Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman

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.

“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?  

A Loss, The Loss

My mother is sitting on the couch opposite me sewing up my younger daughter’s jacket, which is actually her sister’s old jacket. My younger daughter is sleeping, even though it is past noon. My older daughter is back in LA visiting her boyfriend after spending a few days with us. It would be a lovely tableau, except it is a very incomplete picture. My father is not sitting on the other end of either couch reading the Sports section because he passed away on Monday morning.

When I bought our tickets to fly down to Florida last week he was still at home; by the time my younger daughter and I arrived on Friday, he was in ICU waiting to be brought to hospice later that evening.

On Sunday his rabbi told us what a wise rabbi had once told him: at a certain point, you no longer pray for healing but for a peaceful journey. It appears that that is what he had. A peaceful journey for a man who was peaceful his entire life.

Both of his parents had emigrated from Russia with their families when they were young. There is one story of hiding in the back of a hay wagon. Who knows? No one talked of those adventures much. The focus was more on raising their three children, who in turn raised their children, who are now raising their children.

The wavy shock of my father’s red hair had rusted over the years and some on top was lost to two sessions of chemo. But his carrot-top days were still evident in back. As was his sweet tooth. He had not been able to eat for a few weeks due to his esophagael cancer (it was detected in late October), but while we were there we were able to feed him some Key Lime pie, raspberry jello, vanilla ice cream, and he could feed himself some watermelon and cherry candies.

What a thing it is to see a father die. But we spent our last day with him, and his last full day, watching football in the afternoon. It is a thing, though, to know that one’s father was such a good person. Everyone who came to his funeral or came to sit shiva with my mother or who called spoke of a man who was always sweet and soft-spoken. The man who told my mother after a couple of weeks of dating that he wanted to be together “for life” did just that for almost 55 years.

And now my mother will have a different life. And we who loved him will have a different life. But his kindness and gentleness will always be a part of our lives.

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?

Yes, That's Me at JWIBLOG.ORG

For two days (today and yesterday) I am the featured woman at Jewish Women International's blog during October's Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Please go over and check out my pieces (excerpts from my book, Get Your Words Off Me) as well as those testimonies by other women--women who have also suffered and survived domestic abuse.

October is also Breast Cancer Awareness Month. For that there is a pink ribbon. We need to curl the purple Domestic Abuse Awareness ribbon next to it, to indicate another way that women are being struck down--some surviving, and some, sadly, not. 

Losing My Touch

Somehow I have forgotten how to deal with the everyday arrogance of some men. It seems that I have been blissfully in control of all behaviors standing there in front of my classroom. Anytime I sense attitude from my, generally, male students I could turn to him to suggest another way of acting without in any way feeling that I am imposing upon his spirit and certainly without his feeling that he has altered mine. After all, he has been placed in my classroom to learn from me not just what to do with an apostrophe (oh, the horror since they are all but forgotten in this age of txtng) but how to be a decent, civilized man of the world who does not think he is heads above any and all women. And let me tell you, I have been fastidious in this. Just ask Harold, who I had last year. In response to the question, “What have you learned this year in or out of school?” he wrote that he “learned he can never win against a teacher.” His mother, I think, thanks me. I met both her and her husband, and I think she would have liked to send her husband to my classroom for some lessons too. (He was a meeting time-hog.)

Even the arrogance of the men who have demonstrated their arrogance in an email exchange or even a date, I have managed to quickly put behind me with an equal amount of bravado or arrogance since there was no reason to be coy since the very purpose of the endeavor was the culling itself, if necessary.

All of which brings me to the phlebotomist who did the initial poking and interview with me prior to donating blood. I sensed that man-to-woman condescension that I have not experienced for some time. It was a bit of a shock to have him attempt to demean me and ask me questions at the same time. In those instances I suddenly became cold and persnickety, forcing him to speak clearly. Did I do that because it tends to dull the tone? Or because I wanted to be sure that I am answering the question asked and not what I think he has said and to force him back to his job and not to think he can toy with me?

Thankfully another woman came in to finish the interview and yet another female phlebotomist drew the blood.

I’m glad my antennae are still working. I’m glad, too, that I have not needed them for some time. Maybe on the whole things are getting better in the world of male egocentricity. It’s certainly about time. But have no fear, I won’t trade in my antennae just yet. 

The Threads of a Life

So many threads to a life. So many threads interweaving with other threads. Some threads continue interweaving, some go in new directions, and sometimes we need to tie a knot in them to see where we are at the moment. That’s where I am right now, at the knot-tying stage, looking at some of the threads in my life.

