A Winter Public Service Announcement

The most frequently asked question I get around this time of year is if there is a trick to getting through the long winter days. There is no question that, once the holidays are over, and the gray days start to accumulate, it can be hard not to give in to the winter blues. I have grown to appreciate winter, the barren landscape, self-granted permission to watch more TV, and read books under a warm blanket, BUT, that said, if I do not go out of my way to feed my soul and monitor the content I expose myself to, I can slide way down into the all-to-familiar dumps. 

So, my dear doom and gloomies, I am sharing my best resources with you in the hopes that one, some, all of them provide a little light for the long winter days. 

A winter or two back, a friend turned me on to a book called Wintering: The power of rest and retreat in difficult times by Katherine May. May tells about a year in her family’s life where they experience several unexpected and quite serious situations and, instead of categorizing her experience in some of the more typical ways, she outlines how tough experiences are similar to the seasons, using winter both literally and metaphorically. I just love how May tells all about her own life. You can find the book here. 

If you do not follow Nadia Bolz-Weber, you should google her immediately. She is a Lutheran Minister out of Colorado and her posts often reflect what a lot of us think but might not say out loud. She is one of my favorite rebels. She can sometimes be a little bit Jesus-y, but if you read on, you will find WAY more humanity in her message. In her January 1st post, she reminds us that “there is no resolution that, if kept, will make you feel more worthy of love.” She goes on to remind us of the number of ways we can just be much kinder to ourselves and we just do not get enough of that kind of message in our lives. 

If you are looking for happiness, there probably isn’t a better source than Gretchen Rubin and the Happiness Podcast. Gretchen co-hosts with her sister Elizabeth Craft and they are quite the duo! They have a unique balance – Gretchen seems to walk a somewhat straight and narrow path, whereas Elizabeth chooses the less direct, perhaps more winding road. Such great chemistry and the podcast is packed with valuable information, guests, life hacks and much more. It’s an easy listen and, let’s face it, it’s hard to listen to a happiness podcast and not get at least a little lift the day. Here is an example of one of the episodes that will give you an idea of the kind of material they provide. 

Under the umbrella of saving the best for last, you cannot possibly go wrong listening to Kelsey McKinney and Alex Sojoung-Laughlin who host the podcast Normal Gossip. These two talented millennials take stories that listeners send in, anonymize them and then create a story that will have you riveted to your phone. You can find them here, and I would like to recommend the Grandma’s Friend Dot (5/18/22) as a good overall starting point, but do not miss The Plant episode (7/14/23). It’s my favorite!! 

I hope you get to explore some or all of these suggestions and please feel free to share whatever you do to help your soul migrate from winter to spring! 

Hardly Worth Mentioning

Hardly Worth Mentioning

There are so many competing concerns in the world today that deserve all of our time and attention, so I hope you will forgive this small rant that is certainly trivial in comparison. I mean, against the backdrop of multiple wars, a country divided, the threat to democracy, this is truly hardly worth mentioning. And, yet, somehow I cannot help but wonder. 

In Catholic school, I was taught that, when you die, you go to Purgatory which is a place where you log in the required amount of time needed to burn off whatever number of sins you have accumulated between the time of your last confession and the time you stop breathing. Your friends on earth can say prayers designated to shorten your time in Purgatory. The primary get-out-of-Purgatory prayers are either Novenas or the Rosary. A Novena is a specific prayer said over nine consecutive days in order to get the saint to whom you are praying to grant whatever request you want - in this case, an early release date for your loved one’s soul in Purgatory. The Rosary is a prayer that is said using a string of beads with a crucifix attached to one end. The official purpose of this type of prayer is to keep in mind the 20 mysteries of history, but everyone I ever knew that prayed the Rosary, did so because they had some request that they wanted granted. I was taught that, once the correct number of people say the correct number of prayers, your soul is released from Purgatory. 

I think of the purgatory equation something like this- 

Sinner sins + death + Requiem Mass +Purgatory divided by Friend of sinner + prayers + time equals A Speedier Ascension into Heaven

AND there is a procedure to be followed -  Step 1 - Sinner dies and is buried following a Requiem Mass. Step 2 - You, the friend, go to church some unspecified number of times and say some unknown number of prayers which then helps the soul of your loved one get into heaven faster.

Methods of praying for someone’s soul include any of the following -  A celebration of mass in the name of your deceased friend, for which there is a cost because, well, you know the Catholics. They all but invented subscription access services. 

Novena Prayers. These prayers, in theory, are the same prayer said for nine days in a row and they are to bring you peace and help you access “special graces” which in this case would be your friend’s speedy advent out of Purgatory. 

The Rosary. Praying the Rosary involves prayer beads and a prescribed routine of Hail Mary’s, a couple of Our Father’s and then the Apostle’s Creed.  (As a note: there is also a Rosary Novena, which is the regular Rosary said nine days in a row.) 

And, while I guess you can just randomly pray for your dead friend’s soul, it is really discouraged. You want to do the formal gig because you want them out of Purgatory ASAP and your random prayers are not as reliable as the formal Catholic prayers.  

Also hardly seems worth mentioning is that we were also taught that no one can get into Heaven until the Second Coming of Jesus when he will allow all the righteous, living and dead, access to heaven. Now, how can that be? Clearly, there is some fuzziness about the relationship between Purgatory and the second coming of Christ. If a soul has to be in Purgatory to burn off their sins AND no one can get access to heaven until Christ comes for the second time, WHY on EARTH are we praying to shorten the time souls need to spend in Purgatory? Who identifies the GPS coordinates so those souls know where to hang out once they are out of Purgatory but before Christ comes again? Perhaps, just speculating here, this confusion is the very reason the Catholics did away with Purgatory. Perhaps someone pointed out the inconsistencies in their theories so they said the Papal equivalent of “Whoops! Strike that from the record!” which would then provide clearer guidance. Or perhaps those souls now hang out in Limbo. 

OMG!!! Do not even get me started on Limbo! Like I said, it’s hardly worth mentioning. 

It's A Sign

It’s A Sign!

Completely unexpectedly last autumn, I fell in love. At 63 years old, having been married to husband-of-the-year for over 30 years, having had all of the grandchildren I am likely to have, POOF! just like that, completely out of the blue, I fell in love.  I am talking about the kind of crazy, drunken, cannot-get-enough-of-it-love.  I was looking for something new in life, something that would be interesting and challenging, and a friend suggested I take a class in American Sign Language (ASL). I had always wanted to learn to sign, so I enrolled in a community based class and, in about 2 classes, I was hopelessly hooked. I could not get enough signing.

I had never spoken a second language, I knew exactly zero people who sign, and I had no prospects of being in a community where signing would be used or useful. In fact, I live in communities where people either question why I would even consider learning to sign at my age, or they admire me for the courage it takes to try. Still, all I could think of is signing and all that kept showing up, to be completely honest, is the gap between my ability to sign and the level of proficiency needed to actually communicate through ASL. 

There are on-line educational sites (elearning Industries) that say that ASL is one of the easiest languages to learn because so many of the signs have commonplace gestures we already use; however, most other sources do not agree. The general consensus is that the basics are easy enough to learn; however, to really learn enough of the basics to have a conversation takes a 60-90 hour commitment, with additional help from someone who is proficient in signing. What is not noted in this estimate is that those 60-90 hours also involve some level of muscle memory from your hands (not to mention the actual memorization of letters and signs) and that you can really only practice so long before your hands need a rest. And none of that takes into account the difference between expressive and receptive language. 

I do not know how many hours I have put into learning to sign, but I am pretty sure I am somewhere in the thousands of hours range. At last count, I had over a hundred hours of formal instruction, which does not take into account any time practicing with other students or what feels like the hundreds of hours I have spent studying my notes, practicing with Hubs or watching online fingerspelling exercises until my eyes cross. And I would say I am exactly nowhere near even close to being able to have a conversation without the frequent use of slow and repeat. I am progressing, for sure. 

I am an old Catholic School girl who grew up diagramming sentences, learning about vowel teams and diphthongs and who would never, ever end a sentence in a preposition.  I soon discovered that writing and signing the same complete sentence is a very different exercise. I was taught to speak and write by what are now considered “old school” grammar and mechanics, which is also, by default, how I think. And while it might seem blatantly obvious that language completely defines how we see the world, it is not until we actually experience the differences in those worlds that we can see just how dissimilar those worlds can be. 

I knew I was going to need more support than my once a week class if I was really going to learn to sign, so I hired a tutor to help me, which is how I met Whitny. Whitny is a 28 year old woman who is Deaf, whose family are all hearing and who grew up in both the Deaf and hearing communities. Ninety percent of families with a Deaf child do not learn to sign, however, as soon as Whitny’s mom learned that Whitny was Deaf, she began to learn to sign and to access services for her daughter. 

I was nervous to meet Whitny because I knew that I could sign about ten words and I had no idea how she was going to be helpful given the level of what I knew I didn’t know.  Thankfully, a lot of Deaf people use a white board to help bridge the communication gap between the deaf and hearing. That whiteboard was a lifeline for me. Since Whitny grew up in both the deaf and hearing worlds, she is pretty competent at dealing with what hearing people do not know, as well as how to teach them. 

In the beginning, the best I could do was the fingerspell words, which was a slow and arduous process. I had to think about signing every  letter and every single letter that Whitny signed to me. Each word seemed to take forever.  My most frequently used signs were “repeat” and “slow” as in slow down. There seemed to be no amount of practicing that really put me at the speed needed to proficiently fingerspell. Later, in an advanced class, some of the other students would sign to each other at what seemed like the speed of light and I had no idea how their receptive language could possibly be that good. I realized that Deaf people and people proficient at signing do not sign and read  individual letters, but rather they are signing and reading actual words. I sign and read every single letter. It would be the equivalent of seeing a word, say the word is independent and, instead of reading it as independent, you would see it as I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-T. A very different process. 

As often happens if you stay in new and unfamiliar settings long enough, one day, completely out of the blue, something unpredictable appears that wasn’t there before and that something makes a difference. I cannot say how or when this happened, but suddenly, I could sign complete sentences and I didn’t need the whiteboard at all. My repeat and slow signs decreased and my understanding increased.

To begin with, writing or saying a complete sentence is very different from signing a complete sentence. While there are signs for words like for, the, also and because, you would not generally sign those words. Many words are just understood in signing. This means that, for the hearing person, not only are you learning to sign, but there is also what NOT to sign. And it took me quite a while to discover that signing complete sentences as I understood them, is not actually  a thing. I realized then that the Deaf person is learning to sign sentences with one set of rules, while always reading and writing sentences using different sets of  grammatical rules. 

The second thing I learned about signing is that facial expressions are as important as the sign itself and that, in practice at least, you are signing with your hands AND your face. And even though that might sound like a no-big-deal part of the whole process, what became clear to me is that my face mostly says either concentration or confusion and that my ability to use my face in signing is limited to signing things like what-the-fuck, tired and grouchy. Other than that, my face seems frozen in a perpetual look of someone who is considering the next move. 

What was really interesting to me is that the more I learned about signing and communicating the murkier the experience got for me.  For instance, as someone who has had a career of working in the field of mental health, I am very used to clarifying what someone tells me, or even what I say to someone, by being sure that the nuance of what or how something was said does not change the meaning of the message. I often repeat a question in a different tone, use a different example just to double check that I am on the same page as the person across from me. Nuance is not something I can imagine being used in signing, however, I don’t know if that is a function of my inexperience, a function of the differences in the languages or if it is a function of the generational difference between Whitny and me. And, whatever the source, I certainly do not have a way to get to that information right now. 

 I have found that Deaf people are really generous in their interactions with hearing people who are learning to sign. It is as though Deaf people have an ability, or they develop an ability, to grant a kind of grace to those learning to sign. I have interacted with a number of Deaf people at this point and I can’t help but believe that my signing is at times confusing or flat out makes no sense, yet there is never a hint of frustration on their part. And the response is always the same, even measured corrections or a request to repeat the sign. 

The more I got to know Whitny, the more our personalities began to emerge, and I discovered the discrepancies in our lives were as broad as the discrepancies in our languages. Whitny is a trained graphic designer, currently working in a special education school for students who are deaf. She lives at home with her family, plays action packed video games, likes horror movies and owns a horse, which she calls her “son” and says is the same as having a very large dog. She currently does not date, doesn’t want to have children, and aspires to write a graphic novel. 

On the other hand, I am a licensed clinical social worker who has worked in a variety of settings over the years. Hubs and I raised five children and have six grandchildren. We live in a country suburb where the closest quality grocery store is at least a 30 minute highway trek. Until very recently, I was exclusively a rom-com kind of girl with a passion for things that are beautiful - think little brightly colored flowers in tiny little vases all around the house. Think blueberries and strawberries in champagne glasses so my grandchildren feel special. Like that. 

Whitny and I meet these days at a local library, which seemed like a really good idea because signing is a non-verbal language and the library is a quiet setting. Despite our differences, we have developed a way of connecting that occurs as a little magical to me. To begin with, although our communication is non-verbal, we are pretty frequently the loudest duo in the library. Our laughter over signing blunders sometimes gets us the librarian stink-eye.  I am pretty sure that under any other circumstances we would be reprimanded, but Whitny, I think, serves as a get-out-of-jail-free card in this particular case. Or perhaps they are looking at me flapping my hands this way and that, trying to remember the correct orientation for a particular sign and figure I am already having a tough enough time. Still, as it turns out, there are words that have no similar sounds but that do have similar signs. I found this out by confusing beneath with poop, shy with whore, joking with penis - all unenviable mistakes in any language and in any context. 

I no longer text Whitny if I have something to tell her, but instead send her a video text which she most often understands. And I also now understand her return video texts, both of which I am claiming as major accomplishments in this new love affair of mine. I do have to say, however, my at least once every couple of weeks I sign the following-

 “Whitny, I am 63 years old. Do you think I will live long enough to be able to actually sign proficiently?” 

To which she always answers, “You are doing great!” 

On a good week, I interpret her response as “Yes!” On a great week, I think she is saying “Of course you will!” But, it might just be that she is granting us both a little grace and that the actual answer is closer to “No, but gold star for trying.”

The Winter of Our Discontent

I feel like I have been in a personal winter for a long time now. I bet a lot of people feel that way - that life has been hard, perhaps starting with the pandemic, and then bleeding into various other areas of life from there. I have had a lot of changes in these past two years, and most of these changes have been negative. I have lost no small number of close friends, mostly because they, or I, or both of us, hit the nadir of what we could each give and take from the other. I had a friend with whom I shared a lot of life, a lot of closeness, intimate moments about fears for our kids, our spouses and life in general. Somehow, somewhere along the way, with the weight of everything else going on in my life, I ran out of energy. In the aftermath of my family’s endless difficulties, my friend’s hard times just dropped out of my consciousness. I couldn’t give whatever it was that our friendship needed to continue. As the days turned into weeks, and then the weeks turned into months, it became harder and harder to pick up the phone and call. I knew I should have offered at least an explanation as to why I had not been in touch, but I just could not do it. My own personal tank was empty. I had nothing left to give.  I am sure she is disappointed in me. 

I also can no longer maintain relationships with people whose entire approach to life is doom and gloom. I bet you know some of these people from your own life - people whose conversations circle like an endless diatribe of their own stream of consciousness.  Every single encounter with another human being - birthday parties, IEP meetings, book club meetings, garden club meetings, every cup of tea with a friend - begins with talk of what doesn’t work in the world, backed by their uninteresting, poorly thought out opinions. It is as if these people get into a social setting, pull some internal lever, and the topics of how horrible the virus is, how dangerous the political divide is, how blatant the disregard of Black Lives Matter, and how to prepare to live off the grid, go round and round like horses on a dilapidated merry-go-round. And, to set the record completely straight, I DO think this virus has been excruciating, the political divide is critically concerning, Black Lives have been ignored for way too long, and I have been worried about my ability to live off the grid for one reason or another since 1968 when I was taught to hide under my desk in case we were bombed by Russia. But does the merry-go-round ever close down for the evening? Is the merry-go-round the only ride on the pier? 

