Tag Archives: drama

Jan7

Transference — Tend Your Own Garden

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I don’t know what it is about the winter, but it seems to bring out the bear in me. At a time, when I should be going inward, slowing down and reflecting in order to prepare for a better or new / improved renewal in the spring, I have found myself lately drawn in to the drama of other people and getting really tired of it.

Usually I can float on the surface of such things; usually I can smile and nod, like a game show host at the unraveling contestant on my set. I could gesture to the camera tech or producer to cut to another shot.

But lately, the allure has been too much. I have found myself zooming in, in super-HD to examine the pores and nose hairs of the people in my life, looking for flaws and looking for ways to fix them. For me, this is wrong, and it’s classic transference:

Transference is a phenomenon characterized by unconscious redirection of feelings from one person to another. One definition of transference is “the inappropriate repetition in the present of a relationship that was important in a person’s childhood.”

Basically, I am recreating the dynamics of the same crap / relationships I had as a child. (Transference is hard to depict, and it’s very subtle. If someone wants to help me out here, correct me: please do!)

This is my own layperson’s understanding of transference: that when a person named Percival does something that reminds you of a person named Mortimer and you end up unconsciously treating Percival like you would have treated Mortimer, even though conditions, situations, context, relationship, everything is different.

And so Percival is all like, “Gladys! I had no idea you felt this way!!” And you’re all like, “Gladys?! My name is Hilda!”

WAKE UP! This isn’t about your grandparents.

Hahahaaaa… Anyway…

That is transference as far as I can understand. And it’s unconscious; it is something we are not aware of, but when we become aware of it, and our tendency to exhibit transference in our relationships with other people, our lives can change.

I miss you, Charles Schulz.

I miss you, Charles Schulz.

It didn’t used to be like this. I have had significant “training” (therapy) to help me understand when this is happening. In fact, I quit my first therapist because I believe he started exhibiting transference to me and I felt the neutrality was jeopardized. But lately? It’s not like it’s been happening without my knowledge. I know better.

It was like sipping from the bottle of chaos for me. Look at another person’s so-called problems, and treat them as I would the person that I’m reminded of so I don’t have to focus on myself.

I chalk it up to boredom. I also chalk it up to a basic fatigue of navel gazing, of looking back at the misfires in order to create a more content and pleasant future or present.

It’s addictive, the navel gazing, and it’s really narcissistic too, because after a while, if we don’t make any healthy changes based on our navel gazing, if we don’t become aware of our tendencies redirect, or deflect, or point the finger at someone else, we end up deciding that our way of living is A-OK, Billy Bob. (I don’t know where Billy Bob came from…) And nothing changes. We drink/gamble/eat/smoke/shop/dream/navel gaze too much, we shout too much, we hold on too tightly. We don’t improve.

What bugs me most about result-less navel gazing is that lots of people are into it. As a yoga instructor, I try very hard to live the code of mindfulness, of “live unto others” and be cool with whatever happens because that’s meant to happen.

I had a student who reached out to me. She has since quit my classes (yes, they do leave me). It was not under the best of circumstances that she left (she transferred her past / mother on to me and wanted more of me than I felt was professionally appropriate). But I don’t “cut” people off unless I get a directive from them or the situation goes from awkward to untenable. So as is customary, when I was sending out the announcement for the upcoming session, she asked me to remove her from my email list. I did. I get it: clean slate, start over. I dig that. It showed me growth from her. I was actually happy for her.

Namaste and all that stuff.

Moving on.

Oddly, a few months later, she sent me a link to a blog about yoga instructors and how we need to check our egos at the door and not make the classes all about ourselves and trying to attain the perfect pose and just letting our students meet THEMSELVES where they are, so-called “limitations” and all.

Well, if you’re a friend of mine, or you’ve read anything I’ve written or taken a class of mine, you would know right off the bat, that I strive each day to be a growth-oriented and “it’s ok where you are” type person. That paradigm shift for me was massive, 10 years ago. I can hear me now: I didn’t just accept things the way they were! I fought them! That solid, cold, black iron rod must be bent and turned into a platter to suit my needs! Without fire! Without heat! Without cajoling or kindness or flattery, sincere or otherwise… Man, I was a fighter, but without cause.

Back to reality: the irony, of course, is that this former student (and I can say this with a ton of confidence) was still projecting her stuff on to me. My days of “perfectionism” are toast. Twenty years of combined marriage, parenting, yoga, crazy mother, and classic psychotherapy, CBT and EMDR have exorcised that demon. She spoke endlessly to me about her need to make the Yoga Journal -cover perfect pose when reality simply didn’t allow for it.

