Cherish Is A Word

Here it is: Yesterday I ran out of the gas at the end of the freeway ramp. What am I, 15? What adult do you know who doesn't go to the gas station when their "empty" light goes on? Well, I don't. I reset my mileage and wait until it reaches 31, because that's the proven mileage I can get on an empty tank. Please.

Today I get up late. There are signs in the kitchen that my thirteen year old, Sasha, has made a balanced breakfast for herself and gone to school. I eat the first thing I see - Wheat Thins, and heat up old coffee. Please.

I walk about the house and wonder who the hell got it so messy. Of course, it's the dog's fault, he's like living with a goat - my world is covered in Gus, be it his hair or the crap he's dragged out of the garbage can, which I haven't bothered to find the top to since it disappeared. Please.

I go into the bathroom and the plants are dead, and have been for several weeks. I take a shower and just how many bottles of empty shampoo did I try before I found one with actual product in it? Three. Please.

I get out and there are no towels - where are they? Downstairs in the laundry pile. All of them? Please.

Where are my clean clothes? Why is there no toilet paper on the roll? Where are my keys? When did my bangs start blocking my sight line? Why don't I have any cash? Why am I wading through grass to get to my car? Do I still only have a cup and a half of gas? Is that going to get me to the grocery store? Why is my bill so high? Why did I run out of absolutely everything at once? Or did I...

I get home and I prepare to sit. I'm going to meditate but I can't because I'm not in the right chair. So I sit in the rocker. Wrong. I sit in the leather chair and it's too close to the computer and I can still hear the hum. I sit on the couch and Gus jumps up and wants to sit on me. I sit in the red chair. Okay.

Here it is today: mucho grande chatter, chatter, chatter, relax my feet, calves, shins, knees, thighs, etc., etc. hit the third eye, really bright. Blinding. Chatter, chatter, less, less, okay now there's my breath finally, steady, steady -

I'm sitting cross-legged and cross-armed, pouting, in my extremely messy bedroom back on Mumford Road and I'm in gradeschool. My mom is already flying on her speed - excuse me, diet pills - and cleaning the bathroom as though there is going to be a performance of major surgery in it forthwith. Singing loudly. She has just chastised me for my messy room, but done it in a passive way, as though it's not really part of her house - and, to me, as though I'm not really part of her family.

I've seen this scene before. But today there's something new. There's my thoughts added. And they are: "I wish she'd just ask me if I needed help. But she won't so I'm not participating. Period."

There's me in my pajamas, heading for bed. I'm in junior high. "Good night, mom." She looks up from her gimlet and waves little wavies at me - "Toodles." And here are my thoughts again, "I wish she'd just say goodnight and maybe even...I love you...? I could sleep forever."

I'm in the airport, about to head back to New York from a visit to see my mom. There's a lot of people about and a lot of hugs and kisses goodbye. My mom looks around, taking it all in and here I say, "Bye mom. Thanks for everything." She looks at me, but this time I see it. She looks like she's five and scared to death. She grabs me like I think she's going to hit me, but instead pulls me in close to her - too close and way, way too tight, almost violent. "I love you, dammit," she says. Then walks away.

And now I'm an adult, 53 actually, and I've run out of gas and eaten crap for breakfast in a messy house where I can't find anything, with no groceries in it and where the lawn hasn't been mown for a couple of weeks. And finally, finally I wonder: why don't I love myself anymore?

I've been waiting. Waiting for things to straighten out. But the problem is, I've been waiting for that "thing" to straighten itself out and make itself known for 53 years. But she's gone and she's not coming back. And she did love me...as best an addict could.

She should have cherished me. But she didn't. She couldn't.

A lot of people love me today. A lot. But I'm still waiting to be cherished.

How much love can a person miss out on? A lot. How much would I love to stop missing out on what's already in front of me? A lot.

It's becoming clear to me that perhaps in all this waiting - this time for a job or for enough money or for some "right" man - I could actually take care of myself and my surroundings. And love myself again. Maybe then I'd stop missing out on what I already have.

Please.

Never Forget

Nine years ago this morning, I was driving to work in the dark with the radio on, thinking that the morning drive shock jocks have gone too far this time with their joking around: planes have flown into the WTCs. Not possible. But - I did feel a panic in my chest and flew the rest of the way to work.

When I got there, I found out it was true. I stood and watched the towers burn on TV, speechless, while those around me ran commentaries of their own - some between each other, others aloud and to themselves. How can this happen?

The minute I knew it was for real, I knew it was no mistake. Having lived in New York City for 25 years and flown in and out of it numerous times, I knew that the airspace above the island of Manhattan was tightly controlled and tuned to a fine art. That this could be no accident.

And then they fell...and were no more. I unknowingly sat down on the floor and prayed like I had never before prayed.

And I knew that any chance that anyone had of getting out was gone. Having previously worked in WTC Two, above the crash site, I wondered how many of my former mates had fatefully had the misfortune of showing up for work early, or even on time, that morning. I was later to find out that it was many. Too many to bear.

At work, we watched with the sound off, thank god, because I was to later go home and stun myself into trauma with the playing and replaying and replaying of the entire catastrophe - like many, I couldn't tear myself away.

Sitting here with my candle burning next to me, I feel the shock and extraordinary sadness of that morning again. I hope that, out of respect for those fallen, they're not replaying it over and over again today.

But most of all, as I get ready to do my daily sit, I pray that the world has not gone mad - what with all the blind belief in the shallowness of FOX soundbites and ignorant religious hatred. Those who downed the Twin Towers represented madness, not Islam, and their insanity should have gone down with them. It only lives on through Qu'ran-burning fanatics and bigoted persons who show they don't really believe in the freedoms we've fought so vehemently for by denying a simple community center within blocks of Ground Zero.

In the soft light of today, remembering 9/11, I have to say that I am so profoundly grateful for the luxury of my sophisticated problems. My gorgeous and talented daughter. My devoted and sometimes pain-in-the-ass dog. And in the simple yet profound idea that I have the ability to hope for a future. Any kind of future.

Another Word For Rebuffal

Today’s assignment: write about one that got away:

His name was Jim. And first he was one of my very best friends.

I met him in a meeting, along with his friend, Freddy, the guy who shook, nonstop for four years straight. Jim was tall and articulate, funny and somewhat attractive. He fancied himself a raconteur. Please. He was from Troy, New York. Nothing eloquent or savvy about hanging your socks on the hot water pipe to dry in a studio apartment in Troy. But in the big city, Jim had a way of attracting the soon-to-be and already famous right from the start.

He called me almost every single morning for my whole first year in recovery and read from the 24-hour-a-day book because I couldn’t read for that long. We went to dinner, often with friends, and then as time went on and I got better, alone. We became best friends and stayed that way for years. While we were dating other people we used to get together and dish about our respective lovers and what was up with them and us and laugh and laugh and feel not so alone in the scary world of impending intimacy. Which neither of us ever actually reached, mainly because our choices made that impossible. We chose people for their looks or their money or where they had a summer house. Jim liked women who knew a lot of words, or women who knew very few words with big tits. I liked men who were "deep" (aka depressed) who wanted to save me. A mixed bag of nuts, yes?

One night we had gone out to eat with friends and later it was just us walking home, late, down 14th Street in the East Village. We had stopped for Jim to get an ice cream cone at some all night ice cream shop (remember, this is New York City) and were strolling down the street, nearing the corner. Jim asked me if I wanted a taste of his ice cream and I said yes and leaned in to lick when, all of a sudden, he pulled the cone away and leaned in and kissed me. It was a big, very big, very wonderful kiss. I was stunned.

There was a garbage truck on the corner, and the guy leaned out to shout, “Man, you sure took her by surprise! Right on!” and honked the truck’s horn. Which made me jump all the higher.

“Wow…” I said.