What I am attempting to figure out is whether or not people are consciously engaging in conversations, or if they just put their thoughts on loud speaker with not so much as a nod to the impact to those around them?  Or, do they believe what they think is so unique, so brilliant, that they are providing some much needed service to the rest of us? Is this lack of consciousness an impact of the lockdown where, while sheltering at home, they actually lost social skills?  Perhaps they think that they alone are the valuable opinion holders on the planet and that, without them, the rest of us are just uninformed imbeciles. Do my Republican friends actually believe that their endless complaining about the current administrations is creating a closeness between themselves and people they love? Do my Democratic friends really think that continuing to talk about Trump, the insurgence, et cetera, is providing a much needed fertilization for intellectual discourse?  Do people believe that collecting all of the tragic FOX or CNN stories out there, and then talking about them over and over, is a valuable step in creating the life of their dreams? Or is it that they just don’t think? I can’t tell, but I am interested in knowing the answers to these questions. 

And, just to be clear, I am not against any of these conversations per se, but I am questioning the impact of them on ourselves and those around us. This has been, to quote George Harrison,  a long, cold, lonely winter lasting over two years. I don’t know even one person who isn’t struggling in a significant area of life. Not. Even. One. Person. I do know people who are making the best of things, who are hard wired for positivity, who are skilled at counting their blessings, but everyone I know has an area of life that is so hard that it depletes energy from every other area of their life. And, I am also not against complaining, by the way, but I AM against complaining as a communication style. If you are complaining to me with a commitment to either get something off your chest so you can get in a better space, or to problem solve, or to dissect an issue in order to get some resolution, then I am your girl!  Count me in!  But if that is not the intention of the complaint, then I have other valuable questions. For instance, who am I to you, if the only thing you have to say to me is how fucked up things are? And, much more importantly, who are you for yourself that the only way you can connect with others is to provide a constant babbling of all the negative aspects on the planet?  

I guess that, in the end, I am proposing that we are going to need to develop other ways of being in the world, other practices and behaviors, to get through whatever personal and collective winter we are experiencing.  I am not sure how we are going to emerge on the other side of these very tough times if we continue the constant unconscious, mindless discord detailing the “winter of our discontent.” If that were going to do something to help us all heal, it would have already done so. I wonder if we could possibly expand how we interact with each other to include things that nurture us through these times - homemade soup, warm blankets, silly TV, drawing, poetry, planting, building, walks in nature, cups of tea with people, petting dogs…I don’t know, something other than what we have been doing for the past two years. Is it time yet? Can we do that now? Can you please just shut the fuck up?

Twenty-Something - A Tribute To You

 If I have worried about one particular group through these long months of the pandemic, it’s not the elderly as much as it is young adults.  There has been no shortage of conversation about how the pandemic might impact the elderly, the front line workers, those with compromised health, and even children still in grade and high schools, however, in my experience, the impact of the pandemic on young people, people between college age and mid-to-late 20’s, has been dramatically underappreciated.  Instead of beginning to separate from their families, embarking on a stage of self-discovery, of learning skills needed for independence, they often ended up doing the exact opposite. They were drawn back to their families, gave up their apartments, independent living, and dorms to move home. I think, especially in the beginning when the country was closing down, when colleges were actually sending kids home, and we had no idea if there would be enough food or toilet paper, when hospitals where over crowded, the US death toll was skyrocketing, and we had either no information or mis-information, the banning together in family-pods made sense.  It made physical, emotional, and logical sense.  I think parents wanted their unmarried kids home as a way to protect them. And home they came! By the droves! 

What I worry about is that safer-at-home was not without cost to this group and that the cost is largely unrecognized.  And, to be very clear, I am not even proposing that moving home was the wrong thing to do, just that this group moved home and that the impact on them is somewhat invisible.  The covert message is that this group is lucky! They are lucky because they are young, they are, generally speaking, healthy and they have their whole lives ahead of them.  They are lucky because they do not have the financial worries that their parents have and, in many cases, their parents and even grandparents have stepped in to offer them financial support.  The common phrase used is “They have their whole lives ahead of them.”  

Now, just to state the obvious, I know that they have their whole lives ahead of them.  I know that in the grand scheme of things, this pandemic will be the tiniest piece of their lives compared to other stages. Do the math! There are 18 years of childhood, if they are lucky, 60 years of adulthood, 40+ years working, decades of parenting and grandparenting for those who make that choice, as well as many other stages and accomplishments available to them throughout a lifetime.  Let’s say that the average lifespan of someone in this group is a conservative 85 years.  They could live longer, but for the sake of this argument, let’s say living to 85 years of age is a lifetime. Then let’s say, start to finish, the restrictions and necessary altering of lifestyles as a result of the pandemic lasts for two years. That means that the pandemic will be just slightly over 2% of their entire lifetime. Surely a small percent compared to the other stages of life.  But, I am arguing that this 2% is way more impactful than we think.  Even the idea of having their whole lives ahead of them is distinctly the view of someone who does NOT have their whole life ahead of them!  Having your whole life ahead of you is something that is said by those who have perspective. Perspective, however, is a function of having lived at least some amount of life, of having had a variety of experiences, from which lessons have been learned, after enough time has passed such that we can reflect back on those lessons. Young adults do not have any of those things.  How could they? They have loss and confusion and, in some cases, they are even expected to count their blessings and be grateful.  

The problem with the blessing counting business is that the experience of loss is often not made better by the counting of blessings.  Counting blessings, while ignoring the acknowledgement of loss and grief, is a recipe for depression.  Not even one of the young people with whom I work isn’t grateful for their family and all of the support they have received over the past year. Many of them are in awe of the job their parents have done throughout this time.  But that doesn’t change the fact that they themselves have lost so much throughout these many months.  They watched as their dreams, their plans, their greatest expectations  - graduations, celebrations with friends, the cross country move for an exciting job, weddings and wedding showers, baby showers, Christenings, so much of what was important to them - all just vanished in front of their very eyes.  And not having a way to acknowledge and recognize their experience of loss without sounding like they are not grateful, just complicates the loss.  

From where I sit, I might make the case that these young people are actually the unrecognized heroes of the pandemic.  Oh, I don’t mean the ones who were recklessly partying with no regard for safety or the possible impact of their behavior.  That group lost very little.  I am talking about the group of young adults who kept working on their goals in spite of restrictions and prohibitions.  I’m talking about those who graduated from college and watched their name be called on TV, instead of having the chance to walk across the stage and receive their diploma. Those who didn’t have all those pictures taken with their friends in caps and gowns, and who traded their graduation celebrations and parties for cars driving by to beep at them or for zoom calls.  I’m talking about those who moved back home in order to finish the school year,  and then, because there was nothing else to do, did summer classes instead of finding a job or sharing a house down the shore with friends. I’m talking about those who moved home because they could hear the panic in their parents’ voices, and because their parents believed that being close to home offered them protection from the CoronaVirus. 

Week after week, I met with so many of these young adults by Zoom and they talked about what this time was like for them.  They talked about what it was like to jump into new jobs and careers without the benefit of having an office to go to, or being assigned a mentor to help them learn the ins and outs of the company.  Some jumped in and took over family businesses because they were at less risk than older family members.  They got elevated to a degree of responsibility that in any other set of circumstances would have required weeks of interviewing for the best candidate. Some took on the family obligations of their grandparents because their parents couldn’t do all the necessary tasks to manage multi-generational needs. They took over cooking or running errands or cleaning or school work with younger siblings.  They joined their parents and grandparents on daily walks, instead of going out clubbing with their friends.  They were huge contributors to making life happen for their families and communities, even though they had no experience with what they were being asked to do, and even though that is not what they would normally be doing in their lives. It was like the Universe pushed a great big pause button on their life and then, instead of continuing with the previously scheduled show, the Universe changed networks.  Kind of like we WERE watching a weekly scheduled sit-com, but then suddenly we were watching Naked and Afraid. 

Of course, everyone had to make sacrifices and everyone was inconvenienced during this time. There is enough loss to go around, but what I am pointing to here is the invisibility of this group and the disregard for what they lost and what they contributed.  They did all those things without much recognition that their generation was not immune to the impact of the pandemic. They gave up a lot of dreams for their own lives and, like everyone else, they, too, are not getting that time back.  They are not going to get back the chance to walk across the stage with their class, or to plan to come home, or to volunteer to help with their family of their own accord. When this is all said and done, I think they will find themselves in the unique position of being that much older, but not that much further along in their lives.  They will still have to separate from their families and develop independent living skills.  The pandemic launched them onto a path without much care about whether or not they wanted to be on that path.  They will now have to decide if their current situation was always temporary and what decisions are now available to them.  I wonder if they will feel like they have the freedom to make radical decisions or if they will feel that they lost that time.   And it isn’t like I have a solution to this situation. I am not proposing we throw them a party, or a parade or that they get their own federal holiday or anything like that.  In fact, at the end of the day, this is really just my own musing based on my experience with young adults!  But, at least from my little corner of the globe, I wanted to acknowledge these amazing and selfless young adults and to offer my sincerest thanks - on behalf of those of us who have lived long enough to have perspective! 

Making A Difference in the Life of a Child

When I count my blessings, among the top of the list is that I have always had work that I love. For 30 years, no matter what number of things I have done, I have been surrounded by young people.  And, I have got to say, working with teens and young 20-somethings is about the best gig you can get at my age. They live in a world that would be completely foreign to me if they were not as generous as they are about providing a window for me to look through each week. Not that long ago, I was in the company of people discussing Medicare supplemental packages about which I know exactly nothing. I know that there ARE these add-on insurance riders, but, other than that, I have no idea if they are the kind of thing everyone should have, some people should have, or even how one goes about figuring out if one needs a medicare rider. At one point, someone looked at me and observed how confused I looked.  The person wondered if I was lost because I wasn’t yet eligible for Medicare, which was a fair query. I admitted that I was, indeed, lost in the conversation of Medicare, that I wasn’t old enough for Medicare and I didn’t even know at what age one IS old enough for Medicare, BUT, I could take a picture of myself as a rainbow unicorn and send it via Snapchat! Also, I totally know that the eggplant and peach icons have dual (read not always appropriate) meanings and that having a “hot girl summer” is on the rise after the restrictions of summer 2020. I know that if you piss-off the right computer savvy person, you can be doxed and, last but not least, I can forward you the locations of all of the best marijuana dispensaries between Boston and South Jersey. As I said, I love my work.

I will admit that one of the perks of working with young people is that I am a neutral third party to any circumstance of their lives.  I am not the parent or the teacher, I am not the boss, the grumpy co-worker, the disgruntled lover, or any other participant, and because I am not any of those people, I have more freedom to challenge their thinking. Don’t get me wrong, the freedom to challenge their thinking does not come free.  I pay for that freedom with respect and humility.  I go into the relationship with the assumption that the kid’s point of view is valid and it makes perfect sense, even though that is not always evident at the outset.  It costs me a lot of time and energy to get into their world. I listen to everything they tell me and I ask questions until I am 100% sure that I completely understand the situation as they see it. And, then, once I am sure that THEY know that I am in their corner, that they’ve got my support, I ask them if they want my opinion.  It is such a huge gift when a young person is actually interested in what you think. I think a lot of times, older people get dismissed not because they are old but because the younger person is not clear that the older person is actually in the young person’s world.  Or they get dismissed because the young person has to give so much background information that it becomes too bulky to even get to the give-an-opinion-part of the conversation.  Or the older person is going to say something that the younger person doesn’t want to hear, which is pretty often exactly what I end up doing.  Long ago a mentor of mine taught me the art of saying something contrary and it is something like - Caveat, Caveat, Caveat, Disclaimer, Disclaimer, Disclaimer, BUT [insert contrary view here].  Said another way, “Well, listen, I am not your age and I am not in your situation, and I can imagine how frustrating this all must be for sure. And, I could be wrong, goodness knows you probably have twice the IQ points I have, but, have you ever considered that your mother might actually have a point?” 

Now, truth be told, my favorite part of this dance is not the part where they want my opinion, although I do love to give an opinion, but all the fascinating information you get along the way.  When a young person tells you what is going on in their life, what and how they think, all the gory details, they are really inviting you to join them in their world.  Take, for instance, the TikTok app! Not all that long ago, TikTok was really geared towards young people and was focused on short sound bytes of mostly lip syncing and dancing. These days people of all ages are on TikTok and you can find all kinds of topics, how-to’s, crafts, and so forth.  But in the beginning, it really was mostly young tweens and teens. Kids in middle and early high school would come into my office and show me posts of their scantily dressed friends lip syncing and dancing around their rooms.  The young lady who introduced me to TikTok talked me into downloading the app and, by the end of the evening, I was completely hooked. I texted her to say that I couldn’t believe how much fun it was to watch the videos and that I had been on the app for the better part of two hours! She said that was the POINT of TikTok - the dancing and watching for hours and that she was happy that I now get why she and her friends are on TikTok all night. 

Before the legalization of marijuana in New Jersey, I was shocked at how easy it was to get a medical marijuana card! I have to know at least a dozen over 18 year-olds who applied for and received a state issued card.  Holy smoke! (pun intended) The whirlwind of information about the contemporary world of weed took no small amount of effort to learn, but I think I have a handle on it now.  In the beginning when someone would tell me about a sesh (short for session and meaning the time when they were smoking weed), I had to pay really close attention.  I learned all about different strains of weed, also known as herb, bud, dank, reefer, chronic, ganja or flower, which was sold in specific quantities such as a sack, gram, a half-eighth, eighth, quarter, half, zip, or quap.  The THC delivery method could be dabs, solvents, resin, concentrates,  or globs and they were consumed by way of a joint, blunt, bowl, chillin, batties, rigs or torch nail. Phew!! Talk about living in an unfamiliar universe!!! And, this is all leaving aside the topic of edibles and how people are really only supposed to consume something like 5mg but they typically just pop the whole thing in their mouth thus consuming twice the amount they intend.  We are a long way from the 60’s and 70’s where there was weed and hash smoked in a joint or a pipe.  

I also love that I speak various dialects of teen: privilege, street, city, country, anxious, struggling, depressed, to name a few of the more popular ones.  You have to be able to hear what a kid is saying because, at first pass, you could mistake I-love-you or you-are-important-to-me with I-think-you-are-an-idiot or I-have-no-respect-for-you. A few years back, I was seeing a young teen in Princeton. She was a freshman, a very white kid who came from a pretty privileged background, who attended one of the nicer private schools in the area.  She was an athlete, did really well academically, and was zero trouble at school.  After school, however,  she hung around with one of the local hispanic cliques. They were not a group that was particularly up to trouble, they weren’t into dealing drugs or any even minor adolescent criminal activity, but suffice to say that none of the rest of them shared the same background as my kid.  Her most frequent attire was her boyfriend’s sweatpants rolled down to just above the bikini line, which meant the bottoms were tattered because they dragged on the ground and she walked on them. She also wore one of his hoodies that looked like it might have been passed down from an older sibling or two before it got to him, and before he gave it to her. It just so happens that I had dropped my iphone and the screen was cracked on the very top edge. Just a tiny little crack. She sauntered in and saw the phone sitting on my desk with my wired headphones and stopped dead in her tracks. 

“Is that really your fucking phone?” 

“Of course it is my phone!” 

“First of all, that is an iPhone 6, which is so fucking out of date that I can’t even believe it still works!!!  Second of all, you can NOT be running around Princeton with wired headphones on that crappy 6! You know people see you, right?”

“People SEE me? What does that mean?” 

“People!!! People!!! You are a grown ass professional with an office in Princeton!!! You can’t be walking around with a cracked iPhone 6 with wired headphones and expect other professionals to respect you!!! They would take one look at you and know you are a total loser!!!” 

I burst right out laughing! I loved this kid so much! I swear! I assured her that I was getting a new phone anyway and that I would order it by the next time I saw her.  

The next session she walks into the office and sees the 6 still on the desk, stops dead in her tracks, looks at the phone, then at me, and says  “What happened?”

“I have the new phone! I didn’t set it up, but I have it.”

“You have it with you?”

“Yes, I just didn’t get it set up.” 

