my foot can barely reach the dashboard, but I could imagine what it would be like to have longer legs and being able to stick one out the window, feeling the breeze and waving to passing cars, is just a ridiculously unsafe idea. What must be required of a body to have one foot navigating between the brake and the gas pedal while the other foot is outside?

Besides the absurdity of putting your foot where your hand should go, how could you maintain good control over the car when you are doing a split?

Since Congress is finally getting around to writing a law against texting and driving at the same time, I think they should add an amendment against driving while contorted. 

What interesting sights have you seen drivers doing lately?

Dating is Like Being a Politician

It just occurred to me that dating is like being a politician. Everything you type or say or do is scrutinized to the umpteenth degree. But whereas politicians are allowed their occasional moral lapses, daters are not. One incorrect comma or comment and you are voted out of contention. Photographs are the most damaging. Any inconsistencies with expectations of hair, height, and heft will cause you to not even get your name on the primary ballot.

I say this not only because I have suffered from backlashes, but because I seem to be as guilty as the press in highlighting lapses and forgetting about positives. Aren’t we supposed to be looking for the good in each other and not the bad? Or is fear of backing a losing candidate causing too many things to become red flags?

Now I just need to figure out how it is that so many politicians, once they get past the scrutiny and get elected, manage to have wives and girlfriends? Is this akin to money going to money? Or ice cream going to my thighs?

I Wish I Knew More about How the World Works

The camp my daughter is going to has a two-year old policy that I am required to abide by this year, and that is that luggage cannot go with them on the camp bus, but must be shipped separately. I was given the okay to not ship with their very expensive shipper and to use another shipper.

Last week I went to a FedEx office where I was told that it would take from four to five days to ship a duffle bag from Northern Virginia to her camp in Pennsylvania. I asked approximately how much it would cost. They asked me the approximate weight and size of the bag. I told them and got an estimate. I did the same thing with UPS, and while the price was pretty much the same, they told me two business days. Okay, we’ll use UPS.

Camp starts on Tuesday and she was with her father until Friday afternoon, so we really had to hustle with the packing. When I went in to ship the stuff on Saturday morning, the price came out to be higher than I expected. I looked at the breakdown of the cost and there was an $11.75 charge for each bag. Oh, said the attendant, that’s because you’re not shipping in boxes but in bags. Everything was already packed and I was all tense about it not getting there on time anyway, so I paid the bill and left, annoyed, of course. Why hadn’t anyone told me: “If you send your things in a box it will be cheaper”? Yes, I know, they get to make money on me that way. But I don’t think that is the issue here, nor is it that they don’t care about customer satisfaction. I think the problem is that people don’t look behind the questions that are asked of them or the step in the process that they are currently doing. They are the form, not people.

Friday, in the mad dash to get all the things she needs for camp, we were in a store about to buy a tank top when the cashier asked if my daughter had tried on jeans. No, we responded. To which she said that if she just tries on a pair of jeans, we get a $10 discount on any purchase. So off darling went to try on a pair of jeans (they were too short on her). I certainly would not have known about that deal if the cashier hadn’t said something to me. I wonder how many other deals I’m missing out because I don’t know to ask for them because I don’t know of their existence. 

If they have the deal, why not let us all in on it? Maybe this is a real instance of discrimination, not white, black, male or female, but those on the inside versus those on the outside. Why can’t we all be on the inside? If the deal is too expensive, then cut it out altogether. If you want to get some business, then tell everyone. How annoying.

Blogging Thought Bubble

It finally came to me the other day why I have not wanted to blog lately, neither read nor write. It’s that blogging is a conversation, an on-going conversation at that, and since I am still at my core an introvert, a writer, this constant discussion is counter to what I usually do, or have done. It’s an illusion, this blogging, you think you’re writing, but you’re really conversing. The burnt-out feeling that I had was from too much interaction, not keeping things in to stir and settle, and not giving myself time to observe without formulating reflections. Sure, I’m writing but at a certain point, especially lately, posts have taken on a more conversational tone than a reflective one, and that is what I think has triggered my discomfort.