“It’s been Wow for me for quite a long time, Nancy” said Jim.

And that’s how it started.

And it all made sense, you know, we hung out all the time anyway. The only one surprised I guess was me and everyone we knew seemed to take it in stride. What a change for me, though, how easy this all seemed to be. We still did much together and talked every day, several times a day. But things were a little more tense, as things can be when you’re getting to know someone AND sleeping with them at the same time. But we really had a lot of fun.

Everyone I knew just assumed that this was it, that we would probably just be together from then on, get married. Including me.

On Memorial Day weekend I was trying to decide whether or not to go out to Southampton for the weekend and Jim had said, yeah, go out, I think I’m going to go Upstate and see my son. Okay. Simple enough. I spent the long weekend with friends and this was pre-cell phone era, so we didn’t talk at all that weekend. I got home and left a message on his answering machine Monday evening. Tuesday goes by, Wednesday, Thursday…that afternoon he called and said we should meet for dinner. Cool.

We met on the East Side at a little bistro. We ordered dinner and Jim seemed really giddy and smiley and stuff and I think he’s going to maybe ask me to move in or make some kind of more solid commitment when he started laughing and bursts out, loudly, “Nancy, I think I’m in love!!”

I laugh back and say, “Wow, Jim, me too!”

And he says, “Oh my god, did you meet someone too?”

Wha…? “What are you talking about?”

And he starts talking loud and fast, without stopping, in a way that would make me and anyone else listening think we had never started an affair and that we were still just friends:

“Oh, my god, she’s beautiful, she’s perfect and I’m so in love, I can’t believe it. I met her on the train, I never made it to Rochester, she was going to go on to Martha’s Vineyard alone, but I decided halfway up there that I was going to go with her and we made love on the train and then spent all weekend in each other’s arms and I am just so in love I can hardly sit still!”


What? What the fuck! I stand up at the table and knock over the water glasses. I am furious and beyond hurt and I simply can’t believe the manic state he’s in. He’s completely negated the last six months, hell , the last five years, as though they never happened and treated me like one of the guys!

“Oh, god, Nancy, wait” he comes out of his reverie.

But I'm up and running out of the restaurant and down toward the East River walkway. He catches up and says wait, wait and I finally run out of breath at the railing. He falls to his knees, grabbing my hand and says, “Is it possible to be in love with two people at the same time?”

And I say, “Not when one of them is me!”

And he says, “Wait, please, you have to wait for me. I don’t know what’s going on or what I feel. I feel sick, really I do, but feel so in love with her I’m sick, really I’m sick. Can’t you just wait for me to sort this out, just give me a week, Nancy, just a week. I love you.”

This is so freaking dramatic. But I can’t stand the tight knot in my chest that feels like it’s going to bust up through my throat and so I just walk away. “Don’t follow me. Please.” I just walk all the way home alone.

A week later Jim calls and wants to meet for dinner. I say yes and meet up with him. He tells me her name is Carly Simon. You must be kidding, right? No, it’s really her. And she’s been in town and he’s seen her all week. “And I think I’m going to marry her.”

Did I mention this was a week later?

And he did. He married her less than a month later.

Refractory Adjustments

Does anyone know who the god of jobs would be? I'd like to set up an audience with this diety, please. Ahem AHEM!

Today I had a great interview. It was for a job that, in its description both written and delivered in the interview, could not have been tailored any closer to my person if it was sewn directly onto my body. Confident, perceptive, people-person who can talk - I could stop right there, right? - to and/or train retailers about environmentally positive merchandise and knows how to structure well their own time and environment. With energy.

And it pays more than minimum wage.

Tonight, post-interview and pre-dinner, I am wondering what it would be like to not have to wonder where I'm going to get the money or the ooompf to continue in our sweet yet meager little life, me and the Sash. Life used to be so much "bigger" - me, an upper middle class wife and mom who may have been unhappy, yes, but used to just living however the moment flung her - now a single welfare mother, comparison shopping for toilet paper, calculator in hand for the shampoo aisle, feeling the devil-may-care thrill of buying a quadruple Americano, yes, a fourple, at Diva. No more fighting and fighting and fighting for a new mortgage, to keep the electricity on, to get a scholarship to Hebrew school, to land a job? Wow, it's been a long haul, yes?

However, I think what the fight has been most accurately about is to find a new way of looking at the world. What I've most needed a is new pair of glasses. (Again!)

Picture this...a photo of myself with a caption below - "Self-supporting through her own contributions." WOOT!

I know DSHS would be thrilled to kiss my patoot goodbye. It says a lot about where my life in this economy has taken me, both fiscally and spiritually, when my wants would be pretty much taken care of with simply getting a job that could get me off the dole. And that would be nice.

But with some new glasses, I can see that while this job could mean that, it has the potential to mean much more for me - I couldn't have even dreamed up money AND something I'm already good at AND feeling good about what I'm doing. And I hope I get it.

But if I don't, I've earned these new specs. And through them I already see that there are more things out there than silver and gold. That there are things that fit my new vision of what I really need, and maybe even what I really want.

So, for right now I have to let go and let the next right move make itself known. And we know how good at that I can be. Riiiiiight......?

Joan Crawford's Eyebrows

Today I sat. Like I've committed to myself to try to do daily, if only for 10 minutes. I must sit and I must continue to go within or I will "dry up like an old fuckin' Thanksgiving turkey breastbone," as my friend Tim so eloquently put it. Today I am on the dry side of sober.

Unresolved discontent has gotten me re-interested in seeking an inner life, the same inner life I was seeking before my outer life went to hell in a handbasket. That was three years ago, and as life has moved on since, I feel as though I personally haven't moved an inch.

So I go searching. For people who have what I want, classes that teach what I want, a book to read with something I haven't heard before in quite the same way...? For a new job.

At present I'm a shelver in the mornings at a bookstore, same company where I used to be a manager, but again, when my external life went kablooey so did my work status. Anyway, I'm shelving during this time of impending crisis and I'm in the Christian section, shoving every incarnation of the Bible known to humankind onto the shelf without regard to arrangement, just get the freaking things off the cart and onto the freaking shelf. And this is not just because I'm jewish and the Bible's not my thing, but they can be so cumbersome and all look the same unless you pay close attention. And attention is not what I've got today. I am not in a good space. I want to be somewhere else.

I move on to the little, bitty inspirational books and feel as though I'm going to bolt from my body. My friend Andrea quoted Pema Chodron today, "Never underestimate the urge to bolt." I feel like bolting - urgently - but I've got to get this shelving done so I can afford to eat dinner tonight. A particular book with a van Gogh painting on it has fallen off the shelf. Oy. I put it back and move on down the line and, what the hell, the same book has hit the floor again. Ugh. Did I mention that I hate shelving? But I go back and put it back on the freaking shelf, anywhere for god's sake, just get back on the shelf little Christian book! I move on down the shelves again and for the love of god, the book has fallen off again!

All right, already!!

It is Henri J.M. Nouwen's "Life of the Beloved." What do I want with a book by a catholic priest? However, the subtitle is "Spiritual Living in a Secular World." This catches my attention because, although I'm "jewish" I'm also a little bit of everything else. And I open it:

"I have called you by name, from the very beginning. You are mine and I am yours. You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests. I have molded you in the depths of the earth and knitted you together in your mother's womb. I have carved you in the palms of my hands and hidden you in the shadow of my embrace. I look at you with infinite tenderness and care for you with a care more intimate than that of a mother for her child. I have counted every hair on your head and guided you at every step. Wherever you go, I go with you, and wherever you rest, I keep watch. I will give you food that will satisfy all your hunger and drink that will quench all your thirst. I will not hide my face from you. You know me as your own as I know you as my own. You belong to me. I am your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your lover and your spouse...yes, even your child...wherever you are I will be. Nothing will ever separate us. We are one."