“Good!” she said. “Give it to me!!! We’ll just set it up right now while we are talking!! I don’t know what you would do without me!”

So there we sat, talking about the risks of sexting while we backed up the six and charged up the new phone.  What worked about that entire situation is that we both had something to offer the other because of our own unique experiences in life. I had no idea that my iphone 6 was antiquated, nor is that something about which I would actually have cared EXCEPT when I took her opinion as a valid position, she felt respected and important and that she could contribute to my life.  Of course, I then leveraged that against the dangers of sexting. Eventually she had to admit that I had been around more than a couple of blocks, and had worked with a number of teens, families, schools, and law enforcement and that the exchange of naked selfies has the potential to be a disaster.  And she knew that, even if she was right and I was wrong, and that the selfies never did come back to bite her, that my opinion had to be considered because I obviously loved and respected her. 

When a kid lets you into their world, it’s a gift.  Kids so often feel unacknowledged pressures, frequently self-imposed and even more frequently unspoken, their response to which is that they can become so secretive.   And I am not even sure they mean to be secretive! Somehow, they learn to anticipate responses and to act according to the anticipated response.  The result of this can be that they cut out their parents and teachers and maneuver through life unguided or guided by emotions, peers, the thoughts in their head and other contemporary influences. When an adult gets invited into a kid’s world, you are being granted a kind of Grace and, if they will let you, you can help them see themselves so that they can make different choices. It’s different from telling them about their behavior and suggesting a different choice. It’s more, as one kid says of my style, “question-y”.  And, to be clear, I am most frequently saying pretty much exactly what a kid's parents and teachers are saying. It isn’t like I am brilliant or smarter than anyone else in their life, but I am certainly less attached. 

I got a text the other day from a really shy and introverted kid whose parents want her to choose which colleges she wants to look at between now and when she graduates.  This is a kid who has dreamed of going to college, of getting out of the house, who believes that a lot of the anxiety she experiences are a result of her “over involved parents”, her “jerky brothers” and the “stupid school” she attends. I am on record with her that 1) her parents get involved because she often drags them into her life and that she has trained them to interact with her the way they do, 2) her jerky brothers are pretty much the same flavor as most younger siblings and 3) her stupid school is a place where she had done extremely well, where she has played three sports, lettered as a sophomore and where she has made solid connections.  So we have a dance that we do where I agree that her assessment is mostly correct, but then I point out the obvious.  In this case the obvious is that this kid hates making a decision, that having to make a decision often comes with a lot of emotionality, with outbursts, withdrawing, tears, and total digging-in, but then ends with her “over involved parents” stepping in and “forcing” her to do something which she then either enjoys, agrees with, succeeds at or otherwise is grateful to have done.  As you can imagine, this pattern is really frustrating to her parents who have the very understandable question of how on earth this kid is going to make a decision when she is away at college. They worry about how she will get along with her roommates and if they will get distress calls in the middle of the night.  

The other day she sent me a text saying that her parents are planning a trip to look at colleges and that she cannot believe that they are going to ruin the end of her summer by forcing her to go with them. 

“My parents suck! They are making me go on a 12 hour road trip to look at some stupid colleges that I don’t even care about.” 

“Well that does suck! I hate road trips. Can you fly?” 

“No.” 

“Bummer.  Should you go to school locally?” 

“Hell no!!!! I am outta here the minute I graduate.” 

“Not likely.” 

“??????”

“Well, it seems to me that you only do things when push comes to shove or when you are forced to do them, and then when you do them, you are glad you did and you end up being a rock star, no?”

“I guess.” 

“Well, if that is your pattern, and if you are either committed to that pattern OR it is the only way you can make a decision, what should they do? They might be as clueless as you are about colleges.” 

“I guess.” 

“Can you still choose which colleges to look at?” 

“I guess.” 

“Do you want a vote on which colleges to visit? You have said over and over that your parents really know you and they make good decisions. You can let them decide.” 

“No.”

“No what?” 

“No, I don't want them to decide.” 

“Would you be willing to let them decide which ones to look at and you get the veto power? It’s hard for you to make a decision, so you let them choose the colleges, but if you don’t like any of them, you veto those. THEN, if you find a college you do want to see, you can ask them to add it. It’s the best of both worlds - you don't have the pressure of deciding, but you do have the power to veto, which is a safe way of choosing.”

“True.”

“And, PS, I hate to break it to you, but you have been making more and more decisions along the way these past few months. You might be the only kid I know for whom being isolated during the pandemic actually worked!  Before the pandemic, you really made no decisions at all. I feel like during the pandemic you got so sick and tired of being home all the time, that you almost had a little internal rebellion and now you are making decisions.  Little ones, but ones you wouldn’t have made before.” 

“???”

“According to my texts, you decided to attend a graduation party instead of going to your grandparents house, yes?” 

“Yes”

“And to do that, you had to drive, something you hate to do, yes?” 

“Yes.” 

“And then you had to get a gift, which involved making a decision, and then drove yourself to the party in the family “jalopy” as you call it, you had to drive to an unfamiliar town, all by yourself, no friends going with you and you did it!  You went, by yourself, gift in hand, all while the rest of the clan went to your grandparents’ house.” 

“True.” 

“The defense rests.” 

“Ok.” 

“Ok what?” 

“Ok I will tell them I want veto power.”

“Good. And, PS, they are not asking you to decide anything! They are taking you to LOOK!” 

“True.” 

What happened in that exchange is Grace. Oh, it was logic and facts and all of that, but what really made the difference is the Grace that the kid granted me, so I could point to her own behavior.  It is such a feeling, such a space of privilege to be granted trust by someone who is standing at the threshold of their entire future. I sometimes worry that these past few years have left me cynical and jaded, until I find myself thinking that the biggest contribution any of us can make to the future of humanity is to make a difference in the life of a child. 

Meeting Expectations

I am an avid Podcaster fan. I find listening to podcasts a really good way to start the day, transition from one thing to another, power down at the end of the day, or make a morning’s worth of errands more pleasant. These days I am listening to The Happier Podcast by the dynamic sister combo Gretchen Rubin and Elizabeth Craft specifically,   Gretchen Rubin is a writer who studies happiness and human nature, and her sister and podcast partner, Elizabeth Craft, is a writer and producer in Hollywood. The back and forth between these two is really easy listening, entertaining and in many areas of life they offer valuable tips and tricks that make life easier. 

While the podcast covers so many areas of life, I really love Gretchen’s work around personality types which she calls The Four Tendencies. This is pretty different from other personality categories I have seen like Meyers-Briggs, Caliper, Enneagram, etc., although it does not exclude the value of any of those. The Four Tendencies (and emphasis on tendencies, not hard core behavioral traits rigidly applied to personalities across the board) are The Obliger, The Questioner, The Upholder and The Rebel. These tendencies answer the question “how do I respond to expectations?” and your personal tendency can be determined by taking a fairly simple quiz. Ruben freely admits that nothing, including The Four Tendencies, is “the perfect one-size-fits-all” answer, but I have to say that I do think that her research provides a valuable way to look at relationships.   

According to the research the largest category is The Obliger.  An Obliger is someone who meets both inner and outer expectations through outward accountability. Left to their own devices, an Obliger will be sure everyone else’s needs are met before they meet their own and they are typically only going to meet their own needs if they are held accountable by someone or something outside of their own thought process. Generally speaking, people love Obligers. They are easy to be with, get a lot done, are great employees and bosses and, at least according to Rubin, they can be trusted to really get the job done - as long as the “job” isn’t self care. 

I am a classic obliger! People pretty frequently tell me how they admire how disciplined I am, or how much I can get done, or how organized I am, and I hasten to assure them that all of what they notice about me is because I have some accountability system in place. My actual real nature is to sit in front of the TV and watch the same bad shows over and over until I get hungry enough to go get a bag of crackers and some dip. On the odd day, I would get up and make some really healthy meal which I would then eat in front of the TV. That is my actual nature. But, since I know that about myself, and since I know that watching bad TV and eating junk food is not, sadly, the way to happiness and success, I have mastered some accountability system for every area of life that is important to me. 

The next largest Tendency is The Questioner.  Questioners resist outer expectations but meet inner expectations.  Anytime I have a conversation with someone who seems to be going over the same thing repeatedly, I know I am in the presence of a Questioner. The classic overthinker is likely to be a Questioner, and while, at times, the circular thinking can drive me crazy, I have to admit that Questioners often think of things I would never have considered, and I have grown a lot from knowing Questioners. They are most likely to have the answer to the question “Does this make sense?” They are like the Sherlock Holmes of day to day life, looking under every leaf for the mite and the mighty!  If I am looking to make a complicated decision, I find my favorite Questioner to help. 

I have a client who is a Questioner and she recently moved from a home built in the 60’s that she and her husband renovated and customized over the 20-something years they lived there to a new modular home. While one would think that the new construction should be more weather proofed than an older home, my client felt like her new home was drafty and cold. She began her inquiry where most new home owners would, with the staff on site. They assured her that the home was adequately insulated and showed her the insulation plans. Of course, showing my client the plans just gave her more specific questions which the sales rep had no ability to answer. The sales rep finally brought in the head of the construction who agreed to do a second walk through of the unit. Clipboard in hand, my client walked the builder through the unit pointing to this and that until, finally, upon closer investigation, the builder found that they had, indeed, missed insulating around several window areas.  It isn’t that my client was trying to be difficult, which I think might have been what the sale rep thought in the beginning, but rather she was in search of the answer to the question “How does it make sense that my new house is draftier than my previous house? How is it that the new windows let in a draft that the older 1960’s windows did not?” 

The next largest Tendency is the Upholder and they easily meet both outer and inner expectations.  Upholders are your rule followers and I have a love-hate relationship with this group. Sometimes, they can be the hardest group for me and, at the same time, as an Obliger, it is sometimes good for me to have my feet held to the fire. Personally, while I do love a good rule, and I do generally follow rules, I am also pretty quick to decide that a particular rule doesn’t apply to me. Upholders love the rules, they are comforted by the rules, and they need exactly no one to meet their expectations because they are self-motivated to do so. My husband and one of our children are Upholders and, while I admire the way they are able to approach certain areas of life, I have to also say that they can be a tad on the ridgid side for me. Hubs, for instance, buys his coffee on Tuesdays because Tuesday is double stamp day at the coffee place and he likes double stamps. He also likes a Dark Columbian bean ground on the “Turkish” setting. He buys two pounds at a time and is very specific about the entire coffee buying ritual. One time, I offered to do the coffee buying errand for him and he was extremely reluctant to take me up on this. Being lighter hearted and more whimsical in nature than he is, I decided to tease him by questioning his reluctance.  Did he think I couldn’t actually do the errand? Did he didn’t think I wasn’t smart enough to buy coffee? Perhaps he was too controlling to “allow” his wife to buy the coffee?  I was on a roll on and on questioning him until, eventually, he handed over the card and off I went. Turns out, while I did a whole boatload of errands that day, I forgot to get that doggone coffee! So, the next day, I go tearing into the coffee place and I tell the young woman behind the counter the whole story, except I cannot remember exactly if it is Dark Columbian or Dark Something else. And I THINK it is “Turkish” ground but I am not sure, but that my husband comes in every Tuesday and that he is never going to let me live down that I didn’t get the coffee on dumb-double-stamp Tuesday. She laughed and said she knew exactly who my husband was, that it is Dark Columbian, it is “Turkish” ground, that he comes in at 4:45 every other Tuesday like clockwork and that she would double stamp my card to cover the mishap. THIS is the life of an Upholder! The coffee buying rule is that you go every other Tuesday, get the same coffee, the same grind, the same double stamp. It took a pandemic to break that habit, despite the fact that we had two years earlier moved from the neighborhood where the coffee shop was located! 

The final Tendency is The Rebel.  Rebels resist both inner and outer expectations and will accomplish anything at all if and only if they want to do it in the first place. They are highly uncoachable, in my experience, and helpful suggestions or coaching either land flat or are rejected out of hand. I worked with a Rebel once and no matter what the clinical goal was, she would not meet any goal that was suggested to her by me, parents, teachers, or other professionals unless she felt like the idea was something she wanted independent of any other person, criteria or procedure.  So, when she returned back to college for the fourth time, I initiated a conversation about what she would do if she encountered any of the previous injustices that had her withdraw.  She declined the conversation saying that she could handle it this time - it was a different college, she was a different person, she had grown a lot in the past year.  No matter how I approached the topic - her goals, drawbacks of dealing with colleges in general, typical issues between the bursar's office and admissions, deadlines, roommates, and so forth, she had an answer and the answer was mostly that I should butt out. By contrast, if she ASKED me for something, a suggestion, advice, an opinion, it was a completely different game. I had her full attention. My experience of being with Rebels has shown me that they do not deal in reality and they ignore facts. Of course, this is not true. What is true is that they are ignoring other people’s input, expectations, and requirements. Heck, Rebels will even ignore their OWN ideas of what is good for them if they feel like the idea is too agreed upon in general.  For example, a Rebel is the kind of person who will not stop smoking because it is good for their health but, instead, say that they are not going to let the US Government or the CDC or those research nerds dictate what they do to relax.  On the other hand, If THEY come up with an observation of reality that aligns with their wants or needs or THEY research the facts and they decide the facts work for them, they can be totally on board. The most frequent phrase I utter to Rebels is “I don’t know. You tell me,” to which they often reply, “Why should I tell you if you don’t know?”  

What I like about thinking about the people in my life and their possible tendencies is that I feel like knowing the strengths and weaknesses of the tendencies gives me a map to the intersection of my tendency and their tendency and that map helps me predict what I will need and what they will need so that we can enjoy what we love about each other and not have to spend time working through communication.  We’re having a party in a couple of weeks and I knew I would need some help and decided to ask my Upholder daughter if she could help me accomplish some tasks, make some food, do some general prep for the gala event.  Here’s how it went -

I sent a text saying “Hey! Do you have any time to help me get some stuff done for the party next week?” how to interact in a way that works for everyone. 

She responded, “Yes, I can do that. I need a day and time and what errands you want to get done so that I can plan that in my week.” 

I wrote, “Why don’t you tell me what works for you because I can probably work around your schedule.” 

Her response, “I can do Monday, Tuesday and Thursday during the day while the kids are at camp. I can do Tuesday evening when we are scheduled to get together anyway, if you want to do that. I can do Wednesday evening, but I would have to bring the kids. I also have two hours on Friday afternoon.” 

Classic text between us! When I asked the question, I had zero idea when I wanted to do these errands. Heck! I have zero idea of what errands I even need to get done. Even now, less than a week to go, I still don't have a list of what I want to get done, but rather a general idea of what we might need.  And, my list will start with flowers, helium balloons and games to play, when what we are going to really need to know is who is bringing what to eat, will there even be enough food and do we have insurance for the rental property.  But, thank God for the Upholders in my life, for their “rigidity”, for their commitment to the rules, and the structure they bring. It’s a joint effort that will ensure that the event is festive, that there are mason jars with flowers, that there are balloons, games, music AND food, drinks and people showing up on the right day at the right time!   

What I Was Doing When I Should Have Been Blogging

A year ago, I used to write routinely. Most days I would wake up, grab a cup of coffee, sit down at my computer and write for about an hour or so.  If you would have asked me back then, I would have said that writing was an essential part of my daily routine.  And then, just like that, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I am not sure if it was the isolation of the pandemic, if it was not being able to see my family and friends, if it was the falling out that I wrote about in my last blog, the constant and relentless news coverage showing the killing of George Floyd , or if it was the impact of all of those things, but I found that at some point in 2020, putting one foot in front of the other was all I could do – nothing more, nothing less. At some point, I realized that the last time I felt this fogged in was when I lost a child and was left paralyzed by a deep sense of loss and grief.  So, I did the only thing I could think of to do. I took an inventory of all the areas of my life that were important to me and cut out anything that didn’t work. I kept only the things that fed my spirit.  