I recall clearly that I would speak with her after many classes. Calmly, nodding, listening and hearing her, feeling her desperation for acceptable levels of perfection….

I drew her attention to a tree outside and said, “Would you ever consider that tree imperfect? Would you say that it’s not a ‘tree’ as defined by what our understanding of what a tree is? It’s got a missing limb or two, some knots and a hole in its trunk…” She shook her head ‘no.’

“Those things give it character. A place for animals to live.” I added, like freakin’ Snow White Freud.

She nodded and agreed, her eyes welling up a little in the sun. Her nose grew pink and she started to chew on her inner cheek, leaning on one leg more than the other.

“Then why do you beat yourself up? Do you think that tree would consider you somehow imperfect? Why must you insist that you are? And why must you fight your story, your reality, to prove –for whom I don’t know– your perfection?”

I was all “This is our reality… It is what it is, man… y’dig?” In my Nehru shirt and dandelion chain tiara crown.

She said she understood, that she appreciated my help and time. That I was a true teacher and friend to her for doing so and she thanked me.

Then the phone calls increased, the emails increased and the text messages increased. She wanted more of my time; I began to feel uneasy. This is my issue: I didn’t like being someone’s salvation. I couldn’t save my own mother, there was no way I could to do it for a yoga student.

She wanted more of the class’s time and attention. It became a cyclone of need. I had to draw a line; I had my own personality limitations as well as a real interest in protecting the integrity of the class, the time of other students, as well as my reputation as an instructor to manage disruption. I had to ask her after class to stop the chatter, the distractions in class, the bringing of the “outer world” into the room. “…We take our shoes off as a gesture of the solemnity and respect for the practice of yoga, likewise, we need to do with our day, our woes, our ego and our mirth. I ring the bell at the beginning to announce the tenor of practice, to introduce a new moment. Not everyone had a bad day like you did… not everyone just aced a final like you did… everyone is working on something personal and unique in here, so please respect that.”

She didn’t say so. She didn’t say anything in fact. She packed up her stuff and thanked me for a nice class. Only later, I surmise, did she decide to tell me (indirectly through that email) that my interests in protecting my yoga classes felt unkind and ego-identfied to her. That I was asserting my “authority” in a non-produtive and territorial way. I was the enemy. She resorted to her native coping skills and never communicated with me again.

Until that link to the blog.

So I sit and I sigh. Distracted by this not-very-subtle jab at my person and teaching style I start to wonder, actively, about that person. About what makes her so high and mighty, what makes her the high priestess of ego and yoga teaching? She’s not such hot stuff, why if she were then … And what’s with the contacting ME when she told me to take her off my list?? Talk about BOUNDARY ISSUES!!! Why she …. …. …. ….

And down the rabbit hole we go. Watch out for that root on the right as you go down, it’s like a whip.

The good news is that that rabbit hole is brighter now; it has landing strips by it and it’s not as bumpy, deep or as curvy as it used to be. My descents into it are less intense and more fleeting. It’s more of a gopher hole. But the gopher holes are everywhere and they’re in my garden.

Instead of tending to my gopher holes, instead of sealing them up or planting a flower in them, I look over the fence, into someone else’s garden and I start to think about where an azalea would look good to cover up that ugly corner; or that a shade tree would do well to keep from burning up the astilbe… My, she doesn’t know how to tend to her garden; she’s got shade plants in full sun… her kids are likely on drugs too… that son is a mess… I thought my mom was weird … her mother is a trip…

… and there we go again. Me thinking about someone else’s crap instead of my own. Me transferring my energy and my thoughts and my precious little time left on this planet to someone else, someone who’s into the drama, who’s into the distraction and who’s not able to understand my “brand” of help; or my timing.

People need to work at their own pace and just because I can see all the traps and falls awaiting that person, it doesn’t mean 1) she can or 2) he cares. Sometimes the elixir of someone else’s problems or issues are SO important strong that they keep us from working on ourselves. As I said to a friend this morning, fully aware of all the trappings of the drama I’m hovering over, “I love decorating someone else’s house…”

What else this means is that I stop the narrative I’ve been telling about my life. I’m 47. It’s time I put things in their boxes and ship them off for the garbage dump (or the book). My story of who I am and how I got here is precious to me, yes, but it doesn’t define me and it needn’t hold me hostage anymore. I’m not just the result of my parents’ union; I have transcended that — years ago — and I am a fully functional adult female human who has co-created three more humans. I am more than 1967 – 1990; so much more. I am 1991 – 2003; and 2003 to now, and counting. I look back at the time I feel I have squandered worrying about my mother and father, about “reputation” and about fear.