Oh my. I'm not going to get all swoopy at work. So I buy it.

I bring it home with me, it reverberates in my purse, in the seat next to me, in my car on the road. In my hands while I'm reading it. It's 149 pages that read so smoothly it's more like 5. It is where I am.

Or shall I say, where I'd like to be. Because regardless of how elevated I feel when I sit to close my eyes today, up comes the "crowd at the mall," as I call them. Jeez, there's an awful lot of chatter in there. Always has been. But seemingly more than there used to be. Hence the peeling of the onion effect: the closer I get to me, the deeper, more ancient the chatter. My sponsor used to say, "Stop distracting yourself from yourself." Twenty-five years later, with many, many periods spent in meditation, I think I'm just starting to understand what she means.

And what comes into focus in the crowded mall of my psyche today are Joan Crawford's eyebrows. Everywhere. They're thick, like fuzzy worms and everybody's got 'em. My mother used to draw them on every morning. "Never leave the house, never be caught dead without your eyebrows!" One of my mother's tenets. Even at the end - in the hospital she actually crawled out of bed to draw on her eyebrows, only to break her arm when she fell. A couple of days later she died. I forgot to ask my brother if she had her brows on.

Even when I tried to focus on the Serenity Prayer today, all I ended up with were the brows. Many a shrink has had a heyday with me.

Today I'm grateful for Henri Nouwen, for the chatter, for the brows, for my mom - and for the willingness to keep trying to find my truth - that I am, we are, the Beloved.

Stairway to Here

Twenty-five years ago tonight I stood at the bottom of what appeared to be a very, very long staircase - an impossible-to-navigate staircase, like through wacky glasses in length - wondering what the fungula I was up to this time. I had run through quite a few bright ideas in my extremely long and exhausting 28 years, and this was just another to me - but was it? I had to admit, I did have a feeling in the pit of my stomach that wasn't my usual dread, and it also wasn't anything I could remember feeling before, but COME ON, AA? Wow. How dramatic. I mean, really, I wasn't THAT bad.

Not that I knew anything about how bad you had to be. Or what bad even was.

I figured I was like heading upstairs into a room filled with unshaven, slovenly older men, some in trench coats with few teeth, some in plaid flannel, most former working-class heroes, all divorced and depressed. Wow. But I knew I was in trouble and I knew I didn't know what to do and I remembered being told years before by an old drinking pal, Jack, who went from wearing hand-made Italian suits and working with the Rockefellers to...an unshaven slovenly old man...telling me about the program and how he thought it was where I'd end up eventually. I hated him at the time and conveniently forgot about all he said for a few years until the night before my pausing at the bottom of the very, very long staircase.

The night before: by far, not the worst night of my drinking/drugging career, but it was what it was. I came out of a blackout in a bar that I'm pretty sure was Elaine's because it was around the corner from my house. The last thing I remembered on coming out of the blackout was it had just been about 8:00, and I was pushing a large, heavy piece of furniture in front of my apartment door in the hope that it would deter me from leaving home once I cracked open the last of the brandy I had left in the house. I had become...discouraged...by my blackouts as they weren't fun stories to tell my friends anymore, like when I woke up in [famous person name]'s bed or once in another country. Gives a new meaning to forgetting where you parked the car when you wake up in a completely different country and makes for a pretty funny story when you've still got wit - oh, yeah, and friends to tell it to. But of late, most of my friends were gone and I was coming to in places that weren't very funny with people that were very, very scary. Like people who hung out in burnt-out buildings in Spanish Harlem, only had first names and didn't necessarily speak English.

Alas, that night, furniture or no, I must have gotten out and been who-knows-where again, landing my ass on a barstool near home as the sun was coming up through the barroom window. I came up talking to a group of hookers about the perils of being a working girl, as if I had any idea what I was talking about, being a one-track, non-stop, where's-the-drugs-minded girl. And I looked down to find yet another unexplainable gash, this time in my knee, complete with half-dried blood running down my leg and in need of stitches. And this time, finally, I had the thought form itself in whole - WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING TO ME!! I looked up and caught my face in the mirror behind the bottles - WHY?!?! WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS KEEP HAPPENING TO ME?!?! is my thought when - BAM!

A tiny little voice that has not made it's way to the surface before, maybe ever, says, "It's you, Nancy. It's the booze. It's the drugs. It's the end. It has to be..." I didn't hear the rest, because I couldn't, not then, but I heard it the next night. The end of that sentence was "...or you're dead."

And the next day I find myself at the bottom of that very, very long staircase after making a phone call to a number from the yellow pages and talking to some stranger who I think I told something about my needing to do research (riiiight, never heard that one before).

And I did NOT feel well, no. I could not get up them stairs above the Hungarian Literary Society on 79th Street and Lexington in New York City, no way. I did not have enough breath nor life left in me to make it that far that day alone.

But the door opens and in walks a biker dude, who takes one look at me and offers me his arm. Not a word, just his arm and a smile, maybe a half-laugh, and up the staircase he helps me. It turns out there are actually two flights and by the top of the second I'm weeping with impossible weariness, sick and shaking. He never said a word to me, just led me to the door, smiled, bowed, then worked his way into the crowd.

What? A crowd? Of normal looking people who are loud and laughing and have all their teeth. Someone calls the meeting to order and I take a seat across the room in the back row. As I sit, I am aware that I better sit on my ever-shaking hands to make them stop, or someone might notice and think I'm an alcoholic.

The meeting starts and the guy says his name and they all say "Hi Irwin" in unison and I think, WTF, get me out of this room of cult zombies, but I don't move and not because I don't want to - because I've looked down and realized that my dress is on inside out and I'm afraid someone might notice. And Irwin starts to tell his story and I don't really hear anything until he says that he's from Minnesota and I'm from Minnesota too and this tiny, beensy little connection is the biggest connection I've had to another human being in a very, very, very long time and it makes me start to cry big time and now I don't want to go and I don't. I don't leave and I talk to women and they tell me to do 90 meetings in 90 days and don't drink or drug, even if your ass falls off, and I believe them (a miracle in itself) and I don't drink and I don't drug, even when my ass is falling off and then they tell me a lotta, lotta, lotta, lotta other things and I believe (most) of them too. And I haven't had a drink or a drug from that day until this.



July 17, 1985 to July 17, 2010. The longest I've ever done anything other than breathe in my entire life. So far, so good.

My pal Jack wasn't so fortunate. I saw him in meetings off and on over the years, but he never got it and he died a drunk. Most of us actually do.

But he's the one who turned me onto the Stairway to Here. And for that I am forever grateful.

Another Reason I Hate Mail

Apparently my dog Gus believes that the mailman is here to kill us. Daily. Can you imagine having that blinding anxiety arrive every single day at 4:00 p.m.?

Yesterday, in his usual late afternoon frenzy, Gus actually crashed through my glass front door with a head butt, followed by what he must have been thinking was the lead-off for a triple lutz, but actually resulted in a lacerated artery and a torn leg tendon. The bathroom, after a vain attempt at stopping the bleeding in the bathtub, looked like a Hitchcockian murder scene.

And so we loaded up the Cedes and took Gussie to the Animal ER. (Have I mentioned that my car is white? Well, not anymore.) The animal hospital on Lake City Way is open 24 hours and filled with human and animal loving people - once you get past the shape-shifting bull terrier receptionist, who shouts out well-rehearsed questions with hostile indifference and appears unhappy with the answers to all. She obviously doesn't want you there and certainly doesn't want you bleeding on her linoleum.

Can I just stop here for a minute and say that I really wanted her to like me. WTF? I actually worked at it, compliments and all, and finally pulled back with the thought occurring that perhaps I need to step up my AlAnon meetings.