The husband of my colleague, who was diagnosed with esophageal cancer about six weeks ago, died a little more than a week ago. Still in shock, her refrain, her complaint (if it can be called that) is that “it happened so fast.” Even so, a few days before he died they managed to arrange for their engaged daughter to get married in their backyard for a true blending of the bitter and the sweet into their lives. (May his memory be blessed.)

My wonderful student from last year who was supposed to have brain surgery in July was notified that, no, they cannot wait, and so she has already been operated on. I cannot tell you how hard it is to see a 15-year-old child need a wheelchair to get back to her room from just a few feet away. Sure, I saw her two days after her surgery, but there are some images that you don’t want to reconcile with the picture you have in your head of how a teenager is “supposed” to be, and how this lively, enthusiastic, intelligent, perfectionist always was—is.

I was invited to take part in the teaching of writing class that I interviewed for in March. Last night was the welcome dinner. It is fascinating to hear the ideas that other teachers have to excite, instruct and inspire their students to write. Why the creativity of teachers is not a thing more discussed is a wonder to me. We each need to make a 75-minute presentation; I heard the ideas of about half the teachers who will be taking the class (25 all together) and they were all so interesting and inspiring, for me both as a teacher and a parent. You have to wonder how it is that kids are missing out on the sparks that are coming their ways. What is it that they need? Or is the best that any teacher can expect in a year is to reach a few kids, and with that, to feel “mission accomplished” and not stress too much over those who did not have a spark-detector for her?

The assistant principal “raved” about how well I handled psycho mom in the parent-teacher conference the other day. Apparently the “can get defensive” label that I had been given has been replaced with “handles tough parents well.” I certainly like the sound of that more.

Older daughter is moving to California on Saturday, days before her 18th birthday. “Mixed emotions” could cover it, but what’s the mix if it changes all the time? I am certainly proud of her that she is going where she wants and is facing her future as opposed to acting like someone already worrying about retirement before she is even old enough to drink. There is a heavy feeling of hoping: hoping that I have been as good a mother to her as possible and that she is prepared and comfortable to become herself. She did get a letter from a professor the other day who called her brilliant, so on that side of things she seems to be doing well. She is, as I was, as unprepared for the minutiae of life, you know, cooking, cleaning and organizing, but I hope it will come when it needs to.

I will be moving on June 1st. The settlement on the house is to be mid-June. There are countable numbers of days until the end of this ordeal. There really is a tunnel with two ends, for so long I thought it was a dead-end tunnel. I am imagining myself getting up in the morning from a bed and walking a few steps away to see my younger daughter sleeping comfortably in her room, and then walking over to the little terrace, which will become my outside thinking spot, for a few moments of clarity before heading into the shower. Yes, I can finally imagine a lightness to living, and not just dreading hearing heavy footsteps and a tape recorder and another demand for money or twisted interpretation of reality. Freedom. It’s coming.

I told the mediator that I will not pay the bill he sent me because he let ex-man insult me and he tried to pressure me to agree with him. He wrote back that he will cancel my bill, and he won’t have us back again to mediation. No kidding. It was for a really small amount, but I stood up and kept standing.

Today I will be meeting nasty lady lawyer to ensure that I get the full amount due to me from the sale of the house, and that I will not have to pay for his non-payment of the mortgage in the past few months. Soon, soon this will end.

And there is a 35-year-old man who keeps writing me lovely emails. And there is the lovely, laid-back South American scientist with whom I will eventually have a second date. The back, back burner idea of romance suits me. Pseudo-man contacted me again, ugh, and I told him, in between silent treatments, that I have moved on, and I have. I will not have anything to do with someone who is not good for me, or who I think will not be good for me. I am for me now, so how can I let someone in who is so obviously for himself?

A colleague will be 40 today. She’s feeling the life marker. Me, I’m feeling a different life marker, or marks of my life, and so happy to have a head that can finally look ahead and is not just stuck in the now.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, for helping me this past year. My strength has been your strength. You, readers, have no idea how invaluable it has been to me to know that people are reading about my struggles, and passing on to me encouragement and strength, not only through your words, but your presence too (for the non-commentators out there). Your presence has truly lifted me up as a prayer. May life be full of fulfillments for us all.

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. 

The Art of Sighing

It seems that I have become quite a sigher of late. It’s loud and it’s earnest; I guess you could call it a full-body sigh. I can feel my entire body sinking into that sigh as it exits me. I slump down, I make a full-blown exhalation that is not subtle as sighs are supposed to be, and even my face seems to seep and sink into the sigh. It is a perfect reflection of how I feel.

Sigh. It’s how I feel about everything right now. It’s how I feel about my co-teacher who tries to get into a discussion about everything that I do with the students as if he is the class psychologist and I am there as some kind of non-initiate watching how he intuits all there is to know about a student. The sigh reflects my relationship with my daughters: I am the holder of the keys, the pocketbook, the kitchen utensils and sponge, and occasionally a sounding board, for good and for bad.