I have spent the past year creating art and sending cards. I am pretty sure I spend as much in cards and postage as some people spend eating out. Turns out that, when you do not leave the house, and you have even the smallest ability to be creative, suddenly everything looks like it could be something else! I have an Ethan Allen catalog that I have used to send love messages.  I have created photo cards to send and I can draw Penelope, the dinosaur from the book We Do Not Eat Our Classmates.  Somehow I am the proud owner of tiny little bottles so I fill them with glitter and send them to people. I am a huge Flying Edna fan and I don’t want to tally up what I have spent buying cards and gifts from them in the past year.  If you have not seen their website, you must promise me you will go there as soon as you are done reading this. They write from the heart and their messages remind me that we have more in common than we sometimes think. The same is true of Em and Friends, another card company, that creates a much more whimsical line of cards incorporating humor, sarcasm and real-life experiences. Sending cards has kept me connected when I didn’t have the mental energy to pick up the phone and talk. 

And then there are my grandchildren! Man, oh, man! If you want to play the role of the hero in your own life, grandchildren are where it is at!!  As a parent, I remember being continuously concerned with the children’s safety, with finances, with getting dinner on the table, with getting some kid to some game, while getting some other kid to some other game, college costs and a whole host of other parental fatigue.  Somehow, those decades were simultaneously the best years, where I felt fully alive and excited about life and, in other ways, those years are a huge blur. Parenting created a chronic level of physical and emotional exhaustion that seemed like it would never end, but was then suddenly gone. Grandparenting, however, is an entirely different world. It is a state of perpetual grace that is granted by the space between generations. You know, minus the real-life concerns of parenting, I have all the energy in the world to do the important things in life. My perspective has changed in ways I could never have predicted.  For instance, as a parent, I threw the empty cardboard rolls of toilet paper away. I saw them as garbage. NOW, I know that empty toilet paper rolls are actually what you use to make things like super heroes, villains, unicorns, princesses and pretty much anything else you can imagine. I keep a variety of adhesives in the house because glue itself is not fitting for all projects. My closets are filled with art supplies, science projects, soft-fluffy pillows and little notes with “I love you” written in preschool handwriting! 

I have also read a record number of books, listened to more podcasts than I can count, and have watched more mindless TV than is good for anyone. Almost none of the above were action-filled or intense in any way because I didn’t have the emotional strength to tolerate suspenseful story lines or shoot-‘em-up scenes where people were being massacred. It seemed like everywhere I turned, the message was what is wrong, what is going on in the world, why the Democrats are right (or wrong) and why the Republicans are right (or wrong), what’s wrong (or right) with the vaccine and everything in between. At some point, I said no. A real hard-stop NO! I declined conversations that focused on the negative, that were the same topic over and over, stopped watching the news, filtered my social media accounts and put the whole world on alert! If you are not up to something, if you are not creating something, if all you want to do is to complain about your life or life itself, no thank you. My cousin-the-sage says, “When you talk to someone, you think about how you feel afterwards and how you feel afterwards will tell you who is worth having in your life.” I’m telling you, truer words were never spoken.  

Sadly, I said good-bye to a lot in 2020. There are people who were very important to me that I no longer see or hear from, or I see and hear from them very infrequently. It isn’t like there is a “something happened” but more like something that stopped happening.  There were things I did regularly, attending a gym to workout, regular shopping trips to HomeGoods, keeping a regular schedule of activities, that went right out the window. My fancy office that I loved, gone! I didn’t renew the lease and, so far, I have no plans to sublet an office in Princeton where I have practiced for the better part of twenty years.  My twice a week stops at Whole Earth, Ace Hardware, Tuesday Morning, all places that I loved wandering through are all also gone. Poof! Just like that! No longer important to me. I wish no ill will to anyone, I hold no resentments towards any of my previous life and some of it I almost miss, but certainly not enough to do something about it. These days I get up without an alarm, have coffee with Hubs, work, create, walk, listen to books, hang with the kids, visit with life-long friends and cherished family members and then, rinse and repeat.  One of the things I love most about my tiny pod of people is the kindred spirit of experience and compassion. There is nothing any of us can actually do for the other, but we show up with a reserve of empathy, understanding, flowers and herbs picked from our gardens, movie and book suggestions, crisp white wine served in imported crystal heirloom glasses paired with herbed brie on thin slices of French baguette.  As I said, it doesn’t change anything, but their steady presence sure does help with the courage to accept the things I cannot change.

So, here I am firmly planted in 2021. And, in the spirit of full disclosure, 2021 has not been a walk in the park either.  In fact, in many ways, for me personally, 2021 has brought with it far more personal change and loss. Even though I miss pieces of my previous life, I can now see that the time I took to rejuvenate and restore my spirit has helped me build a much-needed muscle to, as the saying goes, rise up from the ashes.  I am much more comfortable with sadness than I once was, and I’m okay with what Hubs calls a little early morning emotional instability. Turns out, sometimes a little time to cry is also good for the soul. I find comfort in the garden where I pick flowers to arrange in Mason jars and place around my house, or cutting herbs for homemade pesto, or cleaning out a closet, or, geek that I am, listening to a podcast about the latest brain science research.  This is me in 2021! Alive and well, a little worse for wear, counting my blessings, finding joy in the day-to-day routine of life. And, overall, if you were to ask, I would say I am among the luckiest people I know.

Love Trumps Hate

“How dare you!!! How dare you make me the subject of your personal blog?!” This from a friend I did NOT write about on my blog. She was referring to a piece I wrote recently called Hate Wins. The piece is about a particularly upsetting experience that Hubs and I had on a call with two other couples. The blog outlines the back-and-forth exchange between myself and one other person on the call; however, I took great care not to mention anyone by name nor did I reveal any identifying information. The title “Hate Wins” drew more attention than my typical blogs. The person now calling me was not so much as a reference in the blog.

“How dare I what? How dare I write about my experience on my blog? I think that is the purpose of blogs, no? Besides, if you read the blog, you know that no one is identified and that I hold myself equally accountable for what happened.” 

“No!” she shot back, “That call was supposed to be a safe space for close friends to come together and share! I don’t want to be the subject of your blog. You don’t realize what you’ve done! Words are powerful! There is nothing you can do to make this okay! I feel violated! I want you to never, ever write about me on your blog and, do yourself a favor, never contact me again either!” 

Click. She hung up. 

Man, oh, man! I cannot remember the last time I had a week that was quite this shitty. I know that, these days in particular, we are all a little more sensitive; I know that our reactions reflect our own demons, our own insecurities, that mostly these over-the-top responses are not personal, but this feels pretty darn personal to me! I kept thinking to myself, Wait, I am a writer. I write. I have a blog. And I totally protected everyone’s identities. And, as Anne Lamott says, “You own everything that happened to you. You tell your story. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” 

The cause of this whole upset is that I requested a call entitled “Happy Hour” include more of the participants’ day to day lives, topics that give us a break from the hard and harsh news stories about the pandemic, politics, racism, protests and rioting. One of the members wrote back to say that she declined the request, that she and her partner are committed to peace, that they did not want to be on a call with people who didn’t want to talk about the important issues that are impacting them and our country. I both called and emailed her to explain that I am completely willing to have a call about the important issues; however, let’s have the topic of the call reflect that agenda. Let’s not pretend to be celebrating Cinco de Mayo or birthdays when the real agenda is current events. Her response was further criticism and a refusal to be to speak to me. It ended by her telling me to not reply back to her on this topic. The shock of this response aside, I also felt shamed and muzzled. 

And, I have to tell you, I do not feel like my request for a Happy Hour call is all that outrageous as far as requests go. I mean, especially against the backdrop of the Black Lives Matter protests. I kept thinking, jeeze-oh-man, if making a request that a call among friends have a less dreary agenda results in this level of push back and silencing, the Black Lives Matter movement is doomed. How do we, as a society, as people who need to co-exist on the planet Earth, possibly negotiate the current political and racial divide when six well educated white people who have been friends for years can’t make room for their own differing opinions? And, as much as I wanted to wallow in my own self-pitying sandbox, there was some piece of my consciousness that kept reminding me what the Black Community is experiencing. I kept thinking of mothers whose black children had been killed, or the black men and women who’d been killed just because they were black. Cries that Black Lives Matter are so frequently met with ALL lives matter or criticism for protesting. And, while I am in no way saying that my experience is similar to that of the black community, these thoughts kept circling over and over in my head and were just so daunting. I couldn’t quite find my footing in this whole thing. 

Then a miracle happened. It came in the form of a text from a kid who I knew years and years ago and this is what it said-

         Hey mama bear💗💐

“I read your blog post and I just really wanted to reach out and validate your feelings. You have done everything right. You are beautiful. You are kind. You are wonderful. I love you. You are more than allowed to step away and take a break from everything going on globally to just enjoy a happy hour or whatever your heart desires AND you don’t even need to create a call to action meeting (unless you WANT to). You’re already a hero to so many.  Allow yourself to grieve the feeling of a loss of a friend and realize that real loving friends hear and consider your needs and don’t use them against you. Don’t let this bad apple deter you from saying what you need or feel EVER to ANYONE! 

If you ever want to FaceTime and have a happy hour just chatting about fun things we did this week, my line is always open ❤️💗🌻💐

Be gentle with yourself and go at your own pace. I’ve always seen all that you do and I’ll always advocate in return for you. Hopefully this help you take a deep breath, relax your jaw muscles and heal from everything you need healing from. I love you so much!!!!”

 I burst into tears. Right there at the dinner table. Hubs, who has also been impacted by the reaction of our now former friends, who is also upset about the current political and racial climate, has been exceedingly concerned that anything either of us says or does might turn into an indictment. Hubs placed a plate in front of me and looked blankly at me for a moment. 

“Now what?” 

“Oh my God! You will not believe the text I just got from Sunny!” 

 “You pissed off Sunny?”

“No, no, no. I didn’t piss off Sunny. She read Hate Wins and sent me this text. “Here”, I said, handing him the phone, “read it.”

 And right there in that moment, I felt my energy returning. I felt my conviction surfacing back, my footing more secure, all from this one text. This kid! This kid, who graduated from the high school that I worked at for years, reached out because she knows who I am. This kid, really this amazing young woman because it has now been years since she was a high school student, was adopted and raised by white parents in a predominately non-black community. She was never in one group in high school, but straddled many groups because she had so many facets to her. This was not some suburban kid who reached out to send me hearts and flowers. This kid knows what it is like to be on the outside not knowing what to do to get inside the circle. 

 A couple of years ago, Sunny and her boyfriend were walking down the street in New York when her boyfriend was jumped by an undercover police officer. The police officer thought they were part of a group of kids who were spray painting graffiti on the sides of buildings. In fact, they were on their way to a restaurant to have dinner to celebrate the end of the fall semester of college, and the completion of Sunny’s independent research project. Not knowing their assailant was an undercover police officer, Sunny pepper sprayed him. Both she and her boyfriend were arrested for assaulting a police officer. She spent the night in jail, and her family had to hire an attorney to get her out.  This incident cost her a job that she was supposed to start within a couple of weeks, not to mention the thousands of dollars it cost her family in legal fees. The prosecutor offered a community service plea agreement, but Sunny refused saying that she wanted her day in court. We all feared that Sunny would end up in jail instead of the dorm room she was planning on returning to in the fall. But not Sunny! She insisted on her day in court. It turns out that the judge threw the case out! I thought back on this incident and just loved that this young woman, who could have looked at Hate Wins through any number of lenses – black versus white, liberal versus conservative, young versus old – chose to look through the lens of how important human connection is. She read my post, got how upset and hurt I was, and reached out to offer support. 

Through my tears I texted back and tried to express the miraculous impact of her text. I told Sunny how alone I had been feeling and how, in one week, I felt like I had pissed off white people, black people, and gay people, and that I was just waiting for my Asian and Latina friends to join the Let’s Hate Donna Parade. And then she wrote back and said this-

💗” Remember, hate will never win baby. Never has, never will! The most beautiful thing about the fact that hate will never win is that so many of us are in this together against hatred, that you can take a break and come back *when you’re ready*. If you’re not ready tomorrow or even until next week- don’t worry we got this and your back covered. Don’t rush it. When your intentions are pure, you don’t lose anyone. They lose you. I love you with all my heart as well. “

The Universe has sent me many miracles over the years, but this one, I have to say, was really well played! This one goes down as one of the all-time best miracles ever. I knew immediately that I would have to write about this whole thing because I can see now that Hate really is NEVER going to win. Hate may be having its day in the sun now and again, but it isn’t really going to win. 

I called my friend Melissa to tell her the story. She had been tracking my blog articles and had been getting day-to-day updates of what was going on with this group of people, how impacted I felt at the lashing out, how I kept reviewing my own behavior over and over and coming up short on all ends. It was so cathartic to be able to call with some good news, to have some piece of my own soul feel like it could take a breath and relax after so many days of stifling heaviness. 

“What are you going to do?” Melissa asked.

“Do?” I was confused.

“Yeah, what are you going to do? Last week, when your other friend had a similar response, you picked up the phone to try to clear the air. Are you going to call this friend back and try to do the same? Are you going to email her? Or are you going to wait and see if she contacts you?”

“Oh, no, I’m not going to call her. I’m going to blog about it!” 

Hate Wins

Every couple of weeks, Hubs and I meet for “Happy Hour” with four long-time friends. Frankly, the hour is not that happy. Mostly, we spend the hour talking about the pandemic, politics, and, more recently racism. This past week I said that I couldn’t take it anymore. I made the request that we do something besides talk about current issues because I am saturated. I spend most of my days helping people process what seems like an unending list of tragedies that we are experiencing both nationally and internationally, as well as equally difficult issues in their personal lives. Needless to say, all of the global issues have done nothing but add to how hard personal issues are. And, just to state the obvious, my own life is not exempt from these topics. Particularly since the murder of George Floyd, I have had to work twice as hard to regulate my mood. I keep reminding myself that the Universe is unfolding exactly as it should, but, in the spirit of full disclosure, I am also in constant conversation with the Universe about the practicality of an advisory committee, made up mainly of me, myself and I. All that to explain why I said that I couldn’t take another “Happy Hour” that left me depressed and feeling worse than before I got on the call. 

This didn’t go over well. Man, oh, man, let me tell you. This didn’t go over well at all. As it turns out, when you request to not talk about the pandemic, politics, and racism, some people feel censored. And, when you challenge people about their self-expression, they get defensive. Predictively, when you rock the boat, people have all kinds of feelings that you might not expect, and, in fact, that people are “happiest” when others agree with what they are saying, when others nod and agree. Who knew? I somehow thought that friends make room for everyone’s opinions and reactions. I somehow thought that friends have space for each other to bump up against diverse opinions. 

 Now, not to be too defensive, but I was actually asked what I was thinking. Prior to being asked, I was sitting quietly, just letting people talk and process. But, somehow, I thought that when I was asked what I was thinking, that I should SAY what I was thinking. I know. I know. It was a rookie mistake. A total how-did-you-not-see-this-coming mistake. Experience, had I called on experience, would have warned me that very frequently, when I speak openly, I do not win over the masses. If I would have just looked anywhere in the past, experience would have reminded me of the no-small-number of people who have made it clear that I am a lot of trouble. And, while I am typically really good at balancing a pretty high degree of frustration with appropriate responses that defuse tense situations, I do know I have a tipping point from which there is no return. And I was clearly past this tipping point. This has gotten me in trouble more times than I can count. I have spent many, many hours of my life in the principal’s office, both as a student and as a professional, dealing with how much trouble I can be, especially when I am advocating for a person or position that someone else doesn’t like. 

 My friend sent me a how-dare-you-suggest-we-don’t-talk-about-politics-racism-pandemic email the next morning. It was in response to my email requesting that we bring something of our lives to the call, that we have “Happy Hour” be, well, happier. The friend who wrote it was pissed and said she wouldn’t be on the call anymore because of my censoring request. She said she couldn’t imagine a call where we didn’t discuss those issues, that those issues are important in all of our lives and that not discussing them doesn’t work for her. She resigned from being on future calls. I can’t even say that I didn’t deserve that response. I was, after all, the author of the first frustrated email and this email was in response to me. 