Anyway, all she said specific to our situation was, "Well he sure did a number on that flipping leg!" and hauled him off to the back room. Needless to say, I did not find any comfort in this opening number to the Summertime For Gusgus musical and asked her meekly several times if I could go back and check on my dog. "No Civilians Allowed" was barked back at me and I took this sitting down for a couple of hours, until I finally got my New York back up and demanded to see the doctor.

I finally got to see the vet and immediately regretted it, as he had me sign $1,200 dollars worth of papers and leave Gus overnight for surgery. Upsetting to say the least, first because Gus is my nearest and dearest dogpal and second because they don't take foodstamps and that's all I have.

So I had to leave him there in the care of the lycanthrope and her band of happy vets and hope for the best. It was hard to sleep without Gus's snoring, but I did it, and got up early to pick him up. Apparently last night after surgery, he came up out of the anesthesia so quickly that he began to kick out and now, of course, he has stitches and a cast on his back leg too. His whole right side, back and front, is wrapped in really fun, neon-colored doggy cast material, and the front one has a waterproof stump cover on it for rainy day potty breaks. Wow. That was an extra $46. Plus the supply of four medications and the overnight boarding.


Now I just have to feed him pills and keep him "quiet" for six weeks. Riiiiiiight.

Today I am grateful to still have a sense of humor.

This Time Next Year

Today I found myself walking down Greenwood, catching glimpses of myself in the shop windows along the avenue and wondering what life will be like a year from now. And then I thought about how many times I’ve wondered that throughout my life.

The first and most poignant time I remember was one Christmas at my mother’s. I must have been about 27 years old. I had brought my 5 year live-in boyfriend home to Minnesota from New York City for the holidays again, and he was out shoveling the newly fallen snow off my mother’s driveway. A novel exercise for him. I sat inside and stared at him out the window, complete with the new shiner, yes, black eye, he had given me less than a week before. Not novel for me anymore. He hadn’t started to hit me until we were together 5 years, and as with most newly abused women, it simply did not compute with me. What was happening? Why had I become so abusable?

I watched him out there shoveling and sadly wondered aloud, “I wonder what life will be like a year from now.”

My mother pulled up in her car, thrilled to be surprised by our early arrival, and by his “generosity,” as being originally from the Middle East, he had certainly never shoveled snow before. She jumped out of her car, threw her arms around him in a big hug as he lifted her tiny little person off the ground in an exuberant greeting. This my brother caught on camera – I still have the photo. They had a great, shallow flirtation going on since they first met. That was my mother, and that certainly was Robert. Big flirts.

My mother came in and found me sitting by the window, gave me a big hug from behind, then turned and took me by the chin to look at my face. Honestly, I was so tired that I just didn’t even bother to say anything, much less to recite the complicated story I had concocted to cover the telltale signs of a smack to the face.

She stepped back, looked to the floor and shook her head. When she finally looked back at me she said, “He’d make a terrible husband…” then looked back out the window at him said, “…but he’d make a great son-in-law!”

Merry Christmas, right? (See many former posts on my mother.)

A year later, Robert and I were through and I was newly clean and sober.

This is also one of the most poignant reminders I have that life changes. It always changes and, if nothing else, on that I can rely.

Today’s wondering was triggered by my attempt to pay my bills. An avid, on-time bill payer, I’ve learned quite a bit of humility in the last few years since the humongous downturn of my economic standing from married middle class professional to single welfare mom. The truth today is that I’m not going to pay the full amounts and they’re not always going to be on time. And while that may not be the truth a year from now, it was much, much worse and year ago.

What’s different today than a year ago? I know that I still have my house and I have my new Making Home Affordable mortgage in place. Last year I was in foreclosure. I have a job, albeit a part-time one, but I didn’t have a job a year ago. My daughter is able to collect SSDI from my ex’s catastrophe, whereas we had no income at this time last year. My ex-husband was going blind and still fed by a stomach tube a year ago. Today he is a seeing man who chews and swallows almost as good as the next fellow. I could stop and smell the roses today on my walk home from the post office. A year ago I didn’t even know there were roses in the neighborhood. A year ago I found laughter painful, even when I felt it to be true. Today I think I easily laugh more than I ever have.

I must take this time regularly to compare myself to myself, as I’m the only one I can truly compete with fairly. Life has not been easy, definitely not, and sometimes I think that if karma is real, then in my last life I must have been Henry VIII or someone else who lacked any kind of humility and broke hearts regularly. These appear to be my lessons this life: humility and how to live through heartbreak.

I’m doing okay today, and for that I’m grateful. But it will be interesting to see where I am this time next year, yes?

Day of the Odd Bod

Two days ago was Norwegian Independence Day here in the Great Pacific Northwest, complete with a parade and those zany little Shriner guys in their fez's and little cars zooming about throwing them orange candy peanuts at all the little tootsies. Happy Lutefisk to you and yours.

Before that was Cinco de Mayo, more candy - and Mother's Day, more candy - and before that Easter, where that bunny that looks like Jesus rises from the cave and brings baskets of CANDY to one and all who shall not die but have everlasting life... ? And before that the celebration of the cocoa plant, St. Valentine's Day (see former post ).

Well I'm here to inform you that today has been newly dubbed as Day of the Odd Bod on the planet where I live. It's filled with fun house mirrors and bad posture, anything, ANYTHING to accentuate what we do to ourselves with all that flippin candy. This holiday was created on the day of New Releases at the bookstore where I work when the book entitled "Big Belly Fat Cure" hit the bestseller tables - and every kind of bod known to mankind hit the bookstore in search of this miraculous tome. I couldn't keep enough copies on the floor. It has a lot of pages and a special coating on the cover, along with a spiral bound spine so you can easily fold back the pages if you so happen to find a before and after picture that "does it" for you. And the basic premise of this cure is?:

KNOCK OFF THE SUGAR!!!!

In about 150 stunning pages.

Ugh. What a nightmare. I really couldn't live with myself if I went into detail on who came out of the woodwork in search of this cure, it would just sound too wicked and the karma fairies might come back at me with something unspeakable. Suffice it to say that I felt like Twiggy standing there by my little counter, and I'm up about 12 pounds right now myself.

No body wants to take responsibility for what they put in their mouths, myself included. We just want a free ticket to chomp with abandon, having no price to pay in the end. But there is a price indeed, and it's usually in that gut that we look down at in shock and awe, like, "where did that come from?" Well, it wasn't that bunny or Cupid's fault, right? I mean, would Jesus hold a gun to your head and make you eat? Surely not, I say unto thee.

Tomorrow, I'm going to take a hard look at this candy nest I've been digging for myself and see if perhaps there's another, less destructive way to find my comfort. I'd like to feel a bit healthier and more streamlined next year on Day of the Odd Bod.

But tonight I'm grateful that I still have Willy Wonka's Runts to finish off. Sigh...

Seemingly Slim Pickins

If fear burned calories I'd be anorexic.

Last two weeks condensed: Broke, stunningly bored and bewildered with idleness, after reaching out again to friends and former co-workers I finally landed a job. Back with my former employer of the retail nature, I find that not only are things there not the same, but I am not at all the same either. The last time I worked full-time retail I had a husband and another income coming in - and an overflow of coping juice in my lifetime supply pool to wash over me should I find myself in any situation that called for it. My pool ranneth over.

Today my little puddle be cracked and dry, and I pray daily not to have to cope with anything bigger than a bad hair day until the coping rains come back and fill my reservoir again. Instead I got a retail schedule that would leave me home only when Sasha's not here and at work when she is. Thirteen is hard enough, but 13 and still in the throes of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is monstrous. Take that and add in the absence of any parental unit for over a week and what do you get? The emergency room on the evening of the fifth day in a row that mommy doesn't come home until after dark.