A sigh certainly reflects how I feel when I leave work and most interactions with people come to an end. Midlife Slices commented on a post the other day that if something were to happen to her husband, she would be happy to continue her life with just friends and family around. But what do you do, other than sigh, if you don’t have friends and family around to cover that hole? Do you just sit in the hole and keep excavating? And even when you try or hope to get out of it, what if there are no rungs to climb up with? It doesn’t always work that you have family nearby, and it certainly doesn’t always work that you have friends who are nearby and who are available to offer rungs in the form of time together. It just isn’t so easy to fill a life with people and interactions just because you want to.

A sigh. A sigh because sometimes, a writer doesn’t want to express the sensation of being alive in little bits when the totality is overwhelming. A sigh would be the equivalent of that picture that you use to “paint a thousand words.” That is my kind of sigh. It feels good when it comes out. It feels as if mind and body are commiserating together, for the benefit, surely, of the overwhelmed me, helping me overcome the feeling of being overwhelmed. As the heavy, charged air exits in a sigh, I feel lighter and fresher.

This is my kind of therapy: sigh therapy.  

Two Annoying Women

Two women have gotten on my nerves lately. That’s not a lot, but generally I don’t focus on people who annoy me (except exman and even that I am trying to curtail because I don’t want to waste any more of my thoughts on him). I don’t even know these women, which makes it even more annoying to be so annoyed by them.

One woman commented on someone else’s blog that another commentator shouldn’t bother to check out my blog because I am a “bitter divorced woman.” Notwithstanding the fact that I don’t think that I am a bitter divorced woman and I don’t think that that is the come-away from my blog, but even if I were and I acknowledged it—what’s with the discrimination? Are bitter divorced women to be robbed of their voices and cries just because other people might find them uncomfortable or pitiable? What’s with the lack of compassion?

And woman number two has only been on the guest list of annoying people since Friday morning when I read her extremely nasty (may I say hostile) email to her son’s English teacher (that would be me) that darling wonderboy did not get credit for an assignment because said teacher is, in all intents and purposes, unable to live up to said mother’s stellar standards. Oh, yes, on his progress report sonny boy had a blank next to an assignment instead of a 10 and, mind you, there wasn’t even a zero so it did nothing to negatively impact genius’ GPA. Later that day I sent a rather benign response email to said mother, but she picked up on my stating that I can’t remember the precise details of checking the homework that one morning out of all the other days I check homework or assignments for my 125 students, and therefore should give sonny boy the benefit of the doubt and give him the points. Or, tell her the date the homework was due so that she (efficient woman that she is unlike you know who) will check her calendar to see if darling missed class that day because his braces were getting tightened (as if it weren’t enough to have an annoying mother, he also has to have a pain in his mouth).

I’m trying to figure out what about these women has gotten to me. Is it their, basically, determining who I am and telling me what to do, two things that I resent. Have I told you that I hate when people make judgments about other people, such as: “she’s smart,” or “she’s not the brightest bulb in the room.” Perhaps the thinness of my skin is what is most evident here, and not the grating personalities of these women. Or the thinness of my self-esteem that any external scratch to it sends me into endless ruminations. But I think I’ll stick to: lately, my life has been filled with really nice and caring people and so when nastiness pops up I am unprepared for it. Yes, I like the sound of that.

I’m thinking that I will just ignore the latest email from superhelicopter mom. And Carrie, wherever you are, it’s not nice to speak against other people, didn’t you ever learn how to be a polite?

Snow Day, Day of Contemplation

It snowed today and rather than drive through the weather for two one-hour meetings on this Teacher Work Day, I decided to take the day off. I didn’t get out of my pajamas until after 7 in the evening when I decided that the dog and I needed a walk in the season’s first snow.

I had two naps today, read half of a book (Three Daughters by Letty Cottin Pogrebin), answered a couple of work-related emails, made mac n’ cheese, and moaned to my mother about the mediator and my home situation, but I held back the tears because I don’t want to cry today. I had planned to pay some bills, but I didn’t even open the envelopes. I also planned to write a couple of blog posts that I have been thinking about, but they didn’t get written. But I did begin mulling over how we bloggers, no, we people who write blogs could get some monetary compensation for the reading of our writing, and how the publishing world needs to change, or really, what I could do to create that change since I was feeling pretty capable today in my flannels. But these are just nascent thoughts, with no light bulbs to accompany them, yet.

Beneath the texture of those external things and thoughts, a current has been running through me like the current in a river that is barely visible but still underlies all. I guess it’s an emotion, since when something is so hard to identify, it’s generally an emotion. Is it sadness? Or is it aloneness? Or is it the emotion of realization, an emotion which probably doesn’t exist but should, because it is what one feels when one realizes that she is who she is and that her life is what it is. Is this a good thing to be feeling, or would it be better to keep glossing over and pretending that I deserve a pair of rose-colored glasses, since I know that I don’t have the rose-colored life (does anyone)?