The only way I can, and you can, and your neighbor and your former friend or ex-spouse, or ex-lover, or former yoga student can fully achieve our own fantastic full-blown personhood is to learn from the past, not let it hold us back or down anymore, see it for what it has provided (a backdrop, that is all — and that backdrop changes with the set of our stories!), and move on, with gratitude for all it has provided. We can leave that garden where it is without regret — and that is hard!

Leave that garden in the sun or in the shadows, in a state of flourish or disrepair, but walk away from it nevertheless. It’s not our garden anymore, and the garden that IS ours, needs us. We can walk into our own garden, as modest as it is, and tend to it. Talk to it, let the sun in and the rain fall. We can see it in the greater landscape with all the other gardens, in their own individual growths, and we can admire it all, while keeping the errant vines and the weeds out of ours. And we can step back. And we can see it grow.

Thank you.

 

Jul22

Missives from the Mat #12 — Trapped and Released

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Who knows why anyone does anything.

I chose to pursue yoga because I knew that I needed centering, healing and quiet.

I was a recent first-time mother, my world was turned upside-down and I had an anger simmering in me that I didn’t understand.

I knew my anger had nothing to do with the baby, but I did feel trapped, as though becoming a mother had sealed the deal: I was en route to becoming my mother, with whom I did not much agree about anything. The only thing I knew how to do was to be Not Her. I did not know mySelf.

Suddenly I had these visions of her visiting endlessly –the proposition of which was absolutely terrifying– and never leaving. Mom would corner priests at the end of Mass; she would close down restaurants. She never said “good bye.” I remember witnessing my parents’ lengthy chats by the car in the driveway when my father would Just Try to Leave for Work. My fears and visions evolved into nightmares and then full-blown panic that I’d never be able to escape her. By giving birth to my son, I’d given Mom a lifetime pass to my … life.

It was all totally irrational. It was all in my imagination. Until it started to happen.

Mom stayed with my first son for several hours a day for nine months after I went back to work as a corporate communications manager for a major telecommunications company. At work, I had it all: stimulating conversations, deadlines, feedback, actual objectives which were attainable and measurable and money. At home, I had none of that, or so I felt. Looking back on all this, now 16 years later, I can see that I had all the measurable outcomes and objectives and goals I needed — they just weren’t mine to attain; they were my sons’. My own personal growth at the hands of my beautiful boys is priceless. No therapist could ever come close to helping me see where I needed to change.

So when I’d heard from my mother that my son was beginning his first steps and that I’d not be there to see it, I had to make a choice: miss out or miss out. I chose to miss out. I chose to stay home.

The morning I decided to leave my job; I had just printed my resignation. This is my beautiful son when he was about a year old. 

The morning I decided to leave my job; I had just printed and signed my resignation letter. This is my beautiful son when he was about a year old.

So I quit work. That job… yikes. It was amazing. But I had other things to do; I had to quit my old world to light up my new world.

But I was a mess still and I had to get out. “You have anger problems,” I remember my mother smirking at me in a smirky voice, as though my unexpressed, repressed rage and anger was all about me and not at all about her and her years of addiction, parentalizing and manipulation of me, upside-down mentality, and hocus-pocus “that’s not what happened” revisionist history.

Full disclosure: I am a peacekeeper by training. Still trying to win her graces, I didn’t want to upset my mother. She offered to stay with him that first year when she learned that I was interviewing daycare providers, “I’ll not have my grandson stay in one of those baby bins…” she would hiss. (I didn’t notice at the time, but I think I was being judged.) So we made a deal: she would clean up. No more drinking and no more pills and she could stay with him. But she had a price, I had to pay her. Every day she would take a cab to my house and be his onsite Mimi. Nine months later, when I left my job, she told me her world fell apart. That I had “taken away [her] reason for being.” The guilt of it all: to quit my amazing job, to stay home with my son, to lose mySelf in his mothering and lose mySelf in diaper duty, having no one to speak to but a toddler for hours on end was all a bit too much. This was supposed to be a happy time: MOTHERHOOD! But I had anger issues, right? Who would teach him Shakespeare? She asked. What about how he likes his lunch? She continued to visit daily, but I couldn’t pick her up, I was exhausted. But because I couldn’t pay her way over, or much of anything after I stopped working — we gave up half our income — the visits atrophied. She did teach him his first sentence, “Puck bit Mimi” after my father’s corgi, Puck, bit my mother rendering a dozen stitches in her right hand … much to the chagrin of our relatives and my mother’s friends, my father kept Puck. I could write vast tomes on my mother’s relationships with my father’s dogs.   

