GIVING NOTICE NOW

Mindful Cooking

2012-01-16T17:27:00.000-08:00

Photo: The "cheesy" snowman appetizer I made on New Year's Eve, from an idea I found on Pinterest

"The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one."--Elbert G. Huddard

Last spring I started a family recipe binder. I bought a stack of clear insert sheets, and divided them by categories like "Eggs and cheese," "Shrimp and meat" (shrimp is the only fish I can stomach), "Vegetarian" (that section is the thickest because Mike is a veggie and a good guinea pig for my cooking lessons). The rule is my family recipe binder can only include dishes I have made and liked (or that would be good with some minor tweaks). On each one I write the date and make notes about the process and results ("Make this one when tomatoes are in season" or "Mike LOVED it but it gave him gas").

The recipes themselves are from all over--stained index cards in my mother's handwriting for dishes I remember having as a kid, like Lentil Stew and Chicken Cacciotore, which she wrote out for me before I left home. My own writing on torn notebook paper, some sheets dating back to my college years when I used to go to the library and copy down recipes from hardcover cookbooks I couldn't afford to buy. Lots of pages ripped from magazines, dating back to 1994, when my job at the University Bookstore included managing the magazine rack. When a new issue came in, I was to pull the old one off the shelf and rip the cover off in order to mail the unsold covers to the distributor. I'd take topless copies of Eating Well and Food & Wine back to my dorm room, ripping out recipes I planned to follow once I had more than a hot plate and one aluminum pot.

Photo: Chicken with cherry tomatoes, onions, and grits

Back then I was eager to have my own kitchen because cooking dinner was something very adult and sophisticated. I didn't see it as domestic drudgery, like cleaning the toilet and washing the windows. Cooking was dinner parties, family meals around the table, creating new tastes and experimenting, sharing my love of food with my guests or partner.

Photo: Shrimp stir fry with shiitakes and snow peas

What I love about cooking (and baking, although that tends to be a more exact science) is that I generally don't worry about making a mistake. It's one of the few areas of my life where it doesn't bother me if I screw up a step because I usually find a way to fix it so the dish is still edible, or even unaffected. I think it's this kitchen confidence that keeps me from second-guessing myself. Cooking and baking are fun, they're creative, and you usually get an end result that makes people happy.

Photo: Mini lasagne in pastry shells

I find that unless I've had a particularly tiring day, even cooking on weekdays can end things on a good note. Yes, it means laundry has to wait until tomorrow night and maybe the pile of dishes will sit overnight. But cooking and baking are two of my favorite ways to unwind, especially on a cold winter night when you feel lucky to be indoors, warm, and well-fed. You have to find the things that engage you in this life--and then have the courage to pursue them without worrying about being perfect.

Photo: Coconut chocolate-chunk muffins (made with coconut and rye flours)

It's good to have a creative outlet where you aren't expecting to win anything, or make money off of your effort, or impress strangers (yes, I am sharing pictures of my cooking and baking online, but that's simply because I love looking at pictures of food and yes, I'm proud of what I make). I almost always follow recipes so it's not like I'm coming up with all new dishes destined to win a cook-off. I do slip in the odd substitution here and there, and by doing that I learn what flavors compliment each other and how I can work with a recipe when I don't have all the ingredients readily at hand.

Photo: Chicken with potatoes, green olives, and lemon

I was surprised when I heard from my mother that most of the family members in my generation on my father's side, Italian-American women and men living in a city where just a few blocks away there are stores carrying every imaginable ingredient, never learned to cook from their older relatives (or simply don't bother). My great aunts and uncles, my grandparents--they all cooked amazing Italian fare everyday, but these days my cousins are more likely to order in Chinese or serve cold cuts at social gatherings. I don't understand how they could grow up with such a bounty of home-cooked food always available to them and not want to replicate this for their own families.

Mike grew up with home cooked meals every night, but like most kids he also had a taste for junk food. Recently, after he heard that Hostess (and the New England division, Drake's) was going bankrupt, he started searching the snack aisles of every convenience store, bodega (or as New Englander's curiously call them, Spa), and supermarket in Kendall Square trying to find his childhood favorite, Funny Bones, those chocolate-covered peanut butter and devil's food logs.

Growing up I wasn't allowed to eat Twinkies or Devil Dogs, though inexplicably my mother did allow me to have Hawaiian Punch and Chips Ahoy cookies, which are no paragons of health. For some reason it was anything Hostess-branded (including Wonder Bread) that was off-limits to me. Of course she couldn't stop me from eating whatever was offered at the slumber parties hosted by laxer mothers, or at the convenience store five blocks away that my friend Heather and I would frequent, gripping our weekly allowance in our fists.

Thing is when I did have my first Hostess cupcake, I wasn't blown away. In fact I was disappointed in the off-taste of the creamy filling, which I thought would taste more like the fresh whipped-cream my mother made. The little frosted donuts and the coffee cakes were pretty good, but nothing special. I far preferred my mother's homemade cookies.

Yesterday Mike found his Funny Bones at our local Shaw's. Wanting to see if the coffee cakes were better than I remembered, and, more importantly, wanting to share in his nostalgia, I picked up a box. I felt like a felon placing the artificial cakes in the cart. I didn't want anyone to see them and say to the person next to them,"Wow, that couple isn't discriminating about what they eat, are they?"

When we got home and unloaded the groceries, I opened the box of coffee cakes and slid out a plastic-wrapped two-pack. They were smaller than I remembered, but most things are when you're a grown up. They tasted OK--sweet, but not cloyingly so, and moister than I was expecting (of course, they contain "stabilizing agents," whatever those are). Mike savored his first Funny Bone, which he said was just as tasty as he remembered and a little taste of his childhood.

So when I told him that I was planning to bake brownies, he said, "What for, we have the Drake's cakes."

"I want to try this new recipe in Cook's Illustrated," I said. "They've perfected the classic brownie. Anyway, the Drake's will last for weeks and weeks. Isn't it Twinkies and cockroaches that can outlive us in a Nuclear attack?" Maybe that's something else I like about making something from scratch--it's a delicious moment in time best enjoyed the moment it's served.

Photo: Cook's Illustrated brownies

Back to Black Friday

2011-11-22T14:53:00.001-08:00

"I just don't understand Christmas, I guess. I like getting presents and sending Christmas cards and decorating trees and all that, but I'm still not happy. I always end up feeling depressed."--Charlie Brown from A Charlie Brown Christmas

Christmas used to be my favorite holiday, hands down. Ornamental glass and glitter to dress up a freshly-cut Douglas Fir, Elvis crooning about his hope for snow, the feast of the seven fishes on Christmas Eve in Bensonhurst when my grandfather was still alive. I didn't actually eat any of the fish--certainly not the stuffed squid or the marinated octopus. But even though my dinner consisted of several slices of semolina bread and rice balls I was content. I liked the traditions, even the ones in which I didn't take part. And the presents! At midnight was the crisp pop of an Asti bottle, an opened Panettone creating a cloud of powdered sugar overhead, and all the relatives and friends squeezed into the tiny livingroom to sit shoulder to shoulder on the plastic-covered faux baroque furniture. Piles of opened gifts formed at our feet, and the sounds of appreciation and glee continued as the last present was presented to Pipina, or sometimes Pipinella, my grandfather's nicknames for my grandmother Josephine, or Guiseppina in their native Italy.

Even as I slipped into my twenties and early thirties, and the boisterous Christmas Eves in Brooklyn became the much tamer Christmas Eve's of my parents' house in New Jersey, I still looked forward to Christmas. We no longer waited until midnight to exchange gifts, and there were probably only five or six fishes if you were counting, but there was still the comfort of traditions my parents and I shared. My mom and I exchanging one gift early ("Just a little one!") The tree festooned to toppling with an assortment of ornaments that took my mother decades to accumulate. I worried a little more about getting the right gifts (and enough of them) for my family, but I also felt expansive in my desire to make other people happy. I felt a connection to my father--who always goes a little over-the-top at Christmas--every time I was extravagant, buying those last-minute cashmere gloves for my mother or the basket of gourmet treats from Chelsea Market for my Aunt.

This year my parents will be in Sweden on Christmas, visiting my uncle and cousins on my mother's side. While I'm happy for them, I can't help feeling like I'm losing the lovely feelings that the holidays usually bring. Some people might say that Christmas is a holiday meant for children, and we don't have any small children in our immediate family. Others look to the spiritual significance of what is otherwise a consumer bonanza that starts in mid-October. But unlike Charlie Brown's existential holiday blues, I'm not newly inspired by the story of Mary and Joseph in the manger because I'm not religious.

Even my husband, who is usually adept at cheering me up, is no help here. He dreads Christmas because he sees it as a time of excessive obligations. Whatever joy he brings to the occasion is for my benefit. We adopted our rescue dog Carmelita last year because, while attending a performance of the cloying A Christmas Celtic Sojourn , I wept at the sight of little girls in frilly dresses and striped tights, knowing they were much happier than I was at that moment and wishing to borrow one of them to distract me from the crap playing on stage. Actually I was the only one who appeared to be bristling at the sound of Brian O'Donovan and the sight of the blonde and bouncy young thing kicking it up every interminable minute.

Black Friday is this week, an ugly reminder of the disregard some of us have for the welfare of others (and I'm not excluding myself here--I can be a hellion at a sample sale) as we push our way toward the promised deals before some other knucklehead gets them.

Even if there is bad news, like the kind I received from a close friend recently, and heard about secondhand from others--the holidays still come. What do those families do to get through, and how can you celebrate when you know there is suffering going on in your midst?

How do we make the holidays meaningful again, without completely deflating the joy and occasional frivolity? I'm not trying to be a joykill here, I just don't deal so well with change and naturally there have been a lot of changes since I was young. It used to be my main concerns were as shallow as "Did my father get me the perfume I want? or "will I have a boyfriend this year and if so, what should I buy him that shows the right amount of affection without scaring him away?" Now I wonder if there's more to the holidays than a discounted iPhone. Even the cookies I like baking have become sugary carb bombs as I get older and thicker.

Maybe I just need to start simple and without high expectations. You know, peer into some decorated department store windows, or make an ornament out of pipe cleaners, or buy a holiday outfit that will make me feel pretty. Or maybe I'll try to think up some new traditions that will fit the way my family, friends and I live now.

Do you have any favorite holiday traditions that make the season bright for you?

Pinned down by Pinterest

2011-11-05T16:47:00.000-07:00

Photo from crafterminds.com

"A great many women view shopping as a form of recreation. The 'thrill of the hunt,' the acknowledged excitement of shopping, tugs you into a powerful magnetic field, designed to cloud your judgment and extract your money. You need to pass up those wild rides on the consumer merry-go-round and instead use a different vehicle to satisfy your basic needs for stimulation, activity, attachment, affiliation, and self-expression."--April Lane Benson, PhD, To Buy or Not to Buy: Why We Overshop and How to Stop

"Our goal is to connect everyone in the world through the 'things' they find interesting. We think that a favorite book, toy, or recipe can reveal a common link between two people. With millions of new pins added every week, Pinterest is connecting people all over the world based on shared tastes and interests."--Pinterest mission statement

I login and press the down arrow. The pictures render achingly slow. I avoid looking at the screen because I don't want to spoil the surprises in store. The OCD part of my brain says, I must start where I left off, I don't want to miss even one! When I hit the bottom of the page, I feel an unease in my stomach that comes from knowing there are more posts that came before these, and that I've missed out on them, maybe forever. What if there was a knock-out dress or some yummy recipe using pumpkin seeds or a book shelf cleverly mounted on the outside of a door? It's the same feeling that I imagine Twitter users feel when they try to read every tweet they missed in that 1/2 hour window when they were away from their computers.

But then the fluttery anticipation, the kind I get when walking into a Lord & Taylor with a 20%- coupon-off-already-marked-down-wear-now-merchandise or, to phrase it a different way, what a junkie experiences on his way to scoring some Horse from his dealer (I've watched a lot of episodes of Intervention).

If it's not an addiction I have, then it's at least lust. I would say love, but the object of my desire is for the perfect high-heeled Mary Janes, the beautiful bathroom with soaking tub and lots of windows, an artistically-wrapped present, or the most luscious cupcake recipe.

I'm pinned by Pinterest. In McDonald's-speak, I'm a Heavy User.

A colleague introduced me to Pinterest as a way to promote a new imprint our company is launching. When the two of us and the Marketing Assistant sat in Red Mango that day, I had a hard time understanding the concept behind this new social media site. I was also having a hard time hearing her over the weirdly-inappropriate club music the yogurt chain was blaring. Later, I dismissed it as dumb, but knew I should at least check it out for publicity purposes.

I dabble in social media primarily for work and for the occasional reunion with an old friend or to talk about books I'm reading. But I can always walk away without any difficulty, like turning off an episode of I Survived that I've already seen. When I started using Pinterest, I had trouble understanding what I was supposed to do and how I was supposed to find and get followers, or even what the point was of "pinning" pictures on virtual bulletin boards. It didn't take long for me to catch on, though. While ostensibly using Pinterest for work, I was also sucked into it on a personal level.

Before Pinterest, I used to come home from work and never turn on my computer, having stared long and hard at a screen all day, and now just wanted to rest my eyes, move around--even if it was to go from the kitchen table to the couch to my bed. Now I'm coming home and logging on to see what cool DIY project one of the people I follow has discovered. Two hours pass before I realize just how much of my free time I have (squandered?) pinning pictures of celebrity haircuts to my STYLE board.

Pinterest is essentially like making wish lists using pictures. And there's nothing I like better than making lists. And it's not just me--lots of people like lists. It's why copywriters and magazine editors love using bullet points and sidebars and favor titles like "The 7 Ways to a Flatter Stomach" or whatever. To me, Pinterest is also a throwback to when I was a teenager and used to tear out pictures from magazines and tape them, collage-like, on my bedroom wall.

There are some advantages to being a regular pinner. I am following all of my authors who are on Pinterest and repinning their pins. I am also getting that retail high, the thrill of the hunt that usually leads me astray on shopping sites like Rue La La. Pinning new skirts from Anthropology and a hot holiday shade of OPI nail polish keeps me from actually shopping, but provides almost the same kick.

Buddhists would call my current obsession another form of samsara or "being hooked" to earthly desires. Although finding the occasional deal on a Kate Spade handbag brings me pleasure, there are times I find myself wandering alone around the Prudential Center in Boston, looking for something to lift me up from some mild but persistent malaise. I won't feel right, I reason, unless I buy SOMETHING, even if it's as small as a tube of lipstick. Mindless shopping--without a purpose other than to cheer me up or to give me a false sense of power--inevitably leads to disappointment and less money in the bank, not to mention owning up to my husband that I have spent beyond our agreed budget for the week.

With Pinterest I can be creative and express my personal style in a way that won't cause arguments or lead to an accumulation of barely-used lipsticks. I like seeing other peoples' pins as much or more than I like pinning my own finds. I try to maintain a few non-materialistic boards, like "Mindful", which is populated with nice quotes and sublime imagery from nature.

Now if I could get myself to actually DO some of the projects I've pinned to my DIY IDEAS board like that pretty flower necklace, or bake those pumpkin pie cupcakes on my RECIPES TO TRY board, this would take Pinterest from a relatively harmless diversion to a life-enhancing technology, which after all is what social media is supposed to be about.

Boundary issues

2011-09-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

"Compassionate listening is crucial. We listen with the willingness to relieve the suffering of the other person, not to judge or argue with her. We listen with all our attention. Even if we hear something that is not true, we continue to listen deeply so the other person can express her pain and relieve tensions within herself. If we reply to her or correct her, the practice will not bear fruit. "--Thich Nhat Hanh, from Your True Home: The Everyday Wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh

I got off the train and steeled myself. I should not enter the building cranky or resentful. I should not bring negativity to someone who has already had a lifetime of suffering. On the one hand I felt guilty and ashamed for being so petty. But I was also thinking, "What will she ask me for next?"

I was visiting my older friend Linda for our weekly talk. I've been volunteering with her for almost three years now and I have pretty good attendance. I know that she counts on my visits as a break in her routine, so I try not to skip a week unless I'm sick or on vacation. The thought of her alone in her apartment day after day is more than a little heartbreaking.

But lately my compassion for her has been tested. Really, I should have seen this coming.

Linda and I talk a lot about boundaries. She has encountered certain people in her life who have boundary issues. Because she lives in Section 8 housing, she has been placed in residences with a mixed population of mentally ill, disabled, and the elderly. Linda has had at least two friends who have been mentally challenged in some form or another.

I was starting to notice that she herself refused to set boundaries with others. She often complains about a neighbor who is kind of a pseudo "friend." Really the woman is a bully, but Linda prefers to keep her enemies close.

According to Linda's side of the story, which may or may not be slightly exaggerated, this woman calls and visits Linda at all hours of the night, barges into her apartment without knocking, and asks her for favors and money. Linda is on a fixed income and is not very good at handling her money. I get angry when I hear that her "friend" has asked her for everything from a glass of juice, to the repeated use of her vacuum cleaner, to a gift of a pricey talking scale (!!), even cash. She wakes Linda up early in the morning and demands a cup of coffee. Linda has trouble with her mobility and whenever the neighbor knocks on the door, Linda has to launch herself up and walk across the room, even if she's not in her braces.

This is not the first time I have heard stories of Linda's being taken advantage of. She says the people who do it don't know any better. That may be true--there seems to be a lack of social intelligence going around. I tell her repeatedly, "Stand up for yourself! Don't let yourself get pushed around." That's when I begin sounding like an article on assertiveness in a woman's glossy. "It's OK to say no to people!"

Although I still fill out a time sheet for the volunteer organization that first set me up with Linda, I consider her a friend and assume she feels the same. But there are times when she seems to turn the tables on me and starts testing MY boundaries.

Every week I bring a snack for us to share, usually hummus and celery or guacamole and chips. She used to put out a bowl of pretzels when I came over but later told me that she couldn't afford to keep doing it, so I willingly took on snack duty. She provides seltzer water. Everytime we start eating, I can sense that she's waiting for me to finish. I'll have a bite in my mouth and she'll immediately exclaim, "Dig in!" or "Have some more." But when I shake my head because I don't want to answer with my mouth full, she always looks pleased with my response and consequently moves the snack closer to her.

Before our visits she often calls me at home and on my cell--repeatedly if I don't answer right away--requesting small items. I don't mind picking things up for her. After all, she doesn't get out much and the person who used to help her isn't in the picture anymore. Usually because the items are small--aspirin, lotion, dental floss--I refuse to let her pay me back for them. I figure as long as it's a once-in-a-while type of thing it's OK.

But when she comes to expect these things and more from me week after week, I start to get resentful. Two months before her birthday she started naming things she wanted me to buy her: Pajama jeans (I talked her out of those), an Episcopal silver cross necklace that you can only find in select religious stores in the outer suburbs, a tacky pleather case for her Bible that she found in one of those Fingerhut-type catalogs, the ones that you see and wonder, "Who buys this shit?" Now you know. We settle on slacks from Land's End. Now I am forever on their plus-size catalog mailing list.

Recently Linda asked me, "Can you cash a check for me?" I asked her what she meant since she has her own bank account. She replied, "I'll give you a check for $32 and you give me cash, and then hold the check until I get my social security next month." A loan. She had just finished telling me how angry she was at a relative who refused to lend her $65 for a pair of sneakers. "He's got a fancy house with an indoor pool and he can't spare $65!" Now who was the cheapskate-miser? Me.

I still said no. Boundary erected.

I did agree to be on Linda's Lifeline list, to be her local ICE (in case of emergency) contact listed on a form magnetized to her refrigerator, and her emergency cat sitter. I am proud to be able to do be these things for her. The difference is these responsibilities come with being a good friend. They don't cost anything except time.

I try to play my role of listener, of confidant. I try to be present for her even during the times she frustrates me. I don't know if her stories of unfriendly encounters with the cable guy or the crazy woman on the sixth floor are exaggerated--she does have a tendency toward paranoia. I don't know if she is really having bad cell phone service or she just wanted to have an excuse to switch carriers again because she's a maximizer. I try not to tell her what to do, but like a mother to a wayward teenager, I find it impossible not to give her advice, even while I know she probably won't take it.

The last time I visited she gave me a piece of banana bread her neighbor made and a frozen Challah loaf (she's recently reverted back to Judaism, which she converted to years ago) saying "I'm afraid of the oven. I didn't know you had to bake it." I take these gifts with the thought that maybe my friendship means more to her than the opportunity to shave a few dollars off her grocery list.

I'm happy just being a lifeline.

Why I fear death

2011-09-12T17:47:00.000-07:00

"When you are standing at death's door and you have a chance to say something to someone, I absolutely think that that proximity to death is going to influence the words that come out of your mouth."--Harvey Chochinov

I was listening to NPR this morning. The segment Your Health came on, and the topic was dignity therapy. The phrase caught my attention because of how much I value the concept of dignity, being dignified, giving others their dignity. Dignity therapy is practiced on the dying--the "lucky" ones who know when they're going to die and can mentally prepare for it while they are still living.

What bothers people most about dying? Psychologists who work with the dying, hospice workers, philosophers, and religious thinkers have all tried to address this question. For some it's the fear of being forgotten, disappearing into nothingness, all of our thoughts and experiences and stories just vaporizing.

Dignity therapy is designed to allay this fear and allow the dying to tell their story the way they want it to be told. The therapy was created by a psychiatrist named Harvey Chochinov. Chochinov was treating a patient with a brain tumor. He noticed that this pale and weak patient had prominently placed a picture of himself on his bedside table, showing him when he was young and healthy, a muscular bodybuilder. Why that picture?

The man was sending a message: This was how he needed to be seen.

As Chochinov continued his work with the dying, he confronted this again and again — this need people have to assert themselves in the face of death. And he started to wonder about it.

"Why is it that how people perceive themselves to be seen should have such a profound influence? How does that make sense? What does that mean?" Chochinov says.

I worry about how I'll be perceived when I'm dead. Heck, I worry about that NOW. It's like an old person trying to convince a child that they were once as young and cute and energetic as they are. The kid can't see it. Or how strangers perceive the elderly, not identifying that they will be them one day. We post our most flattering pictures on Facebook, we tell ourselves stories about who we are--but what will happen when we die? Will that carefully-constructed version of ourselves also be annihilated?

Dignity therapy involves writing down a person's story while they are still here to tell it. The therapist asks the patient questions and records details that are important to him or her. The document is then transcribed and edited by the patient to their satisfaction. When the patient dies, the document is given to their loved ones. This document often becomes as precious to the survivors as the deceased was in life. Sometimes it even surprises family members, revealing missing details and truthful feelings that they never knew about before.

Does it matter if these patients describe events differently then how they really happened? No. Our perceptions shape our reality; what may have been a disastrous relationship with a sibling becomes a meaningful and unbreakable bond. A difficult day is remembered as also having some beauty, some value in it after all. In the end, we often see things differently than we did when we were actually in the thick of it, and that's normal. Maybe that's even a good thing.

Of course dignity therapy can't help those who die suddenly, unexpectedly, mysteriously. I have many questions about my maternal grandmother who died before I was born. I will probably never get those questions answered--or not completely--because she left behind so few details of herself. What if she had taken the time to write about her life--even a few pages about key moments would have been a wonderful gift to my mother and me. This was probably what my mother was thinking of when a few Christmases ago, she gave me a journal in which she had written her memories of her life before I was born. A more thoughtful gift is hard to imagine.

And then there are those who experience a living "death." I'm reading a book called Head Cases. It's a fascinating book with stories of people affected by TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury.) There has been a lot of talk of TBI in the news lately--high school football stars sustaining head injuries that they'll likely carry through the rest of their life, military men and women whose head injuries cause a variety of changes in their physical body but also in their personality. The brain is such an amazing machine, but it's also a mysterious and fragile organ that, when damaged, can cause people to forget they have a wife or a child, to think they're dead, to suffer violent rages, or to become highly gifted artists. You think that you will always be the same person, but you won't--whether it's by means of an accident or an awakening, you will change, and then you will adapt as best as you can to your new reality. But we may not want to leave our old selves in the dustbin like some discarded clothing that doesn't fit us. Those old clothes are still infused with our memories, our meaning.

Which makes me think that we all better get writing the story of our lives right now.

Let the music play

2011-09-05T06:59:00.000-07:00

Photo Credit: dougandadrienne.info

"Why am I doing such a thing as performing an improvisation on a piano? I have a quick answer. I need to know who I am, and this is my most complete way of knowing. And as for why you are listening? You need something as well, some connective beauty we all seem to be longing for.

Now the piece is over. In the moment before applause, the sense of community is palpable We've been connected, but not necessarily in the same ways to the same places. If there is anything we can hold onto in music it is perhaps this quiet, infinite instant when we inhabit our collective body."--W. A. Mathieu, from Bridge of Waves: What Music Is and How Listening to It Changes the World

My favorite record store when I was a teenager was a place called Vintage Vinyl. It was a stand-alone store on Rt. 35 in Oakhurst, NJ. Before I had a driver's license, I would walk from our sprawling condominium complex on sidewalks few ever used because the car is king in the suburbs, past the 7-Eleven and a shopping complex that can only exist in a overdeveloped New Jersey town--Cobblestone Village. I'd make a mad dash across the median of the highway and climb the hill over to the record store. I was maybe 15 years-old, babysitting money in my pocket, and the anticipation of buying a new album or cassette tape made me giddy.

When I had a car I'd drive to Red Bank, to Jack's Music Shoppe, where I'd spend an hour or more flipping through the CDs. Music--like books--were my solace and refuge from hurt and disappointment, but also a celebration of being young, knowing all the tidbits about a band's likes and dislikes, or at least what they claimed in Spin magazine. Music was an essential backdrop in my life in college--whether I was writing a paper (flamenco guitar or anything soft and lilting like 10,000 Maniacs), getting ready to go out on a Thursday night (updated disco from Deee-Lite or the jazz/hip-hop hybrid band Digable Planets), or letting fantasy and wistful song lyrics fill in the blanks of an otherwise unpromising crush (any young female at a piano.)

In my twenties it was live music in New York City, and my best friend's band Bionic Finger--a four-girl pop band who played in delightfully seedy venues in the East Village and Brooklyn. Live shows at these dark clubs not only made you feel young and in-the-know, but united you with all the other familiar music lovers inevitably in the crowd.

In my thirties I could sense the change in my musical proclivities. No longer was I searching out new bands or buying obscure foreign releases of a favorite artist. I still listened to music, but it was usually a rotating collection of discs released 2-5 years ago. I don't want to blame married life for dampening my musical enthusiasm, but so much of what I liked to listen to I associated with being young and single and free. Now the radio dial was locked on NPR News and stations that played that ultimately unhip musical category--Adult Contemporary.

Mike had also been a huge music fan--though his favorite bands were about a decade older than mine--but now he described music as unmoving. I thought that was incredibly sad, and wondered if I would feel the same in ten years. Already I was only seeing bands like REM and Prince live, and even those shows were less-than-thrilling because of the huge arena crowds and the grating, off-tune warbling of the guy next to me screaming out the lyrics, thereby wiping out the voices of the actual musicians I had come to hear.

So it was sweet relief when I saw Raul Malo (former lead singer of The Mavericks, a rockabilly-country band popular in the '90s) this past Friday night. It's true that the venue was a far cry from the dank, sticky clubs of my youth. This place had tables with linen tablecloths and served delicious food made with produce from local farms. The median age in the room was around 45.

But the acoustics were far superior to any I had experienced on Ludlow Street. The audience, clearly enjoying the show, refrained from screaming out the lyrics to every song just to prove THEY were the ultimate fans. The band was phenomenal and Raul's voice might as well have been Elvis's back in the day because every woman in the room was swooning. I was reminded why I still listen to music and how even if the bands I listened to have changed (or are the same as 20 years ago) they still have the ability to make me feel alive, in the moment, and connected to something bigger than me.

I remember a (partial) quote by John Keats that I once copied in my journal: "Give me books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors." Art and music and books will always be essential. They are an integral part of my spiritual life.