What does it mean to feel realization? For me, it’s less about the things that occupy my life and more the people, at least “realization” as I have been feeling it today. Maybe it was being forced to stay at home but to have none of the requisite comforts of home that have been needlepointed into our psyche as the proper image of a snow day. You know, to discuss the condition of the roads and that you should stay home and be safe with the person who has been at your side through summer days and snow days, and who will actually go out and shovel while you prepare mugs of hot chocolate for children sledding down slippery hills and men testing their manhood against the snow. Or was the realization of today just another aspect of loneliness that one feels when you don’t want to be alone and do it all on your own without a crutch or shovel holder to lean on. 

Why get out of my pajamas if no one needs me, or even wants me? What’s the point? To feel less essential? This way I can hide behind my own lethargy and not face my solitariness. No work to do. No children who need me except for finding gloves and perusing the contents of the refrigerator, freezer and pantry together for a total of three minutes. No one who needs me to warm him or comfort him, or who needs to be at the giving end of those comforts that he needs to give to feel alive and needed.

Realization, indeed. It’s like the snow, it descends, makes its impact, and then disappears. I hope we won’t have much more snow this year.

A Divorce Story for Parents and Children

The following is a story that I wrote. At first I thought I would write a story about divorce for parents to read to their children. But as I was writing the story I realized that it's more for parents to read to themselves. This story is also posted at StoryRhyme. I would like to thank JC for encouraging me to write children's stories and for publishing them; I encourage you to go to her site and read her original children's stories--and her blog.

* * *

When Corinna’s parents yell at each other, she goes into her room, closes the door and listens to music, or she goes to her best friend Megan’s house. Corinna doesn’t like to listen when her father says mean things to her mother, and when her mother cries and tells her father to stop and yells at him when he doesn’t stop. And he never stops, even when her mother goes into her room and slams the door. It hurts Corinna too much to listen to her parents. Why can’t they be nice to each other?

It hurts as much as it hurts when her teacher tells her that she’s doing something wrong in class, because she hates when something she does is not right.

It hurts to hear her parents yell as much as it hurts when she and her sister fight. But maybe her parents yelling hurts even more because she knows that she and her sister, Amanda, will make up and be talking to each other again, and watching TV together again, and borrowing shirts again. But her parents, they don’t make up, they just stop fighting, until they start fighting again.

They never say sorry for the things they say to each other. They never say sorry for raising their voices at each other. They never say sorry for saying bad words. They never say sorry for saying things she and Amanda are not allowed to say.

Sometimes her mother comes up to her room after they fight and says that she’s sorry to her for having to hear them yell. She says that she’s sorry that Corinna has to hear that. But is her mother really sorry? Wouldn’t she stop if she were really sorry? Isn’t that what she has been taught, by her mother?

The Soap Opera Continues

Just a sad little run-down on why I feel so run-down. (Monday version)

My parents were here for a day, which was lovely, but ex got to exhibit his more childish-vindictive side. He kept closing my door (when I wasn’t in it), by now standard practice for him. Then, after my closet door slammed (which he just does not abide, tsk tsk tsk) he took a chair (I am surmising here because no one saw the act occur) and started banging on the floor above the room in the basement where my parents sleep when they come to visit me. Yes, a full-grown man, a lawyer, a financial consultant, an ex-army officer, who wears a suit and shirts with cufflinks, was banging on the floor to annoy my parents and me.

I went to the dentist today to continue the extremely expensive work that the root canal guy started last week. Yes, I am thrilled that I am not in pain, but it is not good to almost choke down tears in a dentist’s office when you are told the price of the treatment.

The visit to the dentist was a couple of hours after the heat pump guy came to fix the heat pump, which I had no intention of paying for because I paid for the repair in full in the spring because he just never got around to paying me his 50%. And he had my older daughter relay this message to me—that I need to pay 50%. And I had to stand there in front of the heat pump guy and my daughter and my parents and try not to have a complete meltdown screaming that I don’t need to pay anything. But what does it matter? If I didn’t pay the 50%, he would just not pay some college application fees or other such thing for my older daughter (no question here about younger daughter, he never paid his 50% for the Bat Mitzvah, it was more like 30%) and I would end up paying for it because I cannot let her not apply to the colleges she wants to because her father is such a bastard. (My father looked at me askance when I said that I would not toy with her applications. But hey, I know who to stand up to, don’t I?)