Poor Sasha was so agitated and desperate that I barely recognized her and I found myself in a fear that I have never experienced before. Kind of like the opposite of the day she was born, when I found myself in love in a way I had never before experienced. Holy crap, I have proven to myself that I can take just about anything, but when it comes to my kid - I become frightened and lost. No messing with my kid, Universe, I can't take it.

So she's been home for a week, flat on the sofa and I have attempted to show up for my job until today. This is simply not going to work.

If I could get away with drinking, believe that I would be wasted in a heartbeat. For certain.

But - I am 24 years clean and sober and supposedly have my wits about me, so I know that of all the choices out there for me, that is not one of them. Crazy, right? All that time and all I still want is my bottle to comfort me? And that freaking bottle is singing so rowdy right now that it's awfully hard to get around it to find whatever else my choices may be.

So what now? Hell if I know.

Today I'm grateful that it's Friday and I get to go to my home group and simply sit and take in other people's sprinklings of sanity. It may seem like a small thing, but it's the biggest and the best I got.

American Idle

I'm the new American Idle. And I've hit rock bottom in my esteemed position.

Princeton defines "idle" as "not in action or at work." Well, duh. Then I get to yourdictionary.com and there you have it: "having no value, use or significance; worthless; useless idle talk; vain; futile; pointless an idle wish." Oh - why go on?

I haven't posted for lack of anything to say. I have been thoroughly idle. Until today. I got a job - yes, after three years of holding the crown, I am about to relinquish it to the lowliest of bidders - would you like that with or without thorns?

Funny, when you're a kid you think, "I can't wait to be an adult and not have to go to school and take all this crap from people and make my own decisions." Then you get to be an adult and think, "God, I wish I didn't have to go to work and take all this shit from people and let someone else make all the decisions."

And so you lose your job. At first it's kind of cool. You get unemployment, and then you extend unemployment and then you start in on your savings, knowing that's not going to go down too far because, hey, you'll get a job. And you sleep in every morning and then go for a walk with the dog to get your coffee and wave at all the neighbors pulling out of their driveways for their various employments and think how lucky you are to have your "freedom" and not have to take any shit from anybody or be strapped into a cubicle somewhere downtown or make any stupid decisions. Like what to do about nuclear disarmament or what font to use for the Earth Day bus poster.

And time goes on and you've read several books and taken a couple of day trips and cleaned out the closets and done some landscaping. Because you have an adult conscience, you think maybe you should start checking out craigslist or the Times for jobs. And you warily apply for a couple because you don't really want to go back too fast, just stretch your search muscle a little and no one replies. So you go to LinkedIn and Monster.com and a couple of other networking sites and enter some information and then lie back and read another book. And no one replies.

Hmmm. Savings is going down. So you make a few phone calls to friends in "the biz" and ask what's up and who's where and find out that there's layoffs going on everywhere - Liz from PR had her hours cut in half and even had to get a job at CostCo bakery starting at minimum wage and 4 o'clock in morning just to pay for her heating bills. Joe Schmo from Research got cut totally and just started auto mechanic school because he couldn't find a job anywhere.

Okay, never mind, don't stress, what have you always done before? Hit the streets, shake some hands, sell yourself and get a job. I mean, it's always worked before and I really don't want to have to cut into my 401K or sell my car...

There's nothing in your field. And there's nothing in anyone else's field either. And you find yourself hitting the pavement with your resume - but no one wants to see it. Because they're all hiring "online" now - "No, I'm sorry, you can't speak with a manager. We only take applications online." And you get all kinds of emails saying you're overqualified or that they thank you for your information but they are going "in another direction" this time.

So you go to temp agencies and register and they have no work at this time. Geophysicists are now becoming temporary typists and PhD-holding teachers are receptionists. Call again tomorrow. And then next week. And then next month.

And your savings is gone and now you have to sell the car and cash out your 401ks and there goes your kid's college fund and the tiny inheritance (it seemed big once) from Uncle Bob. Sell a few pieces of gold maybe, an old 50s designer chair? Now you find yourself standing on line at the Washington Department of Social and Health Services, the only one with all their teeth, waiting to take a number to talk to someone about food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Your grandfather would roll in his grave! And your daughter asks you, "Mom, are we poor?"

Past due notices, pre-existing-conditions-not-covered issuances, disconnections, foreclosure and a $10 check from great-aunt Lena are the only things you get in the mail anymore. Forget about the root canal, baby, you got to eat!

And so on and so on. Not to mention that subtle attitude from certain "friends" who aren't really certain you've made a true enough effort.

So what DO you do with your days now? Well, how much can you clean? And then how much can you maintain? How many walks can you take? How much does a class cost, how much can you read, how many weeds can you pull - where are your friends?

At work.

And so, after three years of widdling your life down to within a two block radius and a spot you've been staring at incessantly on the bedroom ceiling - you find a job. And where will you be next week?

At work.

Welcome to America Today.



I'm massively grateful for my new job.

Blind Along The Walls

Here's my day. I awake to the sound of my dog having yet another grand mal seizure. It's 5:00am and Gus has not emptied his bladder since 9 last night - until now. All over the kitchen floor (at least this time it's on the tile floor instead of the silk Persian rug) and then, if you've ever seen a dog seize you know this answer, he commences to drag himself through it over and over again. Complete with mucho frothing from the mouth.

Can you tell I'm getting used to this? I've documented his seizures and apparently this is going to happen every 2-3 weeks, ad nauseum or ad infinitum, whichever comes first. Because if nauseum comes first, I'm not sure what my decisions will boil down to. But I'm not there yet. So be it.

I clean up Gus and the kitchen for about an hour and then attempt to calm Gusgus, who is blind for about 1/2 hour, hence he paces along the walls, until he drops from exhaustion and then I try to fall back to sleep on the sofa. But Gus insists whining and licking my face at the same time with his pewy mug. This is not working.

Sasha, my absolutely NOT morning-oriented teenager, gets up for school and whines and badmouths the state of...everything, then paces along the walls until she leaves for the bus (okay, not really the "along the walls" part.)

I'm tired and I have no coffee. I must have coffee. I harness up Gus and ride him to Diva, where he proceeds to raise the hair on his back and snap at two small children, well-dressed in their regulation plaid Catholic school uniforms. Their well-coiffed Catholic mother flits about along the walls and tells me in so many words to train my dog. Okay, not along the walls here either, but she does flit and spit Catholically-correct fire at me.

I get home and have to get the papers together to meet my ex-husband for our next, most current notarization experience - we have yet another mortgage offer from Bank of America, this time at a lower price and as a result of the intervention of Senator Patty Murray. This should be a red-letter day for me, no?

And yet I find it necessary to pace along the walls, yes, along the walls because I want to be as blind as Gus is after a seizure and even more desensitized because I have to "see" my ex and endure what I know will be the regular recitation of the reasons I'm going to, in his weekly words, BURN IN HELL FOR ALL ETERNITY. Sometimes I can actually find it funny now, because it's become absurd in its roteness, but many times I cannot control how I will feel because I don't have control over all 54 people who live inside me, particularly the ones who remember what it's like to be put down regularly, both in childhood and other past "relationships," for various pathological reasons, several from people who threatened my BURNING IN HELL FOR ALL ETERNITY. Please see former post , among others.

But I do meet him at Bank of America and the receptionist signs us up for the next available bank exec and then makes the mistake of having us take a seat in the same waiting room as several other innocent bystanders. He sits across from me and begins his regular recitation of my failings, complete with names and dates and other assorted details and I grunt an answer rotely on occasion just to see if this time he will stop (what's that definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over expecting different results? Yep.) and finally I cut him off, giggling somewhat hysterically to the semi-horror of the innocent bystanders who have been listening, and I say, "Jesus, man, wouldn't this make a great scene in a really shitty play? Like Mamet, you are!" To which, again to the horror of the innocent ears not three inches away, he shouts, "Fuck no! Too wordy!! Mamet would cut to the chase!" To which we both laugh and then are totally silent. The room feels blown away by the insanity, like the persons sitting with us appear to want to get up and pace along the walls.