Now, in case you were thinking things couldn’t get worse in this little saga, let me tell you my next disastrous move.  I answered the email saying that I was very willing to discuss current events. If we want to have a discussion group, a call-to-action meeting, a let’s-educate-ourselves-on-the-topic-of-white-privilege meeting, let’s do THAT. I am very willing to have that kind of call where the topics are difficult and where we bring how we are experiencing these topics to the call, but that is not what I call “Happy Hour.”  THEN, in what I consider an unprecedented act of maturity, I picked up the phone and called her. I thought, well, we’ve known each other for a couple of decades, plus, we are actually not so far from being on the same page. The only real issue, it seems to me, is that we come to the call with different agendas, so, what the heck? I’ll pick up the phone and clear things up. 

Cutting to the chase, my friend didn’t answer the phone, nor did she return the call. The next day, however, she took the time to reprimand me via email. She copied everyone on the email, so it was very public. She said that she understood that I had been unhappy with the calls for months, she and her husband are very protective of their peace and they are unwilling to be on calls with badly behaved, limit setting me, ergo, they will not be attending any more “Happy Hours” calls. Also, she said, I should not respond back because it was best for the email thread to end there. She went on to say she wishes us all well, she loves us, etc. 

 I had two responses to this email. The first was to be sad and upset, the second was righteous indignation. On one hand, I felt the grief of having lost a friend, the shock of having an expressed need turned against me as an indictment. I felt like a puppy whose owner rubs its nose in its own urine to teach it how to not pee in the house. The shame and humiliation were palpable. On the other hand, who the fuck was she, to assess and criticize my behavior? For the love of God! She has spent a lifetime working for peace and equality. She is deeply concerned with the environment, has supported the arts, has taught in some of the most challenging school districts in New Jersey! Where was that persona? And, who the fuck was she to say when the email chain should end? All day. Back and forth I bounced. 

“Do you have a minute to talk me off the ledge?” I finally reached out to call my friend, Melissa, who is very frequently the voice of reason in my life. 

 “Oh, my God!” she responded. “It’s pretty bad when I have to talk you off the ledge! What happened?” 

 I told Melissa the entire story - all the background information, the details of what had happened, how ashamed and humiliated I felt, what a horrible person I am, but, also how much I wanted to retaliate and be sure the friend got her comeuppance. I kept talking, back and forth, on and on. Melissa listened intently. 

 “Can I ask you a question?” she said, when I finally took a breath.

 “Sure.” 

 “If you had to pick one thing, just one thing that is the most upsetting, what would it be? Is there a one thing that, if it were not there, you could manage the rest of it?” 

 I thought about it for a moment. 

 “Yes. The worst part is that I feel like Hate won.” 

 Then I burst into tears. Hate won. That is the worst part. I have been humiliated before, publicly and privately, and I have survived it. I often feel anger and outrage and, truth be told, I love a good fantasy revenge plan, but I obviously would never execute a revenge plan. The worst part is that Hate won. I set a limit. I said I am no longer willing to tolerate a particular behavior, and the response was punishment, blaming, and shaming for speaking up. There was no empathy or understanding offered. When my friend said she, too, was no longer willing to tolerate a particular behavior, there was no empathy or understanding on my part either. My response was self-absorbed shame and humiliation. Hate won. 

 “Here’s the thing,” Melissa offered, “Everyone is really sensitive these days. We have to go really slowly, we have to have a lot of space for ourselves and each other. All of us, you, me, everyone, we all just need to have a whole lot more patience these days.” 

 “So, you don’t think Hate won?” I asked, daring to be the tiniest bit hopeful. 

“No, I don’t. I don’t think Hate won. I think Hate may be ahead by one, but the game is far from over.” 

In Memory of George Floyd

“Is there any way you have space today for an emergency phone call?” This frantic text came from a young woman with whom I have worked for years. Gwendylin, Dylin for short, is not prone to emergencies, so I made space for her immediately.

“Kevin and I are having a friendship break-up! He sent me a text last night telling me what a racist I am for not using my voice on social media to stand up against racism. He said that I have used my voice for other issues over the years, and that I could just stand back in the wake of George Floyd’s death is unforgiveable. I. Am. Not. A. Racist.”

In terms of context, Kevin is black and Dylin is white. They are each other’s ride or die friend. She held his hand and visited when he was in rehab. He held her hand after she was assaulted. They have had a plethora of friends come and go from their lives; however, their friendship has remained steadfast. They have had frequent conversations about race, culture, sexual orientation, gender fluidity, as well as many of the other sometimes difficult-to-navigate topics. This fall they had plans to rent a flat in NYC where he would continue pursuing a bachelor’s degree in International Affairs, and she would begin a graduate degree in Psychology.  And, just like that, the friendship is over.

“I am not a racist!! I am horrified, HORRIFIED, about what happened to George Floyd!” Dylin continued in-between sobs, “I actually haven’t known what to do! I sent him a text to brighten his day because I wanted him to know I am here and thinking about him! This is so crazy! I feel like this cannot possibly be true, like this can’t possibly be happening! How can this be happening?” 

 My heart breaks for Dylin. I can hear the devastation in her voice. Losing Kevin’s friendship occurs for Dylin like a death. She cannot imagine not having Kevin in her life. She is furious at being accused of being a racist, she cannot imagine what she did to illicit this reaction from him. On and on she goes, frantically creating a defense, interrupting her defense with incredulous disbelief and grief. And I am right there with her mirroring her shock and disbelief. And, at the same time, my heart also breaks for Kevin. I imagine him trying to process the hideous killing of George Floyd, longing for the comfort of his best friend’s support, and not getting it in the way that he felt seen and heard and validated. Dylin felt assaulted by Kevin’s accusations. I imagine Kevin somehow felt betrayed because Dylin’s response was not the response he wanted. 

 I have to admit, it took me a minute to get that what was happening. Dylin and Kevin’s lives have been so intertwined that it took me a minute to get oriented.  Since my primary relationship is with Dylin, my focus in this conversation was Dylin’s upset and trying to find some logical reason why Kevin would have cut her off so abruptly, so aggressively. But, in the spirit of full disclosure, I was having mutually exclusive thoughts in my own head. 

 My first thought was that being upset about the loss of a friendship is a pretty clear indication of privilege. When you are white, you get to call your therapist about the loss of a friendship, while your black friend, who is part of the black community, gets to process the loss of yet another black life! My second thought was how could cutting off a friend, a friend who has been an ally of marginalized communities for her whole entire life, possibly support the Black Lives Matter cause! How can alienating someone who loves and cares for you, who has supported you through all the difficult times in your life, possibly be your best move?  I thought about telling Dylin that SHE lost Kevin’s friendship, but to just try to imagine what our country is losing every single time someone from a marginalized community is killed. THEN I thought about what a privileged position it is to be able to think that our country is losing something versus what it is like to be a member of the black community experiencing this kind of tragedy over and over and over again. On and on, one mutually exclusive thought after another, racing through my head, each one feeling valid until the next thought came along to unhinged the validity. I couldn’t find a place to plant my feet, a place to orient myself. 

 Obviously, I will never understand what it is like to be a member of a marginalized community. I was born with white skin and that white skin has afforded me opportunities that otherwise I might not have had. I know that. And, while I certainly have “fought the good fight” on so many fronts, for so many issues over the years, it doesn’t erase that I live inside of a white person’s context. I think of it like this - when you’re a kid, you know there is this thing called “reading.” You see people read, you learn letters and numbers and, to some extent, you recognize where to apply those letters and numbers, but you don’t actually read, so you can only do so much with those letters and numbers. You can do more than if you didn’t have any knowledge of letters or numbers, but there is a limit to what you can experience in life because, at the end of the day, you don’t read. And then, one day, you put it all together and you begin to read. Once you can read, you can never not read, your entire world is different because you can read. You go from knowing that there is this thing called reading to having the actual experience of reading. YOU migrate from the group of people who didn’t read to the group of people who do read. When you live inside the white-skinned context, no matter what you do to “fight the good fight”, you never know what it is like to be a member of the black community. You have learned some of the information you need to know, and you can recognize the issues and even apply them sometimes, but you can only do so much because you will never, ever be a member of that community.  You never migrate from knowing some of information you need to know about racism, to having the experience of what it is like to have black skin, to live in a marginalized community. 

Like Dylin, I am horrified over what happened to George Floyd. I understand the protests. I also understand the rioting. Over the years, Americans have exercised their right to protest over many, many issues. It is a fundamental right to being an American. There is nothing not to get about that.  Protests are fueled by anger, they are productive, they are informative, they demand rights.  Riots, unlike anger, are fueled by rage. Also, unlike anger, rage happens when people feel impotent. Riots happen because the anger has been ignored, because people have done the right thing for so long, and with so little progress, that the pressure just builds and builds until the anger erupts into an out of control inferno of rage. With each inexcusable death of a black person, the pressure just keeps building. How many peaceful protests are enough? How many times should marginalized communities and their allies have to gather before we see some change? 

 I don’t know the answer to those questions. I have no idea what more to do beyond what I have been doing, what I will continue to do, having conversations about race and privilege in my life, with my family, with my clients, with the middle school children that will attend the leadership camp a friend and I run. My family and I attend local protests, support minority owned businesses, correct each other when we make some insensitive comment that we didn’t even know was insensitive. I bumped the piece that was supposed to post today, interrupted my schedule for the day to write this piece instead. And, to be perfectly clear, I mention all of that not because I want credit at all for doing any of it. In fact, I feel as though anything I have done over the years has been grossly inadequate and insufficient.  I mention it because my heart is broken and this piece is all I have to contribute to the memory of George Floyd. 

“Take a breath”, I tell Dylin, as I follow my own advice. I tell her that it IS hard to imagine her without Kevin in her life, that her shock and grief is completely understandable. I confess my own shock and dismay over the way Kevin treated her. I tell her my theory about the difference between anger and rage, and how Kevin might be experiencing a kind of personal rage the result of which led him to think that destroying their friendship was somehow a good idea. Her grief over losing him, like the smoldering remains of a torched building, is all that is left of their friendship. 

 “It will never be the same!” she says. “No matter what he ever says or does to make this better, it will never be the same!” 

 “It MAY never be the same,” I offer. “You don’t know. These things can be tricky for sure, but often they play out and relationships get stronger, they grow, they change in unpredictable ways.” I say these things because I know them to be true, but I also say them to create a little space for a miracle to happen. 

 That night before I fell asleep I said a little prayer that maybe the Universe would hear Dylin’s words and take them to heart. What if the outcome of the protests and riots over George Floyd’s death resulted in things never being the same again? What if, no matter what, it actually WAS never the same again? And then I wondered if that, too, was a white person’s prayer. These things can be tricky. 

Observations From Planet Danger

These days I find it takes twice as long to do half as much because we use all of our energy trying to just get through the day. I keep saying this over and over because the truth of this assertion continues to blindside me when I least expect it. And, this seems true across the board, or at least, for the people I know and see. On the continuum of responses to the pandemic, I think of Hubs and me as moderately concerned NJ residents. We wear our masks when we go to the grocery store or any public place like that, we don’t do unnecessary errands, and have kept distance from others outside our tiny five-person circle.  We are not panicked. We are inconvenienced.  By contrast, we know families who are locked up in their homes, who have sectioned off areas of their home in order to protect family members by catagory. So, there is a section for the particular family member who is the designated errand person, a section for the college age children, and yet a third section for the elderly grandparents. Their thought is that that family member doing errands could be contagious, and could bring the virus into their home thus endangering the lives of the others.  I also know other people who are steeped in the idea of the pandemic being a conspiracy, who feel controlled by the government, who will not wear a mask and who angrily challenge anyone who suggests they do. It doesn’t matter. Whatever the reaction to this pandemic, it costs a lot of emotional energy to manage what used to be the routine of life.  

Hubs, for all my talk about his expensive and complicated hobbies, is a man of few needs in the world of working from home. He is a geologist and works for an engineering firm that does pollution remediation.  He sits at his “regular seat” at the kitchen table where you can find him from about 6AM until somewhere between 3-5PM.  As far as I can see, in order to perform his job, he requires five essentials items: his laptop, the mouse, a plug, a pad of paper and his mechanical pencil. Early in the day, there’s a cup of coffee added to this list, but mostly those five items are it.  Occasionally, he has a video conference where he and his colleagues have conversations about things like homogenous stratigraphy and other concepts that make exactly zero sense to me, but, otherwise he sits at the table silently working away, cleaning up the planet. For 9 to 11 hours a day, for all intents and purposes, he is like a fixture in the dining area of our kitchen.

I, on the other hand, have what might be the most beautiful work space out of anyone I know. I have a studio office over the garage that is semi-attached to my house where I have been working every day since mid-March. I call it my tree house.  It is brand-new, designed for and by me, decorated with great attention to detail. It is spacious, has exceptional lighting, and is two stories high which means I can look out over the trees and watch the birds.  Every day, I pour a cup of coffee for myself and make the 40-step commute to work. I have a glass water pitcher with little engraved hearts, really nice lunches that I have the time to make for myself, and a diffuser pumping out the aroma of my choice. I feel almost shamefully blessed to have this kind of space to begin with, let alone to have this space at such a critical time. I have a friend who has been working in her 15’X20’ kitchen for two months.  I have friends who are sharing their one tiny office where one works by day and the other by night.  And still, it takes me twice as long to do half as much because it takes so much emotional energy to manage what used to be the routine of life. 

I miss the things that seemed so mundane. For whatever reason, alone time doesn’t count for me unless I am alone in the house and alone in my own head.  For instance, I used to have Mondays off and I spent that day getting ready for the week. I did really unremarkable things on Mondays, barely worth mentioning: cleaning out the fridge, prepping meals for the week, laundry, organizing, errands, creating the up-coming week’s schedule, reviewing the craft supplies for when the children visit on the weekend, contemplating moving a piece of furniture from here to there, all in the comfort of my own house without anyone there to interrupt. Really, nothing I did was actually noteworthy. And, there is nothing to say that I cannot still take Mondays off and do a lot of that stuff, except for one thing. No matter what day it is, Hubby is sitting right there at the kitchen table and, trite as it is to say, his mere presence bothers me. HE doesn’t bother me, but just the fact that he is there and that I am not alone bothers me. THIS is what I mean when I say that it takes so much emotional energy to manage our lives. And, it isn’t, obviously, Hubs’ presence. It is that there is so little left of my actual life that his presence becomes an intrusion. Prior to the pandemic, if he would have been home on a Monday, I would barely have noticed.  I had way too many priorities, way too much to accomplish on my day off, to be bothered by him sitting there. I worked three twelve hours days beginning Tuesday through Thursday, and a half day on Friday, so Monday was my ready-set-go day. 

I can see the same pattern in a client of mine who is about the most upset person I know over social distancing. On his best day, this guy is a cynic. He is a charming cynic, but a cynic all the same.  He has strong opinions which he is happy to share with you, and could literally not care less if you are offended by anything he says. He is a fiercely loyal friend, politically right of right, a Second Amendment defender who is, ironically, loved by more people than you can imagine. My client had a full life before March of 2020.  He worked five days a week where he frequently interacted with people of all ages.  People he works with know that they can come to him at any time, for anything and that he will come through for them. Children routinely come to him to help them solve problems. He functions as a safe space for them. Now my client is quarantined at home and he has lost all of that. With no external life, with no one in his life except for his wife, he now spends his days sitting home watching the news.  Each time I speak to him, he indicates that he is feeling controlled by the government and that his rights and freedom are being taken away.  None of that actually alarms me. I can get his context and understand why he would feel this way. What does worry me though is that he is angry about everything.  He is now hyper-focused on things that he never even would have noticed before, or, if he did, he certainly wouldn’t have bothered being mad about them. He might have stored them away for later, turning them into a good story to share with a friend over a glass of wine or a cup of coffee, but now, he just walks around angry and upset all day long.  