But I would not speak to him. She was actually standing there with her red cell phone telling me that he wants to speak to me, but I could see no reason to talk to him—or have him spurt sounds at me. So I said that I do not want to speak to him, and refused. Petulant? I think not. Taking a goddamn stand.

And when I got the email from the realtor that he told her that he and I would talk about the $2,000 worth of repairs that need to be done before the house would possibly tantalize someone, I replied with a list of my approved repairs and said that I do not plan to speak to him. Ever. Slime. How he manages to look at himself in the mirror and say, “You are the good guy and she is a leech,” I have no idea, because I only see tired eyes and chin hairs when I look at myself. And the gray that I thought was so cute, now I’m beginning to think that my daughter is right, it makes me look old. What doesn’t? 

Oh, and I’ve been whining on Momocrats about Caroline Kennedy, that I wish I were her. She married a nice Jewish boy; I just got the Jewish boy part. Oh, I really need to sit on a mental beach and relax.

And tomorrow it is back to work after this stress-free day off which I took to be with my parents and to prevent ex from having alone time with my parents. Last time that happened he said that he would call the police on my father for trespassing. I have a few parents who are upset with me—I just don’t seem to get their sons. Well, yeah, I don’t appreciate a 14-year-old calling my decision “stupid” and then broadcasting that to the class, or sleeping in class and then whining that he got a zero on the assignment that we did while he drooled.

Okay, I really need to imagine that beach. There will be sand so soft and warm that it is a smoother towel than any towel. There will be gentle waves that tantalize with their gentle repetition of beckoning. The sun’s warmth will caress the chill out of my mind and body. That is all I want.

For now.

P.S. Somehow I forgot the letter from the electric company. The "turn off" notice because he has not been paying his 50% of the bills and the extra letter that said that now we need to pay a two-months downpayment because we are so behind. Yes, I read that letter about ten minutes before the heat pump guy came. Amazing the things you can forget.  

Turning My Back on Rejection

Day in and day out I am rejected. At school everyday I face approximately 75 teenagers who would rather be anywhere except English class. There may be a few who want to be there, but it surely is not anywhere near the majority. Do you remember wanting to be in high school? Then I go home and face my very own teenagers: older daughter, who would rather be pulling out the hairs of her eyebrows in the privacy of her room, than talk to me; and younger daughter, who would rather text anyone in the world about “he said, she said,” than tell me anything about her day. Then there’s mr ex whose very presence reminds me that I have rejected my life as it was. And the “For Sale” sign in front of the house points to how my present life is what I have rejected, and that I am living within the walls of rejection.

Is that why I turned to blogging? To find an outlet where I can find people who accept me? You know, a club that doesn’t reject me as a member?

Is this how life works? We need to accept what we accept and not worry about what we do not? Or that we should not worry about what does not grasp us with warmth and that same level of acceptance that we require? Am I the interpersonal equivalent of a perfectionist? Everyone has to like me or I feel somehow lacking, that I didn’t color between the lines, so to speak. Or do I just need a core group of people around me, with me, physically and mentally? It’s hard to get that when the people who will give me a hug or go out with me on a Friday night are so far away. Is there a certain level of physicality or physical comfort that I need in order to feel balanced?

There surely must be negative vibes being generated in my presence that I unconsciously absorb when I tell my students (myriad times a day) what they must do, which is inevitably against their innate desire to be vegetables on a couch even in the middle of a classroom. And feng shui or not, being in a house that contains so much sadness and bitterness and, yes, hatred, must seep into more than my mind, it must be the source of so much exhaustion, and an inability to find comfort within myself and my life. I’m a pretty cerebral type, but the more I develop in life (okay, age), I realize that the words in my head are not enough to make a fulfilling life.

Last year when I had the torrid affair with the not-separated-enough man, I found myself carrying myself with comfort and confidence. Perhaps it was the sex-glow, but I think that it was the touch-glow, and the glow that comes from being physically accepted by another and by the body’s ability to carry (like a camel) the sensation of a touch for long after the intimacy has ended. And it was lovely, because I think that I was putting my hand on other people’s shoulders or arms more then than ever before. I was spreading the glow, and that just made it all the better.

Is this all about missing sex? Or is it about missing human contact? Or is it about both? Is it also about having teenagers who no longer want a hug from mommy and from whom I need to ask permission to give a peck on the cheek? It is, perhaps, also about being forced into a sort of isolation ward, where most of my interactions are with people who have to be with me. I love lunch in the teacher workroom, but honestly, we are work colleagues and so while we laugh a lot, we are not buds.