Don't break the chain

2011-08-24T10:08:00.000-07:00

Photo from Blurt-Online.com

Jerry Seinfeld's Productivity Secret

Mike sent me this article today. It's related to yesterday's post about choosing a daily practice and motivating yourself to stick with it. What would you like to make your daily action?

The perils of skipping practice

2011-08-23T14:52:00.000-07:00

"Without a daily embodiment in practice, lofty ideals tend to succumb to self-interest."--Jon Kabat-Zinn, from Wherever You Go, There You Are

The promises we make to ourselves are often the ones we don't take that seriously. We think we're being serious when we say we're going to not eat anything after 8:30PM, but the very day we say it, somehow a bowl of chips and salsa appears in front of us, and what can we do?

I've been taking these pricey writing classes in downtown Boston on and off for a few years now. My husband has supported me going because he figures I'd meet people, make some writer friends who I could invite over for wine tastings and lively dinner parties. He also thought taking classes would get me to write everyday, to develop the regular practice we had talked about so many times over glasses of wine, when we'd engage in that kind of dream talking, resolution-making that's cute when you're 19 but kind of pathetic by the time you're 38.

Since taking these writing classes I've written maybe a dozen poems and essays and submitted exactly two.

Not to say that I don't enjoy the classes or like the people I've met there. I love how there's such a range of backgrounds, occupations, and experience levels in almost every class I've taken. In one personal essay class I was in last Fall, there was a cancer surgeon, someone who worked in Geriatric medicine, a school teacher, an aspiring yoga instructor, and an architect. It was a unique experience for me to be among such a group and I loved hearing their writing--the funny, unusual, painfully honest and incredibly moving stories my classmates wrote about and shared with us. We only saw each other once a week for four hours but that didn't cool the intimacy of the essays we read to each other week after week. It was all very inspiring--while I was in class.

As for my own writing at home between classes, I'd often wait until the last minute to do the assignments--just as I did in high school and college. It's a terrible habit that I got away with when I was in school but is doing me no favors now. How many famous writers, from Hemingway to Emily Dickinson to T.C. Boyle, talk about having and keeping a regular writing practice?

Mike eventually caught on to my lack of practice and just recently made a deal with me (we love making deals--we are master negotiators, but only with each other.) If I submitted one essay in July and one essay in August to be published somewhere, he would be OK with me spending $450 on another ten-week writing class. He warned me that it wouldn't count if I did both essays on the eve of August 31.

I failed to submit anything by the first deadline. I thought he might overlook this and agree to let me take the class anyway. I needed the extra motivation, I was having a hard time deciding what to revise and submit. In turn, he told me he felt bad saying no, but a deal's a deal. Even I had no argument for that.

On the other hand, I have lots of useless, avoidance practices I engage in everyday:

Waking up at 4AM and eating a bowl of Kashi cereal before going to sleep on the couch and fitfully sleeping for another two hours
Organizing my coupon folder so there's never any expired coupons that I might accidentally try to use and thus be embarrassed in front of the teenage clerk at Shaw's
Walking the dog twice a day (more of a mandatory practice, but hey I do it)
Logging on to my favorite discount clothing websites to look at the designer bags I still can't afford
Taking daily inventory of my toiletry products to see if I'm low on eye clarifying cream, volumizing spray, or Q-tips

But as far as practices that would actually do me some real good--like meditation, yoga, writing, exercising, dog obedience training...then I'm all, who has time for that?

I bore myself when I hear my excuses for why I waste an $87 a month gym membership that I roped myself into for a year and can't get out of unless I move or die. Or when I talk to others about wanting to take up yoga again, I just need some new yoga pants, or that I'm going to submit an article but I'm just so busy right now. All around me I see regular gym-goers of all ages (you can tell by their arms) and young mothers of five who, postpartum, have written three books and who faithfully update their blog every morning. They somehow found time, why can't I?

Everyone has the same amount of time in a day--it's how you choose to spend those 24 hours that matters. Having a practice that you care about, that truly reflects your values, or as Jon Kabat-Zinn puts it, "is my job on the planet with a capital J", is what makes for a good life. Everything else is just noise.

Happy follow-up to the previous post

2011-08-03T11:07:00.001-07:00

Helen Mirren Has the Sexiest Body On the Planet, from Salon.com

Aging well

2011-08-02T14:55:00.000-07:00

Picture came from this site.

"There is clearly nothing desirable in the world of advertising about growing up. An ad for a truck says 'About the only thing it has in common with the typical 50-year-old is the spare tire.' Fifty is still young these days. Most of us at fifty are much wiser than we were at thirty and we still have another twenty-five or thirty years to go. But we get the constant message that it's all over for us. This is demoralizing for all of us, men and women, young and old--we learn to dread the natural process of growing older and we feel terribly devalued as we age."--Jean Kilbourne, Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel

I often fantasize about moving to France. It's not that I want to practice my high school French, or eat brie and baguettes every day (though that's certainly an appealing proposition) or that French Women Never Get Fat (I've been to Paris, and trust me, some of them do.) There is more respect for the "older woman" there. A woman is not judged by what age bracket her demographic falls into. She is not "past her expiration date" at 40. Actually in her 4th decade she's just coming into her own, and her self-knowledge and confidence give her a particular kind of allure.

And if you're older than 40? TV, magazines, and other media either ignore you or try to carve you into some warped version of your younger self. Once you're 60 or 70, you fall off the media radar completely. Never mind that Americans are living longer and feeling healthier than their parents did. Aging, like Death, is taboo territory. If we don't acknowledge it, maybe it will go away.

One of my personal pet peeves is the raw deal given to senior citizens. Apart from some excellent films depicting older people--like the beautiful Away From Her, directed by Sarah Polley (a bright young thing herself) or any Helen Mirren vehicle--seniors are typically the butt of jokes. They horrify people by displaying what younger people see as inappropriate behavior. Being seen nude seems to be the worst offense a senior--particularly a woman--can commit. It's incredibly sad that a person can live on this earth for half a century or more, adapt (willingly or not so much) to all the changes time and technology present, earn the knowledge and life experience and resilience that only personal experience can give you, and then Poof! suddenly disappear from society, erased like a chalk outline. What they deserve is our respect, but what they get is either our pity, our ridicule, or our indifference.

If living in the present is one of the keys to happiness, why all this emphasis on being younger, exerting all your energy trying to go back to a time in your life that no longer exists?

Speaking of impossible time travel, Mike and I drove down to New Jersey this past weekend to attend my 20th high school reunion. I thought it would be fun to listen to all my favorite music from when I was a teenager. Turns out a lot of it just isn't so compelling anymore. I had forgotten how melodramatic and/or annoying some of my favorite singers were: Morrissey of The Smiths promising to throw his white body down on the rocks below and other happy sentiments; Edie Brickell screeching "What I am is what I am are you what you are or what?"; and They Might be Giants, whose lead singer sounds like he's suffering from a chronic sinus infection, warbling nonsensical lyrics like "But don't don't don't let's start. I've got a weak heart. And I don't get around how you get around." (although "Istanbul [Not Constantinople]" is still one of my favorite alternative pop songs.)

I look to my parents for signs that they are suffering from a lack of youth and relevancy. My father has always kept up with pop music--he knows when Duffy has a new single and has opinions on every American Idol finalist. My mother could care less about pop culture--she's interested in painting, photography, crafts...all the things she didn't have a lot of time for when she was raising me. My father works longer hours than I do, and commutes three times the distance--every weekday and sometimes on Saturdays. Once in love with New York City nightlife, now he would rather be up in Manchester, VT, working on their little "recession cottage." They're both looking forward to his retirement. I respect all they've been through and admire their resiliency. Yes, I do tease my mother about her age sometimes, but that's more of a childish habit than anything else.

I doubt that Big Advertising's message about the unacceptability, the miserable shame, of aging will change--can you imagine an ad for a facial cream aimed at women of a certain age that doesn't promise miracles? That shows a real woman with real skin imperfections applying it simply because it feels and smells good? No way. If the Baby Boomers can't change the twisted message about getting older, who can? But not buying into the media propaganda that life ends at 50--that's up to us. Living in the present and owning our age is something anyone can do, at any time. It's certainly better than the alternative.

Locked-down

2011-07-20T14:14:00.000-07:00

*Photo credit unknown

"The ways in which we need to grow are usually those we are the most supremely defended against and are least willing to admit even exist, let alone take an undefended, mindful peek at and then act on to change."--Jon Kabat-Zinn, from Wherever You Go There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

When you're a worrier, life is a lot harder than it needs to be. A worrier gets a bill in the mail from their primary care physician for a large sum of money and instantly thinks, Oh no, I can't afford this! I thought my insurance would cover it! One quick (well maybe not quick) phone call to the insurance company would correct the error, but already the worry has done its damage. The worrier starts to obsess about an unreality: I'm going to have to pay $250 for that benign mole they removed at my request. It could have been melanoma. I might have died!

Or a worrier takes a harmless, or at best, ambiguous situation, and infuses it with doubt. I was in a cab once and the driver, a Haitian immigrant, starting singing in French. I was mindlessly scrolling through the Apps on my SmartPhone just to fill the time, but when he kept singing--his voice becoming stronger and sweeter--I put the phone away. It would have been rude to act like I didn't hear him, and he did have a nice voice. We started chatting and he told me that he was a musician and songwriter, and that what he just sang was an original piece he wrote. Then when I asked him how long he had been in this country, he said he was a refugee from Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. He went on to describe how his mother died in the quake, and how he tried to save her life and in the process seriously injured himself.

I didn't know what to say--what can you say to a stranger who tells you of such personal tragedy? Then I started thinking, maybe he's making this up for a better tip. Yes, I'm embarrassed to say that that thought popped in my head, and started snowballing until my empathy turned to anger. How dumb does he think I am? And how dare he use a true disaster for his own financial gain!

I threw out a cliche in reply, "Life is suffering," I said. How dismissive. I had a chance to demonstrate some compassion for the guy, but I let it go. How many times have I had the opportunity to show a small act of kindness toward a stranger and then didn't? I worry so much about being made a fool of that I find it hard to be openhearted sometimes.

There was a recent survey that named Boston the Least-Friendly City in America (not to mention the worst-dressed, but have they seen Newbury Street or been to the South End on a sunny Saturday?) Though I live just outside the city, I'm not one of its defenders. I DO think Boston is an unfriendly town. For a moment I was happy to learn that my perspective matched an independently-funded survey's. But instead of bitching about it, I could be part of the change I want to see in my neighborhood.

So I'm trying to think of it this way: we all face uncertain situations everyday. Maybe that person is lying, maybe the bill is accurate, maybe the woman who bumped into you meant to be rude. But when you chronically worry and doubt and spin out worst-case scenarios without knowing all the facts, you're going to experience more unhappy, unsatisfying moments than the average person--and the chances to connect with people with openness and compassion will float away like so many seeds on a dandelion.

The budget crisis

2011-07-03T10:26:00.000-07:00

Credit: http://vladolarte.wordpress.com

"We live impelled by desire. We hunger, we experience a fundamental and pervasive dissatisfaction with what is, and expend enormous amounts of time and energy in striving to attain a better external circumstance and a more satisfying state of mind."--Sasha T. Loring, from her article "How to Tame the Wanting Mind" in the July 2011 issue of Shambhala Sun

"Greater happiness lies in coming together--a transcending of the self. No amount of consumerism can ever approximate the happiness that comes through generosity and giving."--Raj Patel, in an interview with Andrea Miller in the July 2011 issue of Shambhala Sun

$30. That is my allotment of "fun money" for the week. I am finally going to be living on a budget, one that will allow Mike and me to live within our means, not accrue debt, and boost our Emergency Fund. For too long I have been looking at my husband as if he were the cramp in my spendthrift lifestyle. But the truth is right there in the spreadsheet in which we track our monthly bills. Some unexpected expenses coupled with Carmelita's $5 a day Bully stick habit ($150 a month if you're counting) means that for the time being we have to conserve our funds for just necessities. $30 each is what we can afford until our home economic recovery.

My reaction to scarcity is not that different from most people's--I go into panic mode, looking for any loophole, any extra income flow. How much change have I accumulated in my Vermont Common Crackers container? ($37.) How many summer pieces have I sold at the consignment shop so far, and when can I pick up my check? (12 pieces, end of July, although they're usually slow in paying up.) What about those rebate checks for the $80 worth of wine I bought over the last three months? ($10.) Does anyone owe me money? (Sadly, no. The only woman I loan money to is Linda, and that's only $5 here and there. I may be desperate enough not to be above a trip to the bank to cash two $5 Estancia rebate checks, but I'm not about to act as loan shark to a senior citizen living on disability.)

I've taken to squirreling away whatever money I do get. While visiting my parents in New Jersey recently, I pocketed the change from the $20 my father gave me to go into Starbuck's for his daily Caffe Americano. Two days of this, and I had earned about $35 not counting tax, but I also had to endure the ribbing my father gave me about his cup of coffee suddenly going up in price by 733.333%.

Why the obsession over nickles and dimes? Mike and I both have jobs, a roof over our head, fresh food in the fridge, health insurance, clothes, etc. I am not in desperate NEED of anything. I know I'm being irrational, greedy even. But being on a strict budget is like someone with a drug addiction finding out that his only dealer has gone out of town and left no forwarding address. I know that I won't have to live on $30 a week forever--the amount will fluctuate along with our income and expenses. Mike has to adhere to this amount the same as me, and he isn't suddenly looking for change in between the sofa cushions. Then again, he's an ascetic compared to me.

I have to face the fact that I use money as a salve for the emotions I can't control, the emotions that are a part of my being alive. Having money makes me feel safe, but so does spending it. As long as I have money to spend, I can shut out any sadness or anxiety that comes my way unbidden, like closing the screen on a window: the mosquitoes are still there, but instead of biting they butt their little heads against the wire, unable to penetrate.

A woman I work with said that back in Iowa where she spent part of her childhood, mosquitoes are just a part of summer life, so ubiquitous that you hardly notice them. This got me thinking again, the more you try to escape something, the more of a threat it becomes.

I have definitely curtailed my shopping in the last couple of months, but that feeling of wanting more money remains. Just yesterday I broke my budget buying summer sandals at a discount shoe store. Desire is always buzzing in the background. I just hope to reach a point where it doesn't bother me that much because our solvency as a couple means more.

No one was here

2011-06-15T14:22:00.000-07:00

Photo credit: Malagent on Flickr

"Often, we leave rooms a bit messier than when we entered. We think, 'I'll clean it up later.' Later never comes, until the mess is unbearable, and we become irritated enough to undertake a thorough cleaning. Or we get annoyed at someone else for not doing their part in the housework. How much easier if we take care of things right away. Then we don't have to feel growing annoyance at the gathering mess."--Jan Chozen Bays, from How to Train a Wild Elephant & Other Adventures in Mindfulness

If you leave a glass on the table in my mother-in-law's kitchen, don't expect to find it when you come back. She's likely swept it up and into the dishwasher before you have a chance to reclaim it. I think she's practicing Leave No Trace.

When I worked for a brief time at the Appalachian Mountain Club, I noticed that they teach a whole program for outdoor guides about Leave No Trace. Although I never caught on to the appeal of sleeping outdoors among all manner of bugs and no running water or electricity, I did agree strongly about their Leave No Trace edict. When I see empty Michelob Lite bottles and crushed Doritos bags strewn about outdoors, I want to pick up the trash and throw it in the person's bed, preferably with him/her still in it.

But at home I find myself leaving things for that mythical tomorrow. I cook dinner, and afterward, feeling full and lethargic from a day at work and too many carbohydrates, I wander off, leaving the mess in the sink to deal with later. But waking up to a sink filled with dirty dishes is like leaving a filmy residue on the next day. Same goes for the bag of papers to file soon and the magazines to look through and recycle at some point. I have a hard time getting rid of my glossy magazines like Food and Wine and The New Yorker but at this point I have a whole periodicals section in both the living room and office, and no one looking anything up or borrowing them.

I'm slowly reading the new Jan Chozen Bays' book and in it she has an exercise called "Leave No Trace." You're supposed to choose a room and then make sure that you always leave that room in the same condition in which you found it. Like her other exercises you do this for one week. The reason I'm doing this particular exercise is that I find that my sense of self-discipline is lacking. With this flaw in mind, I told Mike what I was up to so he'd be there to nag (I mean, remind) me about it. I chose the kitchen since I like to cook and the dog is confined there during the week, and sometimes the younger cat Joey Thumbs jumps the pet gate and sniffs around for our leavings. At this point I've loved her into obesity (food = love, except when it causes Feline Diabetes) so she's not doing much jumping on the counters when we're not home. Still, starting the day with a clean sink is really a lovely feeling.

So far it's going well. Mike was inspired to take over the Leave No Trace duties this morning by washing our breakfast dishes. If you want someone to do something, it helps to lead by example.

Not that it's easy. I have to fight my urge to walk away from that pile of crumbs or that coffee cup with the lipstick print and coffee stains on it. The call of an intriguing book or Carmelita with the road kill toy in her mouth, begging me to play tug-of-war...they all have to wait until I erase my trace. The idea is not only to be a neater person, but also to appreciate the everyday objects that we use and then mindlessly leave behind. My Captain Haddock mug, the one-cup coffee press, the tiny IKEA spoon--all serve me well every morning and they deserve some props.

So many of us want to leave our trace in this world, but there's something to be said for traveling incognito, coming and going without anyone knowing you were there.

Losing my perspective

2011-05-30T12:00:00.000-07:00

"Simply put, how we react is not the most important element of any situation. When we fixate on our reactions, they pull us away from a primary experience of what's actually happening, into a small room where how we think and feel about the experience is the most important thing, the thing we're now in a relationship with.
"The moment is vast, with a lot of space between the things in it. The moment is generous. I don't have to zero in on my reaction, to act impulsively on it or repudiate it or improve it, all of which tend to reinforce the sense of its importance, but just accept it as one (small) part of what's happening. Usually that simple shift changes everything. It allows us to step out of the small room of second-order experience and back into a fuller, more realistic experience of the moment."--Joan Sutherland, from her essay "Gaining Perspective" (Buddhadharma, Summer 2011).

For as long as I can remember, I've been guided by my emotions. I've lived much of my life so far like an overgrown teenage girl, deeply invested in her feelings about everything. If I felt uncomfortable at a gathering of people I didn't know well, I'd assume it was because people found me boring. If I felt strangely attracted to someone who from all outward appearances was not right for me, I would follow that impulse anyway, often to its inevitably bad ending. If I felt envious of someone who seemed to have everything I wanted, I only saw the positive aspects of that person's life, and not the moments of suffering that we are all privy to, no matter how charmed a life we otherwise lead.

But so what? Weren't we taught from a young age, particularly if we were a girl, that our feelings mattered? That they were our thermometer to adjust until we got the temperature just right? If your house is too hot, you start to sweat and your tongue turns to tissue paper, and you go and turn down the heat until you're comfortable. If I'm feeling lonely it must mean that I don't have enough friends and will probably die alone. As if feeling lonely at times is a problem that needs to be remedied like a stomach flu or a migraine. The result is we spend a lot of time trying to fix what's not broken, and then we worry about that fact that we can't fix "it."

Now I'm trying to unlearn this lesson in egotism. When I first moved to Boston and was feeling an almost constant anxiety and sadness--which I was convinced were the result of circumstances outside myself, NOT the negative thoughts that made a constant loop in my head--I went to see a cognitive-behavioral therapist at a respected clinic in the city. I was tired of living at the mercy of my feelings, of never being sure if my emotions were a result of a given situation or "all in my head." I wanted to pick apart the feelings and the thoughts to form something closer to the truth of my experiences. Some people are labeled "sensitive" or "serious" because they let their negative thoughts run the show most of the time. I was walking around feeling like an open wound--anything that touched me hurt, and instead of healing shortly after the injury, I was letting it get more and more infected with every exposure.

In CBT therapy I learned the difference between "feeling" and "being." Take-home exercises often included thought records on which I was supposed to list a negative thought, like "that woman is looking at me like she can't stand me" and consider all the other reasons why the person might have looked sour, like "She just had a fight with her mother" or "she is thinking of something unpleasant that happened at work." Sometimes it could be as simple as "she just naturally frowns when she's among strangers on the train." When I am waiting for a friend to arrive, and I see her walking towards me before she sees me, doesn't she sometimes have a serious, even slightly hostile look on her face? Then she sees me, too, and her face softens into a pleased expression. How often do we infuse meaning in a situation when in truth there IS no meaning, or the meaning is not what we thought at all?

After I quit CBT therapy (it's only supposed to last a maximum of six months, but I turned out to be a remedial student) I tried to be more aware of what was around me in the moment, and not pay as much attention to the content of my thoughts and feelings. Reading about mindfulness techniques has helped. For instance, in Jan Chozen Bays's new book, How to Train a Wild Elephant: And Other Lessons in Mindfulness, one of the exercises is to use your non-dominant hand for a week. Not for everything, but just when you think of it. It didn't take long before I was catching myself not using my non-dominant hand, and there would be a pause as I shifted from left to right hand. Of course what hand I was using at any given moment wasn't important--it was noticing when I had floated away in my thoughts, become unaware of where I was in the here and now.

Letting go of the moody teenage girl in my head has been hard. But she's been living at home too long--eating my food, racking up bills, leaving messes everywhere she goes. At some point, you have to grow up, open your eyes and ears and heart to all that is out there in the real world.

Fitting in

2011-05-17T03:48:00.000-07:00

"When we spend a lot of time with our body doing one thing while our mind is on vacation somewhere else, it means that we aren't really present for much of our life. When we aren't present, it makes us feel vaguely but persistently dissatisfied. This sense of dissatisfaction, of a gap between us and everything and everyone else, is the essential problem of human life. It leads to those moments when we are pierced with a feeling of deep doubt and loneliness."--Jan Chozen Bays, from How to Train a Wild Elephant & Other Adventures in Mindfulness.

I'm coming on five years of living in the Boston area, but somehow it doesn't feel like home yet. I keep waiting for that moment when ta da! I feel one with my surroundings. Like if I've been away and I come back, it's almost a relief because I'm in familiar territory--the city I love, the place that embraces me and welcomes me back in the fold.

Is it that the place you lived when you were young will forever feel like home? When I moved to Boston in the summer of 2006 I was moving to be with my future husband, but I also saw it as an opportunity to grow. I didn't want to be the person who stayed in one place their whole life.

I remember when I spent my first night in the new apartment, our apartment, the first we had owned. Mike had moved up to Boston ahead of me and for the past couple of months we had only seen each other on weekends. Now this was my home, too. I brushed my teeth in what felt like someone else's bathroom. There was a hand towel of questionable origin hanging from the rack near the sink. The only toiletries were Men's products: Speed Stick, cologne, a razor with black hairs in the blade. There was a light brown soapy film covering the sink.

This was not unlike the scene four years before when I moved into Mike's apartment in Astoria, Queens. I had to find a way to squeeze myself into the space that before had been your typical bachelor pad (except without the leather couch and neon Heineken sign, thankfully.) At one point, when I was removing some decoration of Mike's that he had in the kitchen and replacing it with something floral and pink, Mike said, "You're removing every trace of me!" A slight exaggeration--why would I want to remove every trace of the person I loved? But I could also see his point.

But in this new apartment, in this strange city, moving in wasn't as easy as putting my collection of Belle Epoque advertising signs on the walls and clean and fresh hand towels in the bathroom. For the first four months when I hadn't found a job yet and so had lots of free time I went to work with Comet and a sponge, removing the former occupants trail and introducing our own. I thought that if I could make my mark on the apartment, I could do the same in my new city.

Of course it wasn't enough to unpack my collection of coffee mugs and martini glasses, bottles of skin lotion and pretty guest soaps. Even when my books were side-by-side (but not mixed together--never!) with Mike's, when I went outside in my neighborhood it always felt like I was just visiting, a subletter using another person's couch, coffeepot, bed, until the owner returned. It wasn't Mike's fault--he encouraged me to explore the town and take writing classes and make new friends. This city was somewhat new to him, too. He was from Massachusetts, sure, and had gone into Boston for Red Sox games. But he's from a small town an hour west of here. In a way, even though he had family nearby, this was all new for him, too.

Maybe if I was of college-age when I moved to Boston it would have been different. The city is chock-a-block with young people. Walking around town is like walking on the biggest college campus you'll ever visit. I found myself swamped in nostalgia for overpriced textbooks, world literature lectures, Thursday night bar crawls.

But as a woman in her mid-thirties I felt marooned. Where could I fit into this picture?

Since that in-between summer in 2006 I've been striving to answer that question, making lists in my head of favorite local restaurants, stores, open markets, art house theaters, etc. I started learning and writing about mindfulness, staying present, appreciating where you are right where you are. It has been a slow process, and ongoing.

Puppy-whipped

2011-04-29T14:03:00.000-07:00

"Scratch a dog and you'll find a permanent job."--Franklin P. Jones

I keep a spreadsheet of Mike's and my daily spending and I recently added up how much we had spent on pets in the last five months. Over $2,000. We also own two cats, but apart from yearly vet exams at their kitties-only clinic, and the occasional feather-on-a-stick, they don't need very much to keep them somewhat content.

That leaves the puppy. So if I take the $400 we spent on the adoption fees, and add another $200 for the spay, $500 for various shots, chips, and stool tests, another $400 for that ultrasound they recommended because of a heart murmur, and that tiny winter parka that cost $60 and that she wore exactly twice...yup, that's $2,000 all right.

Who would have thought that a rescue mutt from Arkansas would cost as much in the first six months as a used car?

My love for Carmelita has already been challenged many times, and yet she remains a member of our household.

The problem is when you have ACTUAL PUPPY DOG eyes staring up at you, it's hard to be the no-nonsense disciplinarian you need to be with dogs. I have to remind myself of what Mike said about not wanting to own a yippy, out-of-control little toy who poos wherever is most convenient (Check), steals your new pink suede sandals (Check), and refuses to give up the dead mouse carcass it's carrying like the crown jewels through your neighborhood (check, check, check).

Having a puppy in my life has been a drain on the bank account and on our social life. We've gone through at least four containers of heavy-duty Lysol wipes. And she's chewed through the cushions on our kitchen chairs with the ferocity of a wild animal disemboweling its prey, leaving fuzzy guts all over the ceramic tile.

She's also made me less vain. It used to be that I wouldn't leave the house unless I was showered and dressed and wearing lipstick. I worried about what people would say if they saw me in my natural state--hair that hangs limp if it's not washed for a day, dark circles under my eyes, a bloated tummy.

But walking Carmelita at 6:00 AM precludes my usual primping. I'm out there with my hair mussed up, my trench coat half-concealing a pair of red fuzzy sleeping pants, shoes without socks. I must look deranged, a Miss Hannigan walking Sandy down a busy street. I used to don a pair of sunglasses even when I was up and out before sunrise. I'd be so blind I'd trip over Carmelita's leash and I'd lose sight of the pile of dog poop I was supposed to be considerately bagging.

Now I go out without sunglasses because who has time to put them on? When Carmelita has to go, she has to GO. And I hate to see her shivering in the doorway, waiting for me to coordinate my umbrella to my coat. Half the time I don't even put in my contacts, which is helpful when I want to play the "if I can't see how I look, then I don't look bad" game.

Carmelita has also made me less selfish. Sure, when I get home from work I'd love to immediately flop on the couch and leaf through the latest Anthropologie catalog, dog-earing pages of bohemian fluff and shiny things that I can't afford. But Carmelita has been alone all day, and even after I walk and feed her, she's looking for extended bouts of play time. It can be awfully boring tossing a dog-spit-soaked furry toy over and over, but then I think of that commercial for that anti-depressant I can't remember the name of. You know--the one where the voice-over warns, "Depression hurts everyone" and the camera pans to a dog dejectedly holding a ball in it's mouth because he has an owner who is too depressed to throw anything. What a self-involved, uncaring human! You can be depressed and still play with your dog. Trust me.

So in the balance sheet of life with a dog, Carmelita ultimately comes out on top. Who needs sleep, evenings out, extra money in the bank, when you have that excited little dog greeting you at the puppy gate, flinging herself in the air like like a flying fish leaps out of the water, just because you're home? That's priceless.