So I took up yoga at a local rec center on Sunday mornings. I’ve never been very churchy. This was a perfect compromise. It was the conscious breath with movement that was a nice departure, but the nap svasana at the end which hooked me. I remember thinking to myself, “And we get to take a nap too??” when each class was over.

I’m not an athlete, but I am athletic. I’m not a super-still person, but I can meditate. Get someone to tell me what to do and I’ll do my best to make it happen, so it was that people pleaser in me that helped yoga become a successful element in my life.

It was yoga’s subtle push to open my mind to my inner Self and see what’s inside it (rather than what’s outside it) which ultimately made me stay.

If You Go Looking for Crazy …

Anyone can flap their arms and kick up dust when crazy is going on all around. If you go looking for crazy, you will find the crazy. There’s never a shortage of crazy. So… why not try to be the stillness? Why not contribute to the silence?

After a few months of yoga, I realized that how I felt about / related to / fit in with the outside world was a direct mirror of how I was dealing with my inside world.

I’m reminded of those spin-art cards created at carnivals and festivals: you drop colors of paint on a card and then someone sets the card on a turntable which spins. The centrifugal force sends the gobs of paint to  radiate from the center and then you have your art.

Instead of being like the spin art, when our inner world starts to leak through to our outer world, I’ve learned that I need to go inward, go inside, and settle down and figure out how to deal with myself instead of oozing on to everyone else. That’s what yoga does for me: it keeps me from oozing on to the people I exist with. Yoga keeps me from being like spin art (which is always left behind at the carnival anyway).

Yoga’s near-compulsory / encouraged mindfulness has taught me to keep mySelf in mind in all of my reactivity. Do I still react? Yes. It just takes longer to happen now and is over much sooner. Also, my apologies are more freely offered. I’m also a much better listener. Not perfect! But better. I also have gained the freedom to be OK with making a mistake or to draw back on a boundary if I’ve spoken too soon. It’s OK to change our minds.

No Longer a Baggage Handler.

Yoga also gives me a more open mind which helps me allow people their baggage if I get static from them. I don’t have to take their baggage either — that’s another benefit of yoga. What’s on my mat is mine and what’s on your mat is yours.

I used to get terribly enmeshed with people. Now, I just smile and nod.

Some people come to yoga because they want better abs. Some people come to yoga because they need to stretch after sitting in a desk all day. Some people come to yoga because it’s cool. Some people come to yoga because they don’t know why, they just know it works.

I teach yoga because it has changed my life.

It’s been quite a year for me. A year ago, I had just written the check to attend a 16-day yoga teacher training retreat which beautifully humbled me. Three weeks after that, my mother suddenly died and the next day, school started for my kids. Three weeks after that, I pushed through to complete my RYT-200 written exam as my birthday gift to myself. Then on a snow day from school, I wrapped up the final stages of my yoga certification. Three weeks after that, I was teaching yoga in this beautiful room:

nice huh? it's a 40'x40' space surrounded by woods. all you hear when it's silent is the ticking of the wall clock, the chirping birds and children at the nearby pool in summer. i can't imagine myself teaching anywhere else.

nice huh? it’s a 40’x40′ space surrounded by trees. all you hear when it’s silent is the ticking of the wall clock, the chirping birds and children at the nearby pool in summer. i can’t imagine myself teaching anywhere else. at night, when the evening class ends and it’s dark outside, you hear the peep toads and crickets. in the winter as the snow falls outside…it’s like a dreamland.

The first time I stepped into that room to take yoga from my own teacher several years ago, I remember saying to myself, “What a gorgeous space. I would love to teach yoga in this room.”

Yogi Bhajan, the man who taught my yoga teachers Kundalini yoga has a saying, “Start and the pressure will be off.” That’s basically how my teaching started: I was trapped.

My first adult class came on the heels of serendipitous and universe-at-work, power of attraction, power of intention woo-woo: I set the intention, I got the room. I got the students. They came with the deal. They have stayed and re-upped and brought friends. It’s all a little too magical to believe, so I just accept it. I don’t try to figure it out.

Practicing Vs. Teaching — Oy.

Teaching yoga is quite different from taking yoga.

When you join a class, you go, you practice and you can leave. When you teach, you teach, you demonstrate and you don’t leave until the last person leaves. I get to lock up the beautiful space.

Last month, I wrapped up an eight-week session teaching children for pay and this coming Monday will mark the end of my first 12-week two-class session of being an actual paid yoga instructor to adults. I pinch myself from time to time. The earnings are very modest, but it lets me take the kids to Starbucks or pay for haircuts, or low-grade car maintenance.