Perhaps I started writing for an audience and not myself. No, that’s not quite what I mean. Maybe I have been writing to write as opposed to writing to develop thoughts—in myself and the reader. Yes, I think that is what I am thinking. I have not been giving myself time to not write, to have writer’s block (I cannot believe that I am saying this), which perhaps is what I need every once in a while to do some assessing, or at least to let my thoughts catch up to my keyboard. Not that I have any intention of stopping to write, it is, after all, what I have wanted to do since I was 18 when I realized that I don’t have to just read books, I can write them too, but maybe I need to regain that distance from the writing to the reading that enables more intensity—for both the writer and the reader.

Of late I have read too many posts that really are like phone conversations with one’s friends about the kids and the spouse and the in-laws and work and trip plans and diets and and and. But that is not what I want to do—or read (I am setting myself up for desertion here), I really want to write from my depths as I have done for most of the past year (yes, yesterday was my blogiversary) and so I need to release this blogging-discussion bug that seems to have invaded me. I need to get back to writing as an expression of self and understanding of the world, and not just because it's my turn to talk.   

Life's Layers

The other day I started thinking of a different way to think of life, that life is not a series of steps that an individual takes in his or her life where each step leads one away from one’s previous steps. Instead, each series of steps is layered over those series of steps that came before it. Because, really, we do not walk away from our actions and our words, rather we build on them.  We are not going forward, because that would make the past as if non-existent, rather each experience is added onto those that came before it to create a layered life—a deeper life with more dimensions (layers). You may not remember previous layers, but that does not mean that they are not there.

At the Diner

On Wednesday afternoon I had an interview that was required for a teaching of writing class that I hope to take for four weeks this summer. I think it went well since the director told me at the end of my individual interview (most of the interview was with four other teachers) that he would like me to take the class, he then proceeded to tell me that my school district doesn’t foot the entire bill. Well, there goes more of the lovely tax refund that I already received because I filed early.

After the interview I was not ready to go home. I wasn’t ready to leave behind the public persona, the respected colleague and professional, the woman who made people laugh and say, “Yes, I see what you’re saying,” and the woman who seemed so confident and smart, full of ideas and, yes, in control.

I didn’t want to go to the House of Bitters so I decided to eat out, at a diner. I love eating at diners; I think this stems from being a New Yorker and the fact that I eat out often by myself and in a diner I feel fine with my book and my “One, please” answer to the “How many?” question. I was quite pleased when I remembered that there was a diner nearby, so I went there.

When I pulled into the parking lot I watched as a mother and daughter got into an SUV with Pennsylvania license plates. It was at that moment that I remembered that this was the first place we ate in as a family when we moved to Virginia. We had just driven down from New York City and we were all grumpy and tired; we didn’t recognize any restaurant chains, so the word “diner” sufficed for us.

Now I went in alone and was seated in a mini booth. After giving my order I looked across the room and saw a young couple bow their heads together and say grace. Then a much, much older couple came in. The husband bantered with the waiter; it was a diner so he assumed the waiter spoke Greek. The wife laughed as her husband recounted the scene to her right after it happened, with her there, as if she hadn't been there. And the way they spoke, as if in roles, I thought that they must have been doing this same thing for decades.

Across the room was a group of friends. One woman was the loud conversation hog. When she wasn’t talking she wasn’t listening and she was jiggling her leg. I thought that she would probably be one of my co-teacher’s students and I would probably be telling to be quiet all the time. And there was the woman talking on the phone very loudly about the purchase of a French-door refrigerator and its placement in her kitchen. I told myself that I shouldn’t be more annoyed at how loud she was just because she was on a cellphone and not in a live conversation, but that was hard to do.

While I ate I read a special Valentine’s issue of the Washington Post Magazine with short stories that I had in my pocketbook for a while. The story that brought me in was about a couple that had split up after their daughter died in Thailand on her wanderlust trip; I think it was called “10,000 Steps.” Of course, since it was the Valentine’s issue the couple got back together in the end. But before the re-coupling, the woman decided that she needed to do something to get out of her funk—so she decided to walk. The 10,000 steps came from her reading about pilgrimages people take to reach different temples in Thailand. At the end of the story she finally takes a walk that is 10,000 steps and she arrives at the playground at the school her daughter had attended and there is her husband. The thought bubble that popped into my head at that point was that the pretty symmetry of stories does not have their corresponding symmetry in life.