Appreciating the cherry blossoms

2011-04-07T13:44:00.000-07:00

violets here and there
in the ruins
of my burnt house

-Shokyu-Ni, from Haiku Mind: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness & Open Your Heart

I heard on the radio the other day that Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara has asked that the people of Tokyo show self-restraint during their popular spring ritual Cherry Blossom Season. Granted with the devastating earthquake and Tsunami less than a month ago and another quake hitting the Northern Coast today, celebrating budding flowers might seem ridiculous. Ishihara is also responding to the need to conserve energy ("On an average year, we light up the Chidorigafuchi area so that visitors can enjoy the evening too. But we have to conserve energy this year, so we have refrained from doing so. The atmosphere is different from an average year," he was quoted as saying in an article on Channel NewsAsia.)

This makes perfect sense--I remember those weeks and months after September 11 when most New Yorkers were unusually subdued. It would be a while before it felt appropriate to be anything but grim after experiencing such a large-scale and public tragedy.

That October I hosted a wine-tasting party and I remember what a relief it was to be among friends, opening bottles and serving Brie en Croute and hummus. I lived in Hoboken, NJ then and had seen the towers burning from a pier just blocks from my apartment. My roommate and I were lucky we didn't make it to work in Manhattan that day. We both cried when we saw the people jumping from the Towers.

I don't know how to make sense of random suffering. After 9/11 happened, I personally couldn't shake a terrifying vulnerability. I thought of the dead who were my age (28) or younger, how they were just going to work on an average Tuesday, summer over but the weather still beautiful. I had only been inside the towers a couple of times, but I remember eating at Windows on the World with a boyfriend, the slight vertigo I felt sitting so close to a view of the sky and not much else. What happened to these victims could have easily happened to me or to anyone I loved. It may sound silly, but I don't think I really considered my own mortality until that Autumn.

So what was my response? I developed hypochondria, I worried that I had left the apartment door unlocked or a burner on. I would call home even though there was no one there. We still had an answering machine, and I figured if the apartment had burned down, the machine wouldn't work. But even when I heard our taped message click on, I still fretted. If something so devastating could happen to other good, ordinary people at any time and for no reason, then when would my turn come? My parents? My friends?

My mother, who experienced personal tragedy early in life, has always been a big believer in appreciating beauty, savoring small moments, lingering on the slightest glimpse of joy. Sometimes she wonders aloud how she came to have such a worrier for a daughter. I thought I was just being realistic--after all, the world is a dangerous place where anything could (and did) happen. By ignoring that fact, I thought of my mother as having her head in the sand. It hasn't been until recently that I've started to see how her way of experiencing the world is actually a lot more sensible than mine.

I don't think it's disrespectful for the Japanese people to stop and appreciate the cherry blossoms, drink wine, celebrate spring with friends if they are able. It is in these ways (I say, admittedly from a Westerner's perspective) that we are honoring our humanity and, perhaps more important, ensuring our sanity.

Money, Money, Money...Money

2011-03-23T13:12:00.000-07:00

"Practicing gratitude, we feel rich, full, enough. For those of us with a tendency toward greed, practicing gratitude can be like eating before you go grocery shopping."--Laura Jomon Martin

My older friend Linda loves anything new--or at least, new to her. If someone is getting rid of, say, a glass coffee table or a set of kitchen chairs, she can't pass it up. Her neighbor sells her all kinds of things--frog stuffed animals, a used television even though she has two TVs and four rooms, dining room chairs with tall backs that loom like gargoyles over her tiny kitchen table. Every week that I visit her she has some new acquisition to show me. She has a back-up cell phone even though she hardly ever leaves the house, a motorized wheelchair that sits untouched up against the wall, and an extra bed for those overnight visitors that have yet to materialize. When she told me yesterday that she was thinking about replacing her two perfectly good easy chairs with a couch that her neighbor was giving away, it was all I could do not to call her on her preoccupation with material things.

But I didn't have to say a word. "Some people have jobs to think about." She said, "All I have to think about all day is my furniture and things."

If I were to be honest with myself, I would have to say that the reason that Linda's chronic discontent with her stuff bothers me is because it's a condition that I also share. I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about shopping: collecting coupons, making lists of books and clothes I want to buy, subscribing to shopping sites offering deep discounts. When I'm in shopping mode it's like I'm in a fog and nothing else exists but finding that next great deal. It's the very opposite of mindfulness. Yes, I may have a brief moment of clarity when I think of my household budget or the stuff that I already bought the day before, and sometimes that stops me in my tracks. Other times I live in denial, believing (right or wrong) that I deserve to buy myself something nice and that I can afford it.

This is a tough thing for me to admit because I don't want to believe that A. I'm acquisitive, even greedy at times B. I'm living an aspirational life that often centers around spending money. It was one thing when I was a single girl living in Hoboken and my bank account bore only my name. Now that I'm married, my actions affect more than one person.

That's when I pledge to go on a starvation diet. I won't buy anything but groceries for two months! I will only window-shop and I'll unsubscribe from Shop it To Me. I'll be a more mindful shopper and will only buy what I need. But then I'm faced with that gaping void again. What to do to replace that shopping high? Sweets? No, that's just as bad a habit. Alcohol? Ditto. Trashy celebrity gossip? Reality TV? No and no!

So I'm working on a list of things to do that are fun and free (or at least cheap). This is what I have so far:

Write down gratitudes
Listen to CDs I haven't played in years
Try new recipes
Take pictures when I see something unusual or compelling
Collage using old photographs, stamps, wrapping paper, pages from magazines, etc.
Take a long walk with the puppy, preferably leading to somewhere I haven't been
Reduce my book backlog by reading what I already own
Write an email to a friend or just pick up the phone
Send a pretty card to someone who will appreciate receiving it (Grandma, my Swedish cousins, etc.)
Read and write poetry. Remember how much you love poetry?
Work on that pile of hand washables. Not exactly fun, but you might find that cleaning a sweater you haven't worn in a year is almost like wearing something new.
Make a plan to write more, and then do it!
Go to the gym (someone I know who works in reception at a gym told me they have a thick binder of members who signed up at the gym but haven't checked in in months. Yet they continue to pay for membership. Gyms love these people.)
Pay the cats some attention. Maybe then they'll hate the dog less.

More suggestions are always welcome.

Present moments you'd rather skip

2011-03-01T14:38:00.000-08:00

"To train in staying open and curious--to train in dissolving the barriers that we erect between ourselves and the world--is the best use of our human lives."--Pema Chodron

"Ordinary life might seem hassled, repetitive, and boring. When you are impatient, resentful, or uninterested in daily life, you will be blind to the the potential for living cheerfully and creatively."--Andy Karr and Michael Wood, from their essay "Mindfulness, Photography, and Living an Artistic Life"

How do you remain present, drinking in the moment with all your senses, if what you're experiencing is something you'd rather escape?

I was in the Hynes Convention Center T station last night when this question popped up. I was trying to read my copy of The Mindfulness Revolution but I kept looking up waiting for a train that wasn't coming. The station was packed with mostly college students from Berklee, with their bass guitar cases, ears plugged up with the sounds of their latest downloads. I recently made a conscious decision not to use headphones in public because I didn't like the way I was purposely cutting myself off from the world. So now I only use them when I'm at the gym, where I think it's OK to zone out to classic rock (which now means bands like Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Live, the stuff we were listening to in college. So what does that make Led Zeppelin and The Doors? Classical rock?)

So there was some breakdown on the Green Line and trains were running behind schedule. Nothing newsworthy there. But at that moment I wanted to be anywhere but standing in that station. It's been a while since I've had a vacation. I need to escape Brookline for a while--at least for a week. I'm tired of the snow and sleet and piles of dog sh*t everywhere because people seem to think the poo will melt along with the snow, so they might as well leave it there. If I have to climb a curbside mountain of snow in high-heeled boots, sometimes even sinking and getting stuck, to scoop up Carmelita's mess into a little pink baggie, and then carry that baggy swinging in my right hand like a noxious evening bag for the rest of the walk, so should every other dog owner. Maybe I'll write an Op-Ed for The Brookline Tab about that. When exactly did I turn into an 80-year old man?

T.S. Eliot was wrong--March, not April, is the cruelest month. Unless you're Irish there really isn't anything to celebrate, and the weather hasn't turned yet, so even when it's the first day of spring it doesn't feel any different from the last day of winter. March is 31 days of blah, unless you have Spring Break and plans to go to Daytona, or better yet, you have tickets to South America where you're going to help build houses or something.

The usual escapes--clothes shopping, red wine, chocolate, buying books to add to the Jenga-like pile on my bedside table--none of these things are working to snap me out of my funk. So if I can't find enjoyment in my usual escapes and I don't want to live in the present moment, then where is there to go? I guess acceptance of what is. Practicing gratitude. Not judging your circumstances as either good or bad. Letting yourself be bored or tired or cranky and not actively trying to change it. If you wait long enough, moods naturally shift.

So when I'm sandwiched between a college boy in a hoodie who hasn't showered since Friday night's kegger and an older woman in a massive puffy jacket who keeps sighing when people inevitably bump into her, I accept that this is life and yes it's sometimes irritating and inconvenient, boring and mediocre. There's no real alternative so you might as well just go with it.

That's what I imagine someone more mature than me--who doesn't expect life to be a thrill-a-minute-- might say.

A poem that struck me

2011-02-24T15:38:00.000-08:00

Water

What is the vitality and necessity
of clean water?
Ask the man who is ill, who is lifting
his lips to the cup.

Ask the forest.

--From Evidence: Poems by Mary Oliver

We're all heroes and jerks

2011-02-16T14:39:00.000-08:00

"Compassion brings us back to dealing with the world as the only way. We have to work with people. We have to work with our fathers, our mothers, our sisters and brothers, our neighbors, and our friends. We have to do that because the people with whom we are associated in our lives provide the only situations that drive us to the spiritual search. Without those people, we would not be able to look into such possibilities at all. They provide irritations, negativities, and demands. They provide us with everything.
"So, after all, our spiritual journey is not such a romantic thing at all. It is connected with our ordinary, sometimes irritating, everyday life."--Chogyam Trunga, from Work, Sex, Money: Real Life on the Path of Mindfulness

I surprised myself the other day when I was walking home from volunteering. I was in a perfectly good mood, which is usually the case after I see Linda, the older, disabled woman I visit once a week. Though on paper we don't have a lot in common--she doesn't like reading, watching movies, or cooking, for example, and I am not a fan of John Denver or Pillow Pets--we still find plenty to talk about and there's hardly a moment of silence when we get together.

Going to see Linda makes me feel good--I come away knowing that I brought her some companionship (and snacks!) and she got me out of my own head, which is usually a bad place to linger.

And let's face it--there's also that little glow of the do-gooder that we all experience when we volunteer or commit some random act of kindness. They say there are no unselfish acts, that in some way everything we do has some self-serving dimension. But who wants to acknowledge that when we're busy congratulating ourselves?

So this kind, caring, and compassionate woman (me, after volunteering) is crossing the street a few blocks from my house when a car drives across the pedestrian lane without stopping to let me cross, even though I'm in the middle of the road! In response, I stick my middle finger way up in the air and scowl at the driver through their driver's side window. I surprise myself with this jolt of anger over such a minor infraction. But in my head I'm thinking, does that person have so much disrespect for me that they risk running me over just to avoid the inconvenience of stopping? What's wrong with people today?

About five minutes later, I'm feeling shame mixed with fading anger. I know I overreacted, and the image I have of myself is not pretty.

The same thing happens when I'm home and my downstairs neighbors--Boston University students--have their stereo blasting dance music. Here I am trying to watch a sensitive, low-budget documentary about coffee production in Columbia or some place, and these jerks are making my floor shake like there's a Jersey Shore nightclub below me. I start to seethe and clench my teeth, wondering how they can be so completely witless and still be in college. Various neighbors (not just us) have asked them to turn it down (usually on a Sunday night at midnight) and yet it happens again the next night and the next. They are so disrespectful! Don't they know that I prefer 70's soul and disco?

It's easy to find fault with the world around you--and especially with the people around you. It's hard to consider their point of view. Maybe the person in the car who didn't stop for me was distracted with thoughts about work or his girlfriend. And the college guys--how many times in your early twenties did YOU blast music in your apartment without thought to your older neighbors who might have preferred classical over the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack?

I live right outside the city, in an apartment building that's close to another apartment building. The guy on the roof chipping ice and dumping it in the alley is not intentionally trying to flood our basement--he's probably not conscious of that possibility. He's just trying to stop the flooding in his own apartment. Even when people are intentionally rude or thoughtless doesn't mean they're incapable of also being a nice person.

Yesterday, I got a box of artisan chocolates in the mail from one of my authors, along with a card thanking me for helping to promote her essay collection. It absolutely made my day, this small act of kindness. I hadn't known she felt that way about my work. I started thinking about how I encounter people doing kind things almost as often as people doing rotten things. It does balance out in the end.

And that kind, caring, compassionate woman trying to cross the street? She's no saint. When Linda indirectly asked me to take her to a podiatry appointment early Monday morning I hesitated and made excuses--even told her to reschedule the appointment so someone else could take her. Not that I wasn't aware that it would be the right thing to do. I wanted to sleep in.

Mindless Humans

2011-02-07T05:22:00.000-08:00

"Mindfulness benefits from the ability to concentrate attention but is not the same as concentration. It is a quality that human beings already have, but they have usually not been advised that they have it, that it is valuable, or that it can be cultivated. Mindfulness is the awareness that is not thinking but is aware of thinking, as well as each of the other ways we experience the sensory world; that is, seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling through the body. Mindfulness is nonjudgmental and openhearted (friendly and inviting of whatever arises in awareness). It is cultivated by paying attention purposefully, deeply, and without judgment to whatever arises in the present moment, either inside or outside of us. By intentionally practicing mindfulness, deliberately paying more careful moment-to-moment attention, individuals can live more fully and less on "automatic pilot," thus being more present in their own lives."--Jeff Brantley, from his essay Mindfulness FAQ in the essay anthology The Mindfulness Revolution:Leading Psychologists, Scientists, Artists, and Meditation Teachers on the Power of Mindfulness in Daily Life, edited by Barry Boyce and the editors of the Shambhala Sun

It's hard to pay attention. I took the puppy out for a walk and figured I'd also pick up my dry cleaning since I was going out and coming back anyway. Carmelita wanted to sniff around at the yellow snow in front of our apartment building. Apparently, dog urine and other smelly substances are like a message board between dogs. Carmelita was just trying to get to know her neighbors. But I was already running late for work and nudged her to move on. Dogs can be as stubborn as cats, I've discovered. She just sat there and refused to move, probably sensing that I was too soft-hearted to pull too hard on the leash. Finally she finished reading the urine and followed behind me, then sprinted ahead of me. The sidewalks were covered in slush and ice and I'm surprised I didn't break a few vital leg bones.

We were halfway to the dry cleaner when she stopped again to watch the recycling truck pick up the bright blue containers filled with mixed plastic and paper. It must have sounded formidable to her--this metal monster creaking and screeching as it stopped in front of house after house. Or maybe she was just captivated by the smell of soggy milk cartons and cat food cans and their remnants of meat. Then Carmelita wanted to know what the girl walking toward us smelled like, and if she was open to being jumped on and then licked many, many times in the face. The girl looked like she was heading to class, and not wanting to break the invisible barrier between us, I swung Carmelita way to the right of her.

Then there were the birds. Had she even heard birds before? Their sounds captivated her; she looked all around her for what was making that sound she didn't recognize. The smells, sounds, tastes (there always seems to be something delectable in a dirty puddle)--she was taking it all in. Meanwhile I kept hurrying her on, feeling guilty but wanting my clean and nicely-pressed clothes. How could I be so selfish that I'd rush her when she was so engaged in nature?

No time for that. I picked her up and carried her away.

It's been a learning experience living with a puppy. They say that married couples can bring out both the best and worst in each other. Well, so can dog ownership. Having to take care of a puppy and give her our full attention has been harder than I anticipated, no matter how cute she is when she wrestles with her stuffed hedgehog toy, giving it the death grip and shaking it while making escalating "grrr" sounds, like Frankenstein when he gets increasingly angry about something. We have discovered how undisciplined we can be and how we both itch at the thought of a set schedule. We're both easily distracted and have always had to work hard to show up on time. But a set schedule is what is needed. That, and lots of play time and walk time--time that we didn't think we had enough of even before we brought the puppy home.

But when I do let myself relax and enjoy a walk around the block at night or a long game of tug-of-war with the chewed-up-meat-twist, the automatic pilot I'm on goes out, and I'm back to actually being engaged in the world. I'm not missing it all by walking too fast to some destination or being in such a thick cloud of thoughts that I don't notice my surroundings because I'm busy worrying over something abstract. Carmelita doesn't know that she's mindful. But I do. And I can actually choose to be more mindful.

Mike bought me a pink oval sticker with a drawing of a dog with a halo over his head. It says "Dog is good." Yes.

On notice

2011-01-18T04:12:00.000-08:00

"Stand tall. Take a few moments to experience the sensation of simply standing well. Stand barefoot with your feet shoulder-width apart, stomach muscles engaged, and the rest of your body relaxed. Spread your toes widely to feel a sense of connection with the earth. Visualize roots growing downward from your feet. At the same time, imagine there's a fine thread pulling you upward from the crown of your head. Enjoy these opposing but complementary feelings: deep stability and graceful lightness."--Barbara Ann Kipfer, from 1,001 Ways to Live in the Moment

"Dogs live in the moment," Mike observed, as our puppy Carmelita lay on her back, one hind leg stretched toward him, her eyes rolled back, her front paws extended in the air. "Look at her, she's so relaxed."

Lucky her.

I spent this holiday weekend fretting about my to-do list. I had tried setting reasonable goals for myself by just writing down a couple of things each day in a Mini Goals Notepad. I had done this successfully at work when I knew I was leaving for vacation, and it had helped me focus and get some stuff done that I had been putting off for weeks.

But at home I couldn't stop at two to-dos. I wrote down ten things. Some were as simple as "go buy the Sunday paper" which Mike regarded as more of a reward than a task. Others were "send out submissions to magazines" which I could have spent all three days doing. I did go to the gym. Once. Then I went home and ate sponge cake with strawberries and sugar, tortilla chips, a burrito,and drank two IPAs, which basically canceled out the hour on the elliptical.

In between I was defiant (defying whom? The to-do list? The tssking voice in my head?), doing tasks not on the list. I cleared my desk of junk mail. I filled in an offer card for a free issue of More magazine, then ripped it up after considering the articles I'd be reading: "The Reinvention Coach is in!", "Does This Make Her Look Old?" and "500 Years of Cougar History!" Ugh. I could always read my mother's back issues the next time I'm in New Jersey.

What I didn't do very much of was stay focused. I started wondering if I had ADD. I thought about the point of this blog, and glanced at my shelf of mindfulness books. Then I thought about something a personal trainer had said to me at the gym.

"Did you know you lock your knees when you stand," she asked me. I recently re-joined Healthworks and was using one of my two free personal training sessions that comes with a new membership.

"Try just standing," she said, so I got up, facing her, and felt my legs tense and my knees lock into place like the lid of a Tupperware container snapping shut. This was how I always stood. I never thought about it. Sometimes I'm guilty of the tall girl syndrome of slouching, but I didn't think there was anything wrong with the position of my knees.

"Try softening your knees," the personal trainer, Ann, advised. "it will work different muscles in your legs that you've been neglecting. Otherwise you're at risk for arthritis and other joint problems later in life."

Great. Something else I've been neglecting--like answering emails from friends and hand washing that pile of delicate sweaters I haven't been able to wear in a year. Should I be adding "soften knees when standing to avoid early-onset arthritis" to the to-do list?

Since meeting with Ann I've had moments of mindfulness about my stance and have softened my knees. In line at Trader Joe's. Waiting for the "T." It's hard to change something that you automatically do. It's like a mouth breather suddenly breathing through their nose (I've never been able to do that, no matter how cottony my tongue tastes in the morning.)

What do they always say in meditation (#21 on my to-do list: meditate more)? Return to the breath. Return to softening your knees. Return to going to the gym. Return to writing that sentence. Return to the present moment.

And again.

Going over to the dog side

2011-01-02T13:36:00.000-08:00

"There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face."--Ben Williams

I once had a dog named Muffin. He was a mutt we adopted from the ASPCA and my first real pet (tadpoles and lizards don't count.) My dad built a wood doghouse for him, with a sign bearing his name and a little red heart. There's a picture of me when I was around 7-8 years old, huddled in a blue cardigan sweater in the Autumn chill, my arms wrapped around Muffin as he sits in his new little house.

I'd like to say that Muffin and I became best buddies, that he slept at the end of my bed every night, that I paraded him around the neighborhood with me, and that he leapt with excitement every time I got home from school or dance lessons. Actually, my parents ended up bearing the burden of training him, cleaning up after him, taking him for walks, and feeding him. I was a terrible pet owner--what I really wanted was an animated stuffed animal or a cartoon dog like Snoopy, who never needed a pooper scooper and who could entertain himself with WWI stories and the Red Baron when I wasn't around. I wasn't prepared for this living, breathing, barking, salivating, needy dog. Meanwhile, my parents struggled to train him, but not knowing much about dogs, they ended up being dragged through the streets at the end of Muffin's leash and they had to keep him outside on a long lead because they hadn't fully house-broken him.

Our family ended up giving Muffin away after losing a silly lawsuit having to do with Muffin's incessant barking at night and a neighbor's wife who complained. The sad thing is, I didn't even notice Muffin was gone for at least a day, maybe two. When I finally realized that he was missing, I cried to my mother, who reminded me of my delayed realization of the loss and who assured me he had gone to a loving family who "lived on a farm" (which even to this day they swear is the truth). My father felt bad for me, though, and gave me a Cookie Monster alarm clock as a consolation prize. I remember being more disappointed that my Dad didn't realize that I had long outgrown Sesame Street characters than I was about losing the family dog. I was secretly relieved to have our house back to normal and my parents' attention trained exclusively on me.

For years after I identified myself as more of a cat person. I have a strong affinity for cats because I find them elegant, graceful, independent, and interesting to watch. Basically they have all the traits to which I aspire to have myself.

Mike is also a cat person. He likes to say that he can judge if he's going to be friends with a guy by how that guy feels about cats. When our nephew Matt was going off to West Point, Mike advised him to keep this in mind. Months later when Matt was back home on break, he acknowledged that his Uncle had been right--guys who liked cats were definitely nicer than those who did not.

My husband and I currently have two Tuxedo cats, Audrey and Joey Thumbs. Audrey tends to favor me, while Joey usually chooses Mike's lap when she wants to snooze. I thought two cats was enough--more cats and I'd be perilously close to verging into "Cat Lady" territory. I'm very sensitive to the prospect of anyone calling me a "Cat Lady" since that image is not exactly synonymous with elegance and grace, but of someone who rarely brushes her hair and whose furniture is covered in cat hair and house is packed floor to ceiling with cat-embellished clutter (I would make a crack about people who wear cat sweatshirts, but I know some older women who might take that personally).

Occasionally I thought it might be fun to have a dog. But Mike worried about the responsibility and the end of our free-wheeling lifestyle of partying at the clubs three nights a week (at least). The truth is he was concerned because we both have full-time jobs and it would be mean to subject a dog to life in a modestly-sized apartment with no proper yard and no one home until 7 or 8PM every night.

So it was basically a "Christmas miracle" when, on a Saturday in December when we were out looking for a Christmas tree, we ended up adopting a rescue puppy from a kill shelter in Arkansas. Carmelita was the most excited little thing I had ever held in my two hands, and when she started licking my face I knew I had to have this tiny dog (Was it part Chihuahua? Daschund? No one knew). My husband, who I like to tease for his various eccentricities but who really has a generous heart, asked me if having a puppy would make me happy. I imagined walking Carmelita around our neighborhood, chatting with other dog owners who just minutes ago were strangers standing next to me at the dog run, taking the puppy to one those dog bakeries that have become so popular and buying her a cookie shaped like a bone. Owning a dog opened up a whole new world of possibilities. I was already in love with her warm puppy smell.

We signed the papers and Mike handed over the Christmas money that was originally going to buy a new Lulu Guinness purse for me.

"You know this is your Christmas present, right?" he asked, making sure I understood that there would be no British handbag under the tree this year.

"I know." Who cared? A designer purse can't lick your face and wag it's tail in a frenzy of excitement at your mere existence. It was merely pretty arm candy, not true love.

So has owning a dog for the last three weeks made me a happier person? I think so. I consider this my chance to make up for my absentee-ownership of Muffin. I get to roll around on the couch with a puppy nipping at my face, I'm entertained at the breakfast table by her running back and forth across the kitchen floor, gripping a paper tube three times her size between her tiny teeth. I laugh every time we put her in her little doggie parka to go outside (see pic above). And just today as we were taking her for a walk around the block strangers did in fact stop to interact with her. Dogs have a way of making people smile and even though I know they weren't smiling at me exactly, I still felt a little bit more connected to these former strangers. One woman actually said to us that seeing Carmelita made her 2010, although I find that over the top, and if true, a little sad.

The best moment is when I'm lying on the couch reading, an afghan covering my legs, a cat sleeping on my feet, and Carmelita dozing on my chest. Pure bliss.

All in the Family

2010-12-01T04:03:00.000-08:00

"When we have an open house, we open our doors and we say everyone can come. No one has to bring an invitation, no one has to meet a dress code. We don't go to the door and say, 'you can come, you can't come. You've got a dreadful tie, you stay out. You're the wrong age. You're the wrong color. You're the wrong sexual orientation.' Open house doesn't do that. Complete hospitality doesn't do that. It's just open. It's more than open, it's actually welcoming. It's appreciative of all the people who show up. The basic attitude is that all human beings are fundamentally worthwhile--fundamentally, basically good. We are delighted to see them and we rejoice in their progress in waking up."--Karen Kissel Wegela, PhD, from What Really Helps: Using Mindfulness & Compassionate Presence to Help, Support, and Encourage Others

Every Thanksgiving it's the same. The glossy magazines have pictures of food-styled turkey on their covers, along with teaser headlines like "How to Cook the Perfect Turkey" (most people would settle for a turkey that's "not so dry that it splits in half", a true story I heard from someone recently); "How to Avoid Those Extra Holiday Pounds" (eat Quinoa stew at home then show up to the party full while everyone else is enjoying the cheese board and jumbo shrimp cocktail); and "How to Survive Dinner with the Family."

Growing up an only child, I didn't have big Thanksgiving dinners with assorted relatives and their partners and children. Typically it was just Mom, Dad, and me, our over-sized turkey and our frozen Mrs. Smith's Pumpkin Pie. But Christmas Eve was definitely a family affair, particularly when I was eight and met my grandfather for the first time.

My father is part Sicilian and if any stereotype about Sicilians is true, it's the one where relatives in a dispute proclaim each other "dead", as if the other person's passing is a foregone conclusion and there's no need to even visit the gravesite. I wonder if any other nationality plays this "dead to me" game. The Italians are notorious for it. I think I'm actually "dead" to a second cousin because I didn't invite him to my wedding. I didn't invite him because his son was getting married the next day and I didn't think he could make two weddings in one weekend. (Not that he ever asked me the reason; he just pointedly ignored me at my great-uncle Victor's funeral).

My father and my grandfather were in a dispute over various gripes, one being the fact that my father ran off with my non-Italian mother to marry in California in 1969 (she was 20, he was 19). My grandfather also didn't like that my dad was in touch with my grandmother, who he had divorced years earlier. But an actual death in the family precipitated a phone call between my father and grandfather, which then led to a meeting. My grandfather had softened with age, my father told us later. I'm sure my father missed him. When I imagine it now, I'd be heartbroken if I hadn't seen or spoken to my dad in ten years.

We reunited in my grandfather's apartment in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, which was the first time I met my grandfather, a small, almost completely bald man, with a protruding belly like Santa Claus and ash-stained fingers from a lifetime of smoking. For the most part it was a peaceful reunion--except for one outburst of tears from my grandfather's second wife that caused a small ripple of raised voices that soon died down. I think everyone in the room had decided that the past was the past and not to be dwelled on when there were cannolis and espresso to be served.