And, as ridiculous as this sounds, I cannot help but think that one little run to Homegoods, or a quick dash out to Target, or even just run to the food store without my Hazmat equipment would make it all better. These days, when I walk into a food store and see everyone walking around wearing masks, my neurological system registers panic. I know that I will not be able to smile at anyone and they will not smile at me. We can’t. We are now the Masked-people from planet Danger and on planet Danger we do not smile, or exchange a casual comment, or ask unnecessary questions.  We robotically move through the store, silently putting things into our carts, waiting in long lines made up mostly of space, so we can take our purchases back to our homes to sanitize, so we can use them freely without concern. This all makes me crazy. It is ridiculous. It is necessary. It is infuriating. Those are the thoughts that float around in my head. Ridiculous, necessary, infuriating. Over and over.  In between the ridiculous-necessary-infuriating cycle of thoughts, I tell myself to take a breath. Then I insist I take another one. In and out. Slowly. I tell myself that it is okay to feel upset, these are upsetting times.  I tell myself to be kind to myself, that self-care is important, that I am doing a great job managing my life. I tell myself that the Universe is unfolding exactly as it should. I remind myself that I have always, always believed that the Universe is unfolding exactly as it should, so that these times, these very hard times, are not an exception. This soothing self-talk functions like an emotional GPS system that returns me to myself.  It takes a lot to manage the internal emotional experience that isolation brings and that is exactly what we are being forced to do. So much of life as we knew it has been eclipsed. Our previous lives are images we can barely still see in our rear-view mirrors, while out of the front windshield we have a full view of the unknown.  Miles and miles of the unknown with no signs indicating how many miles until we reach the next rest stop.  

For Dor, who taught me everything I know about gardening.

[Editor’s note: Today would have been my friend Dor’s 65th birthday. She passed away in March, just after NJ started sheltering in place, so her death was eclipsed by the pandemic. Today, in her honor, I am posting this piece. I am eternally grateful to her for insisting I could garden. Turns out, she was right.]

“I signed up for a gardening class,” I announced at the dinner table one day. We were having a family dinner that included our adult children and their families. We recently purchased a new house and I was eager to see if we could be more successful gardening with a fence than we were in the last house where there was no fence, but plenty of wildlife. And, the wildlife had eaten well from beds of lilies, daisies, echinacea and other various landscape plants. 

“Tell me you’re kidding,” my husband said, “You are horrible at gardening.” My husband is a fairly seasoned gardener and used to keep a beautiful flower garden before the wildlife multiplied faster than we could build protective fences.

“Mom do you really think you are the gardening type?” This from my daughter, the family voice of reason, although it was clear from every face at the table that she was speaking for the lot of them.

I looked back at them undeterred. “No, I am not kidding,” I said to my husband and, to the rest of them I said, “No, of course I am not the gardening type. AND, I am taking a gardening class. It is offered through The Suppers Program, which I might remind you is a learn-by-doing program. I think this means that they will dummy it down for people like me. In fact, I believe that people like me might be their target audience. And, either way, I am taking the class.”

I happen to know that I was the first to sign up for the class because somewhere between registering and getting to the first class, I called Dorothy Mullen, founder of The Suppers Program and gardener extraordinaire, in a complete panic. The instant the garden email arrived in my in-box, I registered, throwing caution to the wind.  Now that we were getting closer to the first class, I was beginning to realize just how little I knew about gardening. There were emails telling us this and that and each had terms that I didn’t know or didn’t understand. I told Dor that perhaps I was in over my head and that I should reconsider. Dor assured me that I would leave the first class with everything I needed to be successful. She reminded me that there were other novice gardeners in the group and the program, like much of what Suppers offers, is built on equal parts knowledge and experimenting. Honestly, if this were any other organization, I would have withdrawn and gotten my money back; but I have been around enough Suppers’ events to know that this program would likely be foolproof. 

The first day of the first class was both exciting and scary at the same time. In typical Suppers style, they had everything I could have possibly needed, so that when I left class that day, I was prepared to plant seeds and watch them sprout to life. That was very inspiring. The scary part was that most of what was said in that first meeting was unintelligible to me. I have a fair vocabulary and am good with context clues, but, honestly, some of what was said seemed like word salad to me – pun intended, by the way.  Luckily, there were a few of us who were brand new to gardening, so there was question upon question to which we were provided answer upon answer. Each gardener had unique situations, which was one of the best parts. There were yards where the garden was shared between the gardeners and the wildlife, there were gardens on the balconies of small condominiums, there were shade-less gardens, deep shade gardens, fenced in gardens, large rambling fields of gardens and everything in-between. 

We got a folder of gardening resources, watched a video, ate soup and then off we were to start planting seedlings in little six packs of starting trays. We were a group of twelve women almost giddy as we exchanged envelopes of different seeds: zinnias, cucumber, snap peas, kale, Asian lettuce. We planted, labeled, planted, labeled and it felt really magical, but also really structured all at the same time.  We knew what we were planting, but besides that, it was stepping into the unknown. And then, get this, we had a lesson in how to plant a garden inside of a bale of hay. I’m not kidding. You can actually grow stuff right in the middle of a bale of hay!!! Which means you can grow row after row of plants on black top, if black top is all you have. Who knew?

I arrived home with my bale of hay and trays of seedlings. I brought my seedlings into the house and situated them in a sunny corner of my living room and waited. Over the next few weeks, those little seedlings created a whole new world in my life. To begin with, once home I realized that I had no idea how much water was too much water and worried that I would drown or under water my plants. I happened to be going by the Rutgers Master Gardeners’ Program in Ewing Township, so I stopped in there and the nice man behind the counter told me everything I needed to know about watering. I told him that I had looked this information up on the internet, but I was still unsure and felt like I needed to see how much water and what the soil looked like in person. He was great. Like Dor, he worked with all levels of gardeners and he was happy to impart his knowledge. Turns out, you can call the Rutgers Master Gardeners’ Program and ask them any stupid question you want and they don’t even laugh at the question. 

I have to say, my grandchildren were my biggest fans. My grandchildren were very interested in my seedlings. It was an eye-opening experience to consider my new gardening project from the eyes of my 5 year-old granddaughter and my 3-year old grandson. To them, when they looked at the seed trays, they saw dirt. 

 “D”, my grandchildren call me D, “you have dirt in your living room.” 

“Oh, well, it isn’t just dirt. It is the beginning of my garden. Inside the dirt, are seeds. I planted the seeds and they are going to grow into plants.  When they get big enough, I am going to plant them in my garden.” 

“When will they grow?” 

“I’m not sure, but in a few weeks.” 

“How do you know?”

“How do I know?”

“Yeah, how do you know they will grow. Are the plants under the dirt?”

“Not exactly. There are SEEDS under the dirt. The seeds will become plants and then the plants will pop their little heads out of the dirt. I have to keep them in the sun and water them. We can watch them each week.” 

 Sure enough, each week when they would come over, they would rush over to check on the progress of our plants. One time, when I looked up, I noticed that my grandson was holding all of the little white markers indicating the names of the plants. I watched as he put the markers in the soil, then took them out, then put them back, then out again. When asked, he told me he had fixed them all for me. For the next few weeks, I had no idea which plants were which when I looked at those trays. It’s an experiment, I reminded myself. And, besides, I loved that the children were interested.

It might be that the best part of gardening was sharing it with others and watching how contagious gardening became. Our backyard has two large round decorative containers that were left here by the previous owners, so the children and I decided we would plant flowers that would attract butterflies. I bought them their own gardening tools and one Sunday we planted flowers. It seemed like forever, but eventually, both containers were bursting with flowers and, sure enough, the yard was filled with black and blue flecked butterflies.  The children were delighted to see the butterflies and we talked about how we had invited them by planting the flowers. Although I am well aware that planting flowers to attract butterflies, and then attracting the butterflies is a logical progression, there was a part of it that still felt like magic to me. It certainly felt like magic to the children and they would reference my “knowledge” to other family members. Soon they would say things like “D said we could plant flowers and butterflies would come and we saw butterflies today!” 

Following the butterflies, were the caterpillars. One day I went out to the yard to pick parsley to cook with, and the next day when I went out, the parsley was completely gone. In its place were these huge, plump caterpillars. I had never seen anything like it. They were two or three inches long, looking like green and dark blue striped mini-sausages, all just marching through my herb garden.  I took a picture and sent it to Dor who immediately responded and asked if I was going to “preserve them.” I had no idea what she was talking about. For one brief moment, I thought she wanted me to pickle them, or somehow press them between the pages of a book. Turns out that the caterpillars like to eat the parsley, but the birds like to eat the caterpillars and, without intervention, the caterpillars were likely to become dinner for the birds. I scooped up the caterpillars, got one of those net caterpillar houses and brought them inside. The children and I watched them for an entire weekend and then, sure enough, almost overnight they had spun themselves into cocoons. 

 There is something about having a garden that was then, and still is now, difficult for me to describe. As noted, I was not a gardener and, in fact, the only plants I have ever owned are alive because my husband waters them.  And, I cannot even say what on earth prompted me to register for the course when the email arrived in my in-box; but both 2018 and 2019 were really difficult years for our family and I think I somehow knew I needed to be engaged in activities that were life affirming. I kept thinking I need to create, I need to grow and the Universe kept whispering “plant…plant…plant.” Tending to the garden, watering it, pulling weeds, all of that pulled me outside of myself, even if it was just to walk through the yard, to be out-of-doors, to breathe, to focus on what was bound to grow. It was life affirming and it was soothing to my soul in a way that I never expected. I had worried that the garden would be another thing on my already too long to-do list, but, on the contrary, it was the one thing I did that brought me joy. And, let me tell you, it wasn’t like I had a huge garden. I had two 6X4 foot patches and one 4X2 foot patch. But in those patches, I grew snap peas, cucumbers, tomatoes, kale, lettuce, zinnias, sage, parsley, rosemary and basil. It was magical.  I loved checking on it each day, watching day after day of absolutely nothing happening followed by a burst of growth and discovery.

I know it is very cliché to say this, but I’m going to say it anyway – at the end of the summer I was a completely different human being because I had a garden. I can barely stand how sappy that sounds, and I would ordinarily find a much more poetic way to say that, but it is just so doggone true. I think completely differently because I gardened this summer. I learned the mechanics of gardening, the planting, watering, weeding and all of that.  But more than that, I feel like I created this personalized ecosystem right in my own backyard. My grandchildren and I shared the experience of having been a part of the ecosystem that we created, of eating vegetables that we picked right there out of the garden, of inviting butterflies and creating a refuge for the caterpillars. I grew food and then I cooked all summer with food I grew, which is a seriously cool experience. I loved saying “this dish is seasoned with herbs from my garden….this salad and herbs are all from my garden…I pickled these vegetables that I grew in the garden.” The experience was magical, it was healing, it grounded me to the earth and, more importantly, to myself. 

The garden is now long gone, resting for the winter months. As much as I loved gardening, the rest of this season also feels so right. I now know that part of gardening is also letting the garden rest. It is the inactive part of gardening that I do these days. I cook with the herbs that are now drying in my pantry.  I am a bolder cook this winter because I grew the herbs and I know them much better than when I used to buy them at the store.  I cannot wait for the holidays where I will gift people vinegars flavored with herbs from my garden and, in the meantime, I am watching the birds at the feeders, dreaming of what I will plant next year and who we will invite to the garden. 

Social Distancing During Covid-19

More times than I can count in a week, people are asking me how I am “doing it.” How am I managing my day? What am I doing to get through each day? What do I think the weeks ahead will bring? Obviously, I have no idea how to answer the latter question; however, I’ve decided to outline my personal approach to life these days. Like most people, Hubby and I are social distancing which, for us, means we are home with each other every day, not going out, having groceries delivered and watching a lot of Netflix. That said, however, we have put in some structures to keep us sane. 

For me, the very worst place I could be alone is not a dark alley in a scary city, but in my own head. Left to my own thoughts, I pretty quickly find myself at the intersection of What-if Road and Tragedy Trail, which is a dangerous neighborhood. The What-if Road is almost always a path to disempowering thoughts, worst case scenarios, and, if I don’t catch myself soon enough, I am soon buying real estate on Tragedy Lane where someone will end up horribly sick or dead. Luckily, I know myself well and have put up a few yield signs along the way. Luckily, I have had a lot of practice these days and have become very experienced at being in the here and now. This is so not my forte. By nature, I am always creating something, looking towards the future, predicting what will be wanted and needed, planning parties, beer tastings, celebrations and all things that bring life and connection. I live to see my grandchildren on the weekends, something I consider the ultimate joy. Being in the here and now is a learned skill and I have gone from failing grades to a solid C+ or B- student, for which I am so grateful. Believe it or not, however, the more I practice this skill, the calmer I feel. It is not intuitive for me, but it is becoming a place where I routinely go for comfort. 

I am not sure if everyone is experiencing this, but I feel a huge sense of loss and grief these days. I miss my life. I actually have the experience of being broken hearted at not being able to see my grandchildren. When I think of them, I get tears in my eyes and my throat catches and I have to consciously take a breath to keep from losing it completely. Not having them each weekend has left this huge ache where there used to be joy.  Not knowing when I will be able to see them again, is almost more than I can bear. I miss the freedom of being able to move about without concern. I miss my office, stopping at Whole Earth a couple of times a week, the Ace Hardware store, the bank, all of my regular places. I miss the idea of getting in and out of my car without employing Clorox wipes and disinfectant spray. I miss a life where people had something else to talk about other than Covid-19. This sense of grief and loss is a lot to manage every day, and like many people, some days are better than others. 

Like a lot of people, when social distancing became a NJ mandate, I looked forward to life in my PJ’s and sweats. Also like a lot of people, I quickly realized that life in PJ’s and sweats only works when it is a treat. One of the things that schedules provide for us is structure and structure is one of the main proponents of executive functioning. All of the organizing we do, the tasks that get us up and out of the house in the morning, packing lunches, shopping, paying bills, all of the things we plan and execute, projects, business ventures, most of what we all do for a living, takes a lot of executive functioning. The very act of leaving the house in the morning and driving to work, provides a transition that cues our brains that we moving from one context of our lives to another context of our lives. Even for those people who work from home, there is some trigger that sounds the time-to-transition alarm: someone else leaves for work, their kids go to school, the early morning radio show switches to day time, something that provides structure.  So, day three of social distancing, I went back to getting up, working out, showering, getting dressed, and going to my studio to work from home. As much as possible, I manage my business from home, write, take a lunch break, then turn out the lights and power down at the end of my day. 

If I had one piece of advice to give, it would be the call to practice compassion – self-compassion, compassion for those we love, for those we don’t love, for human beings living on the planet. If ever there were a time in our history where we needed compassion, this is the time. None of us have ever walked this road before, so we are all managing this by pulling from our previous resources and experiences, most of which fall short. Teenagers and young adults are railing against the social distancing. Their only experience of not being able to socialize is being grounded, having a day off because of snow, or being sick, all of which typically have an end point. Parents everywhere are trying to manage what is often a constant cycle of dysregulated moods as teens and young adults feel more and more like caged animals. Parents are being asked to perform the mutually exclusive tasks of working, while taking care of children, while teaching children, while managing household responsibilities. Many of us feel like we are failing miserably at these demands. Turns out, the best antidote for frustration and failure is compassion. The more compassion you can have for yourself, the more compassion you can have for others, the more your central nervous system will relax. I have taken to reminding myself and my loved ones of how much I love them, and reminding them that they love me, and assuring them that everything else is detail. It really is. 

When I was a very troubled teen, I discovered a song that made a difference to me then, the words from which I have carried with me throughout my life. Originally, a poem (Desiderata – page down one poem) written in the 1920’s by Max Ehrmann, it was put to music circa 1971. Although Ehrmann doesn’t actually talk about compassion, his words are a plea to us all to go easy on ourselves. My mantra over the years comes from this poem – “You are a child of the Universe, no less than the trees and the stars, you have the right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, the Universe is unfolding as it should.” It’s a dramatically performed song, almost hinting at a religious message, very out of date these days, and worth listening to every single note. 

So, here’s what I have been saying over and over these days. Be easy with yourself. Be kind to yourself. You are doing your best. None of us have ever walked this way before, so be sure to keep yourself and your loved ones really good company. And, as my Aunt Rita would say, “If you ever forget how great you are, call me up! I’ll remind you!” 