Kids are honest, funny, physically adventuresome, openly competitive and curious. It was a blast to teach them; they were game for anything. The hardest thing I had to do with them was rein them in. Adults are not always like kids: they don’t tell you when it hurts, they keep their expressions to themselves and so it’s largely a mystery how things are going unless they offer a comment. I have learned to accept that if they keep coming back it’s because they like it. I can’t go looking to them for my happiness or fulfillment as that would be completely unhealthy; so I need to grow-up and see the data for what it is: proof.

Part of the Work of teaching yoga is practicing care for our students while also practicing detachment. All of my teachers have privately spoken to me about the varying personalities in a yoga class. I remember myself when I started: I was a super-pissed people pleaser. Somehow it worked out.

For Students: Respect the Space.

I encourage my students to be self-aware too.

The yoga room is a sacred space. When joining a yoga class — whether it be the first time or the 1,000th time — it’s crucial for the success of your own practice as well as your classmates’ that you leave your “day” at the door or at least with your shoes. Why? Because not everyone just got engaged. Not everyone just got fired. Not everyone just lost a friend or dropped the roasted chicken on the floor (guilty as charged). It’s because not everyone lives the same life. I try to do my best to allow everyone’s humanity while at the same time protecting everyone from everyone’s humanity… it’s a delicate balance.

I love that the students mostly know one another — after all, I was the new kid. They were already assembled, I took over the classes. That said, whether the students are adults, children or families: we are there to practice yoga, not share and have coffee — that can happen after or before class. I respect my students enough to begin and end on time, which I think is a rational expectation; everyone pays the same price to be in the room for the same amount of time.

you, your mat and your strap.

no matter where you practice, at the end of it all it’s just you, your mat and your strap.

The thing is — while these 90 minutes are all we have, everyone’s 2′ x 6′ rubber rectangle mat is all anyone needs to come to terms with themselves. They don’t need me to do it for them, in fact I can’t do it FOR them. They might need me to keep them in alignment, to help them not hurt themselves, to inspire or encourage them to go to their edge, but in the final analysis: it’s all them. I’m just there to hold the door open. They are the ones who step over the threshold.

Get Lost to Find YourSelf.

Many people look to find friends or a Teacher (not just of yoga) at a yoga class or session. That’s not what this is about.

Some of these yoga teachers out there are like rock stars to their students followers. I do not have that ambition. I’m not there to want you to love me. I’m not there to get you to trust me — either you do or you don’t. I’m not there to get you to hold that adho mukha svanasana (downward facing dog) for three minutes. It might be a goal, but it’s about YOU being willing to Listen to YOU and not try to impress anyone. ‘Get lost and find yourself,’ I say to myself when I get on my mat. That mat above is my fourth mat. I’m still looking, apparently.

When I first started this teaching gig, 14 weeks ago, I wanted to be liked. I’ll totally admit that. I also wanted to be The Best Teacher Ever and reinvent yoga and create lasting memories in peoples’ lives about how amazing and revolutionary my yoga classes are… now that I’ve exhausted myself trying to live to that standard, and have realized that people just want to be guided in movement, stretched out and relaxed, I have given myself the gift of my own perspective and have released myself from the crazy expectations I placed on myself. Why? Because I never expected that from ANY of my teachers. I just wanted them to tell me how to move.

Practicing yoga is truly about you giving yourself and your mat the time of day. It’s about you trapping whatever you are dealing with on that mat and then working through it so that you can release it and come off the mat that much kinder to yourSelf.

The best gift I can give people is a moment to help them to find themSelves.

Thank you.

Sep25

Grief: Birthdays, “Dear Mom,” and a Play

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So today is my birthday and I will miss the phone call that my mother had made in recent years when she would sing like Marilyn Monroe did for President Kennedy (“Jack” to those of us in the know) or she would loudly and dramatically recite a random line from Molière’s “Tartuffe”: “What air for you the test?” (Or was that Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” (which has little to do with honesty) or was it … Good God, Mom… which play and why did you say it so often out of context? I’m going with Tartuffe and I’m QUITE sure I’m effed up the line. Now I’ll have to Google it. I know, good luck with that. I hope my cousins tell me what it was.)

Mom had a wonderful sense of humor when she was on. I think know she’d enjoy this letter and ask me to read it again and again.

. . .

Dear Mom,

Forgive me some schmaltz early in this missive and allow me to thank you for birthing me 46 years ago today. I know you took a huge risk after Baby John was born, continuing to have children and I am grateful that you did.

You and I didn’t have the smoothest relationship, until just before God took you, as fate would have it. It’s just like us to figure things out and leave the restaurant with the staff yawning and the lights up, as our family and our cousins’ families often did.

I have to say though, that you and God lined things up for me exquisitely before you died, and after your death, I know you lined things up to make it as painless as possible; which wasn’t always very possible.