Then I realized that I was living the symmetry. There must have been a reason for me to be back at that restaurant with that thought in my head. Almost nine years ago I was starting something new with my family. Now, now I am starting something new on my own—the class (if I get in) or what I will do in its stead, because I know that I will do something new this summer (because I need it for me, and for my license renewal). Is the meaning then that there are new and exciting things for me to do and be involved in, and that they are not just in the past? Is the meaning that my life is a series of short stories and not a novel?

The next time that I go to that restaurant I should remember when I was last there; it would have been when I was by myself, living and embellishing my life through the lives of others and my own.

Tidbits from Retired Life in Florida (thanks to my mother)

• Some men surprise everyone with how caring they are to their spouses. After a lifetime of being the typical taditional-style couple with the husband working long hours at the office and the wife at home seeing to his comforts, in older age and with his spouse’s illness this man has become the caregiver and worrier, seeking to ease his wife through this part of life. Maybe the role he played before didn’t let him express what was always within.

• An 80-something women has recently married a 90-something man. My mother is prudish enough to wish she hadn’t overheard this conversation, but not so prudish that she didn’t convey it to me: the woman said to a friend on the golf course that now, now she is having the best sex she ever had. Pause for thought, imagery, and surely a smile to know that life does go on, in all its aspects.

• The control freaks that you try to get away from at work do not change when they retire to the golf courses and tennis courts of Florida. No, they volunteer to help manage things and then turn on the very people who lazily let them rise to the top of the retiree community ladder. You may retire from work, but not your personality, which means that you can’t escape from the personalities that bugged you, they just have more leisure time to annoy you.

• Take-out is king when dining out. Styrofoam containers are a key part of any restaurant meal. It doesn’t matter how hungry you are, you will take enough food home for a meal tomorrow. Is it because people who don’t like to cook continue to not like cooking? Or is it to stretch the retiree dollar? Or maybe it’s to give yourself more time to do the things you like and less the things you don’t like—finally. 

Life as a Ruffly Dress

Life is like a dress with lovely ruffles. Sometimes the ruffles get flattened, and sometimes they are too poufy. It's never quite right. But it's stunning with the imperfections and in those fleeting moments of exactitude. Even with a wilted ruffle that just won't stand, it can be fun, funny and joyous.

What is your metaphor for life?

Israel Story: Making Aliya (Moving to Israel)

A few weeks after I graduated from college at twenty, unable to think of what I wanted to do with my English degree and my desire to write but not actually doing any writing, and unable to wear one of those padded suits and string ties that were de rigor for professional women in those days, I took off for my version of a Grand Tour. I lived on a kibbutz in Israel for six months and then travelled in England, Scotland and Ireland for a month before returning to New York.

It was in a college dorm in London where the shape of my life was to find form. As I took a bottle of juice out of the sink which I had transformed into a refrigerator by filling it with cold water, the following thought bubble entered my head: “If I am not going to live near my family [I always knew I would live someplace other than where I grew up], then I am going to live someplace where my living there gives meaning to my life.” And with that my decision to move to Israel came into being.

What’s especially interesting is that my being the dunce in Hebrew classes when I was growing up did not sway me from this decision. For years of twice-a-week Hebrew school classes I was able to retain the ability to read five letters and two words: abba, father, and beit, house. I had friends who aced the aleph-bet, and who had gone on trips to Israel in a kind of perhaps-preparation for moving there if they so desired and if their parents so desired for them, but me, no preparation.

The only reason why I even went on the six-month trip there was because I was too scared and nervous to go to Europe on my own, and this would give me six months without worrying about where to sleep and where to go. I figured that I would find someone to travel with on the kibbutz, or, if I was lucky, someone from Australia with whom I could live back in Australia. (Every since I saw the movie Walkabout I thought that Australia would become my home territory.)

So there I was, at 21 deciding to become a citizen of a country I barely knew and where I didn’t know anybody beyond the acquaintance level. But I did know that I was pushing my life past the “me” expectations that were bogging me down. I was afraid of losing myself in a life devoted to acquisitions and days filled with inconsequential actions and thoughts, I yearned for meaning. Unable to figure out how to create the meaning myself, I did the next best thing and boarded a plane. I found meaning in every word uttered in an ancient language that created a bond going back millennia and in every path traversed that had been the site of defeats and celebrations still remembered. I created myself in a place that comforted me as much as it distressed me.