Is this how it’s going to be if I don’t create in the flesh friendships with people who I see more often than on a monthly or bi-annual basis? Is this where a lifetime of being an introvert has led me, to feeling isolated? Or is it merely how it feels to be living with people who have not elected to be with me? How many of our daily encounters are with people who want to be with us? If we are married, it is daily (okay, it depends on the day, but still, it is daily). So in essence, except for a spouse or significant other, we spend most of our lives with people who have to be with us. Generally, this seems to be okay, I mean there are people we don’t get along with; on the whole, in my experience, most people are good and have an aspect to them that you can find enjoyable or bearable. It seems odd to think about it, especially now when people are thinking so much about family get-togethers, that so much of our lives is with the un-elected. You have family and work colleagues. How often do we get together with friends? Especially once we have entered the realm of creating our own family? Is this balance what is missing? This need not to dump the people who reject me, but rather to balance it out with more people who I want to be with and who want to be with me?

Sounds like a plan, but this seems to be even harder than finding a potential mate. There is no Craig’s List list for friendships (an idea that I thought of way before Craig’s List even came on the scene, if you must know). But perhaps this should be my New Year’s Resolution (which I generally do not do): to create my own social situations and relationships. Maybe not having a husband to rely on for built-in company is actually good for me, because I am not as much of an introvert as I thought I was. And maybe one of the reasons that my marriage was bad for me was because of its isolationist tendencies. Change is good, as long as you change internally with the external change.

Anyone want to get together next Saturday afternoon for a walk? 

Thanksgiving at My Brother’s

My two daughters and I went to my brother’s house for Thanksgiving. In attendance were: my parents, my brother, his wife, their two kids (both teens), her parents, both of her brothers, one with his wife and two sons (teen and tween), the other with his wife and baby son (until it was time for her to leave and go upstate to her parent’s house where she really wanted to be), one of her two sisters and her husband, and the son of the other sister (who spent the holiday with her boyfriend—“when will she get the ring?” was the question of the day, and his young daughter). It was a full house. Oh, and a teen friend.

In accordance with tradition, my sister-in-law cooked far too much delicious food. Let’s just say that she had an entire 14-pound turkey that was not even carved as part of her leftover feast.

One brother-in-law regaled us with stories of his eating adventures in China. These included: leeches, dog, and (I think) monkey brains. But he did have some insight into more than just his food forays when he said that he wanted to give these impoverished “restaurateurs” a $20 tip for serving him the best meal he had in China in their extremely bare home/restaurant. First he told them (through his employee, who was taking him around the country) that it was a wonderful meal. As part of their thank you, they gave him three bottles of bottled water (which, he said, are very expensive there). When pressed, his employee told him that he couldn’t give the $20 to them since they wouldn’t be able to give him anything in return, and that would be unbearable to them. I, of course, joked that he could take one of their children who were sleeping on a plywood slab on the dirt floor. That broke the levity, but it was a moment of insight into the importance of self-respect and what it means to give, and to give back.

When he and his wife left, the news fluttered out that he just found out that he has cancer.

One of the sister-in-laws told me that her parents, in their early and mid-80’s are not doing well and that she spends her days tending to them, and her sisters tend to them on the weekends.

And my sister-in-law’s parents looked better than last year, but they’re both suffering from a medical book of illnesses.

And my parents are starting to look frailer.

It was weird, all of the “children” are in our 40’s and 50’s; our children are teens, going to college, applying to college, or heading into high school; and our parents, somehow, became our grandparents. We all moved up a rung on the ladder, and we are now in a position of responsibility (at least in regards to our families). We are who we are. While I still have illusions of grandeur, I am also this divorced woman, who is a teacher, who lives in the suburbs, who says “uh huh” and “oh, I’m sorry” much more often than I am consulted on issues related to girl’s self-esteem, women’s need to not listen to men and their lectures unless they offer a few lectures of their own, and how to break the cycle of control and abuse.

Family gatherings, a time to gather and to gather insight. Also a time to quiet the discontent and simply flourish being with people who love you because you are family, and since we have been family for so long, we are all related to the first degree (us Italians and Jews, it’s all the same by now).

(Oh, and I’m thankful that mr ex isn’t around to make any snide comments about anyone. It truly is liberating not to have an arrogant man around.)

(I just wrote “snide comments, and a woman at the next table in Panera’s said “snide comment” about ten seconds later. The universe is an interesting place.)

Thanksgiving List

I am thankful that I am not a bitter woman, or that I am not letting my anger and hurt and pain consume me. Or that I do not feel that I am a bitter woman. 

I am thankful that I still believe that people are basically good and compassionate, and a reason to go out in the world every day.

I am thankful that I have two daughters who I was able to raise to the best of my abilities.

I am thankful for my students who have forced me to learn the eight parts of speech, and to identify a thesis statement, and who have made me get outside of myself for hours a day—and night—because, indeed, it is a village and I like the realization that I am a part of something, that I receive even more than I contribute.

I am thankful that Barack Obama will be president in less than two months.