After that initial visit we went to Bensonhurt regularly, and always on Christmas Eve. Most of the people at the long, clear-plastic covered dining table spoke Italian while my mother and I--who could only understand the occasional phrase, like "Madonna" which sounded like "Ma Doun" to our ears because the Italians like to cut off the last vowel sound, like in "ricotta" and "mozzarella" which became to our ears "rigoat" and "Moozarel".

Despite the fact that my mother and I didn't quite fit in (for instance, we were bookish and disliked fake nails), I enjoyed my big, loud Italian family. I was proud to introduce my Lithuanian-Jewish best friend one Christmas Eve and thrilled when they welcomed her with open arms once they saw how she willingly ate the Octopus appetizer (those tentacles and suckers gave me the creeps--I couldn't even be in the same room with them).

The fact that we were different was something exciting for me, and having this large family that I hadn't known about for the first eight years of my life made me feel special, more interesting. Like so many Americans, I came from a diverse background of not only Sicilians but French people and Swedish. Although I was always close to my parents (as most Onlies are) I was thrilled to have these extended roots, even if they did stretch out in disparate directions.

Now that I've married into another family, I am once again sitting around the table with people I might not have met or gotten to know otherwise. Some of my new relatives are more conservative than I am, or braver, or more handy. I have a nephew, a West Point graduate, who is going to a survivor camp somewhere in the swamp land of the south. He does this willingly, even eagerly. My other nephew just got a job as a fire station dispatcher. I know almost nothing about being a fireman except that I would not be the one entering a burning building but the one fleeing it. And I have an introspective niece who has found her voice doing college plays. Mike and I try to see each production once. If I didn't have family, I wouldn't be sitting in a private college gym 's auditorium, watching 18-21 year-old college students dressed in red face paint, gyrating to loud German death metal (the play was an updated version of Dr. Faustus).

Being open to learning about people who are different than you may be off-putting at first. We all like to gather in our little clans of like-minded souls. But family forces us to expand beyond that limited circle and gain some new perspectives. I'm grateful to have family. Each in their own way, they help me to be a better person.

The Merry Pranksters

2010-11-15T14:11:00.000-08:00

"Buddha once said that if we're hit by an arrow it will surely hurt, but if we're hit by a second arrow in the same spot it will hurt much more. This may sound like common sense, but if we use the second arrow as an analogy to help clarify the harmful qualities of the thinking mind, its meaning deepens and becomes more useful. For example, if we get a headache, there's no doubt it can be somewhat painful. But if we have the thought "This is terrible" or "Why is this happening to me?" it's like being hit with a second arrow, and it intensifies the physical pain. As we observe ourselves, we'll see that we shoot ourselves with second arrows quite regularly, even though we're normally not aware that we're doing this."--Ezra Bayda, from Beyond Happiness: The Zen Way to True Contentment

I was walking to the "T" station this morning, trying to focus on looking at the trees and appreciating the colors of the few leaves clinging to the branches and scattered along the sidewalks like paths of petals. Neighbors still have their Halloween decorations up, even though it's mid-November--my first thought was "OK, you've had almost two weeks to take down the golf ball ghosts from your tree. Get with it." But then I caught myself being judgmental when the exercise for the morning was just to be present, to notice my surroundings without commentary.

I live in a lovely neighborhood, but sometimes I see things--minor things--that annoy me more than they should. Early in October, I spotted a seasonally-appropriate family of Jack-O'-Lanterns on someone's front steps. Or at least 3/4 of the family were there; on the sidewalk, perilously close to the front wheel of a parked car, was a pumpkin that had been kicked in the head, leaving a large gaping hole. Pulp spilled out of the hole like brains. Mardi Gras beads lay beside the "head." It looked like all of the pumpkins had been decorated by children--instead of cut outs for eyes, nose, and mouth, there were stickers representing the pumpkins' facial features.

I imagined these children--maybe a 4 year-old and a 6 year-old--coming home from school and discovering their mangled friend. They would be perplexed--how could someone do this? It would be their first insight into the petty meanness of strangers. Years later they would remember the gouged Jack O' Lantern when they found spit-up food smeared on the front of their locker, or a hole punched into the wall of their apartment and their favorite gold bracelet stolen (yes, these things happened to me, and no, the perpetrators were never found. Dammit.)

I picked the pumpkin off the sidewalk, stood it back up on the steps, with the gash facing away from view, then tried to drape the Mardi Gras beads over the hole with some success.

There. The world was right again. Or at least MY world was right.

The next morning I was walking past the same house, and saw that same pumpkin lying smashed on the front lawn.

So today, while observing trees and autumn colors and seasonally-inappropriate decorations, I passed a poster for a missing cat. It looked like a Maine Coon cat, gray and white with a fluffy tail and an old man's wisps of white coming out of its ears. Next to the picture of the cat someone had scribbled "he tasted good." I walked by, contemplating some person's poor attempt at a joke. I thought of the owner, the family even, who were missing their beloved pet. They would see the poster and automatically envision their friendly, lost cat, roasting on a spit. I was a block away from the sign but I turned around and went back to the tree and scribbled out the written-in message. I knew to the outside world I probably looked crazy, but I didn't care.

I tried to resume my mindfulness exercise, but as I approached the "T" station I found I was losing the battle. Why do people have to suck so much? There's enough bad stuff in the world, why pile on the meanness?

And by getting irritated by these small pranks that were probably committed by bored middle-school boys, I had successfully demonstrated how we twist the knife further by being reactive.

The myth that persists

2010-10-26T03:15:00.000-07:00

"Just like 'aspirational' airbrushed advertising in women's magazines, reality TV beauty programming invites female viewers to envy models' unrealistic figures, and, by proxy, their clothes, cosmetics, shoes, and lifestyle products. Though impacts vary, decades of research have documented that women's self-esteem often drops with exposure to advertising and ad-driven media."--From Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV by Jennifer L. Pozner

"Beauty. It touches everything."--Calvin Klein perfume ad

When I lived in New York and worked in midtown, I'd often find myself walking through Times Square to get to my office at 1745 Broadway. Loud, flashy, over-the-top, Times Square is the tackiest of tourist meccas. It impressed me as a child when my parents would drive through it on our way to see a Broadway show. I remember feeling awed by these giant photographs of models and celebrities and Coca-Cola ads. But as an adult, the images on these oversized billboards made me feel uneasy, dwarfed as I was by these scantily-clad Amazon women posed suggestively in the latest Calvin Klein perfume ad or H&M poster.

During most of my time living in New York, when I was in my twenties and early thirties, I was naturally thin. I didn't diet or exercise religiously. In fact I loved food--going to new restaurants was one of my favorite activities in the city and where I used up most of my disposable income. Restaurant Week, when assorted expensive "It" spots offered lunch for $20 and dinner for $30 to us average-salaried workers, was especially exciting to me. As soon as the participating list of dining establishments was posted, I'd be making plans and reservations, emailing friends to quickly line up dates.

Not worrying about what I ate or how much I weighed was a tremendous freedom that I tried not to take for granted. I had other insecurities, but at least in this area I felt confident.

Looking back at my life then, I realize that being thin was nice (especially the whole eating-what- I-want-and-never-gaining-weight part), but it didn't save me from feeling bad about my appearance. Being thin didn't translate into looking like a model or loving myself in a bikini. It didn't make me feel more worthy of a good relationship or confident enough to wear sweatpants in public. I didn't chastise myself about what food I ate, but neither did I think I was good enough in a city filled with images of perfection.

The thing that saddens me about this is even knowing that fitting a particular beauty standard doesn't necessarily make us happy, many of us still aspire to be as perfect as those Calvin Klein models. We may not even know that we're thinking this way, but looking back I see how much importance I placed on appearance and how I rarely measured up to its tough dictates. I immediately felt inferior to prettier friends though I tried not to let it affect our relationship. I would feel unfashionable in a skirt I bought six months ago and feel compelled to buy something new to wear out that night. The feeling was more of a compulsion than an actual choice.

Some women are able to see past the "Beauty Myth," the title of a popular book I read in the nineties. But a lot of us are susceptible. When you're confronted by images that are exalted on advertising posters and in magazines, and you don't resemble those images, after a while this high beauty standard starts to feel like the norm, which can only mean, my dear, that you are abnormal.

I regret not having taken advertising classes in college. Mike talks about a class he took that really changed how he viewed marketing strategy. Even as a college-educated person, I never stopped to evaluate these images and wonder what they might be trying to tell me, namely, buy this and you'll feel better! The answer is beauty and acceptance and if you only buy me you will have these things in spades!

I like to joke that, even though I've worked in marketing, I'm a sucker for packaging. But it's not just the rose-shaped pallets of eyeshadow in a $79 Chantecaille kit that captivate me--it's the longing--informed to a large degree by messages in advertising and television--that have effected how I view my own packaging.

Many women strive to be thin and flawless--it's almost impossible to find a women's magazine that doesn't emphasize this wish and insist we can achieve it by reading another 4-page article filled with "essential" tips and "must-have" products. The most successful woman can be made to feel inferior by just ten minutes of reading Elle or Glamour or even O magazine. As a publicist it's part of my job to look at magazines. Thankfully I've ended up at a Buddhist publisher, where the women in magazines are often bald and wrapped in plain robes. But that doesn't mean I'm not also looking at more traditional publications that always feature young flawless models, even when promoting an anti-aging cream.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to look nice. I happen to love clothes because I like the challenge of finding good pieces and matching them into outfits. I have never outgrown the pleasures of dressing up. But though they may "say" otherwise, beauty ads and diet articles that claim they're helping you to"look your best," are really saying "look like her" (fill in model's name/picture.) Is it any wonder women feel less-than? Is it at all surprising that we silently compare and compete with each other?

I'm older now and not as thin as that city girl I was. When I start to feel bad about that, I try to call to mind how being thin didn't really change how I viewed myself. It was nice when I went to try on jeans and had no trouble finding a good fit even on the first try. But it didn't make my life infinitely better or more valuable.

Everyday I fight the urge to give in to the hundreds of messages that call out to me like sirens from the Odyssey. Often their invitations seem innocent, even helpful:"Sabotage cellulite 24/7 with our all-day, dimple dashing duo" (Bliss) or "Tired of looking tired? We hear you (Origins.)" Sometimes they're downright aggressive (open any Victoria's Secret catalog.) The thought of not "buying into" advertising can be disappointing--you mean self-confidence and contentment can't be bought at Sephora?

If only it were that easy.

Choose compassion

2010-10-17T18:43:00.000-07:00

"Young Americans today live in a world of endless connections and up-to-the-minute information on one another, constantly updating friends, loved ones, and total strangers about the minutiae of their young, wired lives. But new research suggests that behind all this communication and connectedness, something is missing. The study found that college students today are 4o percent less empathetic than they were in 1979, with the steepest decline coming in the last 10 years."--from "Empathy is so Yesterday" in the Boston Sunday Globe (October 17, 2010)

"What difference would it make in your life if you engaged the world with a conscious commitment to end sorrow or pain wherever you meet it? What difference would it make to wake in the morning and greet your family, the stranger beside you on the bus, the troublesome colleague, with the intention to listen to them wholeheartedly and be present for them? Compassion doesn't always call for grand or heroic gestures. It asks you to find in your heart the simple but profound willingness to be present, with a commitment to end sorrow and contribute to the well-being and ease of all beings."--Christina Feldman, from Compassion: Listening to the Cries of the World, excerpted in The Buddha is Still Teaching: Contemporary Buddhist Wisdom

My Alma Mater Rutgers College was in the news recently, but not for producing a Noble Prize winner or hosting president Obama in anticipation of the midterm elections. Freshman Tyler Clementi jumped to his death from the heavily-trafficked George Washington Bridge in New Jersey. The suicide was the result of a cruel prank committed by Clementi's roommate, Dharun Ravi, and Ravi's friend and accomplice, Molly Wei. They thought it would be hilarious to use a webcam to broadcast Clementi having a private, sexual encounter with another man.

Were Ravi and Wei cruelly demonstrating their personal homophobia? Probably. But it seems to me that--if you listen to the media--Clementi's tragic story is one of many that we've heard in the past few years involving young people and the Internet. From Megan Meier, the 13 year-old girl who killed herself after being duped by a neighbor into thinking she was developing a relationship with a "cute boy" on MySpace, to Phoebe Prince, who was not just "bullied" but downright harassed by classmates whose constant taunts on and offline led Prince to commit suicide. Reports have said that the teenagers continued to mock Prince on Facebook even after learning of her death.

When I read these stories I can't help but feel that "Generation Wi-Fi" lacks compassion for others, and, even keeping in mind the extreme nature of these stories, I wonder if there aren't more cases of shaming and cruelty happening in this country as a result of the digital boom of the last ten years. I think it has been amply demonstrated that sites like MySpace and Facebook have distanced kids from each other, making it easier for them to lash out online without the consequences, of say, being punched in the face or cursed out live and in person. Worse, the incriminating videos or vicious rumors are not like a nasty note passed between a few girls that ends up crumbled in the trash. They can easily be passed on to anyone in the world and tend to stay online indefinitely. That's a far cry from when I was a teenager, and my worst fear was a stray insult lobbed at me from across the hall. No, this meanness sticks.

But is it entirely Facebook's fault for the increasing number of cyberbullies, or is it the culture at large--with unreal "reality" shows making women, minorities, gays--basically anyone who strays from the mainstream--into the butt of viewers' laughter and scorn and where the modern cult of celebrity has made us as narcissistic as a 16-year-old pop star? It's true that we are living in an age when Google enables us to peek into the lives of others without the slightest effort to really get to know them. Worse, real people's lives can be toyed with as if they're just another source of entertainment on a dull Tuesday night in the dorms. But is that the fault of an efficient search engine or is it more like road rage, when the irrational desire to cut off the car that cut us off is easily played out without either driver even seeing the other, much less communicating with him.

In the Globe, reporter Keith O' Brien does acknowledge that "empathy is such a basic ingredient of the human experience that even babies exhibit it, crying when other children cry or reacting to the facial expressions of adults and parents." But while few young people would openly mock their college roommate about his sexual preferences, there are many like Ravi and Wei who have no problem exhibiting the same mockery online for a few laughs.

Technology and social media are only as good or as evil as its human users. "We are tempted to think that social-media technology drove the behavior, but as a truly ethical matter, the behavior has to be and should be considered human-driven, not technology-driven,” says Scott Foulkrod, a philosophy professor at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology in Pennsylvania, talking to the Christian Science Monitor ("Rutgers Student Death: Has Digital Age made students callous?" October 1, 2010) A person's capacity for both compassionate acts and acts of cruelty have always been present. But the means by which we can act upon our cruelest thoughts have changed, and as a result, young people growing up with the Internet may be tempted to act out some of their darker impulses online, where restraint in the presence of the other person is essentially eliminated.

I'm fascinated by what drives people to do cruel things to each other. I'm also struggling with the concept of human beings being multi-dimensional. Reading Buddhist teachings has taught me that even those who commit evil acts aren't inherently evil. Reading stories like Clementi's makes my guts clench with anger. Someone should shame those two co-conspirators with a webcam trained on THEIR most private lives, I think. But that is not showing compassion, that is making the world into "Us" and "Them," where anyone under 20 is regarded as a narcissistic jerk or worse. I've met many young adults who have shown kindness and compassion, even online. Kids are still reaching out and supporting each other, like in the story of 16 year-old Esther Earl of Boston, who had an online following of admirers who helped her battle thyroid cancer and who, even after her death, spoke of her as if she had been a favored schoolmate and not a girl they met over the Internet. I think that Earl's short life was definitely enriched by her online supporters, and that their good wishes for her show that not every young person uses social media for ill.

I do hope that there are more stories like that of Esther Earl. Our compassion for one another is what makes our common suffering easier to bear. I'd hate to think of a future where we're so distant from each other that feeling empathy for someone is considered a weakness or a waste of time.

(Dis) Contented

2010-10-08T14:21:00.000-07:00

"The way we know things depends upon the mind, nothing more. Most of us have moments of deep contentment when we don’t feel a need to alter, express, run from, or invest some special meaning in our experience in any way. Deep contentment shows us that, at least momentarily, our habit of cherishing and protecting ourselves from what we call “other” has subsided. In moments like these, we have stopped objectifying things. We can let things be. And when the mind rests at ease in this way, it accommodates everything, like space." - Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel, The Power of an Open Question
If there was a caption running over my head, something that others could see but I could not (and let's face it, there are many things we can't see about ourselves that others can perceive without fail), my caption would be "Not enough."
No matter what I set out to do, in my mind it's "Not enough." When I look in my closet, instead of seeing a reasonable wardrobe for a woman in her thirties who is neither rich, nor famous, nor a fashion model, I think "Not enough." When I look at my achievements in my chosen profession, I don't see the things I got right; I see "Not enough." When I'm getting ready to go out to dinner with Mike or meet a friend at a restaurant, I look in the mirror and almost always say, "Not enough."
I once read a book called Enough. In it, the author talks about how we are bombarded with everything from information we want to absorb, to advertising tempting us to buy more, to multiple choices at the supermarket where there is always a fresh product claiming to be new and improved. When I was younger and used to read Self magazine (a woman's mag whose title says it all) I would write a list of all the products they recommended for women like me--volumizing shampoo to make my "fine" hair as puffy as a an eighties soap opera star; spot cream to minimize the sun spot on my left cheek that an Origins saleswoman was "kind" enough to point out to me; even cellulite cream to reduce the unsightly fat cells that had appeared on my legs after I gained a few pounds in my thirties.
I still make lists, and they tend to take up multiple sheets of paper. I'm not just making lists of products, but of restaurants I want to try, books I notice while reading Publishers Weekly, vacations I want to take, websites I want to bookmark so I can visit them later. My head is often filled to distraction and once one thing is crossed off the list, I'm off to the races, on to the next item. There is very little time for contentment at what I've acquired or achieved or completed. Never enough.
A person could live their whole life this way, but that would be a sad existence. And I'm not saying that we shouldn't jot down a good idea or an interesting web address or a product we'd like to try, even if we know it will probably have the same effect as the last product we tried, which is not much. Maybe this shampoo will smell really good, and that will be enough.
The problem for me (and for the people around me whose lives I directly impact) is that I find I'm very often discontent. And I know I'm not alone in this. Take a perfectly nice day, walking around looking up at the trees changing color (early this year for New England), smelling the pizza being served up at a neighborhood restaurant, seeing people laughing among themselves, and all I'm thinking is what's not right about the situation. Like those puzzles that ask you to find inconsistencies between two pictures, I notice what's wrong--I'm sweating a little in my new trench coat (why did I decide to wear this in September when I know the weather is fickle?) I stumble over the pavement and almost fall down (why can't I walk straight, why am I so clumsy?) I miss the train (that driver saw me and yet he still pulled away. Why does he hate me?)
And there goes another lovely fall day in my wacky world.
Increasingly I agree with the writers and psychologists and spiritual leaders who say that contentment is the most rewarding feeling we can hope for, better than just some abstract goal like "happiness." To paraphrase a quote I read in O magazine (which I read despite the fact that her notion that "we're beautiful as we are, but here are pages and pages of my favorite things that you should buy, which, by the way, cost more than you make in a month) "What if instead of trying so hard to change, I embraced all my (insert first name)-ness?" Instead of worrying about what strangers think about the non-thickness of my hair, it's enough that the people who love me don't give a fig.
We're enough. This crowded train I'm on is enough because, despite the fact that it's crowded and a conductor just asked me to type "more quietly," it's taking me to see a good friend of mine. I'm not hanging off a bus filled with people trying to find somewhere--anywhere--to sit. I have a window seat and a table for my computer. That's enough. My spending budget for the weekend would not impress The Real Housewives of wherever, but it's more than enough. (Anyway, there's nothing real about anyone on "reality TV" as I'm reminded when reading a book I recently picked up, Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV)
Our life as it is is enough. What we wouldn't do to have just this life back if we found ourselves homeless, hungry, sick, or dying. I was at a funeral for my husband's uncle last weekend. He was 90 and in poor health, so it wasn't a shock--though any family member or friend's death, whether expected or not--always shocks anyway.
Uncle Ken was a quiet man--in the almost ten years I've known Mike I don't recall ever hearing a word out of him. But in fact he had many passions in life--he had a deep love of nature for one--and he had survived heavy warfare in North Africa and Italy in WWII. I suspect that, though quiet, he was a man who felt that on many levels he had enough in life.
I would think that people like that die without too many regrets about what they didn't have enough of.

Humble pie

2010-09-12T14:45:00.000-07:00

"We must surrender our hopes and expectations, as well as our fears, and march directly into disappointment, work with disappointment, go into it, and make it our way of life, which is a very hard thing to do. Disappointment is a good sign of basic intelligence. It cannot be compared to anything else: it is so sharp, precise, obvious, and direct. If we can open, then we suddenly begin to see that our expectations are irrelevant compared with the reality of the situations we are facing. This automatically brings a feeling of disappointment.

Disappointment is the best chariot to use on the path of the Dharma."--Chogyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, included in The Buddha is Still Teaching: Contemporary Buddhist Wisdom, selected and edited by Jack Kornfield.

It's getting to that time of year, when the air carries a chill, the sun has packed up at 5PM, and a persistent desire rises up in me: to finally make a pie crust.

Pies are a staple in my husband's family. At my mother-in-law Teena's house, it's a ritual to have apple pie and pumpkin pie at both Thanksgiving and Christmas. She also makes Tourtiere, a savory French-Canadian meat pie made with pork and beef and served with cranberry sauce. The weekend before the big feed, Teena and my niece Meagan whip up about a dozen pie crusts, then wrap them in plastic and put them in the refrigerator to chill. Later my mother-in-law will fill them and bake them until the tops come out a warm cinnamon color.

I have always been secretly envious of women who excel in the domestic arts. I say secretly because my generation was one of the first to benefit from equal rights and my ambition in school was to be a writer and editor working in a city and eating out most nights. But I also wanted to be married, sew frilly skirts, and make pie. I liked the trappings of my mother's generation, but without the boredom and repression.

Marrying a full-time job with a flair in the kitchen didn't seem to be out-of-reach for me. I had never learned to sew because it's hard to teach a left-handed child to do anything involving a sharp object, but I had spent all of my childhood watching my mother bake. She was a stay-at-home mom until I was 11, and it was important to her that I have the kind of mother she didn't have--someone who baked cookies in the afternoons, read to me every night, and sewed cotton, hippie-style blouses that made me a fashion plate in the late 1970's.

The first few times I saw my mother-in-law make pie, I was inspired. My husband warned that making pie crust was "a black art" but I would not be deterred. I bought myself a beautiful red ceramic pie dish from Williams-Sonoma that I brought to my in-law's house and showed off to everyone. My mother-in-law had the same set of tin pie plates from thirty years ago, judging from their residual scratches, dents, and scorch marks.

She started by making a crust herself so I could see all the steps and get a sense for what I'd be doing. Unlike me, who always uses a recipe, she was able to eye the ingredients and intuit the measurements like a seasoned detective scanning a crime scene. Her movements were fluid, her hands strong, especially when she vigorously rolled out the dough on a dish towel.

"Don't handle the crust too much because it will break apart," she said. I didn't think much of this comment at the time.

When it was my turn, I moved slowly, hesitant. I must have been lulled into a state of oblivion when she was demonstrating the steps, because I couldn't remember any of them. I asked her question after question, a pesky fly buzzing around her as she tried to start the next pie crust. She had been a professor so she was used to remaining patient with remedial students like me.

When it came time to roll out the dough, I poured a mountain of flour on my surface and started to shape my crust. I could never seem to get an even, circular shape--my crust looked more like an amoeba. I lifted the dough into my hands and mashed it together into its original lump to try again. Then I remembered what she said about not handling the dough too much. I felt like I was a contestant on Jeopardy, competing against a Harvard student and stuck with a faulty buzzer. More flour, than slap! the dough was down for the count and I was rolling against the clock. ZZZZZ! Time's up.

My mother-in-law was kind, mentioning something about how her first pie crust was a disaster (I doubted it) while she stepped in to repair the damage my over-zealous pounding and rolling had caused. There were scraps of dough under my fingertips, flour in my hair, and disappointment in my heart.

The following pie season I was back in my mother-in-law's kitchen. This time we were joined by my 14-year-old niece. While grandmother and granddaughter rolled out beautiful crusts which they delicately draped in the pie tins, I was trying to peel off the pieces of dough stuck on my rolling pin. I didn't want my teenage niece to see me cry. Too late.

My cousin Mikki, who also makes pies around the holidays, reassured me that she used pre-made Pillsbury pie crusts from the supermarket.

"No one knows the difference so why knock yourself out?" she said. But it was more than a matter of saving time. I felt like I had set out to prove I was a capable woman, able to make the dough at work and at home, and I had failed. My beautiful ceramic pie dish gathered dust in the kitchen cabinet.

Now that it's coming on pie season again, maybe I'll give it another try--third time being the charm and all. But if it doesn't come out right this time, I know where I can get a ready-made version. No one but my mother-in-law will know the difference.

License to Drive

2010-09-06T15:19:00.000-07:00

"The biggest obstacle to any kind of transformation is the voice that tells you it's impossible."--Geneen Roth, from Women, Food, and God

Yesterday I drove by myself to run some errands. So what, big deal, right? For me it is. I haven't driven a car by myself since 1992. I had been putting this day off ever since I got my license renewed in Boston and started practice driving with Mike.

The good thing about driving solo was at least if I crashed I wouldn't be dooming my innocent passenger to life as a paraplegic burn victim.

It helped that I was up in Maine this Labor Day weekend, where there are still two-lane roads--one going North, one going South--and that apart from a few testosterone-addled guys in pickup trucks, people are generally friendly to other drivers. On part of my ride from Fryeburg over the Maine/New Hampshire border I encountered no other cars at all. I signaled anyway and stopped at every Stop sign, checking for non-existent traffic. I was a grown woman hoping for a gold star from the DMV. At one point an old 10,000 Maniacs song came on the radio and I turned it up and started singing. I noticed that in this moment, I was having FUN. Why had I let myself be intimidated for so long?

The Toyota RAV I was driving used to belong to my father. He clocked in 173,000 miles on it commuting back and forth from Central New Jersey to Manhattan. For a year in 1996 I commuted with him. At the time I wasn't an early riser but my father would get up at 3AM, drink his big cup of espresso, and, suitably wired, wake me at 4:30 with a fake bugle call. In the car I'd be trying to sleep, one hand clasped over my ear, while he'd play his CDs of Spanish balladeers. I'd wake up slowly and with hesitation as these soulful singers belted out the one word of Spanish I had learned on these same car trips. El corazon.

The year of commuting with my father was also my first year working in Manhattan. I was the assistant to a Chemistry books editor at John Wiley & Sons when its headquarters were still in New York. The job itself was dull, but I didn't care because I had achieved my goal of working in the editorial department of a New York City book publisher. The interview process for my first publishing job was as scary as I had anticipated--me in my little Ally McBeal suit, hurrying down 6th Avenue with copies of my one-page resume pressed in a plastic folder under my arm (1992-1995: part-time bookseller at Rutgers University Bookstore--praised for my creative end cap displays.) For the first time I was seeing the inside of publishers like Simon & Schuster and St. Martin's Press. I was so eager to be a part of this world I had imagined--of three-martini lunches and long editorial talks with famous writers in my book-strewn office with a view of Central Park--that I was willing to take a position in the mail room if I had to. Luckily it didn't come to that, though I did have to spend 18 months interacting with chemistry professors.

My father liked to start his day early, so we'd typically be entering the Lincoln tunnel around 7:00AM. I loved those mornings when we'd get into Manhattan and the sun was shining. The city was literally beaming down on us. Dad would drop me off across town and I'd walk the extra blocks, pausing to look into dark store windows, then stopping at a little coffee shop near my office to savor that first sip of my cappucino. Now that I was awake I was excited at the prospect of a new day.

At 5:00 I'd take NJ Transit back to my parents' house or my dad would swing by 605 Third Avenue and we'd get takeout while he waited for the rush-hour traffic to die down. At the end of the day, it was nice to come back to the familiarity of sitting in the car and eating chicken and rice or a slice with my father.

