Humble pie

"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

"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?

"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

"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

"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

"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.

1. I'm grateful for my parents being alive and healthy.
2. I'm grateful for my husband who loves me even when I'm sick or tired or bratty.
3. I'm grateful for my job which I enjoy.
4. I'm grateful that I HAVE a job (not a given these days.)
5. 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.

1. I'm grateful for my ten purple-painted toes. All functioning.
2. I'm grateful for my air conditioner (if you live anywhere in the Northeast right now, you know what I'm talking about.)
3. I'm grateful for books. And eyes that can see because I'm not crazy about audiobooks.
4. I'm grateful for my good taste. Yes, I can say that and not be snobby. Maybe.
5. 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

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.