It is all executed and done in perfect silence, at least on the part of him - he signs in front of the notary, he flips the papers back in my direction, he leaves. It is sufficiently dramatic to win at least a Drama Desk, with maybe even a nod from the Obie's and I should feel thrilled to have had my mortgage cut in half, yes?

But no, I cry on the walk home because as he has pointed out I'm a loser who still does not have a job to pay for this and I never will since I am about to BURN IN HELL FOR ALL ETERNITY, only about half of which I really believe, but since I can't pace along the walls I have to at least cry to relieve the tension. I can pace when I get home right?

No. I get home and it seems Gus has gotten up all the way up to the middle of the dining room table and snagged Sasha's Easter basket, which was filled with chocolate. And its contents? All gone. Anyone know what 25-30 pieces of chocolate do to a dog? Generally speaking, it throws them into a seizure. But we've already had one of those today, you say? Yes, but I don't think Saint Gustavo, Patron Saint of Mutt Seizures keeps count nor shows mercy.

I call the vet who, of all things, laughs, and says I'll have to stay close to Gus FOR THE REST OF THE DAY. But I have appointments and errands? Gus will have to go with me FOR THE REST OF THE DAY. There shall be no escape nor respite.

I take Sasha (and Gus) to drop her at her first appointment across town and I think, jeez, it's nice out, maybe we'll go to Magnuson dog park close by and I'll let Gus out for a little spin. It's nice out today, sun shining, birds singing.

We get to the park and the first person we run into is...my ex with his dog. He's also there with his dogwalker "friend" who's 20 years younger and 20 pounds lighter than I am. "Tee hee," she says. Joy. Five minutes later, the heavens open up and we are drenched, me and Gus, while the ex, his stick girl and his designer dog drive off in heated-leather-seat comfort. Me and Gus pad back through the monsoon, slide back into my 21 year old vehicle with the door that won't shut all the way and the window that won't completely close and we head off to pick up Sasha. But not before I slam back into the bumper of a brand new Toyota. And I think, great, let's call the police now that it reeks of wet-dog-who-has-peed-all-over-himself in here.

But we all get out and and - Aha - made of rubber! I get my 13th dirty look of the day, smile back and thank the Patron Saint of Bumper Makers, St. Come-On-An-Hit-Me-Sucka. I pick up Sasha, who immediately points out that she is thoroughly disturbed by it reeking of wet-dog-who-has-peed-all-over-himself in here. Perhaps her father should have picked her up? Ah, the beautiful silence.

I'm tired. There have been no further seizures. I have not had any demonic spirit show up to DRAG ME TO HELL yet. Is there a conclusionary lesson to this essay today? No. I'm just grateful it's all over.

Greetings From The Empty Vessel

It's three years ago this week that life as I knew it completely fell apart.

I walked into the extra bedroom where my then-husband was "sleeping" and found him in a state that no human should ever have to experience, either as a condition themselves or as a witness to such condition. He had a fever of 107, was yellow-ish green, his neck was swelled out to his shoulders, he could not open his crusty, puffed up eyes and when he tried to answer my question, "can you stand up?" he just blew sheets of the inside lining of his mouth out in large bubbles.

That's as much as I will graphically describe - except to say that when he finally did answer me, he reached in and pulled his lip off, taking his earlobe with it as he tried to move his hand from his face.

This was a catastrophic, toxic response to a prescription medication that years later a court would find both the prescribing doctor and the drug company NOT RESPONSIBLE for. I am attempting to write a book about the whole experience, but as one can imagine, I do get stalled out and stare at the wall for hours at a time without realizing time has passed at all.

But for this post I'm going to stick to what happened to me. This was my life three years ago this week: I was a wife and mother living in a home that we had just paid top dollar for in a great neighborhood. Our combined income was up to a couple hundred thousand a year and rising. We had two luxury cars, 3 401k's, a substantial savings, even moreso because my mother had left me a small inheritance. I had a career that I loved - other than being a writer myself, I managed the 3rd largest grossing Barnes & Noble in the country, and had for about 8-9 years. I was up for promotion. My then-husband's career was skyrocketing, selling land to builders and buildings from the land. Our daughter was a straight-A student who was one belt away from a black belt in karate, something she had worked toward for about 6 years. We had just bought a French bulldog and she was a little tiny expensive bundle of energy. I was clean and sober 20+ years.

David was in the hospital in a coma for almost four months. Despite the odds he lived. But one must remember that there are states that are worse than death, and he was definitely in one of those for a long, long, long time. Sometimes I don't think he's passed through it completely even now.

Our marriage was precarious to say the least – hence the aforestated finding him in the EXTRA bedroom, i.e. HIS bedroom. But I would have stayed that way indefinitely I think rather than face change because: we had a child together; we made a lot of money together; nobody has a perfect marriage, so said my mother (yeah, a future post on the Relationship Theories of Marge to come); I was too lazy to do anything about my unhappiness and; blah, blah, blah fear of the unknown.

As one can imagine, and I will not go into it here, our already broken marriage could not withstand the rigors of the attempts to heal from a state worse than death and we split.

So – over the last three years I have basically lost everything that I could possibly use to naturally describe myself – except that I am still a recovering alcoholic and a mother. I can’t even say that I’m still blonde, because stress turned me grey and I pay a high price for that blonde now.

I lost my marriage, I lost my job and my career, I lost the income from my husband’s lost career, I lost my mortgage, I lost my healthcare coverage, I sold my cars, I cashed in the 401k’s, I spent the inheritance and the savings. I lost belief in a god of my then-choosing, I lost quite a few friends (future post on Are People Afraid That Tragedy Is Contagious?), I lost my dog to my ex-husband, I lost my concentration, I lost my mind. But not really, because when you’re a mother you don’t have the luxury of insanity.

No more wife of an rising star, no more wife, no more manager, no more future district manager, no more homeowner, no more free-to-get-sick person, no more safe driver, no more financial security, no more credit rating, no more writing person, no more Scary-Ass God believer.

Three years now I’ve been a single, sober, unemployed welfare mom.

Whatever It Is That Runs The Universe has seen fit to make me an empty vessel.

And that includes ridding me of the voice of that Scary-Ass God.

You live through enough, and there's not much left to be scared of. And for that I'm grateful.

NOW

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." Philip K. Dick

"How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg." Abraham Lincoln


Okay, first of all, can I just say that if your last name, or first for that matter, was "Dick," wouldn't you change it as soon as you could? Can you imagine having the name Dick in middle school? Ay, the horrors! Okay, I'm done.

Almost 25 years ago I made a commitment to reality, whatever that turned out to be, by getting and staying clean and sober. And I have done the best I can...or HAVE I?

It's all relative. First it was booze. Then it was drugs. Take them away and it was anorexia and food obsession, which, by the way, will never be perfected as I have to form SOME kind of relationship with food to continue to exist, said relationship also striving toward a healthy reality. Face that, then it's "romance" or as some would say sex, again, not total abstinence but...sane or "healthy"? Face that, then it's money and finances. Again, more of the same.

So let's see now, we've got AA, OA, AlAnon, DA. Oh, and I quit smoking. Without an A.

Now, there have been many, many other sometimes mucho fun and, alternately, somewhat destructive things I have put in the place of these obstacles to the facing of reality, but most of them wouldn't kill me eventually. The one I'm bumping up against most right now is fantasy land. Again, something that won't kill me and doesn't need to go away completely, but right now it's got my laundry piling up and the cupboards bare.