But now that those commuting days with my father are past, I miss them. He used to work long hours in the construction business and commuting together everyday was the most time I ever spent with him when it was just us. I was finally getting a taste of what my father's life was like when he wasn't at home with my mother and me. We both share a love of nice restaurants. I remember feeling so pleased when I would go to one of his favorite spots and then tell him about it. We enjoyed making each other jealous. "Guess where I am..." one of us would say on our cell phone, while the other would make the requisite sound of delight spliced with envy.

My parents still live in New Jersey, and I only get down to see them every couple of months. My father doesn't commute to New York anymore; he's got his eye on a different life now--retiring to a cabin in Vermont.

But driving his old RAV makes me feel closer to him. It's got 260,000 miles on it and now I'm the one behind the wheel.

Got religion?

2010-09-01T16:14:00.000-07:00

"My friend Kelly says that when she listens to the news she hears so much conflicting information she can't truly reach a conclusion about anything. Usually we see this as a problem. Our inability to reach conclusions makes us feel ignorant and helpless. We feel pressured to sort it all out.

But think about this: maybe experiencing complexity brings us closer to reality than does thinking we've actually figured things out."--Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel, from The Power of an Open Question

I'm having my friendly visit with Linda, the older woman who is disabled and lives alone. We have just settled into the "comfortable chairs"--two big, green, puffy chairs that you sink into when you sit down. We're talking about religion. I had discovered several visits ago that I could talk religion with Linda and not worry about offending her. I'm agnostic, and though she believes in God, she hasn't found a religion that's stuck.

Not that she hasn't tried. Years ago she converted from Christianity to Judaism. The town we live in is home to many Jewish people--in fact, at the end of my street you can find a kosher grocery store, several delis, a Jewish giftshop, a bookshop, and several Asian restaurants.

Linda became an official Jew, but her hard work did not translate into instant acceptance. She perceived the other members of the synagogue did not accept her as Jewish. She felt slighted by her rabbi. She was way past the age for a Bat Mitzvah.

So she quit Judaism and became Episcopalian. Christianity she understood. Once a month a member of the clergy would visit her apartment to give her communion, a bonus because it meant that she could count on another visitor to come regularly. She gets lonely a lot.

But right around the time I started visiting her, she was complaining about the priest. "She left her communion box here and now she won't pick it up! She says she's transferring to a different church. What am I going to do with this--I can't throw it away, it's sacred." I wondered why she didn't just store her keys in it, or some throat lozenges.

And then there was the time she called the church to offer them a desk chair to give to a family in need. They picked it up, but when she called them later to see if the chair had found a home, no one seemed to know where it went.

"It was a good chair," she assured me. "And now they don't know where it is? I should have kept the darn thing." I looked around her small apartment. If there was one thing the place was not lacking, it was chairs. She had enough seating for a Thanksgiving Day service for twelve.

The final straw was when they lost her monthly donation check for $10. She was on the phone for hours trying to find out who had the check and why hadn't they cashed it yet? "It's been two weeks!" she told me. "And the woman who answered the phone was so nasty and dismissive. She told me the priest might have it somewhere on her desk and then she cut me off. For all I know she's using my check as a bookmark."

Not only did the Episcopalians lose $10, they also lost Linda. She had the communion box sent by cab to the church (this part I could not picture. Did she hail a cab, place the box on the backseat, then slam the door and pay the driver for a one-way ride? Was she so angry and dejected that she couldn't bring herself to accompany the box?)

From there she joined the Baha'i faith. They too misplaced her donation check, but she stayed with them because she had made a friend in the community who visited her and took her out to buy New Balance sneakers and sheets from IKEA. They also prayed together, and Linda found the Baha'i prayers comforting.

But it was only a matter of time before she was questioning her chosen faith again. "What happens when I die and my brothers have to plan my funeral? They're not going to say Baha'i prayers! They won't know what to do. No, I should go back to Christianity--it'll make the funeral go much more smoothly."

I told her that if the Baha'i prayers were comforting, she should continue to say them. But now she had a conflict. She had recently joined the Church of the Nazarene because she heard they had great prayer groups. She was excited to report to me that two members of the church had already visited her and brought flowers and Nazarene paperwork. But then her mood darkened, and she said, "I did call one of the ladies after their visit, to invite her to come over again, but she said she was going to be busy all of September. She wasn't as nice on the phone as she was when she was here."

"Can I stay a Baha'i and also be a member of the Nazarenes?" she asked. "What if my Baha'i friend finds out? She'll stop visiting me." So long, afternoons at IKEA.

Then she paused and said, "Am I just being wishy-washy? Shouldn't I just pick a religion and stick to it?"

I was taken off guard by her sudden insight. I often think that my agnosticism is wishy-washy. I was brought up Catholic, but dropped out after my confirmation party at Bennigan's (perhaps the ubiquity of shiny things on the walls had me hypnotized, but more likely it was because I was turning into a sullen teenager who believed in mopey rock stars rather than a faceless God.) Since then I've been back to church for weddings, funerals, and the occasional Christmas mass, but it's always in respect for other family members. I no longer feel that I fit in there, even if I can "pass" because I remember all the words to The Lord's Prayer. When I'm in church I never know if I should go up and receive communion, and feel guilty when I remain in the pews while everyone around me starts lining up. Would they stare at me with slits for eyes and think, look at that naughty girl! Does she think she's too good to accept the body of Christ? Then again, maybe I'm projecting some apparently unresolved guilt about abandoning my childhood faith.

The more I read Buddhist books, though, the more I'm convinced that it's OK not to be a member of any tribe, not to choose a side, not to reject one faith for another. I do admire people who have the comfort of faith and religion--not to mention a ready-made set of friends who'll bake them a pie when they're sick. After all, what comfort can I take from Buddhist philosophy? Life is suffering and then you die?

I'm joking, of course. I realize Buddhism, like any philosophy or religion, is complex. Not knowing is scary, but for some people it feels more honest to question than to pick a side and stick with it for life. Things change, people change, the world is complicated and there are many opinions on what's right and wrong. It can take a lifetime to even skim the surface of the mysteries of the universe. Being uncertain but staying open to possibilities--that's the only way I see myself living right now.

Linda is also searching, but for her there's the added element of giddy anticipation--like starting a new class and buying the textbook and pencils. You haven't read through the book yet, but it's exciting just to imagine what you'll learn. Never mind the serious work of actually studying and retaining knowledge. The promise of a new way of life, new friends, a new set of beliefs...that's enough for her.

Until that check doesn't clear.

It's all about me

2010-08-11T14:44:00.000-07:00

"The pain and anxiety we experience in our lives are in equal measure to the size of our self-importance. Our attachment to self is at the center of ego's world--ego's empire. In our attempt to secure ego's empire, we must wrestle with the world and all its unpredictability. We have so much less control than we would like. All our hopes, fears, and preferences stir up feelings of insecurity within us and feed our mental unrest and aggression."--Dzigar Kongtrul, from his book Light Comes Through: Buddhist Teachings on Awakening to Our Natural Intelligence

Mike has been out of town on a business trip to Alaska this week, milling around among the burly, ax-wielding, red-plaid-wearing lumberjacks. Actually he's there for a science and computer conference, but the lumberjacks make the story sexier.

In his absence, I've been moody, more so than usual. I've grown accustomed to my husband being around. Without him, I start spending too much time in my own head--my monkey mind comes alive and starts swinging from limb to limb ready to grab all the bananas it can get. I become more self-centered. Why hasn't that person answered my email yet? Why didn't that person say hello to me? Why wasn't I included in their plans? In order to feel more in control of my world and to seal the leaking gaps in my ego, I reward myself in some way: I buy something pretty online, I eat TWO bowls of chocolate ice cream. My needs become foremost. Only later do I worry about the money I spent or the extra sugar I ingested.

Writing teachers tell you that to in order to write well you need to look outside yourself, to notice the small details that you miss when you're wrapped up in angry thoughts about some minor infraction you think you've suffered. When you pay attention to things outside your insular little world, you learn so much more. Instead of repeating endless unanswerable questions in your mind, like when will I be happy? you notice little things in your environment that were never on your radar before. That woman with the red hair looks tired, I wonder what happened to her today? That family of tourists is quiet, not speaking to each other, I wonder if they quarreled? What brought them here and why do they seem to be let down? Or that old man with the long gray beard playing his guitar and singing--where did he come from? What makes him so extroverted?

Taking an interest in others is a way to step out of ego. So much of the time I'm thinking about getting my share. I may think of others later, but my initial reaction is What about me? There are times I shock myself with my own selfishness. It should be me who picks the restaurant. I want that last piece of cake, in fact I'm taking it. Why does she get to ride around in a Mini Coop? That's MY dream car.

But when Mike is around he often calls me out for being self-referential, for thinking that the world is supposed to line up according to my needs, my desires. When I'm talking with friends I often find myself cutting into the conversation ready to give my take on something, and I have to force myself to step back and let the other person finish. When I'm able to refrain from jumping in, I feel like I'm actively listening, that I'm present for other people. Paying attention to others--whether it's a smile to a an old woman, letting someone get on the train before you, staying mum while a co-worker talks about their summer travel plans--that's often just as satisfying as immediately inserting yourself into the picture. Standing back and observing gives you a fresh perspective, one that is uncluttered by the narrow sight line of ME.

I'm also guilty of this on the Internet. The whole idea behind social media is to be social. But more often than not I'm talking and not really listening. I get on Twitter and it seems like so many voices talking at once and no one really listening--like a political debate without Jim Lehrer. But am I even listening? Or am I just adding to the noise? Sure, it's important to express yourself--to say I am here. But you reach a point when you might as well be talking to yourself. And isn't it far more interesting to hear other people's stories? Heck, you've got yours memorized.

The point is, I'm learning that there's a difference between a healthy self-interest and being self-absorbed. When you're self-absorbed, you miss out on so much. It's hard to make true connections with people if you always have a personal agenda. You can't take a good picture if the camera lens is always turned toward you.

She's crafty

2010-07-28T04:02:00.000-07:00

"I've discovered many reasons why thrifting makes good sense: politics, nostalgia, economics, and perhaps most of all, the environment. More and more people are thrifting as a way to lessen their impact on the earth. And along the way, they're getting quality goods with a connection to the past."--Amanda Blake Soule, from Handmade Home: Simple Ways to Repurpose Old Materials into New Family Treasures

I was on Block Island with Mike this weekend. We were walking around, climbing up hills to look at the B&B's and grand hotels--places where F. Scott and Zelda would have felt quite at home. Mike was impressed by how old the buildings were: The Spring House, for instance, has been around for 156 years. Maybe the Fitzgeralds DID summer there.

Our own B&B I had found on the Internet. The Oak Room was perfectly fine except that it was the front most facing room, so we could hear everyone's conversations from the front porch. We had come here with a decadent wish: for peace and quiet. But now we knew the whole story of one of our fellow guests, some nasally-voiced woman who disagreed vehemently with her condo association.

To make it worse, maintenance set up a ladder right between our windows, and as I lay on the Queen-sized bed, trying to relax in the humidity, I saw the dirty soles of a man's shoes step up one rung after another and then plant themselves, spreading roots there.

Plus there was no clawfoot bathtub (not that I saw one on the website. I just wanted to be pleasantly surprised.)

Anyway, it was our first trip to Block Island and we loved the scenery. Surely there were better accommodations to reserve next year. As we were scouting out places and picking up brochures we came upon a brick walkway lined with colored bottles leading to a small ramshackle old house. The edges of each step had been turned into mosaics, with cracked china and pieces of sea glass sparkling like rock candy in the bright sun.

I wasn't sure if this was a private residence but I wanted to take a closer look. The pathway curved like a parenthesis, and near the front door there was an arrangement of yellow flowers, it's soil spiked with a metal ornament of an angel and the rim of the pot circled by small ceramic creatures you might see on your grandmother's mantel.

The place appeared to be an artist's studio. Through the window on the door I could see various crafts arrayed on shelves and hanging from the ceiling. I walked into the small entryway (outside Mike had found a "husband's chair" and was leaned back with his Tilly keeping the sun off his face.) To my left behind a glass cabinet there were maybe thirty different shadowboxes, each lined with a different old-time postcard like the kind your parents probably sent when they were kids on vacation in the 1950's. There were shells and sea glass arrayed in each box. I picked one up, not realizing that the shells were not fixed in place. The clatter surprised me, and I jerked my head around to see if anyone had noticed. But when no one came to investigate, I placed the box carefully back on the shelf and gave the cabinet door a gentle push to seal it shut.

Lining the windowsills were jars and jars of pretty sea detritus--dried starfish, sand dollars, shiny colored pebbles and sea glass formed from bottles seaman tossed overboard without a second thought. There were also jars of old buttons. I was reminded of when I was a kid and my mother would open a small wooden jewelry box, revealing heaps and heaps of assorted old buttons inside. I liked to shake some out and line them up, or just scoop my hand inside and pretend the buttons were a pirate's lost treasure. I had no particular use for the buttons--I didn't know how to sew or make jewelry. But I liked to look at all of them, the clear glass ones and the colored plastic ones, the old Victorian style ones and the ones shaped like Tweety Bird. I have always been easily entertained by shiny things.

There was a second room with brilliant colored cotton pillows and bags and long sundresses--all sewn patchwork-style from scraps of vintage materials. Looking around me, I felt connected to a past I had never known, one that my mother had shown me in old photographs and which I glimpsed in antique store windows. The clothing and bags reminded me of some of the projects in Patchwork Style, but without the wacky Japanese sensibility.

In the final room, a woman about my mother's age stood talking to another customer. I moved quietly about, not wanting to disturb their conversation or be asked if I needed help. There were more jars of seashells, more pretty fabrics hanging from wall posts. The room had a counter and sink, and looked to be the woman's workspace. I flipped through some old postcards of Block Island in a cardboard box and plucked a few to bring home with me. When the other customer left, I stepped forward with my modest purchase. I looked at the woman more closely. She had blunt-cut blond hair that reached just over her ears. Her face was pink and wrinkled from years of sun exposure, but I could see that she was pretty. She wore one of her long sleeveless sundresses. I wouldn't mind having her life when I'm sixty.

Her name was Jan and she owned the shop and was its sole designer, except for a few pieces of sea glass jewelry her daughter sold there. Jan had been coming to Block Island for decades, and like the idealized middle-aged women at the center of Luanne Rice novels, she had finally decided to stay. She told me that she was once a designer for large clothing manufacturers. Among other things, Jan had designed a popular men's shirt for Banana Republic.

But that was a long time ago, she said. She quit the business once all the sewing got shipped overseas. "Now it's all just replicas of the past, not the real thing," she said with a soft toss of her hair, "You have people coming in here touching the fabrics and taking notes just so they can replicate the item so their customers will THINK they're buying good quality. But it's not quality. And then they charge the same amount as the authentic product costs, and people pay it!" She rubbed the edge of a tablecloth between her fingers, "This is what real cotton feels like. It's light but not insubstantial. And the colors don't run like they do with synthetics. It's hard to find real fabric anymore."

Then she put two identical starfish in each of my hands. "Can you tell which one is real and which one is plastic?" I could, but only because I was holding them side by side and could feel the delicate outside structure of the real starfish. "People go to boutiques and buy these plastic imitations, when the real thing is right on our beach for the taking!"

I thought about someone buying this plastic replica of a natural thing and displaying it on a shelf. A year or so later, it would end up in a box in the basement, or in the garbage because of some chipped paint.

Why did we buy this crap anyway? Why, when we want to remember our blissful island weekend, do we buy a memento that was made in some Chinese factory by people who have probably never heard of Block Island? Why did I covet expensive designer bags made to look vintage when in reality these same bags were assembled for peanuts in some far-off Asian country? Why did I buy so many new things when I could make valuable treasures out of the pieces I already owned?

It made me want to take up sewing, to go venture into some antique stores, searching for the good stuff, the real deals, the authentic past. I told Jan as much. Problem was I didn't know how to sew or do anything else that was very crafty. Jan told me that many people stop by her shop and just drop off old but pretty things, just so they can see what she comes up with, how she arranges their castoffs into something new, unique, and lovely. I was intrigued. I wanted to go home and make something. At the very least I could collage.

It did occur to me (briefly) that this woman might be feeding me a sales pitch, perhaps hoping I'd add a $50.00 patchwork apron or pillow to my stack of postcards. But I dismissed the idea. Jan seemed genuinely pained at the thought of a future made of plastic and synthetics. I also didn't get the impression that this woman was hurting for customers in such a tony, leftist neighborhood, where people loved anything handmade as long as someone else was making it. These people would pay any price, but at least what they got was the real thing, something new from something old that might otherwise be stuffed in a box in the basement, forgotten.

If you're in Block Island, RI, anytime in May through October, visit:

Jan McKillip Designs
Lightburne Cottage
Spring Street
02087
(401) 466-8894

A life less ordinary

2010-07-15T14:57:00.000-07:00

"We must be willing to be completely ordinary people, which means accepting ourselves as we are without trying to become greater, purer, more spiritual, more insightful. If we can accept our imperfections as they are, quite ordinarily, then we can use them as part of the path. But if we try to get rid of our imperfections, then they will be enemies, obstacles on the road to our 'self-improvement'."--Chogyam Trungpa, from Ocean of Dharma: 365 Teachings on Living Life with Courage and Compassion

I was in a marketing meeting this morning and the editors were discussing their Summer 2011 titles (yes, 2011. Publishing, like the fashion industry, dwells in the future. But what I hate about fashion is that they start selling fall clothes in August, so when you're looking for, say, a pair of shorts during a heat wave, all they have is wool pants, as if to say, duh--why didn't you shop for shorts in March?)

One of the Summer 2011 titles is by Jan Chozen Bays, the author of Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food. That book was well-received, and Jan has many followers who think she is the bee's knees when it comes to mindfulness meditation.

The new book, Adventures in Mindfulness, was described as "a guided program for bringing mindfulness and meditation into ordinary daily activities to reduce stress and enhance well-being." There will be an exercise a week for a year; one example: notice in your speech how many times you say "um, ah, like" etc. Then instead of using those words, try taking a few deep breaths, then resume what you were going to say. This would be a hard exercise for almost anyone, but especially for us girls from New Jersey who use the word "like" as a preposition.

But I've observed President Obama when he's giving a speech and how he pauses in between thoughts instead of "ahh-ing" or "umm-ing." Yes, every Toastmasters member knows this trick, but you don't have to be a great orator or the President to pay attention to your speech. Look how calm and collected Obama looks, even when he has something difficult to say (which is all the time.)

Another exercise is keeping a gratitude journal. I have one that's published by Chronicle Books. It's got quotes and ideas in it to inspire you. The problem is I feel like I write the same thing over and over because my life is pretty staid.

I'm grateful for my parents being alive and healthy.
I'm grateful for my husband who loves me even when I'm sick or tired or bratty.
I'm grateful for my job which I enjoy.
I'm grateful that I HAVE a job (not a given these days.)
I'm grateful I don't live in a war-torn country where "happiness" is defined as "not getting blown up or kidnapped or forcibly silenced."

These are all good things for me to remember when I'm feeling low, but I don't want to write the same thing every time. So I've branched out.

I'm grateful for my ten purple-painted toes. All functioning.
I'm grateful for my air conditioner (if you live anywhere in the Northeast right now, you know what I'm talking about.)
I'm grateful for books. And eyes that can see because I'm not crazy about audiobooks.
I'm grateful for my good taste. Yes, I can say that and not be snobby. Maybe.
I'm grateful for black olives.

My mother is a big believer in finding happiness in small moments. I have to practice being mindful so I can do that.

But I don't like being ordinary, listing ordinary gratitudes. When you're young you feel like so much is possible. Living in New York City I experienced that feeling several times a week just being there, dwarfed by the skyscrapers and constantly stimulated with novelty. Now I feel like life is stalled. The possibilities look less abundant now, and I'm supposed to be happy about that? Is being mindful and accepting yourself as you are just an admission of your mediocrity? Is celebrating the small stuff just another way of giving up your big dreams?

Here's what Thoreau says: If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours ... In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.

Can we do both? Dream big and succeed, and have a simple life?

I'm thinking that when I can get a hold of Jan Chozen Bay's mindfulness manuscript, I'll try doing the exercise-a-week and writing about my experiences on here.

Maybe by then I'll have come closer to understanding my favorite Emily Dickinson poem:

I'm nobody, who are you?
Are you nobody too?
Then there's a pair of us
Don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

Facing it

2010-07-05T15:37:00.000-07:00

The 91-year-old widow lived by herself in a tumbledown house on a desolate country road. But she wasn't alone, not really, not as long as she could visit her husband and twin sister.

No matter they were already dead. Jean Stevens simply had their embalmed corpses dug up and stored them at her house _ in the case of her late husband, for more than a decade _ tending to the remains as best she could until police were finally tipped off last month.

Much to her dismay.

"Death is very hard for me to take," Stevens told an interviewer. --Associated Press

That which you avoid will confront you again and again, whether it's grief or love or fear of heights. That's what I'm learning. Avoidance doesn't make the emotions go away. It just makes fear stronger.

I'm also learning that the best way to conquer fear is when you have no choice. Give me the option, and I'll say, Nah, I can't do that. I don't want that. I can't deal with that. But what about when you have no options?

I stopped driving a car when I was nineteen and got into a fender-bender in the White Street parking lot in Red Bank, NJ. I had just been Christmas shopping and among my purchases was a little something for me from Jack's Music--a Ned's Atomic Dustbin CD with free t-shirt. I can space out pretty easily and as I backed out of my parking space thinking about my cool CD and tee, I saw another car behind me also backing out of his spot. I blanked for a second before placing my foot on the gas. I hit him, of course. When he came out of his car, I couldn't believe my bad luck. It was my assistant principle from Thorne.

I was sure he would recognize me. Despite my geek status in junior high or maybe because of it I had been asked to deliver a speech to my eighth grade class at our graduation. That same week my best friend Heather and I were the winners of the lip sync contest at our graduation party at the Tradewinds beach club in Sea Bright. While the pretty, popular girls phoned in their performance of The Go-Go's "Vacation" Heather and I appeared in our matching pink miniskirts and long faux pearl earrings and sang "You Keep Me Hangin' On" as if we were singing our broken hearts out thinking of all the boys we loved who never noticed us. Our dance moves were primitive--pantomime, really--but our enthusiasm was undeniable, our pain the pain of all young girls who never got to shine while they were in school. We took first place. The asst. principal congratulated us and said to me, Wow, you're everywhere. I guess he meant I was not even a dot on his graph until the last week of school.

Maybe he didn't want to embarrass me that day in the Red Bank parking lot. Or maybe he genuinely didn't remember me. How many kids does a junior high school assistant principal meet in a lifetime? He probably only remembered the bad kids, the truants and greaseballs, which seemed unfair but that's life.

It was my mother's Toyota I had been driving and when she decided to get a new car with some extra money she had just inherited, she wouldn't let me drive it. I worked part-time in a bookstore in the mall, so I had no chance of affording a car on my own. So I got rides. And eventually I moved closer to the city where a car was actually a liability.

I decided I liked being carless. It was a convenient way to excuse myself from learning how to read a map or having to take over the wheel on a long car trip or navigate roads filled with everyone's rage. There were times I missed that brief window when I did drive, and I'd blast 106.3FM (once a great alternative station when the word "alternative" actually meant something, back when Matt Pinfield was a DJ not an MTV/VH1 talking head.) But who wanted car payments when I had restaurant meals with friends, unlimited boutiques and bargains, and a student loan to pay off? I was a city girl--no car required.

Which takes us to the present. I had talked for a long time about learning to drive again, but I had no real intention of following through. It sounded like the good, responsible thing to say, but inside the thought terrified me. I feared dying in a fiery car accident because I was, say, daydreaming about ice cream cake. Or worse, I'd survive a crash but my face would melt off. I had seen a woman on TV once who had her face melted off in a car fire and I thought, if that were me I wouldn't be appearing on TV. No way. I'd probably spend the rest of my life indoors, getting fatter and fatter from all the shut-in, emotional eating and I'd eventually die of heart failure.

The first time I realized I had no choice and had to re-learn to drive was when my husband was in a bike accident. He was riding his bike to work as he always does, but this time he was going down a hill too fast and he flew off the bike and onto a grassy patch of sidewalk. Among other things he had a broken pelvis and was taken to a hospital in Newton, many towns away from me. I didn't drive so in order to get to the hospital I had to be picked up by my brother-in-law who lives AN HOUR AWAY.

What would I do if another emergency like this occurred? Could I always rely on public transportation? And what about all the car trips my husband and I take? Mike ends up doing all the driving, and I get to do all the snoozing. Yes, it's an excellent deal for me, but hardly equitable.

The first step to re-entering the driving world was renewing my expired New Jersey license and get a new one for Massachusetts. Because my license had been expired for several years, I had to take the written driver's test again. I beamed with pride when I got a perfect score. I was disappointed that my 100 wasn't noted on my new license, but still it was a confidence-booster that I knew what the penalty was for a teen with two offenses and what to do if confronted by a large animal crossing the road (try as much as possible to avoid the animal without causing a serious accident.)

But even after I had my valid license and Mike had put me on the insurance, I still wasn't driving. Maybe a spin in the country now and then, one-lane roads where a car passed about once an hour. But no more than that.

Until the night when we were driving to Vermont for the weekend and Mike, behind the wheel, suddenly doubled over in pain. We pulled into a rest stop and he turned off the ignition to take a break and wait it out. But the pain was only getting worse. He feared he had a kidney stone. He had one once before and the feeling could only be described as labor pains (except other people get a baby for their troubles but all you get is a rock.)

I had no choice but to drive us the rest of the way to the motel. Once he was able to diagnose himself and knew that no ER visit was necessary, we switched places and suddenly I was in the driver's seat. I steered white-knuckled down the dark roads to Manchester, my hands firmly at 10 and 3 o'clock. When we arrived in one piece an hour later, my anxiety slowly turned to pride. I had driven us here! I had saved our trip! That feeling was way better than dozing.

Recently I was given another test I could not avoid. Once again, we were driving back from a weekend trip when Mike's mild headache morphed into a blinding migraine. It was eleven at night and we still had a ways to go to get back to Brookline--including the stretch over the Zakim bridge and through the tunnels of Boston. I didn't want to drive. I had avoided any major highways thusfar and never had to cross a bridge. I was terrified. But what other option did we have? We had brought one of the cats with us so we couldn't exactly check into a motel for the night. Plus we both had to work in the morning. Someone had to drive us home and it wasn't going to be the person with his eyes squeezed tight, moaning.

So there I was again, a reluctant driver about to face one of my worst fears. Yet by virtue of the fact that I had no choice I suddenly felt more focused, more confident, calmer. I would get this done. I had to.

And I did. Except for that one incident when I almost crashed into a truck cutting into my lane, I drove competently, if not smoothly. I pretended I was in a dream, but not the kind where you stop paying attention because you're thinking of eating ice cream cake. The one where you aren't scared because it all seems surreal and nothing can touch you.

It's sometimes a gift when we are faced with just one choice--to move forward. Last example: If you're afraid of heights and find yourself climbing a church tower with your Swedish relatives, you can't just disappoint them and scurry down to safety like a mouse. You must move forward, forward, each step in darkness bringing you closer to your goal. Your eyes are focused and your mind suspends fear until you're at the top and finally you can exhale.

Gone Baby Gone

2010-06-23T03:29:00.000-07:00

The Missing All--prevented Me
From missing minor Things.
If nothing larger than a World's
Departure from a Hinge--
Or Sun's extinction, be observed--
'Twas not so large that I
Could lift my Forehead from my work
For Curiosity.
--Emily Dickinson, from The Pocket Emily Dickinson

There is a hole in my mouth where a tooth once lived. I, being a negligent landlord so preoccupied with keeping my front teeth white and clean, routinely ignored--even forgot--about the tooth in the far back of my jaw. Now there's a hole with just a few crumbling pieces of tooth that will soon be extracted. Gone forever never to be replaced.