I am thankful that there is a chance the war in Iraq will soon be over.

I am thankful that I am healthy (at least I think I am).

I am thankful for discovering blogging, which is a world of reading and writing and written conversations--and new friends and acquaintances. What more could a person want? (Rhetorical question)

I am thankful for my parents who have stood by me and held me up and listened to me cry for countless cellphone minutes.

I am thankful for Poops, who snuggles next to me and makes me remember that I am not alone, and that I am snuggly. 

I am thankful for my friends because life would be so pale without them.

I am thankful for the beauty that is before me every second of the day.

I am thankful for my daughters.

I am thankful.

Get Your Words Off Me: Excerpt 26

I've taken a break lately in posting excerpts from my book, Get Your Words Off Me, but I thought that it was time for a new one, and specifically this one, which explains how he got the master suite and I got the guest bedroom. 

* * *

KICKED OUT OF BED

Why have sex with a man you detest and who makes you hate yourself?

When we were working on our marriage by going to therapy, I felt that it would be an affront to the effort to turn him away when he wanted to have sex. I was, still, unfortunately, seeing submission as a positive attribute instead of what it was: an absolute relinquishment of the self. By cooperating I thought I was behaving fairly, which is ironic considering that his actions were fundamentally unfair and caused me to feel—to be—violated and used.

One night, a few weeks after we had begun our reconciliation process, he got into bed and reached out, touching me, when I was already asleep. That night I finally reacted instinctually—protecting myself, not my relationship. Out of the depths of my sleeping self, I shouted “NO!” He immediately withdrew his hand. I woke, stunned, feeling the “NO!” as it exited my mouth from my unconscious and hung between us.

Then, shockingly, he said sharply, “Get out.” The absurdity of his telling me to get out of our bed when he was the one attacking me, when he was the one who had repeatedly asked me to come back to bed, was enormous. But I realized, as I lay there in the dark with the “NO” still echoing between us, that I had no desire to fight to stay in that bed with him, it was the opposite of what I wanted. I was not going to explain or apologize, or soothe. What a relief to have finally spoken what I felt. So, I stood up, walked out of the room and returned to “my” couch (where I had been sleeping before the attempt at reconciliation).

I have not returned to that bed since; except for one night when he was out of town on a business trip a short time after I had left that room, when I still felt that it was, to some extent, still my room. It is now his bed and his room, I have ceded the space. I should have said, “No, you get out, you are the violator.” But, as with so much else in this marriage, I took what I was dealt and tried my best to survive. And so, in the middle of the night, in my oversized tee-shirt and cotton shorts, I walked out, leaving him naked, alone with whatever demons or remorse may eventually plague him. 

 

Why Are Bad Habits Bad?

First off, let me explain that I am not talking about seriously bad habits, just run-of-the-mill bad habits. The kind that we develop as children and never seem to leave us, or which we never let leave us.

If I want to pick at the hardened skin around my left hand middle finger (I write with my left hand) then I think I should be able to so without well-meaning people pushing my hand away. I have passed the age of majority and so should not have my mother try to stop me from pick pick picking. Certainly the man I met for coffee the other day should have learned to never, ever infringe upon a person’s right to her stress-relief habits. Is it really hurting your poor heart that I am hurting myself? For goodness sakes, I have ugly fingers anyway, so who cares if they are even less attractive? And it’s not as if I am really hurting myself, the skin grows back, the nerves stay relatively even-keeled, so what’s the problem?

What’s with the holier-than-thou attitude? Don’t we all need a small bad habit? It’s not like a take a knife to my arm or drink a barrelful of beer, I twirl my hair and pick my fingers. Considering the status of my life, I would say that I’m in pretty good shape with my bad habits. Even eating, which I need to curb, is not so bad. While I might indulge in second servings too often, it’s not as if I have ever finished a cake or box of cookies on my own—at least not in one sitting or in one day.

Why are bad habits called bad? Shouldn’t we rename them and simply call them habits? What’s a habit for anyway? It enables your mind to lose its focus or find its focus, whichever you need at that time, without calling attention to the thought process. It’s like white noise, it’s there somehow soothing you without you even realizing it; so why fight it? Does it comfort me or keep me level? Does it enable me to compartmentalize my mind, where the nerves are relegated to being simply soothed while the thoughts are pondered?

And what would I do instead? Because I don’t think that I would suddenly become a pillar of stillness, I am, after all, a kinesthetic learner (a fidgeter to the jargonless), which means I would just find a replacement habit. What could I do instead? I can’t even think of anything. Oh, I know, I could pick at the dry skin on my lips. No, even less attractive. I could develop an itch that needs to be scratched. I could doodle. (Been there, but it just didn’t have staying power for me.) See, I have no imagination here. I need to stay with my tried and true bad habits.