Growing up in New York City was wonderful, but the experience of living in Israel was different. It really did force me out of myself and my interests (which New York certainly doesn’t do, if anything, it forces you deeper into yourself), and made me see life as a community activity, or rather life as requiring community.
Maybe this is what people experience when they move to their family’s “old country.” They become aware of a duality: self and continuity. This is surely what I needed, and once again long for. But now, now that I am back in the states I don’t expect to act on my wanderlust again, I need to find a way to bring that feeling into my life—and my daughters’.

It’s not just in the foods or the holidays; it’s in a sense of self that is unmasked. Maybe that’s it, being clear that who you are is not just you, it is you as the latest version of those who have come before and who have unwittingly participated in forming you. It is seeing the self as a variation, not a unique model, that brings comfort and the ability to truly create, or to create truly.

Gaza and the Manassas (Battle of Bull Run) National Battlefield Park

The other day I walked around the Manassas National Battlefield Park with a friend. As in, I took a leisurely stroll on a cold, cloudless day through what had been a Civil War battlefield; “today, more than 5,000 acres comprise the battlefield park, allowing the visitor to explore the historic terrain where men fought and died for their beliefs a century ago.” We walked around some of those acres, and we read signs that told of where people died and where people were injured, and we saw cannons where they stood at the time of battle.

According to the park’s website, these are the fatality figures: Battle of First Manassas in July 1861: 4,122 (Union: 2,896; Confederate: 1,226); and the Campaign of Second Manassas, August 27 - September 1, 1862: 23,869 (Union: 14,449; Confederate: 9,420). For a “grand” total of 27,991 men killed “for their beliefs” on those 5,000 acres almost one hundred and fifty years ago.

Yes, I know, the Civil War was an important war to fight and win. And so many wars are important because people are fighting for their beliefs. Most recently in Gaza, the Israelis were fighting for their beliefs and the Palestinians were fighting for their beliefs. And we could place placards along the streets that read: “A rocket landed here,” “A man/fighter/terrorist/son died here,” “A building collapsed here,” “A hope for a peaceful future expired here,” “A dream ended here.”

Yes, fighting for one’s beliefs is important. The only problem is, someone is generally going to have a different belief, one that either denies yours or seeks to eradicate yours. What to do? Pretend that only your side counts? Pretend that you can wipe out all detractors? Pretend that those whose beliefs go counter to yours are less human than you? Pretend that all those who don’t agree with you are stupid or naïve or unworthy of thought?

What to do? Fight for your beliefs so that there will always be battlefields to walk through, as parks or re-creations or as real-life battlefields? Or is there an alternative? Is there a way to look in horror at the loss of life and not say “it had to be,” but to say “they didn’t do enough to prevent the killing field”?

If you die for your beliefs you cannot live to fulfill your beliefs. So what, really, are you fighting for?

Yes, this is surely sacrilegious to say, especially for a Jewish woman, what with our history of fighting and dying for our beliefs. But really, we are in the 21st century now, can’t we somehow progress from fighting and then talking, to talking and then NOT fighting? It’s not as if we don’t know what happens when two sides fight, we know. We know that people die, people get bitterer, people hold onto their positions even tighter to validate that loss of life. Yes, they died for a reason, which is just a circular argument with death itself validating the reason for dying.

If we can transplant hearts and lungs, the very things we need for life, can’t we finally transplant those swords into ploughshares? Hasn’t history presented us with enough battlefields to stroll along? And enough heroes who died for their beliefs to honor and uphold? Isn’t it time to take to heart non-violence, not as an anomaly but as strategy and tactic and way of being? Does human history really need to keep repeating itself?

I’m not sure how this would come to pass, but perhaps a start would be for each person to accept every other person on this earth as being worthy of life and hope. Surely that shouldn’t be so hard for isn’t that, really, the basis of all religions (which seem to be used as the raison d’être for far too many wars, or at least the never-ending ones).