How did I become unpleasantly aware of this? Last night I was with a group that was talking about "self-care" and I could feel myself get really twisted and annoyed. I thought, "I don't relate to this namby-pamby crap anymore, this kindergarten of the basic spiritual search, and I don't feel like sitting through my ABC's again. I know how to take care of myself and I do and blah, blah, blah, hmmmmmm...I'd like to lose some weight [because I've noticed all day that my waistband has been cutting off my circulation] and I wonder if that guy [I was thinking about all day] will call [and we can do what I was imagining] and I wish my hair would grow out longer [like I pictured it looked all day] and I think ...." Non-stop.

Somewhere in the speaking going on around me [while I was thinking], interrupting the busy signal I was creating by chronic self-absorption, a guy I know said the words "self-indulgent" and "alienation." Wham! Back in the NOW.

Here I am again, in the running for another overhaul of my spiritual ABC's. There is such a world of difference between self-care and self-absorption, and I've been living pretty much in the latter. How do I know? I look in between those brackets and see what I've really been up to [all day] versus what's on my to-do (self care) list!! I got a lot done on the Planet Nancy this week, but here on Earth I still need to do laundry, go grocery shopping, get dog food, make a doctor's appointment, set up a dentist appointment, fill out a camp scholarship form and job hunt. Take a shower, read a book, play a game, write a story, make a phone call, have coffee with a friend. All self-care. None done.

I believe in fantasy and I think there's definitely a time and place for it in everyone's life, even daily. But like the definition I found of self-indulgence: "to yield to desires and whims of, especially to an excessive degree, to allow unrestrained gratification (i.e., indulged herself with idle daydreams) - if I can put it into practice in between big chunks of actually living my life it might add to instead of take away. I think it's called pulling oneself back into "living in the NOW."

I am a compulsive thinker by nature. Always have been. Much of the time I know I'm doing it and I'll indulge, even when the phone rings or the doorbell sounds. It doesn't do much for my real world, at least the way I practice it thus far. But wouldn't it be great if I were a compulsive writer-downer of my compulsive thinking and then a compulsive promoter of my compulsive writing down of my compulsive thoughts? Would I need yet another program, I mean other than Quick Books, to add up all the revenue to be made?

Today I'm grateful that learning, particularly learning to be me, is a lifelong process.

Hand It Over Big Guy!!

Hey Universe - Just give me what I want!!



I'm not going to word or reword it over again so that I don't ask for it with the wrong stipulation in it so we have to go over this all over again. You know what I want. Just give it to me - what's the big deal? Does everything have to have a lesson in it? Does everything have to be about teaching me something or about Who's in charge of the Universe and Who knows better than whom? I mean, I'm even capitalizing for You!

Just give me what I want!!

Things are getting a little cruel here if you ask me. I don't know what to do and You sure as hell aren't giving me any hints, or if You are they're in such teensy little places that only the fly in my office can see them or they're so high-pitched that only my dog can hear them and quite frankly, I don't speak fly or dog and I don't want to! Do You find this is still necessary after all this time? Get a grip!

Just give me what I want!

I know what I want and I'm tired of pretending that I don't so that You can have room to fit Your opinion in. Fuck humble. If what I want is so completely screwed up then let me find out on my own, would You?! I can handle the highly improbable pain of disappointment and/or failure - You of all Beings know that as You've graciously allowed me plenty of opportunities to test that theory - so hand it over to me to unravel on my own then!

Just give me what I want!

Or maybe You could see fit to just give it to me straight, free and clear, without the need to untangle or unravel. Maybe what I want isn't screwed up at all and maybe it really is the right thing for me and I can handle all of it and I can live a life like so many other people seem to around me - how the hell am I ever going to know if you don't

Just Give Me What I Want!

What am I grateful for today? You Already Know!!

Milk Carton Girl

This morning Sasha was laughing when she asked me, "What's that look on your face?"

"Whaa....?"

Today I'm...lost. You know how when you reach a fork in your road and you could either go to the left or to the right? But you'd really rather just keep going straight? But there's no path there?

Can't I just hike down the middle?

Well apparently not. Because then I just get farther away from ANY path. And I have a day like today.

Today Gus had two grand mal seizures and I spent part of the day cleaning up after them and then getting him settled back into reality. I didn't like the seizures, of course, but I liked having purpose. And it made Gusgus smile.

Then Sasha needed marshmallows to make Rice Crispy Treats. I hate going to the grocery store, but again, I liked having purpose so I went. When the stock kid asked me if I was finding everything okay, I asked him where the Cris Rispies were. He must not have been from here because he laughed and pointed at me with a political incorrectness reserved only for the East Coast.

I raked half the yard. Then I swept half the house. I tried to read twice. I couldn't even nap. I tried that two and a half times. I needed to walk the lake later in the afternoon and I really didn't feel like it - but I did and it had purpose - yet everyone appeared to be smirking at me. Really - strange because I kept thinking about Chauncy Gardner from that movie "Being There."

Later, I walked by one of my neighbors who was making wooden planting boxes, you know, them organic vegetable-growing kind. What I refer to as "survivalist" gardening. We talked a bit and I said, "Jeez...those are amazing" to which he laughed and said, "they're just boxes, Nance, anyone can make a box" and I said, "no, I can't seem to get anything done" and he asked, "why can't you get anything done" and I didn't want to get all existential on him so I just sighed and said I meant in the organic sense, which he thought was very, very funny.

I guess I must look funny when I'm lost. If this goes on much longer I'm going to put myself on a milk carton.

Maybe someone will find me...?

Today I'm grateful to be...to be...to be. I guess...

waiting...waiting...ladidah

My friend Bob just wrote that his morning meditation stated: "Within our dreams and aspirations we find our opportunities." He went on then to say, "Apparently what I had in mind for myself wasn't big enough. (Again). This isn't a bad thing...I just don't have the answer...yet."

Oy. Well I'm in the same place and today it feels like a bad thing. I know feelings are not facts, but they're feelings all the same and I'm working as hard as I can not to finish off a one pound bag of Willy Wonka's Runts in pursuit of relief from my non-factoid sensations.

Here's what I'm waiting for: A call from the mortgage banker regarding my possible workout or impending foreclosure; a call about at least one job that I'm up for after not working for almost three years; a return call from the IRS; a call from a...guy; a spark of inspiration to go on with the book I'm writing, though lord knows I'm writing it anyway in as stilted a fashion as I've ever written, etc. There's more but I don't want to bore you. Or me for that matter!

With regard to the bank and the IRS, I have done all I can, or at least all that I know of, to clean up my side of the street and the results are going to be up to them and whatever it is that runs the Financial Universe. Oftentimes it doesn't feel like the same Higher Power that I'm acquainted with, am I right?

With regard to the ...guy, I am fully aware that whatever anyone thinks of me is none of my business and I certainly can't cause or control feelings in anyone, so...maybe I'm not aiming in the right direction again...? Do I really care about this particular ...guy, or am I bored?

With regard to the book I'm writing. Well, that's the way it goes, right? Look how long it's been since I've posted here, for god's sake. Sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not and in the times in between you just continue writing and wait for IT to be back so you can go back and clean it up, right? Thanks for listening.

Okay. Now. With regard to the j-o-b. This is where Bob's statement hits me right between the eyes and, although it makes me want to run screaming into the night, it also has the effect of a kind of loving warmth - the one where you know you're not alone trudging the road to happy frakking destiny. Yes, frakking, and I like it because I think it goes better with "happy" than "freaking."

I know, in my heart, that I don't aim high enough. I know this. I've been told this since the 1st grade. But I don't know what to aim at. Here's another of my favorite quotes:

"Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither."
C. S. Lewis

So, in my reasoning, if I could only figure out what's higher than heaven, I'd aim at it and everything would work out...peachy?

It's a tough economy right now, true, but it's a tough world for us underachieving potential overachievers. A lot of us have been coasting in neutral for so long that to crank it into second or third is going to hurt like the dickens and probably sound even worse. But I'm so willing to hurt and to sound like my gears are going to grind themselves into liquid. I just can't get a grip on the frakking gearshift!!