Maybe there are people who don’t need bad habits, or whose bad habits don’t involve a degree of self-mutilation. Maybe they watch too much tv, or shop too much, or curse too much. Who knows? Maybe some people need to tell other people that their habits are bad. Me, I’m of the “you leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone” type. So don’t come by to criticize me, I can do that pretty well on my own. And I promise I won’t ask why you have six packs of gum in your bag, or why you are playing with your keys on your keyring, or why you have a stack of papers growing on your floor.

My Ex-Husband Never Became President, Neither Did I

The other night, watching Michelle and Barack Obama on the stage in Grant Park I couldn’t help but (yes, think of myself) think of how we choose the man we will marry (and I am assuming in these days of SAHF, the woman we will marry). I am not talking about being a gold digger, but about the selection, both sub-consciously and consciously, that we ponder as we date, especially when we are too young to have a resume to present. Don’t we pick people who we think will succeed? Don’t we go with the guy who we think will go to the White House of his chosen profession?

I think that we are able, to a certain extent, to decide who we will fall in love with. All of the things that you find wrong with a guy in the first five minutes of meeting him, isn’t that just your way of telling yourself that he doesn’t meet your expectations for a husband? Granted some of the rejects are on their way (my first and only set-up blind date seemed to be on his way to being a bigwig in whatever field he was in, but all I could talk about was how I was moving to Israel in a couple of weeks, and he had to go back to the office to finish some things after less than an hour), but we do have to be somewhat selective. And even those who go for the deadbeats, don’t they usually talk about how they think they will turn him around? I worked with a woman who kept referring to the fact that her husband was a diamond in the rough when they first met, and after a few years he had built a successful company.

But going back to the Obamas, I’m sure that they were taken with each other’s physical, intellectual, and emotional compatibility as well as the potential that the other has in making her/his way in the world. I mean do you really want to hitch yourself to someone who has no ambition? Obviously we want success for ourselves, but don’t we also want to be with someone who has stars in his eyes—especially at the beginning of the journey?

When I started dating mr ex he had just become an officer in the Israeli army and he had plans to either be a spy (HA!), lawyer, or businessman, and perhaps politician down the line; and I was determined to be a writer of the intellectual bestseller by the age of 24 type (no comments). But beyond his career goals, this was a man who was at the center of a few groups of people, and they all listened to what he said (which was good, since I couldn’t always figure out what he was saying since my Hebrew was pretty basic, but it set the stage for me, or rather his stage). Not only was he the nuclei of different groups of friends and colleagues, but also of his family—he was the older son who everyone listened to. One of the interesting things about being in the military (this seems to be pretty universal) is that there is an intense selection process that tracks people, and you can really see how someone is valued and judged by the track he is put on. And boy, was he on an impressive track.

It all seemed good. He had been vetted. But the vetting process only works well if who you see is who you get, and the who does not transform in unknown and unexpected ways.

My point here is not that most of us fail to meet our own expectations, never mind how our significant other fails, but we at least begin with a heightened estimation of that person. I believed he could do all of those things (so much so that I even petitioned against the whole spy business) and I think he thought I would be a bestselling author (even though he didn’t “appreciate” what I wrote).

Maybe it’s harder to correctly analyze this when you are young (I was 22 when we started dating and he was 20) and don’t have much to go on. But there’s always something. What did the person do in high school? What college did the person attend? What was his SAT? What did he do during his summers? What did he do when he got out of college? Sure, it’s not quite on a track, but there’s a general direction.

Which leads me to an awfully obvious question: Am I jealous of Michelle Obama? You betch’ya. Even, God help me, Laura Bush. I made my choice, and I thought it was a good one. For goodness sakes, I thought that I had hit the bonanza with him, that we were on our way to tête-à-têtes in important circles with important people. In my own defense I do want to note that both of these women met their men in their 30’s, after the adult formative years and when there was more to see and assess—you know, more to fall in love with (or not).

Reconciling yourself to your own inadequacies and failure to launch are hard, but it’s hard, too, to reconcile yourself to the fact that your spouse didn’t live up to his own expectations—or yours. And it really doesn’t matter if it is because the world is against him or if he just didn’t have it in him.

Or maybe more tellingly, because other people saw in him a flaw that it took me so long to recognize. 

Still Looking, Kind Of

I just read a listing on JDate and the guy noted that he is not interested in a woman who blogs about the details of her life. Well la-de-da to you. Why? Is he scared that his foibles will be blazed across the internet and multitudes of people will read that he is sweet and has restored my faith in men, or conversely that he is another controlling man who won’t see me again. Oh well, I have self-selected out of some people’s lives by writing, by communicating, by reaching out to friends and creating new friends. If that is scary to some men, so be it.