My problem used to be having too many teeth. When I was a kid, once my baby teeth were gone, a surfeit of larger teeth moved in, crowding each other in my small mouth like passengers on a rush-hour bus. I had fangs, extra teeth hanging above my gumline on either side of my front teeth, pushing those teeth closer together, resulting in Laura Ingalls'-style buck teeth. Other kids called me "Bugs Bunny." I also had four impacted wisdom teeth. I didn't think they were doing much harm--I could have used a couple of back-up teeth. But they too had to go. Before I was fitted for braces I was sent to my dentist who pulled half a dozen teeth and an oral surgeon who, while I was sleeping, cut out my Wisdom. I was being stripped of excess, but now I wish I had some of those virgin teeth back.

Mike says that I focus on the wrong things. I worry about my outside appearance, but I ignore the fundamental things like sunscreen. Even though I don't tan, I like getting some color on my face, a healthy glow on my cheeks. Isn't that the beauty standard to which we all ascribe, especially our mothers? Go outside and get some color, my mom used to say when I was spending too much time indoors with a book. But when letting my cheeks turn pink, I'm also starting a process of aging that will be hard to reverse. Mike reminds me to put on sunscreen, even sometimes applies it to me as if I were a little girl with arms wrapped in swimmies. It's sweet that he cares so I let him do it. He does this because he's concerned about skin cancer and my fair skin, but he's also admitted that by slathering me in SPF 80 he hopes to spare me future dermatological procedures that will cost us the equivalent of a trip to Europe.

When the cap on my front tooth--the result of a rollerskating spill down my driveway when I was younger--started yellowing with stain, I immediately made an appointment with a cosmetic dentist to have it replaced, paying for the $500 bill out-of-pocket. I had seen pictures of our recent trip to Key West and in all of them is that amber splotch on my smile. When they introduced at-home whitening kits, I faithfully applied the strips twice a day for two weeks even though they made me drool.

But I was neglecting what I couldn't easily see. Those back teeth got only a modicum of my attention and care. And now one is gone and the other one is on the endangered list. I figured the dentist could do something with what fragments I had left, but two broken caps later I was running out of options. They could pull the tooth slightly by the roots like unfurling a line of floss to get to a clean piece. But even the roots were showing signs of decay. I could have the whole thing extracted and get an implant (for an other large out-of-pocket fee.) This option appealed to me. Start fresh, I thought. This time will be different, just give me another chance. But my dentist said an implant that far back in my mouth might push against my sinuses. I'd have to have a consultation before they could approve an implant. I was faced with the prospect of that gaping hole being permanent.

It's not like you can see the void when I smile. But I know it's missing and that I caused it. It's another sign that I'm mortal, that I can't always count on my body to pick up my slack.

Buddhism teaches us that clinging to the ephemeral causes much suffering. But there are things I could have held on to a little longer if I had just payed attention to the right things--regularly flossing my back teeth, for instance. My dentist advised that I pay more attention to preventive care. Unlike a sweater, my teeth could not easily be replaced by purchasing a new one every time there was a hole.

After receiving the bad news, I shuffled out of the office and went straight to CVS. I bought fluoride rinse because the Listerine Whitening mouthwash I was using wasn't effective against plaque attack. I'm paying more attention now to how well I'm flossing. I pay penance for my sweet tooth.

Which makes me wonder what else I may be overlooking.

Work Does a Life Good

2010-06-15T14:11:00.000-07:00

"The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the things worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident."--Marge Piercy, from the poem "To Be of Use"

Last night I was having a friendly visit with Linda. We had eaten most of the bag of olive-flavored tortilla chips with mixed olive cheese dip. I always bring a snack for us to share, partly because after work I'm ravenous and I can't concentrate on anything--including convivial conversation--when I'm hungry. But also because it's a treat for Linda. When I first enter her apartment, I notice her eyeing my enviro-tote to see what I'll pull out. I try to go for healthy snacks like hummus and carrots, but at times it's a pint of Ben & Jerry's Boston Cream Pie or a box of Girl Scout cookies. Once it was a pumpkin pie with whipped cream--that was in anticipation of Thanksgiving. We started out with generous slices and followed that with significant seconds. I ate so much pumpkin pie that I had trouble sleeping that night because I was burping up pumpkin.

We start by sitting at Linda's kitchen table eating our snack. Linda's contribution is a can of seltzer water for each of us. When the food is nearly gone, we adjourn to the two green vinyl chairs in the livingroom. Almost all of Linda's furniture is stuff that her friend Chris found for her on the street. In particular, she has a copious assortment of chairs that could seat a large dinner party as long as matching isn't an issue. These include lawn chairs, wide-seat kitchen chairs, a rolling desk chair, a bright orange plastic chair, a chair too narrow for anyone but Olive Oyl to sit in, a chair that converts into a sleeping pad--although as far as I know Linda never entertains overnight guests. It's hard for her to refuse something free, no matter how many she already owns, even if she doesn't have room for it. Plus every new addition allows her to make more adjustments to the set-up of a room. I can always count on her to ask me if the desk lamp would look better on the table near the front door or next to the waterless electric fish tank. Would it change the aesthetic of the room to swap the display case of beanie babies with the low book shelf containing all her Dr. Phil books and John Denver CDs?

I don't think she really listens to my response. She just likes asking. Rearranging her apartment is something to do, a challenge, a never-ending project.

Because of her disability, Linda has never held a full-time job. She once volunteered at Mass General Hospital, assembling surgical tools for doctors. But that ended when she had trouble getting in and out of Boston on time.

I can see why Linda is endlessly moving her stuff around, why she changes her phone company as frequently as her bed sheets, why she quickly returns items she orders from catalogs and goes back and forth between a Verizon cell phone and a Jitterbug. These are the otherwise mundane tasks that keep her occupied and engaged. Granted, changing phone plans is one of many chores that busy people dread. Who wants to spend an afternoon talking by phone to customer service? Linda does. And if she gets a good rep on the phone it means the difference between a bad day and a great one. In the end, she's accomplished something, she's made a change in her world.

I find work to be essential to my well-being, too. Lately I've been thinking that working a second job--say as a freelancer--would probably make me happier than spending two hours watching "Intervention In Depth: Glue Sniffing" or "I Was Bitten and I'm Still Alive!" The times I'm truly caught up in my work--whether I'm writing a pitch letter or arranging coupons for a much-needed trip to the grocery store--are some of the best kind of present moments for me.

When my husband fantasizes aloud about winning the lottery and retiring twenty years early, I think, I don't want to be retired. The few times I was out of work I was too panic-stricken to enjoy waking up at 11 and having the rest of the day to myself. When I was laid off in 2003 I immediately hit Monster.com. My beach read was What Color is Your Parachute? When I was looking for work after moving to Boston I could hardly focus on decorating our new apartment; I kept checking my email to see if anyone had responded to my cover letter. Only AFTER I had a job did I think--I hope they let me start in a month! Then I can enjoy a day of rollercoaster rides and cheap beer at Coney Island without any intruding thoughts of destitution or shiftlessness.

My grandmother is another example of someone who needs work. She lives down the street from my parents in a retirement building similar to Linda's. When my father was growing up, his parents divorced and my grandfather sent for Josephine, who was living with the nuns in Sicily. This woman who knew very little about the world spent the next thirty years living in Bensonhurt, Brooklyn, raising three boys and a girl and cooking for her husband. When my grandfather died, the apartment they shared on the second floor was no longer suitable for my grandmother, an overweight woman with swollen feet who had trouble navigating the steep stairs.

After many tears and threats to return to Italy--which we knew was a bluff since she never seemed to enjoy her visits back to Palermo--Josephine conceded to my father and Uncle and moved to New Jersey. After some adjustment that included more tears and threats, she started to enjoy living there. And though she lived alone, she still cooked large pots of tomato sauce and pasta. At holidays my father would say, "Ma, you don't have to cook this year. We have it under control." But there she'd be, with her tray of stuffed artichokes (which my father has a hard time refusing) and breaded cutlets. Women of my mother's and my generations could go to Wegman's and buy a couple of party platters. But my grandmother has a NEED to cook. It goes even beyond love to necessity. This is her job. Without it she'd be lost.

My father is out of work right now, but you wouldn't know it. A construction project manager, he has switched gears out of necessity--from the construction site to the home front. Every day he has a mission, a vision of the next improvement he wants to make. He's taken up landscaping (he might take issue with the word "gardening.") The last time I visited my parents' house I was shocked at how organized he had made the garage. It was like the "After" portion of a show on HGTV. Every tool had its own hook. Bicycles and bicycle parts had their own corner. My mother's craft materials were arranged inside a work table on rollers. If I didn't live five hours away, I would have hired him on the spot to organize our place!

Mike says that if he were retired now he'd be doing the same thing as my dad--focusing on projects that would enhance both our lives. Perhaps he doesn't feel as passionate about his vocation as I do about book publishing. To me, my career is essential to my well-being. No matter what else is going on in my personal life, I always want to do good work. I know that tying your identity to your job title can be dangerous. I find it hard not to.

Feeling useful, productive, effective at something--more and more I equate that with happiness and longevity. Even my weekly visits with Linda are satisfying for this reason. Last night when Linda said to me, "You don't know how much I look forward to Monday nights when you come to visit" I felt myself tearing up. In some small way my efforts mattered. And so can everyone's if they dedicate themselves to something meaningful to them--be it grand or mundane--and stick with it.

I am a rock, I am an island

2010-06-01T14:45:00.000-07:00

"We are each an island. It is your task to bring to your island what you need to live long and well: love, beauty, diversion, friends, work that sustains, a meaningful life."--Kay Redfield Jamison

Mike and I were up at the family cabin again this weekend. First time in the hammock this year, first time putting my bare feet in the water.

The wildfires in Quebec caused a grey haze to obscure the mountains and made the air smell as sweet as a late-night campfire. It was a very pleasant smell, something LL Bean might put in a sachet and sell for $9.99.

I experienced my usual love-hate relationship with nature. In the hammock with my book, a gentle breeze keeping the mosquitoes away, I was as happy as a kid getting a turn on the swing. Then there was a buzz near my ear. It startled me beyond reason and I lost my page in the novel I was reading. I have a very knee-jerk reaction to buzzing. It not only annoys me but it fills me with anticipatory dread. I can't relax until I know the perpetrator is smashed and his accomplices have fled the scene.

I looked around for the source and saw that half a dozen dragonflies were circling the weeds, rocks, and trees around the hammock. What a hypocrite I was! Dragonflies were the theme of our August wedding. People had given us dragonfly-themed presents: pieces of Kate Spade June Lane china stamped with golden dragonflies. Framed color photographs of dragonflies. A dragonfly candle. Even a dragonfly magnet. And how was I reacting to the real creatures? Like they were the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz--proving once again that I like the sanitized version of nature better than the real thing.

Mike and I climbed down the rocks to get to the lip of Lovewell pond. The feel of the mucky pond floor actually appeals to me. It must be all those times my parents took me to lakes when I was a kid. In the shallow end I could touch the floor, and though it felt slimy it was also cool and soft, like stepping into a bowl of pudding. My father preferred jumping into deep rock quarries, places where a kid would need to know how to swim (which I didn't and still don't.)

The pond water had receded and pollen had left yellow bands around the rocks like chalk marks on the sidelines of a football game.

Something about being in a natural setting on a beautiful day makes people want to say something profound about life or death or the state of humanity. I am not immune. Some of my most intimate talks with my husband or with a friend have been when we're away from the city. Like looking out the windshield of a car eases the discomfort of a difficult conversation, talking openly seems natural while watching the small ripples on the surface of the water, the setting sun an airbrushed orange.

I asked Mike why it is that even in a beautiful, peaceful place like this I still worry so much. Is it that I'm addicted to thinking of worst possible outcomes? Mike suggested that I might be trying to prepare myself in case something unforeseen happens--even unlikely things like him falling on a rock and splitting his head open. Of course, he doesn't make me feel secure when he's jumping from one unbalanced boulder to the next.

I'd make the most anxious mother in the world.

It didn't help that I had chosen to bring Nothing Was the Same, a memoir by Kay Redfield Jamison about her husband's death from cancer, as my Memorial Day Weekend read. Did I WANT to be depressed? My wiser cousin Mikki, who was also staying at the cabin, had gone into White Birch Books in North Conway and asked the bookseller to recommend something fun. Meanwhile I was wrapped up in a book about losing a life partner. Yippee!

Mike said that probably more people have these feelings than I realize. It is hard sometimes to imagine other people having neurotic worries like I do. As empathetic as I try to be, I still have the tendency to think that other people have it together where I don't. I'm confident in some areas, sure. But feeling happiness in the present moment without worrying that it will be taken away in the future is incredibly hard for me. How do other people experience life?

One of my favorite authors to work with, Ellen Graf, brought up this very topic last time we spoke. She's married to a Chinese man who came to America to live with her. In order for them to live peacefully together she had to let go of some of her assumptions about other people and how they think. This is harder than it sounds since we all look through the lenses of our own thoughts and experience. It's difficult to imagine a Republican's point of view if you're a Democrat, a life of poverty if you're privileged, or the perspective of someone from a different culture than your own. Graf had the opportunity to experience this firsthand and it proved essential to her marriage.

Knowing that I'm not the only one to feel sad or anxious sometimes, even when there's a spectacular sunset before me, cool water on my feet, and someone I love at my side, is enough to rouse me out of my funk. I may sometimes feel unmoored in life, but this is not a disaster, and I'm not alone.

We all need a happy place

2010-05-17T15:11:00.000-07:00

Photo credit: DeaseLake.net

"The only thing I didn't understand

was how in a world whose predominant characteristics
are futility, cruelty, loneliness, disappointment
people are saved every day
by a sparrow, a foghorn, a grassblade, a tablecloth."--From the poem "What I Understood" by Katha Pollitt, from her collection the mind-body problem

I notice lately that I'm having trouble focusing. I must have been too unfocused before to have noticed.

At work, I jump mid-sentence from composing an email to an author, to checking what the weekend weather is so I know how to pack for New York, to adding a new blogger to my review copies list, to checking my Twitter feed. The emails keep popping up in my inbox and the to-do list is growing tentacles.

I know this is typical of modern life as most of us live it. But it wipes me out. I've been walking home from work lately, but instead of using that time to breathe and recharge I'm still thinking about work, as well as the 91 things I need to do at home (Yes, 91. I counted.) I get home, throw a packet of Tasty Bite Madras Lentils in the rice cooker, and if our schedules intersect, have dinner with Mike. By that time I'm feeling as worn out as an old sneaker and I berate myself for not being more productive, for letting another day go by without getting more things done.

Sometimes all this mental stuff depresses me. Now that it's Spring, I feel the cartoon cloud over my head lifting, but the obligations and projects and should-dos are still obscuring the blue sky and brilliant flowers. And then I feel guilty that I'm not savoring the nice weather I wished for all winter!

The tyranny of too much stuff, whether it's mental stuff or that stuff I buy myself because I love acquiring new and shiny things, can be suffocating. It's like when I go to our local craft store, Paper Source, and pick out a few items for making my own cards from their modest but well-selected inventory. Then I go visit my mother in New Jersey, where she takes me to Michael's. There I'm confronted with hundreds of options of cuteness--and that's just counting the new Martha Stewart Crafts line. I get a dizzy, almost out-of-body feeling, like I've had too much caffeine. No end of choice gives me a headache.

This weekend we opened the family cabin in Fryeburg, Maine. I spent Saturday morning vacuuming dead insect parts from the windowsills of the bunkhouse (where Mike and I usually sleep because Mike likes the composting toilet, or what I refer to as the "litter box.") Strings of spider webbing stuck to my fingers like cotton candy. Outside the bunkhouse, I picked up old tree branches and tossed them in a neat pile in the woods.

It was the most calm and focused I had felt in weeks.

Our cousin Mikki calls the cabin "the happy place" and I agree. Not that we sit around all day smiling and singing songs. It's just that it's one of the few places left where our lives get simple again. Our options are manageable--read a book on the hammock or on the comfy old couch in the cabin with its panoramic view of Lovewell Pond? Go into North Conway for fresh vegetables or outlet shopping, or spend an hour splashing in the water? I tend to bring some of the paperwork of my ordinary life to the cabin, but then I forget about it because I've picked up a T.C. Boyle novel at The Local Bookie.

Sunday was a glorious day, sunny but with a gentle breeze which helped keep the mosquitoes at bay. I sat in an Adirondack chair facing the pond, an IPA on the armrest like a Corona commercial, a book in my lap. From time to time I'd look up and watch a pair of nesting loons diving in and out of the water. That's all they do all day is dive for food and then emerge--like synchronized swimmers--right next to each other. The book I was reading was Twitter for Dummies, a compromise between studying up on social media and nature watching. I actually found I could concentrate on what I was reading, even with the occasional looking up to see the late-afternoon sunshine cast perfect photographer's light over the rippling waves.

Life can be chaotic, overwhelming, depressing, alienating, hard. But that's why nature is so important, so crucial. The loons, the pine trees, the quiet--that's what restores us.

Until the neighbors arrive with their power tools, leaf blowers, and mobile lawnmowers.

High in the upper-30s

2010-05-04T14:05:00.000-07:00

"The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: you can create a good future by creating a good present. Discontent, blaming, complaining, self-pity, cannot serve as a foundation for a good future, no matter how much effort you make."--Eckhart Tolle

I turned 37 yesterday. A few days before my birthday, I had complained to my mother about it, and she said, "This is a good time in your life, Jenn. Think of how you'll feel when you're 47, 57, 67?"

My mother is a sensible woman. I take after my father.

I wonder, is it time to subscribe to More magazine, the one for women over 40? When I visit my parents' house and read my mother's back issues I feel like it will be years and years before I will be in this magazine's demographic. Each issue is filled with stories of successful women with gray hair, dressed in suits and white blouses and long layered necklaces and maybe some sort of short-heeled boot. They have three kids and an architect husband, started their own business or switched careers in mid-life, and give to various charities while dropping $500 on handbags. I don't relate to these women. They're not me. A couple of years ago I picked up a free book of essays by women over 40. I shelved it way in the back of my bookcase, figuring I'd want to read it someday. That someday is now sometime soon.

You know you're going to get older, but like a shark attack, you think it won't happen to you. I hardly ever go in the water, you think. But then one summer day you find yourself snorkeling with your husband, and you feel a tug at your ankle. You realize (too late) that you are no exception.

I've spoken about my fear of aging before so I won't carry on about it here (or not anymore than I already have). I think I've discovered what is at the heart of this fear--I'm having an identity crisis. An identity crisis is not the same as a mid-life crisis. I'm not going to the gym five days a week and buying myself a bitchin' Camaro. Simply put, I don't know how to be a woman in her upper-30's. What should I be doing? What will make my life rich and meaningful? Am I doing enough now to guarantee a happy future? I haven't even rolled over all my 401K accounts yet!

I'm sure a lot of this has to do with not having children. Women who become mothers in their thirties can focus their attention on their child's milestones while neatly avoiding their own. I'm not saying mothers don't have the occasional identity crisis, too, but for the most part they know what their purpose is for the next twenty-one years: to raise an intelligent, happy, healthy, well-adjusted human. Beyond that...well, they'll worry about it when it happens, in their Empty Nest days.

The thing I need to do is to make my life as it is now in the present moment the best life it can be. So I'm 37, so what? Some interesting, dare I say hip people, are my age. Or at least there must be a few. A quick Google search finds...um...Dave Chapelle (what's he up to now?), Vera Farmiga (broke George Clooney's heart in Up in the Air, you go, girl!), Heidi Klum (although I stopped watching Project Runway when it moved to Lifetime I still admire her for turning her modeling career into a hit show. I hear this past season was good.) Further down the list we find...Joe the Plumber (listed as "activist"), Monica Lewinsky, Tori Spelling (husband-stealer), Tina Yothers (my least favorite character on Family Ties), terrorist Richard Reid (the shoebomber is 37 this year?) . Hmmm.

I could look to my friends, many of whom are also 37 this year. But comparing my life to theirs isn't helpful, either. We're all at different places in our lives. Using friends as a yardstick for your own goals and accomplishments is a surefire way to stop being friends. Anyway, I've always set my watch to a different time then them.

Maybe I just need to stop ruminating about my age and start living it. 80-year olds are proud to have made it to 80--they announce it every chance they get. If I make my late thirties as good as my late-twenties maybe it will cease being a big deal every year. When I turn 40 I'll laugh at my former neurotic self. While driving my red Mini convertible down the Pacific Coast highway.

Flower Power

2010-04-28T14:11:00.000-07:00

Monday night there was a special event at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. "Art in Bloom" is a 34-year tradition at the museum that celebrates the spring season. It's an opportunity to present beautiful works of art inspired by beautiful works of art. Let me explain.

Throughout the museum (with the majority in the second floor galleries) were 50 flower arrangements made by local garden clubs and florists. What distinguished them from mere wedding bouquets was that each arrangement was inspired by a particular piece of art on the wall. I'm not sure how they made their selections, but I admired the artistry of the flowers and started looking at flower arranging in a new way.

I used to regard flower arranging as something bored housewives and retirees "studied" in Adult Ed class. Flowers are beautiful and smell pleasant but they are not art. Art you can hang on the wall or install in a gallery. Flowers last a few days if your lucky before they drop their petals everywhere. Perhaps artists like Christo are an exception; I was in New York City when he and Jeanne Claude did The Gates in Central Park. I'd say it was a waste of orange fabric.

There's a new book coming out this fall called Ikebana Style: 20 Portable Flower Arrangements Perfect for Gift Giving and I've seen some color spreads. Ikebana is the Japanese art of flower arranging. Here is an example from the book:

Photo Credit: Erich Schrempp

The author, Keiko Kubo, blends her Eastern style (simple, asymmetrical, designed to be viewed from the front and the side) with a Western aesthetic (a variety of types of flowers, potted to be transportable, can be viewed from all sides.) A student of the fine arts, Kubo considers her three-dimensional arrangements to be sculptures.

I understood this once I saw the flowers on display, each influenced by their muse--an art nouveau poster by Toulouse L'Autrec, a portrait of a 12 year-old girl that her parents would use to find her a proper suitor ("like Match.com for the 18th Century," my husband quipped.) Flowers bent gracefully at the stem like gentlemen, or stuck straight up in the air like stubborn cowlicks. Care was taken not only to capture color, but nuances of form and mood. One arrangement looked like a rooster that was emerging from the center, its fire-red crest flowing. Sure enough, next to the arrangement was a still life with fowl.

The names of the flowers were a novelty. Flame of the Forest, Kangaroo Paw, Pincushion, Angel Wing Begonia...the names were as evocative as the displays! Yes, I knew about gerbera daisies and roses. Once a week I buy a bouquet from my local Shaw's. But that's just because they're cheap--unique flowers with unusual names are harder to come by and therefore not available at any old regional grocery chain.

I admired the patience it must have taken to assemble these delicate beauties, employing floral foam as a sturdy base, with wired picks and tubes to keep the stems intact, the flowers hydrated. Knowing that I was witnessing something delicate and ephemeral, I attempted to capture each arrangement and it's accompanying art work with my cell phone camera. Many other people were doing the same thing and at times lines began to form for a chance to snap a close-up. Someone (usually me) found themselves standing impatiently behind some pair of older ladies in hats and loafers who had endless, encyclopedic knowledge of every arrangement.

I took so many pictures that for a time I didn't even stop to look at the flowers. Instead I went right up and viewed them through a viewfinder. It took me a while to realize what I was doing. I was at the exhibit, but I wasn't really paying attention. It was like the time Mike dressed up as a blind man for a Halloween party. He needed pictures afterward to see what people wore, ate, and drank. Though he had been standing there the whole time, he had missed the party. By trying to collect images to bring home with me, I was missing the real thing right in front of me.

Flowers are often used as a symbol of our impermanence. Think of the cherry blossoms in Washington, DC, the alpine flowers on the top of Mt. Washington, the annuals your neighbors plant in their front yard. Flower arranging is like building a sand castle or decorating a cake or drawing on the sidewalk with chalk. Why do we do it? Someone will invariably come along and kick the castle, cut the cake into gooey pieces, or train a hose on the sidewalk.

But oh how nice it was when it was finished, when it was admired by strangers, enjoyed by dinner guests, cherished by honeymooners carving a heart in the sand with a piece of driftwood, then watching the tide rake the sand clean.

My path starts here

2010-04-21T14:36:00.000-07:00

"Meditation practice provides the perfect context for observing our beliefs and recognizing the tug- of-war we have with our own experience. Just sit quietly for five minutes and watch what happens. Unless we have some accomplishment in meditation, we won't know what to do with all the activity. We become overwhelmed by the energetic play of the mind, pummeled by our own thoughts and emotions, bewildered by our inability to sit in peace. We will want to do something. And we really only have two means of escape from all this mayhem: we can either spin out into thought, which is an exaggeration of experience, or we can suppress or deny it.
"Exaggeration and denial describe the dilemma we have with mind, and not just in meditation. Exaggeration and denial operate in conjunction with all our fantasies, hopes, and fears. When we exaggerate experience, we see what isn't there. And when we deny it, we don't see what is. Both exaggeration and denial are extraneous to the true nature of things, the nature we experience when we just stay present."--Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel from her forthcoming book The Power of an Open Question: A Buddhist Approach to Abiding in Uncertainty

I finally went to the Shambhala Center of Boston after thinking about going for months. They have an open house for new people every Wednesday night, but it's across town and Wednesdays I'm usually cranky. I heard somewhere that people's least favorite day of the week is Wednesday. Me and Bob Geldof thought it was Monday. Something about it being a day in the middle of the week makes us enervated.

I was going to hear the author Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel give a talk. But I was also going to try the 1/2 hour sitting meditation beforehand. I was nervous--the most I had ever been able to sit in meditation on my own was five minutes. Possibly three minutes. I could blame the cats or my husband turning on the Celtics game. But the truth is I've never enjoyed it. It's uncomfortable sitting there, trying to focus on my breath. My thoughts competed for my attention like squabbling children. Was I supposed to clear my mind like you'd erase a chalkboard--wiping away all thoughts until all that is left is a blank? Or was I supposed to watch the thoughts like they were soap bubbles, popping each one as it floated around in my head? The stress of worrying about what to do made me want to give up. I'd rather read a book or eat rice pudding--much more gratifying.

But since I started writing this blog I knew I had to eventually try group meditation. It was the only way I could experience firsthand what many of the Buddhist books I've been reading lately were teaching. If I wanted to live in the present, here was the way to start.

I walked into the Shambhala Center and immediately began leafing through pamphlets at the welcome table. There were fliers of various talks happening, some by authors I help promote. There was a membership brochure which I pocketed like a promise. I'm already a member of the MFA and the MSPCA, but maybe my company would give me a discount. It seemed like a logical fringe benefit. I dropped a $5 bill in the wicker donation basket.

There was a greeter standing in front of a table with a sign-up sheet and another wicker basket. All I had left was a $20. I needed some time to warm up to the place, so instead of meeting eyes with the smiling young man with gold studs in his ears, I looked to the right at a circle of chairs and sofas like you might find at a support group. The only person sitting there was a heavyset man with wisps of hair covering a bald crown. I thought I should probably talk to him--after all, this wasn't like riding the "T" where eye contact is for Southern tourists and drunks. Buddhists were supposed to be open and friendly, right?

I once labored under the delusion that I was an "open" person. I considered myself to be kind-- outgoing even--if I was in the right mood or had had a few glasses of wine. That image of myself was shattered a few years ago.

I was new to Boston and determined to get to know some interesting women who might turn into good friends. When I left New York I also left a fun group of women friends I had known for most of my life. I wanted to find their doppelgangers in my new city.

One day at work I overheard this woman, N, mention a wine bar on Charles Street that she'd gone to the night before. It was the same wine bar I had read about on boston.com and wanted to try. It was something about the way she detailed the food she ate, with such stunning detail and clarity, that made me think, she's someone I'd like in my new friend pool.

It turned out that lots of other women felt the same because she always seemed to be going out after work, having cocktails, throwing parties to celebrate the Spring Equinox, arranging group lunches. She was not simply a social butterfly; she was a hummingbird.