The details of those months are for another letter, maybe a book, and I’d be foolish to suggest that it was just the months that prepared me.

I know it was the decades of good times and bad times, sadnesses and happinesses, healed feelings and hurt feelings that forged my steel and honed my blade to be sharp, keen and precise when separating the wheat from the chaff.

In some circles, it is suggested that my soul chose you to bear me and be my mother; that there was a karmic exchange for past lives to learn lessons and that your passing, well, all of our passings, means that our souls have done all they can to teach or learn the intended lessons. I believe that stuff, I believe there had to be a greater purpose to our discord and to our mirth, right? Otherwise, it all seems such a waste.

I was talking to your only son-in-law this morning and he is so good, Mom. He’s charged the boys with making me a dark chocolate raspberry cake for dessert tonight. We talked about death, he and I. He is concerned naturally about his own parents and he mentioned death and my grieving as sort of an isolated case.

I couldn’t help but remind him, and anyone who dares chat with me about it, that this is part of life; our universal experience. It’s what we all go through. Every single one of us. I am not afraid of death; I hope that brings you comfort and I’m sure you already suspected that. I would be lying however if I didn’t say I get mad when people talk about their still-living mothers.

I love that your final words were “Yes, please” and that you were looking forward to ice cream as your next big move. You were so frail, Mom. But your heart, the one that bears your soul, was soft and kind in the end.

Your funeral. Mom. I think some people were totally taken by surprise by how much I resemble you. There were a couple friends of yours who literally stared into my eyes looking for you. You’ll get a kick out of this: one was getting all weepy and sad and telling me how awesome you were and staring into me, in a weird Star Trek sort of way and I got this feeling with a couple of them, “Oh no; I’m NOT taking care of you… it’s My Mom who went to God and is no longer around, you’re gonna have to deal…” and I would be whisked away by an observant family member.

Your death has brought me closer to estranged relations. Even in death, Mom, you manage to mend fences and bring us all together for a play of sorts. The nice thing about this play was though, that there was no acting. We were all very sincere. I guess that’s the best acting of all.

So the other day, Mom, I went for a walk/run/jog/walk thing. It was my first since you died. It was hard, but I thought of your heart, the physical one, and how if it were stronger that maybe you’d still be here; but then I thought again and said, “No. When God wants you home, when you’ve learned or taught your lesson, it doesn’t matter. Your number is up.” But when I was finished, I was in the cool-down mode and I decided to do some stretches and some yoga down dogs, etc., and a neighbor saw me. She was on a walk with her friend.

Here… we’ll do this the way you liked it:

The scene: Modern-day suburbia. The weather is beautiful; a crisp late fall morning. Molly, a middle-aged (gasp!) female returning from exercising outdoors without her dog, her buffer, for the first time after her mother died. She is in her quiet zone, feeling a little sacred and grateful that her legs, lungs and heart could sustain the effort. She is wearing her headphones. Music is on and she’s stretching, doing some yoga poses that she hasn’t done in a while.

Up comes a neighbor, a lively southern sort, who was walking with her friend. She sees Molly and she spazzes completely.

Neighbor: WAhahaha aha aha aahaaa ha MOLLLLAAAAY…  ARE YOU SHOWING OFF YOUR ABS?? ARE YOU DOING YOGA TO SHOW OFF FOR ALL THE WORLD??? she gesticulates and speaks in a humorous friendly way … sorta show-offy for her friend who is likely dying inside.

Molly is still in her headphones and is literally making the “cut throat” sign and the “time out” sign and the “hands up, please stop” sign …

Neighbor: BLAH WAAH BLAAHAA HAAA YOGA ABS OF STEEL!!! RUNNING!!! WHERE’S THE DOG?? I CAN’T RUN TO SAVE MY LIFE…BLAH BLAH WAAH BLAAHAA HAAA AND SHE’S IN PEARLS! WHO WEARS PEARLS WHEN THEY WORKOUT?? MOLLLLLYYYYY…. BLLAHAAAHA HAAAAA….LALALALAAAA.

Molly sighs and just stops. She removes her headphones, puts up her hands: PLEASE. PLEASE STOP. TALKING.

Neighbor, taken aback a bit: What’s the matter?

Molly thinking “I barely know you so shut the eff up”:  I’m just in a different place, I’m sort of low these days, not depressed, just grieving a bit…

Neighbor, throws her hands up to her mouth and gasps like Frances McDormand in “Raising Arizona” upon her first sight of the abducted quintuplet… : HUH??!… OMIGAAAD. GRIEVING!? ! WHAT’S WRONG??