Extreme Self-Care

In case you are wondering what I am doing while social distancing, I have composed a list of extreme self-care practices to decrease stress and increase sanity. Feel free to steal anything from my list, as well as adding any suggestions of your own. 

1.     Since I am a big smelly soap kind of girl anyway, I decided that every time I wash my hands, I want to feel good, not scared, so I ordered On-Guard soap from DoTerra and a foamy dispenser because, well, as I said, I am a big smelly soap kind of girl. Plus, washing with the fresh, clean smell actually makes me happy. I am also playing with different scents in my diffuser and filling my house with smells of happiness, health and cleanliness. Every day or so I call my friend Carolyn and she tells me new combinations of oils to try and it feels like one big girly science experiment. *

2.     I have begun the process of planting my garden. My herbs are blossoming, the flowers we planted last fall are waking up, and playing in the dirt helps me stay grounded. I have moved all of my face-to-face appointments to on-line appointments.  Once I heard that Apple closed all its stores worldwide, I figured what is good enough for Apple is good enough for me. Hence, more time in the garden.

3.     Hubs and I are trying new recipes that we can share with people once we are no longer social distancing. We are focusing on learning the balance between salt, fat, acid and heat and are playing with the use of unfamiliar herbs. We make a portion to eat and a portion to freeze. **

4.     I am creating cards and writing letters and sending them to people I love to remind them that they are loved. In times of stress, it’s good to know you are loved and not alone. And, even if you actually know that intellectually, it’s good to get a little love note in the mail. ***

5.     I have taken at least one long walk each day and have been calling “hello” to everyone I meet along the way. Yesterday, I walked past a group of eight women, 7 running and one on a bike. I cheered them on, reminding us all that it is STILL National Women’s Month, even if we are in the middle of a national emergency. 

6.     I am actively on the hunt for miracles. The tow path near me has an eagles’ nest in one of the trees and you can see it from the path. It is enormous and mama eagle is sitting there, big as life, looking like the best visual of America that I have seen in a long time. Just seeing her brought tears to my eyes and reminded me that Americans have survived many very difficult times and that we will survive this as well. 

7.     I am monitoring how much TV I watch and what exactly I am watching. A colleague recently recommended Disney’s Christopher Robin and I am telling you, it is well worth the watch. Seriously soothing to the central nervous system. Although I am a Law-and-Order-Criminal-Minds kind of girl, I have decided to give my neurological system a break from blood and guts and give it a serotonin boost of serenity.

8.     Feel free to laugh, but I have laundered everything that needs laundering and/or freshening. I am paying particular attention to things that need stains soaked off, or need to sit in bleach to restore their whiteness and, my very favorite, things that need to be ironed.  There is something about that process that is so soothing to me. All those visual problems getting worked out right there in my laundry room.

9.     I am going easy with my loved ones and with everyone else with whom I come into contact. When Hubby is grouchy or short with me, I am practicing the act of taking a breath and searching the response files in my head for the kindest, most generous response I can find. Anne Lamott reminds us that in times like this is it “right foot, left foot, right foot, breathe…. right foot, left foot, right foot, breathe.” Solid advice. 

I hope this list of coping strategies is helpful to you. While I do not subscribe to the advice to “relax”, I am proposing a balance between staying alert, taking responsible action and extreme self-care. 

I love you. No, really, I mean it. I love you.

Donna

*Contact me if you want Carolyn’s number. I happen to know she is home with three adolescents so a little adult conversation might be very welcomed. 

** Let me know if you want to know what we are cooking.

***Send me your address if you want a love-note. 

A Ring In Time

Hubby and I are married 30 years this year and we are uncharacteristically excited and eager to celebrate. We’ve decided we are going to pick 30 things to do this year that will commemorate our time together.  Some are big things, some are little things, some things are romantic, some are whimsical and some are just standard fare.  One of the first things we wanted to figure out was what to do about our wedding rings. We could each still get our rings on, but they were tighter than was comfortable and we were reluctant about wearing them.  This resulted in the rings taking up permanent residents in our bedroom closet for the past few years. Each time I went past them, each time I thought about them, it made me sad. 

The rings themselves are exquisite.  We bought cheap gold bands for the actual wedding ceremony because, at the time, we had a lot on our plate and didn’t want to make a hurried decision about our wedding rings. This was one of the best moves we ever made because it allowed us to meander through the first several years of our marriage, looking at rings whenever we had time, whenever we were away, just plain whenever. Sure enough, on one romantic weekend get-a-way on Martha’s Vineyard, we found the rings of our dreams. They are called Milky Way and are, loosely speaking, the design of a galaxy, patterned with tiny moons, Goddesses and minuscule diamonds that twinkle like stars throughout the band. The rings also have a raised edge that borders the galaxy and adds definition. We loved them the minute we saw them, and, although they were way more than we could afford, but we bought them anyway. That was more than twenty years ago and, still, they are the most beautiful wedding rings I have ever seen. Except, of course, if you can’t wear them. 

And, ever since the size dilemma, Hubs and I have had the same few dead-end conversations about these rings.  For instance, feel free to laugh, but somehow, with zero knowledge of jewelry, we decided the rings couldn’t be made larger and therefore having them sized was not an option. It seemed to us that there was no way to cut the rings, or stretch them or do whatever they do to increase the size of a ring without interrupting the Milky Way pattern.  There was also a conversation where we considered being buried with the rings, except neither of us wants to be buried, which was the major kink in that plan. We talked about melting them down and doing I’m not sure what with them, but neither of us could bear that option because we loved them so much and just the thought of that made me so, so sad. We considered leaving them to one or two of the children when we pass away, which effectively would make them someone else’s problem, and also did not seem like any kind of an actual solution. I’m telling you, no small amount of thought went into these conversations, at the end of which, I was always sad and deflated. I just wanted to wear my wedding ring. 

But, you know how these things go. You can endure something for a long time and then suddenly you can’t take it one minute longer and doing something becomes almost urgent. So, Hubs and I had yet another conversation about the rings and we decided that, it was time to be grown-ups about the rings. No more dead end, circular conversations.  If we couldn’t wear them, there was no sense in hanging on to them. And, after all, this is the year of our 30th anniversary, and we wanted to be wearing our wedding rings, so we decided we would look into getting them sized and, if this was not possible, we would melt them down and use the money to buy new rings. This was the best of the worst options because we still wanted rings that were special and unique.  We couldn’t see ourselves going to a Jared-type-jewelry store (no offense to Jared’s) and buying something out of the case.  Thirty years later, even more adamantly than back in 1990, we wanted our wedding rings to symbolize us, not just the union, the sacristy of marriage, but who WE are. Thirty years. That number kept playing through my head. Thirty-years of for better and for worse. 

Enter Amy Ragsdale. I have known Amy Ragsdale for over twenty years. She is a jewelry designer who makes hand crafted one of a kind pieces and some of my best pieces are from her studio. I have always known that Amy’s art, the craft of creating signature jewelry was more than a talent for her. Amy’s work always felt more like a spiritual expression, a gift she gives to the world. Life being what it is, she and I hadn’t spoken for a few years, largely because it is hard to keep in touch when you are launching children, moving, changing jobs, burying loved ones and otherwise tending to life. Now, however, with this new dilemma, with time being of the essence, I was eager to call Amy and get what I knew would be the real deal on the rings. [Editor’s note: Just to be clear, while this is not an ad for Amy Ragsdale Design, you should totally check out her website which you can find here.  Feel free to PM me if you want to know my personal favorite pieces.]

So, one stormy Saturday morning, we drove our wedding rings out to Amy’s studio in the suburbs of Philadelphia. We tell her our whole story, we present the rings, we tell her they are precious to us, but we also say we are willing to let them go if we have to let them go. She holds her hand out so I can place the rings in her hand, but I am not done with my explanation. I want to be sure, before I hand over the rings, that she gets the angst of it all. 

 “We’re WILLING for them to not be sizeable,” I say, “BUT, it is just that it took us years to find them. And it’s our THIRTIETH anniversary. And we are really willing for you to tell us it can’t be done, but, here’s the deal, we want you to work your magic and make them the right size.” 

“I got it,” she assures me. “Let’s measure you and see what size you need the rings to be, leave them with me and I’ll see what I can do. No promises, but let me see what I can do.” 

One week later, Amy called to say the rings were done. I wasn’t 100% sure what “done” meant and I was way too nervous to ask. I told myself if they were really compromised, Amy would have mentioned that. THEN I told myself, that if they were really compromised, Amy never would have mentioned that. She would wait until we were in front of her to prepare us. We assured each other that, if we hated the rings, we could STILL melt them down for the price of the gold. We told each other that we were making WAY too much out of the thirty-year mark, that this is the kind of thing that is a set up for disappointment and, after all, there is always the next year. It seems like just yesterday that we celebrated our twenty-fifth! Whatever, we told ourselves. 

Once again, we packed up and drove out to the studio. We talked about the rings the entire way out there and suddenly I could get what it felt like to be young and in love. During our courtship, Hubby and I were both single parents who each had full time custody of our children. I was finishing my undergraduate degree, preparing to go to grad school. We got married the summer between graduating with my bachelors’ and beginning my masters’ degree largely because managing our lives in separate residences no longer seemed possible. I couldn’t see how I could get the kids up and out early in the morning, while worrying about evening classes and homework, not to mention the commute to Rutgers. Hubby, who was eager to get married and looking for any reason to tie the proverbial knot, proposed that the only solid solution was marriage. So, when Hubby and I got married, we had five children between the ages of two and twelve years old. Suffice to say, there was never any young-and-in-love. We were young-feeling-old-and-somehow-in-love. It was a ridiculous and downright heroic move, but we did it. We just jumped in, got married and here we are thirty years later. 

 Anticipating the rings, the unveiling of the rings, the deciding about if we would keep them or not, felt like a restorative event. Maybe we didn’t get to mull over every detail of our backyard garden wedding thirty years ago, but we are now mulling over every detail of how we want to celebrate our thirtieth year together, which is why this decision about the rings is so important to us.  This is a time for us to really be mindful of our lives together.  Marriage, I don’t care who you are or how happily married you are, is a roller coaster. You hope to get more good days than bad days, you hope to love your spouse more days that you hate them, but it is all such a crap shoot. I am telling you, that for better and for worse stuff? We all say that, or something like that, but it isn’t until you are knee deep in kids, pets, health concerns, job losses, bills and conflict that you know exactly what worse can look like.  But, this year, this milestone is giving us the space to create some of those moments that we might have missed, but were too busy to have even known we missed them. 

We arrive at the studio and we can barely wait to see the rings. Amy takes them out of a little white bag, unwraps the tissue paper and lays the rings in front of us. They are magnificent! You cannot tell that they were sized at all! They look exactly like they did the day we got them – bright, shinny, brand new! 

“I cannot believe you did it,” I say, looking bewildered. 

“Well, to tell you the truth, it was a little dicey. I took it to my soldering team who looked at me like I was crazy. They made me no promises, but I told them to do the best they could and I would work out the engraving and all the rest. I have to say, they were really shocked at how well they turned out in the end.” 

“It’s like a miracle.  I love it when you take something that is impossible and make it not only possible, but predictable!” I said. 

Hubs and I kept looking at them from all angles, putting them on and taking them off over and over. The traditional symbolism of wedding rings is a representation of ongoing love, commitment and loyalty to each other. For me, our rings, wedding rings in general, represent every piece of life that a couple will endure together and the miracle it is that couples choose to stay together. There are so many choices that came our way throughout the years. There were so many times being married seemed like such a dumb idea. There were so many times I dreamt of what I might have done if I had not married Hubby, if I had chosen to travel, if I had taken a corporate job, if I had…well, you get it. The list goes on. But, in the end, here we are, married 30 years, wearing our precious wedding rings, thinking that saying “I do” thirty years ago was the single smartest decision we ever made. Go figure.

On the Anniversary of My Dad's Death

It is nine years ago this week that my father passed away. In a way, the years have flown by and, in another way, it is as though he has been gone forever. I miss him. I miss being able to see him, although in the spirit of full disclosure, I wouldn’t have seen that much of him if he were still here. I know that. There is no sense in pretending otherwise.  If he were still alive, we would not have been very active in each other’s lives. And, to be crystal clear, I have exactly zero regrets about how little we saw of each other. Such was the relationship we had. Such were the demands of his marriage, ergo the demands of his life, and consequently the demands of our relationship. I am okay with all of that. As the ever-popular, extremely annoying and overused saying goes, it is what it is. Well, since he is dead, I guess it should be it was what it was, but you get the idea. 

I have very specific and endearing memories of my dad. I can envision his smiling face and I remember how he laughed.  I remember him shaving in our downstairs powder room and splashing Old Spice on his face when he was done. After the Old Spice, he would put VO5 in his hair to keep it in place. The vision of him shaving, applying the Old Spice, and then combing his hair with the VO5 is so vivid for me.  Old Spice was a cologne of that era and you hardly ever smell it these days; however, on very rare occasion, whenever I do come across that smell, it brings me immediately back to childhood. It is a comforting memory.  Whenever I am transported back to those days, it is with great delight. I recently found photos of my dad and I am surprised at how handsome he was. I never considered him handsome before finding those photos, in fact, I often thought that he and his brothers looked a little elf-like. They were small men with bulbous noses and really big eyes. For sure, my father was the most handsome of them and the least elf-like, but still. 

 Not that you could really ever tell this by the life he ended up living, but my dad really loved our family, both our little foursome, as well as my extended aunts, uncles and cousins. His mother died when he was 5-years-old, leaving five children under 12 years-old. There were less than two years between my Uncle Joe and my dad and, again, between my dad and my Aunt Fritzie.  According to family lore, my grandfather was something of a drunk so, after my grandmother passed away, the state of Pennsylvania threatened to take the children from him unless he could “come up with an appropriate plan” and something like $2000.  Whenever I hear this story, I have two recurring thoughts – the first is that he must have been SUCH a drunk for the state to threaten to take the kids from him in 1928, and the second is that the amount couldn’t have been $2000. That would have been an impossible amount for that era. Still, that is the story as it has always been told to me.  

My grandfather may have been a drunk, but he was one smart cookie because he put together a brilliant plan. My parents both lived in the same small town so their families knew each other well. At the mercy of the child protective services, my grandfather went to see my maternal grandmother to see if she would help him. He proposed that she would take care of his children before and after school, provide them with meals and do the laundry, and for all this he would pay her.  She agreed, he raised the $2000, or whatever the sum was, and he got to keep his children. In the photos I found, there is a picture of my father standing with my maternal grandmother and you can see how much they loved each other. I hardly remember her before her mind was taken over by Alzheimer’s, but what I do remember is how her face used to light up whenever my father spoke to her. He was only person I ever remember making my grandmother laugh. 

 During the years when my dad lived home, the first eleven years of my life, he was the life of any party. He was seriously the organizer of every family event I ever attended. In the summertime, he would arrange these huge picnics at a lake near our house and all of my aunts and uncles and cousins would attend.  There were almost 30 of us at any given time, which meant we could field a soft-ball team, or play round robin games of horse shoes or any number of other activities.  These picnics were always on Sunday afternoons and the grown-ups had the pre-picnic procedures down to a science.  Because we were all Catholics, we couldn’t arrive to the picnic ground in the morning because we were busy going to church. This is before the days where our churches offered Saturday evening masses.  The picnic area filled up quickly on Sundays, so one member of the family would be assigned to go there early and stake claim to at least two sites. This guaranteed us two picnic tables and two of the outdoor grills. That was pretty much all we needed because, shortly after noon, the rest of us would pull up looking much like Jed Clampett and the Beverly Hill Billys. Everyone’s cars were packed to the brim with folding chairs, and folding tables, portable grills, BBQ coals, coolers of food, bags of ice, horse-shoe games, badminton games, wiffleball sets, swimming floats and kids. We did this for years and these picnics are among my most cherished childhood memories. Once my dad left home to live with his new wife in Florida, the family never did those picnics again. It was like expecting the Glenn Miller Band to play without Glenn Miller. All the talent was still there, but there was no one to lead the way. 