N took classes in something called Nia. I had never heard of this before but I figured if N liked it, it must be fun. She had mentioned going on weeklong Nia retreats on beautiful islands with her girlfriends. It all sounded exotic. Was there a Nia uniform--maybe a grass skirt and beaded halter? Was it like bellydancing? I asked N if I could tag along with her to her next Nia class.

N, two of her friends, and I drove to the Nia studio one Saturday. It looked very much like a dance studio and I had flashbacks of sweaty dressing rooms and chalk. Our instructor was a young woman wearing cute, black swishy gym pants that stopped at mid calf like abbreviated bell-bottoms. Later I would search every TJ Maxx for a pair, without success.

The theme of the class that day was Madonna's Ray of Light album. It was one of the few Madonna albums I owned, the one she made after her daughter Lourdes was born and she had some sort of epiphany and became Indian. The class was full--about twenty women of all ages and body types were represented. The instructor put on the CD. As the first song began she started moving in place, telling us to let go, to feel the music in our bodies. OK. I had improvised dances in my bedroom before. Yes, I was twelve at the time, but I could still do it.

Then she wanted us to circle around the room, using any movement that felt right to us. Most of the women in the class knew what to expect, and launched into their own unchoreographed dance routine. It was one thing for me to do the Natalie Merchant twirl in the privacy of my own home, but it felt very uncomfortable doing it in front of nineteen strangers, even if most of them were smiling at each other as if to say hello friend, isn't this great? Don't you feel free? I was reminded of a tampon ad.

At one point we were told to roll around on the floor. I started to giggle, then caught myself and pretended I was just so full of joy and freedom that I was giddy with laughter. I looked over at N and saw how fully engaged she was in her dance. This came natural to her; if this was 1969 she'd be traveling cross-country in a van painted with flowers and the words "Make Love Not War." I slipped out of class and went into the women's restroom.

I was having a bad time, there was no denying it. I just wanted to get out of there. I was as reserved as a clam and I had to admit it. At 34, I felt the need to be self-protective. It mattered to me whether or not I looked foolish in front of strangers and suddenly opening up to people I just met felt threatening, false even, like being drunk at a party and spilling your secrets to someone you just met.

Yet when I returned to class and it came time to leave, I approached the instructor in the swishy black pants and told her how much I had enjoyed myself. I wanted to be put on her mailing list. I wrote down her email on the back of a postcard. You'll see me again! I said.

I don't know why I lied. Maybe I hadn't yet accepted that I was not the Nia type and that my new friend N would probably not be joining my fledgling Boston entourage, which had at least four available spots still open. She had other friends, other interests. Her circle of women was closed.

So when I found myself sitting in the Shambhala Center, waiting for meditation class, I worried that this would be just like Nia. I'd have trouble sitting cross-legged in my skirt, my back would ache, I'd start hyperventilating from all that concentrated breathing.

But when the meditation session started, I realized that, like yoga, this was an individual practice. I could sit however I felt comfortable, switch positions as necessary. No one was looking at me and saying hi friend with their eyes. We were all looking straight ahead (or in my case, at a potted plant in the corner of the room.) And yet I wasn't alone. I was among other people trying to find their way, searching for their happiness, their place in the world. It was communal in the best possible sense. We were all being still and silent together, like those times in the car with my husband when we share a comfortable lull in conversation and just enjoy being in each other's presence. Yes, my mind raced with thoughts as usual, spinning like a pinwheel in a hurricane. But I was able to keep returning to my breath. Again. Again. That 1/2 hour felt like 10 minutes.

Will I go back again? Probably, though not every week. Like I said, Wednesdays I'm cranky.

Be patient

2010-04-11T02:36:00.000-07:00

Photo credit: Marion Peck

"Patience is not learned in safety. It is not learned when everything is harmonious and going well. When everything is smooth sailing, who needs patience? If you stay in your room with the door locked and the curtains drawn, everything may seem harmonious, but the minute anything doesn't go your way, you blow up. There is no cultivation of patience when your pattern is just to try to seek harmony and smooth everything out."--Pema Chodron, from The Pocket Pema Chodron

I woke up early this morning, much too early for a Sunday. I think it was 4:30AM. I stumbled to the bathroom, and on my way down the hall, I felt something gritty under my feet. It felt like cat litter, so I assumed it was one of the cats kicking off some litter that had stuck to her paw. I went in the living room to read and inevitably fall asleep on the futon like I always do. More grit. The room was dark so I still thought I was stepping on scattered litter. But if this was litter, the cats must have staged an overnight revolt, dumping the entire content of their litter box upside down in protest. Had we failed to clean the box thoroughly?

I didn't want to turn on the light for fear of what I'd find. When I did, I was surprised to see tiny lentils scattered everywhere I looked. Then I spotted it. The torn plastic bag we had just bought yesterday at an Indian speciality food shop. It was gnawed open, the front of the bag a gaping maw. The bag itself was completely empty, save for one or two lentils clinging to the inside.

I know there are worse things that could happen. Parents all over the world are cleaning up after their sick children. Sanitation workers are collecting piles of garbage left over from raucous house parties on Fraternity Row. As I write this, many people are doing many dirty jobs.

But why did our kitten choose to maul a 2-pound bag of lentils while we were sleeping? And not just 2 pounds of ordinary lentils but baby lentils, lentils as small as benign moles? How did she even get the bag off the counter in the first place?

I couldn't yell at her or spray her with the water bottle we keep around for disciplinary purposes because I didn't actually catch her in the act. So I just breathed in, breathed out, and went looking for a broom. A vacuum would be more ideal for this job, but I didn't want to wake my husband. He adores Joey Thumbs and she adores him, but he would not be pleased to see the late-night havoc his beloved pet had wrought.

I could only find a small broom and dustpan. I got on my knees and started sweeping up the impossibly tiny pebbles. It was like trying to sweep a beach of its sand, a Sisyphean task for sure, and not one I wanted to be doing.

As I swept the lentils into small piles, I thought about yesterday, and how Mike and I were having breakfast and amusing ourselves watching Joey climb onto the small white bookshelf where I keep my cookbooks, stretching her long, lean body to peer over at the bags of croutons and sliced almonds we keep on a small cart. She would select a bag, grab it between her teeth, then jump down and carry it into the living room and under the coffee table. Apparently that's her lair, where bags of croutons go to die.

Of course we always grabbed the bag out of her mouth before she could actually do anything. But what had been cute yesterday was now a colossal mess, not to mention a waste of good lentils. I felt the grit everywhere I walked. I had a feeling that, like pine needles in July, I'd be finding lentils in unexpected places for years to come.

But what could I do about it but go about the task of cleaning up, or waiting for Mike to wake up so I could move things along with his ancient but powerful vacuum? Getting upset about it would only make me feel worse. She was a cat, so therefore I wouldn't have the satisfaction of sitting her down and lecturing her about messes and waste. There was, however, a possible lesson in this for me, something about cultivating patience. My lesson was to not get mad and throw the kitten and her toys out onto the street. Beat it, kid. Scram.

Right now Joey is sitting on my lap, warming my legs like a furry heating pad. She's purring. It's like she's doing it on purpose--she's saying, I know I pee in inappropriate places, eat the leaves off Mike's peace lily plant, jump on your counters and snatch bags of legumes to toss around the apartment like confetti. But look how adorable I am when I wrap myself in a ball!

Only Joey Thumbs, toddlers, and really good-looking people have this power to make you forgive and forget.

Hitting a spiritual wall hurts

2010-04-05T03:35:00.000-07:00

"Anything that appears in your life you regard as something to consume. If you see a beautiful autumn leaf falling, you regard it as prey. You take it home or photograph it or paint a picture of it or write in your memoirs how beautiful it was. You have finally managed to consume it--such an achievement. It was fantastic; you brought the dream into reality. But after a while you become restless again and look for something else to consume. You are constantly hungering for new entertainment--spiritual, intellectual, sensual, and so on."--Chogyam Trungpa, from The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation

Yesterday I spent the day with my husband's family for Easter brunch. The pleasures of this day (and of many of the holidays I spend with my in-laws) are the ritual aspects; the fact that we always have the same meal--eggs, home fries, cabbage salad, fruit-filled muffins, strawberry soup, cousin Susan's delicious Easter bread--rendered more special by the fact that she's highly intolerant to gluten and so has to wear a mask every time she bakes it. My mother-in-law puts up the same kitschy Easter decorations--A paper bunny on the window of the front door that might have been hanging in all of the houses they ever lived in since the 1950's, the same egg-shaped box of jellybeans on the coffee table, a cartoon postcard on the refrigerator of two chocolate bunnies, one with his bum bitten off and the other with his ears missing, one bunny saying to the other "My butt hurts" and the other responding "What?" I love this repetition of food and trimming--it makes me feel like nothing will ever change.

Meanwhile, there is also the pursuit of the new, the desire for change, that excites me. I got an early birthday present of a MacBook Pro from my husband. I had been using one of his ex-company's castoff Dells, circa 1999, and so I was overdue for an upgrade. The new laptop is a thing of beauty--sharp, shiny, powerful, with lots of new features to explore. Once I started using the computer--even before I had learned how to install any software--I was thinking of what accessories would go nicely with it. There's been lots of talk at my office (yes, even a Buddhist publishing house embraces new technology) about the iPad, and even though I've lived without this device for all of my 36 years and been just fine, I find myself wanting it. I'm not even sure what it does--all I know is that it too is shiny and new and desired by many people whom I respect and admire. My ears also perked up when I heard they were developing an iPhone for Verizon. I feel outdated with my stale LG phone from three years ago with no "apps" or even a touch-screen, though it still works (except for the stuck "9" on the front keypad.) Yet I remember the lengths to which I went to acquire that phone back in the winter of 2007. Mike had been in a bike accident and shattered his pelvis. Despite the fact that he was barely mobile, I pushed his wheelchair over many city blocks of ice and snow, determined to get to the Verizon store so we could consult about the new LG NV (emphasis on the "NV," as in, I want this phone so I can be the "envy" of...)

The grasping of the old, the pursuit of the new--both attempts to maintain ego and obscure the fact that life is finite. At least that's how I understand it from the Buddhist teachings I've been reading for almost two years now. I suspect that even the fact that I've been reading various Buddhist books for 18 months could be conceived as spiritual and intellectual materialism. Mike and my in-laws often joke about my love of shopping, and even though I've started to become more aware of the things that truly bring us happiness--family, friends, feeling connected to our community--I still find myself dog-earing the latest Garnet Hill catalog, imagining myself in one of their admittedly overpriced sundresses.

I'm not sure how I can eliminate desire. Is it even possible? I know that clinging to the familiar while hungering for the new brings about suffering. But there's also pleasure in that pain, and even though it's illusory and short-lived, it's still pleasure. I would like to go on having Easter brunch with my in-laws indefinitely, while at the same time I'd like to redecorate our apartment--toss the old green chair and bring in the new sofa and queen-sized mattress. Tradition feels secure--like eating in your favorite diner--and change feels like an opportunity to extend happiness, repeat the novelty over and over with each new acquisition. Even as I'm reading and enjoying one book, I have fourteen more listed on Good Reads that I'm itching to start.

I don't have any answers. I just know that as Americans we believe in our right to the pursuit of happiness, in whatever form that may take. This seems in direct opposition to many of the ideas I'm reading about in my Buddhist books, making it hard to understand--much less to live up to--the Buddhist teachings of ego-lessness.

But, perhaps ironically, I keep on trying.

Leave the Predictions to the Weather Forecasters

2010-03-26T14:37:00.000-07:00

"For at least a century, psychologists have assumed that terrible events--such as having a loved one die or becoming the victim of a violent crime--must have a powerful, devastating, and enduring impact on those who experience them. But recent research suggests that rather than being fragile flowers, most people are surprisingly resilient in the face of trauma. As one group of researchers noted, 'Resilience is often the most commonly observed outcome trajectory following exposure to a potentially traumatic event.
"Negative events do affect us, but they generally don't affect us as much or for as long as we expect them to. Able-bodied people are willing to pay far more to avoid becoming disabled than disabled people are willing to pay to become able-bodied again because able-bodied people underestimate how happy disabled people are. If negative events don't hit us as hard as we expect them to, then why do we expect them to? If heartbreaks and calamities can be blessings in disguise, then why are their disguises so convincing? The answer is that the human mind tends to exploit ambiguity."--Daniel Gilbert from Stumbling on Happiness

My friend Linda, the older lady whom I visit once a week, has recently experienced a very unexpected and positive life change.

She used to live in a studio apartment on the first floor in a building that also happened to house mentally ill people who are transitioning to living on their own. Linda was not a part of that group; they just happened to take up a certain amount of the apartments and have their meetings in the basement. It's great that these programs exist, but it's not without risks. For example, I read in the Brookline Tab that one of the mentally-disturbed residents (most likely off his meds) almost choked the program director to death. That was my first inkling that Linda's living situation was not ideal.

Before the choking incident happened, I thought Linda was doing OK. Because of her physical disability she's always been Section Eight, which means she pays a small portion of her rent and the government pays the balance. My assumption was that Section Eight housing was in bad neighborhoods in run-down buildings. But Linda's studio was on a leafy street in Brookline. All the things she needed--her pharmacy, her podiatrist, etc., were a short walk away. Her apartment was on the small side, but it was just her and her cat, Maxine. The building didn't look like it was in any disrepair beyond the usual troubles that pop up from time to time, like a non-functioning air conditioner or an over-functioning furnace.

But I soon learned there were other problems. One mentally impaired resident had decided that he didn't like Linda and threatened repeatedly to kill her. During the night, Maxine caught a mouse and when Linda woke up there was a mangled rodent carcass in the place where you'd normally put your slippers. The windows only opened a crack and her blinds were falling apart to the point that she felt as exposed as an Angelfish in a fishbowl.

When complaints to the landlord fell on deaf ears--even the death threats didn't seem to bother him even though just a short while ago this same man had been CHOCKED NEARLY TO DEATH. He told Linda if she didn't like it, she could move. But where would a fixed income 65-year old woman find another apartment in a wealthy neighborhood like Brookline? I was skeptical.

But then the strangest coincidence happened: in just a week's time, Linda found a new apartment! One had just opened up down the street in a senior living facility that usually had a multiple year waiting list. She was getting a one-bedroom apartment on a higher floor. The amount of rent she'd need to contribute was less. The building had an on-site hair salon, fitness room with a personal trainer, and lots of common areas for sitting and socializing. Not that I expected Linda to do much socializing--she's shy in group situations. But maybe she'd bump into someone--likely another woman with a cat--and make a friend. It was certainly more likely to happen in this new building than in the old one where she was afraid to walk the hallways.

A few weeks ago, I visited her for the first time in her new apartment. I was impressed by how spacious and clean it was. Any repairs she needed were promptly taken care of and the maintenance men were actually NICE and TALKED TO HER. At the old building they showed up a week late and barely mumbled a hello. For someone who lives alone and who doesn't go out much, every interaction she has is an important part of her day.

I started talking to her about a book I was reading by a Harvard psychologist who writes about how humans are bad at predicting what will make them happy and what won't. Part of the problem is that we expect to feel exactly as we do now in the future, so we make plans based on our present feelings. This was interesting to me since it seemed to support the idea of living in the present moment. It hadn't occurred to me that my feelings in the future wouldn't match what they are now. But of course they won't! For example, I used to think wearing my collar up looked cool and that saving money was for cynics.

Linda told me that ten years ago she had looked at this same senior living center and made up her mind that it was a depressing place. She didn't think she'd ever enjoy living there. But now she relishes the quiet, she appreciates the many conveniences (no more asking me to mail her bills--they have a drop box in the building.) These may seem like simple things, but to a disabled woman used to having to do everything the hard way, her new living situation was like moving into the Ritz-Carlton.

I spend a lot of time worrying about the future, about the bad things that will happen and how I'll feel as I get older (not good.) But all we really have is the present moment and our feelings right now. We can't know the future or predict how we'll feel ten, twenty, thirty years from now. It's like that expression of which my husband is so fond, "Worrying about something before it happens is like paying interest on money you haven't actually borrowed yet." Over the last few years I've been paying a lot of squandered interest.

It's comforting to know that we don't have all the answers and that we don't need to. Just concentrating on what is going on today is enough. And who knows--maybe when I'm 80 I'll be an irreverently happy old lady with a posse of other happy old lady friends, and things like the daily coffee hour, a nice view from my apartment, and the sun on my face will be enough to make me content.

Tonglen for Dummies

2010-03-12T14:31:00.000-08:00

"Tonglen is a practice of creating space, ventilating the atmosphere of our lives so that people can breathe freely and relax. Whenever we encounter suffering in any form, the tonglen instruction is to breathe it in with the wish that everyone could be free of pain.
"When we protect ourselves so we won't feel pain, that protection becomes like armor. When we breathe in pain, somehow it penetrates that armor. With the in-breath the armor begins to fall apart, and we find we can breathe deeply and relax. A kindness and a gentleness begins to emerge. We don't have to tense up as if our whole life were being spent in the dentist's chair."--Pema Chodron, from When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

I thought that Tuesday, March 2, would be the worst day of my week because I had an appointment to get my gums assaulted--I mean "cleaned"--at 2. An hour in the chair with the hygienist telling me to relax, then digging her little hook deeper into the recesses between my back teeth, until I'm spitting blood swearing I will floss once a day. Please. Just be done.

I like comfort. Who doesn't? But I really like comfort. A lot. It means I'll probably never hike through the Amazon or go ice-fishing but I'm happy to skip those things. I'll read about others' experiences. Just put me in a 3-star hotel. It doesn't even have to be 4-star! Is that too much to ask?

But Tuesday was a hayride compared to Wednesday. Around lunchtime I threw up at work. In the bathroom, thank god, but I work in a small office and I guarantee that at least half of the employees heard my retching. I skulked out of the bathroom, grabbed my bag, and left the building. I got into a cab and gave the driver my destination, worried I'd get a talker. I stared out the window, acting fascinated with the scenery like I had never driven through Kenmore Square before, just so he wouldn't talk. If I had had to respond, he might not have liked my answer.

The next 24 hours are kind of hazy. I just remember a surging pain in my lower back and legs, like I'd been beaten up and left for dead. I had a pounding headache and was incredibly thirsty, and still nauseous. When Mike came home I could only utter "Coke" and "wet cloth" while I writhed on the bed, clinging to the heating pad wrapped around my middle. I was going from chills to sweat in 60 seconds.

"Kidney stone" my mother said. "You can take Tylenol Extra-Strength but there's not much else you can do until it passes."

I spent a sleepless night lying on my back, then rolling over and back again. I just couldn't get comfortable. Not even a little. The pain was constant. It was hostile.

The next few days I would experience more of the same symptoms, accompanied by some new ones just to sweeten the pot. I was thirsty, yet I couldn't pee so my bladder felt like a water balloon ready to be hurled at someone. If I had a needle I would have burst it myself. I could barely eat anything except ice and...yeah, I think that's it, ice.

At times my thirst was so acute that even after drinking a gulp, my lips and tongue would instantly turn to cotton. I started doing my own form of tonglen, breathing in my pain and the pain of others, breathing out relief for me and for everyone else who suffered. Except I really wasn't feeling relief. Only in theory.

I got to thinking about how precious clean drinking water is. It may seem like stating the obvious, but the typical American rarely thinks about how lucky they are to have the basic elements that they need to survive and thrive. They think, I have to have that new Droid phone or when can I afford that trip to Sardinia. They don't think, well at least I have fresh drinking water. There's that.

But I'm telling you--this past week, I could have easily gone without food but I wouldn't have lasted a day without a drink of water. I have even more respect for shipwreck survivors who find themselves stranded at sea unable to drink the water. If that were me, I'd have been the first to start hallucinating a shoreline and jumping out of the dinghy.

It made me feel empathy for everyone around the world who suffered and could not get relief. Me, I could at least drink flat Coke and chew on a Saltine while listening to old radio mysteries on my stereo. I had blankets and a bed and my husband to lean on (to the point that I left a dent in his left shoulder.) Others were not so lucky. I vowed that when I was feeling better I would give a donation to Doctors Without Borders.

I don't know what I had, if it was a kidney stone or gastroenteritis. My doctor never gave me a diagnosis. It could be A, she said, or B-G. I'm on antibiotics as well as probiotics; let them fight it out, I'm exhausted. I'm also ten pounds lighter, but I don't recommend this particular crash diet.

Last night I ate my first real meal in a week: stir-fry vegetables over rice. I knew my appetite was coming back when I sequestered myself in the bedroom so I could eat without threat of Joey Thumbs stealing food from my plate.

I feel grateful for all my food choices and the availability of Gatorade. We should all have it so good.

Slow down, you're going to crash

2010-02-25T14:01:00.000-08:00

"Fundamentally, every one of us feels extremely insecure. You could have a lot of money, lots of background, education, friends, resources, skills, but none of that is going to make any difference to your security. The more we seek security, the more insecurity that creates. There's something fundamentally threatening and insecure taking place all the time in our lives. Something's not quite as solid as we would like it to be, so we need lots of reassurance--some philosophy, some idea, some kind of backing from the world of comfort, the world of companionship. There is always hollowness, an emptiness taking place in us always. Basically, we feel we are broke and have a poverty mentality."--from Ocean of Dharma: 365 Teachings on Living Life with Courage and Compassion

Mike and I were driving home from a visit with friends and family in New Jersey a couple of weekends ago. I had five hours to sit and think of ways my life or the lives of loved ones could unexpectedly blow up. I have to give my husband a lot of credit for listening to me when I'm prattling on (and on) about car accidents and fires and homicide. I can make a long car ride a laugh-a-minute.

On Monday night Mike was in a good mood and spontaneously suggested dinner out. We went to a new bistro in Coolidge Corner that's usually packed every other night but Monday. Settling in with his Mac and Cheese doused with truffle oil, Mike looked utterly content, as if he were swinging on a hammock on a balmy spring day.

"What if I was in a fire and my face was horribly disfigured? Would you stand by me or look for someone else with a normal face?" I leaned over my plate of grilled steak with asparagus and potato cake to better hear his answer.

Before he could reply, I said, "Because I would stand by you. If your face was mangled in a four-car pile-up, I'd stay by your side."

Later, when we were walking home, sated and a little buzzed from our pints of beer, Mike started talking about joining the community boating group that sails on the Charles River in the summer.

"As long as you wear a life jacket," was my knee-jerk response.

Mike turned to me, his fist squeezed as if he were holding a microphone, "Now we go to Jenn, with The Worst That Could Happen Report. Jenn, what can you tell us?"

"You could fall overboard and drown."

"And that was Jennifer with The Worst That Could Happen Report. Back to you in the studio."

My mind has a tendency to attach itself to the worse-case scenario. I watch television shows like I Survived and memorize the survival tactics of people who get lost in the Amazon or stranded in a dinghy in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean--though it's unlikely that I will ever find myself in either place. Maybe someone I love will be on a boat that drifts off course. That person could call me and I'd know what to do to save them. I treat death like it's a test I'm cramming for.

I hate the thought of losing anything. But it's just that grasping--to things, to places, to people, that gets us stuck and causes suffering. The truth is (say it!) that I haven't been faced with any major losses thusfar in my life and I fear when something really bad does happen, I won't be able to handle it. In the grand scheme of things, I've been very fortunate. But it's hard for me to trust in good fortune because I know that at any moment it can reverse course and leave me stranded and alone.

The more stuff we carry around, the more stuff we fear we'll lose. The richer we are, the more we worry about being destitute (see, The Bag Lady Papers, or for that matter A Christmas Carol.) The more intimate we are with someone, the more we cling to that person. And so on.

How do we stop seeking security and start fearlessly living?

The gift of your attention

2010-02-17T11:53:00.000-08:00

"Take some time each day and create a "no multitasking zone." It doesn't have to be for long; five minutes would be a great place to start, during which you can simply focus on one object (or task) at a time.

"Imagine what that might be like: when you're on the phone with a client, you're on the phone, bringing your natural intelligence and insight to bear. When you're typing an email, you're simply focused on that email. It's not hard to imagine the quality of results when you focus on the tasks at hand."--Jon Rubenstein, from Multitasking is Not Your Friend, posted on the blog The Buddha at Work on Beliefnet.com

My father spent many years waking up at 3AM. He'd go downstairs, make himself a cup of watered-down espresso, and then return to his study (once my room, eons ago) to do paperwork. I don't know for sure why, as a construction project manager, he kept farmer's hours. My guess is that he wanted time to focus on his work without any distractions. No one would be calling him on his cell at 3AM, no one would be sending him urgent email messages or pulling him into a meeting. Everyone else in the house was asleep, and he must have felt a relief at being left alone--to sip his coffee, review his notes, focus on one project and then the next. I imagine this was the time in his day that he was the most productive.

Waking up at 3AM is not the healthiest way to get your work done unless you're working the early shift. But there was no other time for him to concentrate--he left the house at 5AM and typically didn't return from his Manhattan office until 8 or 9PM.

I've been thinking about the concept of time, and how we handle the same 24 hours a day, every day. It seems like the trend is moving away from focusing on one project to trying to keep on top of five or more, all coming from different outlets: your cell phone, computer, Blackberry, etc. Attention Deficit Disorder no longer seems like an aberration in a minority of children. It is becoming normal, a necessary byproduct of our digital age.

I'm more like my father, I think--I like to focus on one thing at a time and give it my complete and undivided attention. I feel like switching over from writing a press release to, say, checking my email every five minutes or posting on Facebook is a bad habit, not a way to do business. Multi-tasking means it will take me three times as long to get one release written, and meanwhile I've spent most of my time on a bunch of small stuff that doesn't add up to a hill of beans at the end of the day.

I'm used to juggling different projects over the course of a day--to say in a job interview that you're able to multi-task is like saying you know how to fix a jam in the printer. But is it effective multi-tasking when you're answering an IM while reading a book review and finishing up an email to an author? Is it really a good idea to have seven windows open on your computer at once when three would be sufficient?

I guess when it comes to getting work done, I'm more of a serial monogamist than a swinger. I like to invest my time doing one task and then the other. I'm not like the curt manager who at meetings can carry on two different conversations at once. I am slow but deliberate, comfortable only when the noise fades away and I am completely engaged--in the act of writing the essay or talking to the friend or preparing the meal. Don't try talking to me when I'm working in the kitchen--I'm liable to get flustered and add an extra teaspoon of bouillon to the soup. For me it's all about being in the flow.

There are people who are effective multi-taskers. They tend to talk in sound bytes, they're comfortable with the 140-word limit on Twitter and the childish shorthand of "C U @ 8" of a text message, they see the value of flash fiction or CNN headline news. There are many advantages to being this kind of person--busy executives like people who are quick on their feet and can summarize the plot points and send one-sentence emails. Mike and I both have a tendency to write long, wordy emails and I'm sure most of what we write goes unread. I'm sure when you see this blog entry, you'll probably skim it, and I don't blame you.

But what about some appreciation for the uni-tasker? The person who deliberates rather than jumps, gives her friends or colleagues her undivided attention instead of interrupting them to take that call on her cell phone?

And what happened to just sitting and daydreaming? How about just doing nothing but sitting still and silent? I like to read on the train, but sometimes I find myself putting the book away just so I can stare out the window to look at the snow on the branches of the tall pine trees lining Beacon Street. An ex-boss of mine called it "sitting and staring at the wall." After a day of looking at a computer screen for 8 hours, I want to unplug and stare at the vase of pink tulips on the kitchen table, or at my husband's smile, or at the kitten as she prepares for another ill-fated sneak attack on my older cat. Without this time of "doing nothing" I become like a horse who won't move no matter how much you pull on my reins. But give me some time for quiet contemplation and I will gladly resume pulling the wagon.

So along with uni-tasking, why not try simply unplugging all your digital connections so you can sit there and do nothing. You're really not doing nothing you know. What you're doing is giving yourself permission to breathe in the present moment, noticing everything around you as if you had been asleep and now you're waking up. If we could all do this once a day, everyday, I think we could change this idea that so-called multi-tasking is the only way to live full, productive lives in the 21st Century.