Molly explains what she’s dealing with and it being her first day out; no running since and out and about, no dog to buffer her, just going for it… and the neighbor’s friend sighs and touches Molly’s shoulder but the neighbor is now upset.

Neighbor: OH! OH! MOLLY!!!! MOLLLLLLLYYYY!!!!! I’M SO SORRY! WELL ISN’T THAT JUST LIKE ME… I’M GREAT UNTIL YOU GET TO KNOW ME THEN I CAN’T SHUT MY MOUTH….

Neighbor starts tearing up and Molly is clearly vexed: “No. not another one… please don’t make me take care of  YOU now… ” but she managed to recover the situation and talked rationally a bit about it all… when in her heart, Molly just wanted to say, “I can’t really do this right now,” and then turn her music back on and go running away. AWAY. Super fast. 

. . .

It’s that kind of shit, Mom, that makes me nuts. And it’s not her fault, I mean, how was she to know? As I said to a friend in an email today about it all,

there is no way to know what i’m going through; there’s no mantilla to wear or sackcloth. for modern American living, those days are over, but grieving is not antiquated, it just feels that way because of the pace of this world, but i find solace that i’m not alone, ever in this sensation and that people the world over are doing EXACTLY what i’m doing right now — be it fresh news or ancient news. there is always someone dying  and someone else doing what they can to process and not get lost in it all. at least that’s what i’m trying to do.

But really, I’m not here to take care of her.

Me? I’m largely OK these days. I go up and down. I became really anxious for a few days last week; jumping and jittery. I got very sad last night because I knew you wouldn’t be calling me. I dreamed about the Buffalo house again. Really, Mom?!

I asked Dad if he wanted to go to lunch today, but he emailed me and told me he couldn’t because he had plans. So I’m good with that. But then he called because he realized it was my birthday so he switches plans around and invited me to go to lunch with him and a colleague I’ve never met at the Occidental Grill downtown and I’m imMEDIATely saying “No” to that. I can’t do that. I gently declined. He pressed. He said my going would help him with parking and driving in and I just can’t so then my gentle decline became a firm decline. I want to stay in my jeans or yoga pants and no contacts and not drive to the city and so… sorry Dad.

But then the wheels start turning and I begin to think that in the total space of harsh reality when dealing with life and grief and the brutality of death, that no matter HOW much we think we’re going to transform into self-actualized, stellar people who all of a sudden have achieved a new sense of authenticity, vulnerability, empathy, altruism and kindness, that at the end of the day: we don’t. It’s not that we’re evil or complacent or afraid — it’s just that we’re being real with ourselves, I think.

Maybe our souls aren’t ready or done. I think we’re allowing ourselves to evolve as much as is comfortable or planned. I’m no Buddha or Jesus. I’m just me: flawed, insecure, a little panicky these days truth be told, but I’m alive and taking notes and adjusting.

I’ve been reading a book, In the Midst of Winter, which is an anthology on grief and it’s been terribly helpful. I laughed a little when I saw that one of my favorite excerpts is by James Agee, one of your favorite modern (20th century) writers and playwrights. The excerpt is from A Death in the Family which published posthumously. In it, the widow of her recently deceased spouse is getting dressed for her late husband’s funeral. I piqued at reading it because it reminded me of how I felt when I was doing the same for you almost three weeks ago. How that I was putting on a new dress on my body for your body’s “last day” above ground. I still have the tags from that dress. I couldn’t throw them away that day.

Agee writes how that through this experience this widow had somehow felt more a part of the human race, more evolved and that having children was just some sort of apprenticeship. And I think about that; how true it was and then I reflected on you: that you had literally almost done it all, but that God spared you from the final one. You buried your son, your parents, your grandparents, your favorite aunts and uncles, a nephew, and friends but not your husband; he will be the one who has now buried all the levels that life has blessed him with.

You had guts, Mom. I think about your woes, the God-awful stuff you experienced as a child with your unique parents, being a young woman in the 1950s, being a young mother in the 1960s and putting up with all that sexism and bullshit and yours and Dad’s weird friends in the 1970s. And how even in your own way, you were able to keep going. So then I think about your heart. Your heart was fine. It was just your time.

You have prepared me for this. I know it. Despite our biggest arguments and our worst moments you did the most amazing job: you mothered me. You got me here.

I wanted to tell you about the faceless chicken and how we selected your gravesite and the truly odd undertaker and his wife, but this letter is long.

Today is my birthday. The day you said I reminded you of a wrestler, a limbed tongue because I was so mighty and strong. The day you said “yes, please” to me.

Thanks, Mom. I’ll miss your phone call.