I can also remember my family getting together to play poker. Whenever I saw poker games on TV, it was always a group of men playing, but that wasn’t how it was in my family. In my family, when my dad would arrange for a poker night, everybody played - all the aunts and uncles and, in fact, a couple of my aunts were cut-throat poker players. They played with pennies and nickels and I can remember nights where someone would claim to have won $25 playing poker. Even now that seems like a lot of money to have won playing with pennies and nickels, but that is how I remember it. Mostly, the games were held at my Aunt Mary and Uncle Pete’s house, which was fine with me because my cousin John and I were close, and we used to play in his basement while the grown-ups were busy gambling. I remember ham sandwiches served on half torpedo rolls made by the Italian bakery around the corner from my Aunt Mary’s house.  Someone would make macaroni salad and someone else would make potato salad.  The appetizers always included pepperoni, olives, cheese, pretzels and potato chips, but the best part was that my uncle would buy soda by the cans and we could choose between orange, grape or cream soda.  Back in the day, we didn’t drink soda unless it was a special occasion and poker nights qualified as a special occasion. Again, once my dad left, I don’t recall that the family ever played poker like that either.  

 My dad told me that he always regretted leaving home. I would like to believe that is true, but my dad was something of a chameleon, so could see him telling me that he regretted the decision to leave and telling his new wife that it was the best decision he ever made. He was like that.  I don’t begrudge him whatever duplicity he needed to make his life work. He made a bunch of decisions that complicated his life and, in the end, probably just wanted to be loved by the people who he loved. My brother has a very different view of all of this and, if I were my brother, I would certainly share his opinion.  My brother was exceedingly generous with my dad, financing some big-ticket items for him over the years, while forgiving him transgression after transgression. My father didn’t appreciate my brother’s generosity, nor did he display much generosity in return.  My brother forgave my father over and over again until, one day, he got really tired of that game and opted out. People always think that, between my brother and me, I have the bigger heart, but that isn’t true.  I didn’t give as much of my heart as my brother did, so there was less to lose. 

During the years when my dad was still home, he read the Trenton Times newspaper every day. Now and again, he would point out a quote from Abraham Lincoln that was, I think, printed every day as part of the Editorial page.  As I recall, the quote was always there, kind of serving as a context for the op-ed pieces they printed. 

“See this?” he would say, “Listen to this.  Abraham Lincoln said this.  ‘I do the very best I know how - the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what's said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.’” 

Here’s to remembering you, Dad. Here’s to remembering all of the wonderful parts of life with you.  I hope you are resting in peace. I hope you are reunited with your mom and all the people you loved and who loved you. And, here’s hoping that the end brought you out all right!

The Emperor Strikes Back

Extreme Middle-Aged Husband Needs Additional Space to Make Room For Totally Reasonable Hobbies. No room for wife. 

 Free to a good home, one really loved, really cherished wife. Wifey comes with well-articulated views on most contemporary subjects. She is well read, keeps abreast of current politics and world events and will provide you with endless hours of conversation about these events. Should you be one of those people who reads the paper in the morning because you, too, are interested in current events, you might consider having your subscription delivered to the office because wifey will want to share her views with you starting around 5:30 each weekday morning. One of the really good things about Wifey is that you almost never have to guess what she is thinking. You will always have a first-hand blow-by-blow account of how life occurs for her and, as she has reminded me many times over our 30 years together, “we talk about things until we are done talking about them.” Weekend pontificating is typically (read mercifully) skipped because she likes to see our grandchildren on weekends and they distract her from things like reading the paper and listening to CNN.

 Wifey will arrive with everything she needs to become a beloved member of your household. This includes many dozen shoes, boots and sneakers, which are all similar in both style and color, the color ranging from various shades of brown to various shades of black. She has a single pair of kitten-heels in blue suede so every dress outfit she has has to match these heels. I wouldn’t worry about that too much, however, because, according to wifey, everything matches her blue suede kitten-heels by declaration alone. While you will seldom see these blue suede kitten-heels, you will see every other pair of shoes Wifey owns because she has a no-shoes-in-the-house rule. This no-shoes-in-the-house rule results in no less than five pair of shoes puddled at the back door at all times, with another pair or two on the stairs on their way to the closet and at least one pair under the kitchen table where Wifely likes to write. For some reason, the shoes hardly even see the custom closet (one of Wifey’s conditions/demands when deciding on whether or not to buy this house) where they have their very own home. 

 If you like a lot of stimulation and surprise, you will love this aspect of living with Wifey. If there is one thing she is really good at, it is changing, for instance, a perfectly good furniture arrangement into a different and “better” furniture arrangement.  But, do not fear, this is not limited to furniture arrangements. This little perk can include every single aspect of your life such as your own personal drawers, closet space, the arrangement of tools in your work area, your personal hygiene items and medicines, even if they are kept in your own bathroom cabinet at your own sink, and so forth. If you are prone to getting up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, I recommend a small head lamp (available at Amazon) so that you do not run into an end table that used to be next to your bed, but is now across the room so that you can have the maximum benefit from the lavender diffuser that Wifey will set up to improve your “sleep hygiene”, a phrase that I couldn’t believe even existed until it came out of Wifey’s mouth.  

If you are the type of family that worries about your carbon footprint and therefore purchased a small economy car, then you will really enjoy riding in Wifey’s top of the line Black Jeep Grand Cherokee. It is big enough for you to move almost anything you will ever need to move including things like refrigerators, beds, couches and so forth. The experience of riding inside is like driving in your living room and it has things like seat warmers and seat coolers, automatic windshield wipers, automatic lights, settings for five different terrains, in case you spend a lot of time climbing roads with large rocks and sand, and automatic chasse adjustment based on speed and terrain choice. When you get to the end of your ride, Wifey will press a “special button” which will lower the chasse so you can get out of the vehicle without the need of a small step stool, which she keeps in the back of the car because she cannot get into the tailboard of the vehicle without it. It takes a full five seconds for the chasse to drop and Wifey will encourage you to use this time to “breathe and center yourself” whatever the heck that means. When I turn off the ignition in my car, I do not need five seconds to “breathe and center” myself. I just get out of the car. Her Jeeps gets about 18 miles to the gallon; however, Wifey takes care of her own vehicle requirements so the enormous gas bill will not impact your monthly budget. 

To schedule an interview please email richardjasaitis@gmail.com.  Non-negotiable deadline of April 1, 2020. Serious inquiries only, please.  

Free To A Good Home

[Editor’s note: this piece is from a writing assignment I was given in a writer’s workshop I attended over the weekend. As is always the case, Hubs is a rock star in the world of husbands.]

Free to a good home: Extreme-middle-aged wife looking to downsize and cannot take husband with her.

 One older husband, well broken in, but with plenty of miles left to go.  Hubs comes complete with all the necessary equipment to quickly become a cherished family member, particularly if you have hobbies such as outdoor camping, listening to music, performance vehicles and craft beer.  

You will want to make plenty of room for Hubs because almost upon arrival, he will want to create a sound proof area in which to set up his stereo system. The size of the room will determine whether he sets up the big rig or the small rig system. Do not worry about furniture for the room. He will remove all but two comfortable chairs and a table large enough to hold one remote and two beers. This will ensure that there is no issue with sound waves inappropriately bouncing off, say, an antique table or a large portrait of your beloved grandmother. Although Hubs is limited to 4000 albums on his personal hard drive, also included is a lifetime subscription to Tidal which gives you access to around 8 million songs, give or take. If you are a rock and roll, jazz, classical, quartet type music enthusiast, you will be in heaven. If you like country music or music with drum machines, this may not be the deal for you. 

To enhance your listening pleasure, Hubs will set up a nano-brewery so you will have continuous access to craft beer. While he typically likes a lot of hops in his beer, he is amenable to brewing beers with less hops and is something of a genius at playing with the malt-to-hops ratio, which I find makes all the difference. You will find beer selections rotate by the season and he takes requests as long as you don’t ask for anything stupid like kombucha. You will need friends to help you drink the beer because Hubs is a bigger brewer than he is a drinker which also means that you will need at least one coffin size refrigerator to house the 5+ kegs that will always be on tap at your house. 

You can do away with those costly vacations where you spend thousands of dollars on fancy hotel stays and expensive food and wine. Hubs comes equipped with enough camping gear to take up to five children on a week-long wilderness experience, typically 10,000 feet above sea level in, say Wyoming, or one of the National Parks. I would not be caught dead flying across the country and hiking a day and half just to camp in the wilderness, but our children seemed to have enjoyed it and yours might as well.  Should you decide you are the outdoor type, you will need seven days of your paid time off for the five-day excursion to assure the required one day on either end of the trip for travel and for your body to adjust to the change in altitude. Hubs will provide all tents, sleeping blankets and mats, backpacks, bug spray, a 3.5-ounce stove for summer camping and an 11-ounce stove for winter camping, pots, pans, dishes, utensils, five days of dehydrated meals, fishing poles, knives, stuff sacks, emergency kits, bear spray and a GPS Satellite Communication System in case of emergencies not covered by the bear spray and the standard emergency kit.

If you are not the outdoor type, but do like a nice Sunday drive, you might enjoy a spin in Hubby’s candy apple red 2003 Nissan 350 Z. Don’t worry if you do not drive a stick shift because you will never sit in the driver’s seat and if you do, you are not likely be able to see over the steering wheel anyway. If you have lower back, hip or knee issues, you may need a steel grip handle (available on Amazon) to lower yourself in and to hoist yourself out of the car.  Once in the car, you can sit back and relax. The vectors from the speed at which Hubby drives will keep you securely pressed against the back of the seat, but, as an aside, I always use my seatbelt anyway. Don’t worry about making pleasant small talk because the engine is way too loud to allow for any conversation. 

Serious inquiries only. You must arrange for pick-up. No backsies.

Mom's Eulogy

[Editor’s Note: After my last blog, a few people who had attended my mom’s funeral suggested that I also post the Eulogy that I delivered at her mass. Below are my brother and my thoughts as delivered at Mom’s funeral mass.]

Good Morning,

My brother Jimmy and I wanted to walk down memory lane with you so we can really celebrate our mother’s life, and not be left in the sadness of her death. There are some overarching themes of Mom’s life that we want to be sure live on, something for you to remember that really represents who our mother was.

First of all, if you didn’t know this about our mom, she was one tough cookie. If this wasn’t her funeral mass, we would say she is a capatose – which is Italian for the hard head, but since this is her funeral, we are going to say she was one tough cookie. Many of you know, my mother was born in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania. She came into the world two months pre-mature, and back in 1925, the odds of her surviving as a pre-mature infant were pretty slim. But, not Antoinette. Two months premature, weighing 3+ pounds, she survived just fine. We see that theme over and over again in her 94 years. When my dad left home, he left my mom unemployed and penniless. My mother was devastated. She would say she had no idea how she would go on without him. Turns out, she went on just fine without him. She got herself a really strong support group, she got her high school diploma, she got a job, she took dance lessons, learned to swim, went on cruises, traveled abroad and enjoyed a life she had never imagined.

Last week, when my mother had a neurological event, formerly known as a stroke, it looked like she would never even last through the night. Having heard the news, my brother and I rushed to her side where her hospice nurse assured us that this was not a transient event. Since she weighed 75 pounds and had not been eating well for some time, she was not likely to last long. No denying she was in bad shape. She had orders for round the clock morphine to help manage any pain and to help her rest comfortably. She was non-responsive and was lying child-like in her bed. My brother and I looked it up. The prediction was that she could not go longer than four days in her current condition. Had it not been disrespectful, we would have laughed out loud, because we knew better. When her nurse left on Friday asking that we let her know of any changes over the weekend, we assured her that my mother would be right there waiting for her to return on Monday morning, which she was. Mere mortals could not go more than four days, but our mother? She was one tough cookie.

I don’t know anyone who valued family as much as our mother did. Our mom was one of eight, she and her family grew up in the same town as her five cousins, so she was always surrounded by family.  The family all lived in the Trenton/Hamilton area, there was a constant parade of relatives in and out of each other’s homes. We got together for every holiday, for Sunday dinners, for engagements, for weddings, showers, births, graduations or for no real reason at all. Once my brother and I were grown and out of the house, my mother would spend almost every weekend with either my Aunt Rose or my Aunt Rita and their families would fight over who “got to have Aunt Anne that weekend.”  If you ask my cousins, many of them would say that Aunt Anne was always there for them, or that Aunt Anne was their favorite aunt, or they would have an Aunt Anne story to tell. Over the years, my mother had various surgeries after which the doctors would recommend six weeks of physical rehab. My mother’s idea of physical rehab was to go stay at my Aunt Mary and Uncle Pete’s house and make the Physical Therapist come to her. I can recall her saying, “Why should I go stay at a rehab when I could just go stay with Pete and Mary and do the exercises there?” Being with family was better than any therapy she could get elsewhere.

Our mother was also very involved in raising her grandchildren. Every week, like clockwork, my mom showed up at my brother’s house on Sunday evenings. My mother watched my children two days a week, every week, so I could finish college. Once I was working, she drove my daughter to play hockey because I worked evenings. My daughter, Maureen and my nephew, Michael, have had an on-going battle for the title of Gran’s favorite for years. At any family gathering, the two of them would position themselves on either side of Mom, just in case one of the other grandchildren was going to try to get in on the action. 

I want to tell you the last words my mother ever said to me, but first, let me give you some context. My Aunt Rita, one of my mother’s older sisters, was known for making really horrible coffee. She could make anything BUT coffee. Pasta dishes, sausage, and peppers, chicken, soups, I’m telling you, anything but coffee. There would be any number of us visiting and, at the end of dinner, my aunt would say, “Shall I put on coffee?” and people would jump up from the table to put on the coffee so my aunt wouldn’t actually make the coffee. There would be a chorus of “Let Aunt Anne make the coffee, she makes the best coffee.” Really, anything so that my aunt didn’t make the coffee, although it was true that my mother made the best coffee.

So, imagine this – we get the call that my mother has had a stroke. My brother and I show up and we hang with my mom for the rest of the day. My mom is trying to talk, but unable to form any words, looking to her left, reaching out, as though she sees someone we cannot see. I move to her bedside, slowly so as not to disturb her process, whatever it is. I take her hand and I begin to talk to her softly.

“Mom. Who do you see there? Do you see Aunt Kate? Is she making raviolis for you?  Who do you see? 

Do you see Uncle Pete? Is he calling for the Bella de Fratella?”

On and on I go, talking to her, encouraging her, in case she can see her people on the other side. I keep talking. My mother says nothing. She gestures, but she says nothing.

Finally, I say, “Mom, do you think that Aunt Rita is making coffee in heaven?”

She looks up at me and says, clear as day, “Nooooooo.” THOSE were the last words my mother ever spoke to me.

I asked my brother what the last words Mom said to him were and he said the day before she had the stroke, he came to visit her and he brought her coffee. She opened the top, took one sip and pronounced, “This coffee is weak.” These are Mom’s last words – not I love you, although we know she did, no last instructions, nothing like that. Just complaints about the coffee.

Finally, I want you to all know that, if you are here, my mother is praying for you. For as long as I could remember, my mother had a hotline to God.  I had friends from all over who would call me and say, “Can you ask your mother to put my second cousin’s daughter on her prayer list?” When my brother and I went through our mother’s things, we found stacks of prayer request forms in her belongings. I want you to know, if you asked my mother to pray for a sick family member, my mother had people praying for that person, their family, their medical team, the family of their medical team, and so forth. Our mother believed in the power of prayer. Just for kicks, my brother and I estimated how many hours our mother spent in church or in prayer in just the last 40 years. Here’s the number – our mother spent 43, 646 hours and 50 minutes in prayer or church. That’s almost 1100 hours per year in church. This doesn’t include volunteer hours, it doesn’t include her driving people to doctor’s appointments and a whole host of other things that filled our mother’s life. So, I would say that if you are here in this church, you are someone who is loved by our mom, or by us, or by our family. And, to tell you the truth, even though our mom is no longer here on earth, I am pretty confident that she is going to continue to pray for you until she sees you again and then, she’ll put on the coffee.

Thank you.