My Real Age

2010-02-10T13:03:00.000-08:00

"The best age to be is the age you are."--quote used by Susan Moon in her book This is Getting Old: Zen Thoughts on Aging with Humor and Dignity

I got a package at work today. It was my $9 trench coat. It actually costs $49, but I won't go into the long story of why it only cost me $9. This isn't a shopping blog.

I opened the box and took out the coat. It was red--I had wanted a red trench coat for years--I have it in my head that it's a French woman's wardrobe staple. The coat has horn-shaped buttons, like little chili peppers, and a belt to cinch it. But after examining the coat for a few minutes I thought, this is for Juniors. This is not for me.

So I have this thing about age. I define myself by it, and I also use it to judge others. I don't like to admit that I do this because--in all fairness--I think the older you get, the more value you have to society because of all your experience. It makes me furious when I see older people being treated like they're invisible or worse. But there are deep-seated ideas I have of what it is to be of a certain age. I obsess over being age-appropriate. I won't wear anything that's short or tight or is by a particular brand known for making clothes for younger women, even if the style looks perfectly fine on me. Recently, I looked at a picture of myself and the first thing I saw were the lines on my neck. "Oh, I hope you don't inherit my neck" my mother said without thinking. That's it, I said. I'm officially at the Candace Bergen stage of dressing--I'm wearing nothing but turtlenecks until summer!

And it's not just about appearance. As I get older, I worry that life is no longer that movie in which you're the starring ingenue. I'm married, settled in a job, I know where I'm going to live for the foreseeable future. To the outside world I'm all done...I'm figured-out. The End. But what happens AFTER the end of the movie?

I feel like I've lost what makes me mysterious, intriguing even. I don't feel as fully alive as I did when I was younger because so much of what was novel to me then is old news now.

I'm not saying this is rational thinking. Of course people continue to learn and grow after 35. I love being around older people (and NOT just because they make me feel younger!) Growing up an only child, I was constantly surrounded by adults and I liked it that way. Adults were dignified, worldly, intelligent in ways that none of my young friends were.

But emotions are rarely rational. If I could get my head and heart to engage in some sort of truce, I'd be a lot more relaxed. But head and heart are sworn enemies--in fact, they are dead to each other. My head says, stop limiting yourself! Wear the coat, go to the party, talk to those college students. When I was nineteen older people intrigued me, so why should it be any different for these new crop of kids? They don't necessarily care about my age, it's not a big deal.

But my heart says, Who are you kidding? You're washed-up. Old news. Might as well just hang it up and start wearing long nightgowns.

I didn't always feel like getting older was something to fear. When I was in college I desperately wanted to be older. I wanted to travel and write and be an editor and have a nice apartment and be married. I remember bringing pots and pans, nice dishes, even a marble cutting board to my dorm at Rutgers. In an effort to get to know people, I made them pasta and served it in ceramic bowls, not plastic, and with real silverware. People probably thought I was nuts. I dressed up for class everyday in silky shirts and sleek skirts and hosiery. This was in the early nineties when everyone else went grunge--wearing the uniform of plaid flannel shirts and dirty jeans to class--even the women. I rarely wore pants and NEVER would be caught dead in sweatpants, especially ones with the name of my school ironed-on the leg. One time I was mistaken for a professor and was flattered.

I remember going to see the movie Damage at the student center with a friend of mine. It was an over-the-top story of a love triangle between a father, son, and the son's fiance. I had read the book by Josephine Hart and I remember feeling very adult carrying it around. The movie starred Juliette Binoche, and at the time I thought she was just the most elegant, chic actress I had ever seen. A lot of it had to do with her trench coat and sassy haircut and casually-draped scarf that was all so very French. I walked out of the movie wanting her life. But I had to settle for cappucino and chocolate croissants in the college center Au Bon Pain.

Now look at me. I'm no Juliette Binoche, of course, but I'm a grown-up woman, with nice clothes and a cute, funny husband, and a job in publishing. I've been to Paris. Isn't that what I wanted back then? I even have the trench coat, though I haven't quite mastered the casually-draped scarf.

But here I am worried about being old and getting even older, and wishing I could be 22 again. But do I really? Many of us say we want to go back in time, but how many movies have there been where a kid switches bodies with an adult and later they both realize they were happier before? There are good and bad things about every phase and age of life, and it's delusional to think that being 22 again would make me happy, just like it's delusional to think having a new car or house or body would make me happy. This is who I am now. The past is past, the future is yet to be determined, but the present moment is mine.

At age 36, I'm hardly finished. You're never really finished until you're dead, and at that point, you probably won't care--maybe you'll even be glad to be done!

I read an article about cryogenics in the New Yorker recently and told some friends that I was considering being frozen when I died. They laughed. Why would I want to do life over again? It wouldn't be how my life is now, with my family and friends and familiar creature comforts. The world would be more like it was portrayed in Wall-E, run completely by computers in outer space somewhere.

No, the Buddhists are right. It's better to just allow time to pass, to not cling too much to the past. I'm at my best age now, and next year I'll still be at my best age.

Strike a pose

2010-02-03T03:51:00.000-08:00

"It seems that it is a common experience to take extreme views; we don't usually find the middle view. For example, we come to a dathun and we're all just starting to practice. The first couple of days we think, "I am going to do this perfectly," and we practice with intense effort to sit right, walk right, breathe right, keep the silence, do everything. We really push, we really have a project. Then, at a certain point, we say, "Oh for goodness' sake! What in the world am I doing?" We may just drop the whole thing and go to the other extreme--"I couldn't care less." The humor and the beauty of practice is that going from one extreme to the other is not considered to be an obstacle; sometimes we're a drill sergeant, sometimes we're like mashed potatoes. Basically, once we have some sort of joyful curiosity about the whole thing, it's simply all information, gathering the information we need to find our own balance."--Pema Chodron, from The Wisdom of No Escape

Since writing about my first attempts at practicing yoga I've started taking a beginner yoga class once a week called "Yoga FUNdamentals." I go with Chloe, a friend of mine from work. It's a mad dash to the studio to get there, changed, and with my yoga mat out before the class starts at 5:30. Like the mediocre student who doesn't want to be called on for an answer, I always place my mat at the back of the room. That way I can watch the other, more coordinated students and make sure I'm not on the wrong foot or standing when I should be lying down with my hips aloft.

The first time I went to the class I had no idea what to expect. I hadn't taken an exercise class since that one failed attempt at bellydancing back in 2002. I've belonged to gyms before, but I always stuck to working out on my own. I would push myself, sure--but not too hard. It's like a colleague of mine said yesterday about taking a spin class, "I would never work as hard on my own as the class makes me work." I also have the annoying habit of "upward comparing." I find the best student in the class and watch her. Suddenly I'm stumbling more, or I notice my form is poor, or I stand on the wrong foot. I feel much less satisfaction with myself, even if when I started the class I thought, "This is good, I'm proud of myself for showing up."

Better to downward compare, to take a glance at the student who is struggling to keep up, who needs the teacher to come and readjust her position several times during the session. Unfortunately, that person is usually me.

So when I took my first yoga class, I worked hard (which for me is not giving up after twenty minutes to lounge around and eat chocolate cake. Hey, I exercised, I can eat sweets now!) I worked so hard that sweat dripped off my forehead and splashed on my mat. I realized how many muscles I hadn't worked in months, and that I had trouble bending over to touch the floor so I could only hang there, like a rag doll missing some stuffing. Early on the instructor showed us the Child pose, to be used whenever we got tired and needed to take a break. Of course I read this as only the lightweights go into child pose. I'm going to work through the pain.

When class was over, instead of letting myself feel good about doing it, or noticing those wonderful endorphins coursing through my body, I looked in the mirror in the changing room and was horrified by my red face and sweat-slicked hair that stuck to my forehead and cheeks. My friend Chloe, who is petite, nimble, and younger, and who seems to lack the self-consciousness gene (I always find myself befriending people like this, perhaps because I want to learn their secret or catch whatever positive vibe they have) took just a few minutes to gather herself and her belongings together before she was ready to go. Meanwhile, I flung powder on my shiny face and frantically tried to puff out my flat hair. We were going out in public, I was taking the "T" home, and I looked like a crazy lady. This was not what I took a yoga class for!

I ended up feeling so out-of-sorts that as soon as we stepped onto Boylston Street I hailed a cab. Actually, that's not all that uncommon for me, taking cabs. I consider cabs to be one of the treats afforded to middle class people like me. My husband, of course, would disagree, saying that I don't have the money to waste on cabs when I have a perfectly efficient subway system and a monthly fare card. But I love sitting in the back of a cab, being whisked away to my destination. I like having the whole backseat to myself and not having to be squeezed in the tube of a subway car, standing hip to hip with strangers and trying to balance myself and not fall on anyone as the train lurches and jerks.

When I got home, I was feeling down. Mike asked me how class went and I told him how hard it was and how much I was sweating and how disheveled I looked afterward. He smiled and said, "That's how you know you got a good workout." The following week, when I mentioned the same thing to Chloe, she said, "I thought you had a healthy glow." Hmmm...negative spin on yoga class--too hard, hate getting sweaty--meant that I would be restricted to Gaiam videos for the rest of my life. Positive spin--good workout, healthy glow--meant I could keep taking the class and who cared what I looked like, in class or after? I chose to be positive.

Happily the next class I knew what to expect and followed at my own pace. After all, with yoga you only go as far as you can. It's not a competitive sport. If someone can do the downward facing dog better than you can, they don't win a free yoga block. In fact, if you're really living in the moment you're not paying attention to other people at all. You're just following your own breath, your own ability, your own path.

I left that class just as red and sweaty as the previous week, but instead of looking at myself as a mess, I saw the promise of regular exercise. This time I felt the endorphins in spades. And I didn't hesitate to take the subway, facing the harsh light and what I perceived as the harsh judgment of others. It all felt good and promising.

Of course, not every class is like that. This past week I came in late as usual and tried to take my place in the back, but the very friendly, soft-spoken instructor invited me to come up front. I dragged my mat forward, dreading my new position. Put me in the front row of an English literature class, no problem. Put me in the front row for any kind of physical fitness and I start looking for the exit.

I made my share of mistakes, and noticed that yet again I was one of the few people the instructor had to adjust. At one point when she said I had to push down from my hips and then my stomach, I just fell flat. Was she kidding? I actually laughed at her, and she said, "Good, giggling is important."

When she didn't stop to correct my form or when she said "good job people" and didn't say except for Jennifer--I felt capable, basking in the praise. There was nothing I could do about other people and whether or not they were thinking "wow, that woman is a spaz." I also couldn't completely control my own mood at being asked to balance myself like a stork for five minutes (when is this class over?) And when my breath was getting particularly shallow, I allowed myself to retreat to child pose. That one is definitely my favorite.

Working at happiness

2010-01-21T05:07:00.000-08:00

"We tend to think of happiness (and by happiness I also mean health or overall well-being) as a gift, and sometimes it is, a pure gratuity. But most of the times it comes about because you've done the work, prepared the ground to allow it in or tended it carefully once it arrived. You have to practice happiness the way you practice the piano, commit to it in the way you commit to going to the gym. You don't do it most of the time because it feels good to do it. You do it because it feels good to have done it."--Norah Vincent, from Voluntary Madness

Some of us (myself included) reach an age where we realize that we've been walking around with a sense of entitlement. I deserve this or they should give me that or why can't I have it? My generation likes to complain that the younger generation are the ones that feel entitled, because their parents doted on them more than ours did, and everyone got a trophy at the spelling bee. But I think it's more cultural than it is generational. Those of us who grew up in fairly stable homes, or even those who had difficult childhoods and think that the world now owes them--we don't take enough ownership of our destinies. We wait for things to happen to us, including that wellspring of happiness that we think will keep filling us up.

Other cultures don't necessarily think this way. Other cultures don't expect to be happy or always get what they want. When people immigrate to America, most have to work hard at menial jobs just to survive here. They're not welcomed by a committee who shakes their hand and gives them a new house and car. Often they are not even welcomed at all.

I read a book recently called Factory Girls, about young women in China who set off from their poor and rural hometowns to make it as a factory girl in big cities like Dongguan, where there are lots of jobs and opportunity if you work hard (or if you're tall and speak English.) And these women work very hard, sometimes with only one day off. And after work they often take English language classes, including one where all the students shave their heads to show their commitment to their studies.

I grew up in a middle-class suburban home in NJ. I got some of what I wanted, not everything-- like a real Cabbage Patch doll (I had a knock-off from Poland) or a new car at 17. But I know I had it good. We never had a boatload of money, but my father worked hard to assure that my family had the little perks like yearly vacations and dinners out and big Christmas parties. When I was 17 I got my first real job in a chain bookstore. I wanted to make my own money--in fact, my father recalls that I would never show my parents my paycheck because I didn't want them to know what I made, and then ask for some of it! This was a very different attitude than when my father was growing up in Bensonhurst and he had to hand over every paycheck to his father, who then doled out a couple of dollars to his son to take my mother to the movies.

Work has always been important to me, a big part of my identity. I think that's true of a lot of people, and why the current unemployment situation is causing so many people to feel the sting of their identity lost. Yet over the years I must admit that I've developed a sense of entitlement when it comes to being rewarded. I expect that I will get a good job that I love and do well, I expect that I'll automatically get a raise after 18 months. I expect to earn the respect of my co-workers because of my skills and experience.

In my personal life, I expect that married life will be nothing but trips and restaurant meals and shopping sprees and lots of affection without the conflict. I expect to have the same freedoms I had as a single woman except now with a partner-in-crime who will catch me if I fall. But that has not proven to be the case, because everyone knows you have to WORK on your marriage. You have to constantly compromise and weather the ups and downs of your financial, romantic, and work lives--which are often in flux.

And then there's happiness, which I thought would come from having a good job, a kind husband, and a nice home. But that's not the end of the story. Nothing lasts forever, nothing is permanent. You have to work on steering the ship or else you'll float out to sea, lost.

So work hard. Push yourself to do better. And for god's sake (and now I'm addressing myself here), do it now.

Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise?

2010-01-15T10:00:00.000-08:00

"People complain that Buddhism is an extremely gloomy religion because it emphasizes suffering and misery. Usually religions speak of beauty, song, ecstasy, bliss. But according to Buddha, we must begin by seeing the experience of life as it is. We must see the truth of suffering, the reality of dissatisfaction. We cannot ignore it and attempt to examine only the glorious, pleasurable aspects of life. All sects and schools of Buddhism agree that we must begin by facing the reality of our living situations. We cannot begin by dreaming."--Chogyam Trungpa, from The Pocket Chogyam Trungpa

"Definitely lose the forest for a tree, a branch, bark, a leaf, whatever your pathetic little mechanism can handle, because it certainly can't handle the whole show. Reason, of all things, is the enemy. An excess of sense is senseless. Take refuge instead in the cupcake, the sugary sop morsel that gets you through. The digestible piece and no more."--Norah Vincent, from Voluntary Madness

Remember the scene in Annie Hall when Alvy Singer, played by Woody Allen, approaches a young and attractive couple on the street and has the following dialogue with them:

Alvy Singer: Here, you look like a very happy couple, um, are you?
Female street stranger: Yeah.
Alvy Singer: Yeah? So, so, how do you account for it?
Female street stranger: Uh, I'm very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.
Male street stranger: And I'm exactly the same way.
Alvy Singer: I see. Wow. That's very interesting. So you've managed to work out something?

Is happiness just self-delusion? Or is depression the product of dwelling too much on your own suffering (or the suffering of others?) Is it possible to think too much, to wallow in the world's sorrows? Or is it better to face facts than to stay blissfully ignorant?

In other words, does happiness occur only when we purposely ignore the realities of the world we live in and the personal hurts we've suffered and our eventual mortality?

Despite my tendency toward depression (particularly in winter), I find myself compulsively reading every negative story in the newspaper (and in the Boston Metro section, in particular, there's plenty of those.) It's like this need to know the worst that can happen, that DOES happen everyday. A fire that started in one apartment spreads throughout the building, leaving eight families homeless and with nothing but the clothes on their back. A drunk mother driving her kids and their friends home from dance class crashes her SUV, killing everyone inside. A girl is leaving her homecoming dance when she is lured by a group of her "friends" and then assaulted and gang-raped, with no one coming to her rescue for at least an hour. I could go on and on, but you get the idea. Each time I read a story like this, first I put myself in their place and wonder, could I handle that? Could I survive that and still find cause to be happy? Then I imagine the feelings of the people involved, and wonder, where are they now? How are they doing? I want follow-up stories, reasons to feel hopeful that the human spirit can endure almost any calamity caused by nature or by your classmate, next-door neighbor, even someone in your own family.

I feel incredibly lucky that I have not had to endure the kind of poverty that drove thousands of New Orleans residents out of their city after Katrina or that keeps a family in poor health because they can't afford health insurance or even good produce. Looking at pictures of the aftermath of the hurricane in Haiti, I wonder, good lord, haven't those people had enough misery (as if misery were a glass that was in danger of overflowing.) How can they possibly be happy again after suffering such relentless tragedy? They won't have money to go to a good therapist to heal their post-traumatic stress or to rebuild their home--replacing the pots and pans and everything else that they lost. They won't even have the money to give their children with the hope that the next generation of their family will have a better future.

Will the Haitian people affected by this natural disaster just try to put it out of their mind, the way the Hutus and the Tutsis did when they moved next door to each other after suffering unspeakable violence at the hands of the other? Will they survive because they choose not to dwell on the harm done to them and instead move forward with optimism? I read somewhere that resilience is a muscle that needs to be used or it (we) become too soft, too complacent in our comfortable lives. Kind of like I was in my 20's, before 9/11 happened just across the river from me.

Obviously a Buddhist wouldn't advise anyone to focus only on life's suffering. If that were the case, Buddhists would merely be a bunch of Sicilian widows. Obviously it is possible to see and accept reality--even when it's wretched--and still manage to be happy. This blogger posted a poem Edward Espe Brown shared with her that just might be my answer.

Social Media Fatigue Syndrome

2010-01-08T13:43:00.000-08:00

"We know that all is impermanent; we know that everything wears out. Although we can buy this truth intellectually, emotionally we have a deep-rooted aversion to it. We want permanence, we expect permanence. We experience impermanence at the everyday level as frustration."--Pema Chodron, from Comfortable with Uncertainty

One of the ways that I know I'm getting older is that innovations like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter don't really interest me. There--I've said it. I feel a sense of relief like dropping my oversize pocketbook.

I used to want nothing to do with these sites. Although it may appear otherwise--hey, I blog about my life here, don't I--I'm actually a private person in many ways, and putting all your pictures and exploits up on Facebook is like giving away the store to anyone who cares to look--even if it's years later, when there are some things you'd like to forget (or at least keep new people from discovering!) Also, I've been the victim of identity theft, and so I'm careful about how much information I give out online. And ultimately I wonder, do people really care what apple farm I visited over the weekend or what I ate for supper tonight or what newspaper article I happen to be reading? It seems like not only an exercise in navel-gazing, but also a waste of precious time I could be using reading or emailing a friend a long, personalized message.

The young women who sit near me at work, however, are very fluent in social media; to them social media is like America Online was to me ten years ago. I've been trying to wrap my head around how to incorporate social media into both my work as a publicist and for my own blog. But for some reason, whenever I start to read a book like Groundswell or listen to a Cision webinar about Internet 2.0, I get this dizzy, spacey feeling, like someone who swallows too much chlorine. I take copious notes, I highlight and bookmark and tag, but the fact is--there is too much information out there, the web is continuosly growing and spreading (there's a reason they call it viral) and I can't keep up with it all!

I guess this is what the older folks meant whenever they get nostalgic for the more simple times, when movies cost 5 cents and you could watch as many as you wanted, or when people all had the same four TV channels so the next day everyone was talking about the same plot points from the same shows. There was a point when I decided I liked the old and familiar and feared the new--maybe it was around the time that I realized I was the demographic Starbucks was targeting with their Retro 80's CDs at the cashwrap. Those are certainly not for the kid on line with the earbuds and Tavo gloves. Or when I noticed that I was the only one in the dusty, half-filled CD aisles in Borders.

In order to live fully in the present, I need to not only accept changes but embrace them! I can't be wishing for the 90's when it's 2010. I need to keep up, especially at work. It's a daunting task when all I really want to do is go home and read a book (print, not digital.)

This is kind of a paradox of course because I've worked for an eBook company and I've been an Internet Marketing Manager who had to learn basic HTML and figure out web banner sizing. It just seems different now--the changes have accelerated and instead of being enhancements that work alongside the old ways, they're taking over like some voracious creature that keeps doubling in size every time it eats and spits out another newspaper company.

But it's the information overload that really causes my mind to freeze up. More sites are popping up all the time, more blogs which I wouldn't mind reading but have no time to, new ways of doing business. You could spend so much time in front of a computer navigating all this new-ness that you'd forget to take a shower or eat lunch or see your friend's face (in person, not in her profile.)

But its essential to learn as much as I can if I want to stay successful at my job. Those companies that are hiring now are hiring people who understand social marketing and can bring in new ideas. The fact that I read a lot and can write a good press release and get along with authors and editors doesn't seem as valued these days. I think personal relationships happen to be just as important as having 100 followers on Twitter. But I also worry that by not keeping up with the trends, I'm going to be left behind. And that would be lonelier than sitting alone in your office, typing on your blog about how you're afraid of impermanence.

That time of year

2010-01-01T07:51:00.000-08:00

Taking a nap
I hide within myself--
winter seclusion
-Buson

On New Year's Day
the morning in town
comes irregularly
-Anonymous

Both from Haiku: An Anthology of Japanese Poems

Last night I spent New Year's Eve alone, at home. I'm sure I wasn't the only one--many of us have reasons why at one time or another we find ourselves alone, even on holidays. My reason was that I had a cold and I didn't want to keep Mike from enjoying a planned get-together with our cousins because of my uncooperative immune system.

We've started a tradition where every New Year's Eve we go to our cousins' house and have cheese fondue and lots of other gourmet treats my cousin Mikki prepares, and we drink champagne, get silly, and then stay overnight and eat breakfast together. Last year I overindulged in food and bubbly (once I took that first bite of bacon-wrapped date swallowed down with a fried calamari ring, I knew I was in trouble.) I ended up missing the countdown to midnight trying to remedy my nausea as discreetly as possible in a one-floor apartment. Yes, I was among family, but I was also 35 years-old--too old to be miscalculating my food and beverage intake. I could already see the barely-disguised smirks around the breakfast table the next morning (yuck, who could even think of breakfast?)

This year I'm happy to say it was a more respectable sickness that kept me from celebrating the ball drop. On Sunday while enjoying a game night with our grown nephew and his lovely girlfriend, I started to feel a sore throat coming on. The next day I had a full-blown head cold, and over the course of the following three days I wasn't getting any better. I would wheeze whenever I layed down and routinely hack into tissues like an old man. Piles of white balled-up Kleenex created their own mountain range in the apartment. The ones I threw in the trash were rescued by the kitten and then dragged around the floor until she got bored and left them wherever they dropped.

Luckily, like most publishing houses, the company I work for was closed this week so I didn't need to use up any sick days. And I wasn't SO SICK that I couldn't putter around doing a little cleaning, a little baking, a little dusting, a little paper recycling during my vacation. I got a pile of books for Christmas that I placed in the favored position on my bedside table, eliminating some older runners-up that no longer made the cut (for example, I can't seem to get past the first couple of chapters of The Liar's Club.)

You there, the fresh novels purred, why don't you come over here, put your feet up, stay awhile. For me new books are like an invitation to Mae West's boudoir. And being sick is the perfect excuse to spend all day in bed reading.

I wore the same flannel pajama bottoms everyday, and even though I showered a couple of times during the week so as not to be completely gross, I never really bothered to brush my hair, so I had a brownish-blonde tangled mass on the top of my head. I resembled one of those pencils toppers I had in elementary school, the ones with the googly eyes and shock of red cotton hair that you puffed up by furiously rubbing the pencil between your palms like you were trying to start a fire.

By Thursday morning I knew I wasn't going anywhere. It's not that I wasn't dying to get out of the house--I'd been cooped up inside since Saturday and was beginning to feel like a vampire (but not one of the sexy ones.) I just didn't have the energy or the usual party spirit. It used to be, whenever I was preparing to go out at night, I'd put on some disco mix CD--maybe something with a few Donna Summers tracks on it--take a long and leisurely shower, try on a bunch of outfits just because it was fun to dance in front of the mirror holding up different wardrobe possibilities, then maybe have a pre-dinner aperitif before heading out the door.

This year there would be no Bad Girls or costume changes or glass of Lillet. I was parked on the couch under a red plaid flannel blanket, eating cup after cup of strawberry Jell-O and adding one balled-up tissue after another to the plastic bag by the couch. The cats, no doubt sensing my pathetic-ness, stayed close by. They even made a temporary truce so they could both sit with me--Joey behind my bent knees and Audrey at my feet.

Though this New Year's get-together at my cousins' wasn't the sort of affair where I needed to put on a classic cocktail dress, I pride myself on overdressing for occasions, and I had no intention of showing up in a sweat suit. Progresso Chickarina soup was sounding so much more tempting than shrimp cocktail and Brie en Croute (yes, I was feeling that lousy.)

So Mike and I wished each other a Happy New Year, see you in 2010, and off he went.

There's something nice about being alone indoors on a cold winter's night. It's cozy and warm, you don't have to pile on layer after layer until you're two dress sizes larger than when you started. No need to be witty and gracious despite your Seasonal Affective Disorder, or eat a healthy, balanced dinner when all you want is a pair of English muffins and a handful of Bacis while you watch corny old movies on your new favorite channel, TCM.

Like the first movie I watched, Woman Obsessed, starring Susan Hayward and a very hunky Stephen Boyd. I was slightly disappointed that there were no actual obsessed women in the picture, and there was that preposterous scene at the end with Boyd sinking into mud like it was quick sand before his recalcitrant stepson decides to rescue him with a tree branch. But it was good, clean fun.

Throughout the evening I checked myself for any hint of loneliness or self-pity. Here I was, alone on New Year's, no one to kiss at midnight, etc., etc. I anticipated feeling like the ugly duckling who never got invited to Prom (geez, Jenn, when are you going to let THAT one go?) I imagined grabbing my cell phone and telling my husband I had changed my mind and that he should turn around and come home right away. Or saying hey, I was only testing you when I said you should go without me--and guess what? You failed.

But none of that happened. Instead, I felt happy that both Mike and I were getting what we wanted and that I would be no one's party spoiler. I opened up another cup of Jell-O and settled in to see what was on Pay-per-View. I rented Up, the Pixar movie about the old man in the balloon-propelled house. This was not a night for my usual movie fare--foreign films featuring poor, orphaned, Hindi widows, forced to dance at beer bars in Mumbai to pay for their children's education. I wanted something fun. Up turned out to be the right choice; it even had some tender moments that made me cry--not tears of sadness, but more like life-is-good tears.

And when that movie ended, I turned on a Thin Man marathon on TCM, and watched the always elegant Myrna Loy, with her hat boxes and cute shrugs, trade loving wisecracks with on-screen husband William Powell. I fell asleep somewhere in the middle of Shadow of the Thin Man. When I woke again, it was 1:30AM. 2009 had come and gone.

I was surprised and relieved that I had actually enjoyed my own company. Part of that was offset by the fact that I really wasn't alone. I knew there were people in my life who cared for me. But even if there weren't, even if my feared scenario were to occur and I found myself living alone, small things like not having plans for New Year's Eve wouldn't be the end of the world.

It's OK to be alone sometimes, not going anywhere, not dressing up or dancing or joining a raucous sing-a-long (though there was plenty of that going on in the Thin Man movies--when did people stop gathering around a piano and singing at parties?) Yes, I believe we all need friends in this world, that no man is an island or a rock. But to be alone and peaceful in the moment--that's a gift that doesn't require the right circumstances or the right people to make it happen. You can always carry that with you.

When my husband came home the next day, I sat with my feet in his lap as he told me all about his night and the delicious nibbles he ate and the great conversation he had and the unexpected friends that crashed the party. Then, with eyebrow raised, he commented on the piles of empty Jell-O cups in the sink. I told him I had had a very good night, too.