Aug28

RHONJ, Snappy Taglines, Remoras and More-a

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RHONJ, Snappy Taglines, Remoras and More-a

If you’ve been following me for a while, thank you. Your poor bastahds, you must have nothing else to do.

You have probably figured out I like to write. I write about all sorts of stuff, except politics. I have three boys: I don’t need any extra work in my life.

I write about personal things, motherhood things, aging things, rowing, friendships, yoga, running jogging, laundry. I sometimes write with an edge. I write entirely in lower case sometimes. Other times I use “proper” punctuation.

I like to think that I’m above certain behaviors. Or better, I like to have you think I’m above certain behaviors… well, perception is everything, right?

Here’s what I’m not above: letting perfectly clean laundry sit in a basket for several days unfolded and all scrunchy and watching Bravo-TV.

Don’t you love my logo? It was really hard to do. I spent like… oh, six seconds creating it. It’s hot. I know.

I thought that in the spring I’d had it with Bravo’s #1 viewed quintet of queso, the “Real Housewives of New Jersey.” I thought I’d given up on them. I even thought I told my DVR to not record any more shows. But then lo and behold, almost two weeks ago… there they were: Teresa Guidice, Melissa Gorga, Kathy Wakili, Jacqueline Laurita and Caroline Manzo and their fake-boobed, appendage-like, botox-stricken, remora friends all over my DVR — THREE EPISODES! OHMAIGAWD! This was like winnin’ the frickin’ loddery, JeeeezUS! Ah you kiddin’ mey?

I didn’t look up their names. I actually know these biotches’ names by heart. What’s worse is that I know their husbands’ names too. I won’t do it though. You can’t make me go there.  (Joe, Joe, Rich, Chris and Albert.) Gawd, I’m pathetic.

Back to remoras. Do you know what a remora is? It’s that little fish like thing that hangs out with sharks. It’s a symbiotic relationship: the sharks don’t eat the remoras because the remoras clean the mites off the shark’s body. (I love sharks. That came out wrong: I respect them and I love them. I don’t like that they occasionally eat a human, but if we stayed on land all the time we wouldn’t be attacked by them. Just saying.)

What I’d realized is that I told  the DVR (lissen t’ me… “told the DVR” how cute) to stop recording the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills because of all their backstabbing. There’s something … I dunno … expected out of our east coast Real Housewives in terms of really poor behavior. They have to drive around with all that ill-begotten wealth in all those dead animal skins and whatnot.

Regarding Beverly Hills, I’d like to think that all the money, fame, limos and child-stars turned psych ward inmates of the region would have enabled the ladies to have more of their acts together. They disappointed. I had total faith in Camille Grammer to pull the show up a notch or two last year, but watching that sad, pathetic Kim Richards live with that mole man (now I really can’t remember his name) was too much for me. Too contrived. (I know, right?) So when I realized that my DVR did have my best interests at heart (and the kids will love this because now their laundry will be folded and ready for them to put away) by recording the New Jersey girls, I jumped for joy.

Finally, we get to the point of all this: the taglines. I love a good tagline: “Have a Coke and a Smile”; “UPS: The World on Time”; “Staples: That Was Easy.” “Dick Nixon: I am not a crook.”

The RHONJ taglines have been amended a bit this year from previous years to reflect the agendas or maybe self-reflective introspection on behalf of the ladies. (Ok, I know, “introspection”: that was reaching.)  Last year, Jacqueline said, “I might blah blah blah, but I AM my own person” because she was such a remora to all the bitter, wedge-driving losers on the show in previous years.

This year, Jacqueline’s tagline is something like, “I’m a Vegas girl at heart, …” I forget the rest, it doesn’t matter, I learned all I needed to with ‘Vegas girl.’ (Her father is a retired Army colonel, that’s shit’s hard to pull off, making colonel… she coulda said something about that…) Teresa says “When things get tough, you learn who your real friends are.” Melissa says something having to do with throwing the first punch and being a knock-out. Kathy’s talks about “We’re old school: we believe in respect.”  Caroline’s is something like “I’m 50. I’m lucky to still be on this show.” No, actually, it’s “Life is too short, I don’t have any time for drama.” Which is essentially the same as my fake “I’m 50” tagline.

So last night, Thing 2, who is bloody hilarious, started making fun of the taglines. He would push out his booty and say, “Tereeesah: I’m a knock-out!” and it was very funny. Until it became creepy.

But it got me thinking… what would my tagline be for my new season this fall? (Just kidding, there is no new season … maybe there should be.) And I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it and came up with this:

“I’m Molly. I love my bed. Don’t wake me before 9 on Sundays if you want to live.”

So I want to ask you (and I really hope you do this): what would your tagline be? So pleeeease… do one. I can’t wait.

Thank you!