One more quote and I'm done. "You know what my problem is? My problem is that I can have absolutely anything I want - I JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT I WANT!!" Alec Baldwin's character in Miami Blues.


I'm so grateful to have a tribe who lovingly and warmly knows what I'm talking about. Most of the time. Suggestions are welcome.

Yesterday I Loved

"Being alone and feeling vulnerable. Like two separate themes, these two parts of myself unite in my being and sow the seeds of my longing for unconditional love."
--Mary Casey

Yesterday I was busy. I had mentally prepared myself all week to sit and relax back into the idea that my purpose on Saturday, for the most part, was to be chauffeur to my 13-year old daughter, whose social life extended from 10am to midnight, with four places to be physically and 342 places to be mentally. And because I was well-prepared for this, she only needed to visit maybe one place spiritually. That's my job. I'm a mom, and I am the only person on Earth responsible to love her unconditionally - for the REST OF HER LIFE.

That's right. Many people will love her - because she's a good person and she's smart and witty and kind and helpful and a helluva lot of fun - but no one can be held to the task of loving her unconditionally but her mother - and that's the way it is. If she were to miss the unconditional love of her mother, like many, many people out there did, she would never have the chance to make up for that again - although theoretically we hopefully learn to love ourselves that way and learn that some type of Higher Power loves us that way too - but our mothers are the most important people, ever, in our love lives. Moms are the hands-on manifestation of spiritual love.

When I worked as a retail bookstore manager and I would get called to the cashwrap because some unruly person would be complaining about some "thing" they believed they had been shorted: a discount for a creased page, an indifferent attitude from the cashier, etc.; and there would be times where I felt pushed beyond capacity. More than once I found myself actually saying to one of these "entitled" persons - "Hey, I'm sorry your mother didn't love you enough but we can't make up for that today. Do you want the book or not?" Most staff would find this outrageously funny, most customers would find this outrageously maddening and I would find it outrageously cathartic. Not the "right" thing to say, no, but certainly the truth as I see it.

I mean, why do you think all them prison dudes get tattoos that say "Mom" on them? Unconsciously they know, deep inside, that Mom is the only one that's ever going to love them no matter what nasty or unlawful acts they commit. And that's their birthright, as I see it.

When I brought Sasha into the world, I knew the minute my lips touched her forehead, right there in the delivery room, that my job was going to be at least a thousand-fold bigger than I had imagined it would be - and that I would have to rely on Something to help me find a path to follow because I didn't have anyone to mimic. My mother did love me unconditionally, as an adult, but when I was a child she was an active alcoholic and drug addict and what I remember her saying most often to me through grit teeth was, "Oh my god, you are just TOO MUCH!!!!" Hence my choices in husband and love relationships - "OMG, you are just too [fill in the blank]!" I've heard: Independent, Loud, Wordy, Funny, Blond, Flirty, Stubborn, Expecting Too Much, Expecting Too Little - the list is just stupid long.

It takes work to accept our loved ones for what they are, continuous work. We grow up to have ourselves and our tastes and we would most likely enjoy having a compliment to our person to be our partner in life. But we're never going to love them unconditionally, and they aren't going to be able to do that for us either. This is awfully hard to explain to someone who's never had a kid, because you're granted something at the birth of your child that you never had before and really didn't know existed, especially if you didn't get it from your own mom. But everyone was a kid and knows somewhere inside what their birthright was and that they deserved to be loved for exactly who they were, not for just what they did. It runs through our veins forever and ever. And if we don't get it then, we tend to look for it forever and ever again.

I'm fortunate enough to have found a Path to follow, a way to find what I need and sometimes even what I want, and most often it's through giving others what they want and what they need, if only for a few moments. Again, the smile to the sad guy bagging my groceries, my stopping for people looking at a map confused and offering my help, a hug to the barista this morning who had tears in her eyes. This giving helps me get. But I am still painfully aware, as are many of my "tribe" that I lack. And what I lack can never be made up for, it's not in the now. It's in the past.

Again, acceptance is the key to my spiritual well-being, and accepting that I wasn't loved in the way I needed to be when I was a kid will help me accept the love I do get today - as being enough. Yesterday, in between all my chauffeuring about, I took a walk to Greenlake, around it and back, and I knew I had to cry. I didn't know what about, but I knew it was there and that if I didn't find it I was going to eat yet another entire box of Girl Scout cookies and have to start searching for it all over again tomorrow. I allowed my mind to wander like my feet were doing, going through how unfair it was that Sasha's having such a good time and I'm not - no, that's not quite it - how my social life is nil this weekend - no, that's not going to do it - how I miss my mom so much - okay, that's a bit closer - and then, for whatever reason, I landed upon the beginning of my relationship with my ex-husband. And that did it.

Two lost kids we were, finding each other, hoping for the best. We had a great time, we did - I didn't marry some monster, I married a man I loved who loved me back. We lived our lives, we filled in each others' blanks and even though neither of us had ever been unconditionally loved, we were satisfied with what we did have. Wasn't perfect, but wasn't unworkable either. Good times. "What happened to us?" That's what finally brought the tears I was looking for - what the hell happened? Honestly - we had a child.

Now don't get me wrong, this is not Sasha's fault. She is probably one of the best things that's ever happened to me, physically, emotionally and most particularly spiritually. BUT, two people have to get on board with what feelings do come up when you have a kid who is entitled to get from you what you never got from your parents - unconditional love. It's imprinted, the love, the jealousy, the dysfunction - what the German philosopher Alice Miller, in her book Prisoners of Childhood, calls "the compulsion to repeat" what was done to us. And if you want to stay on your Path, you're going to have to look hard and long at what you didn't get, so you can give what you're about to give. Whoa, what a tall order!

Although many other things happened to cause the demise of my marriage, this is where it started. Having a child. And now I'm alone. Or yesterday, that's certainly how it felt - BIG TIME. I am alone, making all the decisions, weathering all the storms, taking all the responsibilities, having to find the resources, etc. I am alone and I am vulnerable and I don't feel loved.

I finally get back to my own street and by now I'm weeping up a storm and trying to stop because I've got to get back to real life and find my chauffeurs hat and act like a mom. Shit! I wanted to cry and now I can't stop. What the heck do I do now?

As I cross the street, there's my neighbor, pulling weeds and landscaping her absolutely beautiful yard. And she stands up and she sees me and she asks me if I'm okay and I can't answer without sounding like a six year old so she walks up to me and just puts her arms around me and hugs me tight. Okay, is that that Higher Power we speak of or what?

And I tell her what I'm thinking and what's come up for me and she tells me the most interesting thing: that she feels the same way. Not at that very moment, but often. "I am alone, making all the decisions, weathering all the storms, taking all the responsibilities, having to find the resources, etc. I am alone and I am vulnerable and I don't feel loved." And she's married. And she has a child. And she was raised by an alcoholic mother.

So there you have it. My evening turned around a bit, just like I needed it to, with that hug and with that connection with another of my "tribe" and I finished up my chauffeuring and watched "Inglorious Basterds" with my popcorn (much less fat than them freaking Girl Scout cookies) and I lived and loved my way through another day here on Earth.

The Path! I am grateful, although somewhat exhausted.

Proposed Intro Page

May I be relieved from the dangers of my mind
May I be safe from the dangers of the world
May I enjoy good health, prosperity and a generous heart



Navigating Lightening Bolts
Mapping The Fields of Gravity
Nancy Jordet Falsberg


INTRODUCTION


They gave my mother six months to live. It was 1998 and she was 69 years old, newly diagnosed with metastatic malignant melanoma, or skin cancer. She laughed and lived seven more years.

The women in my family have always been hard to kill.

My grandmother, Valborg, of good hearty Danish stock, lived to 94, despite her unwavering devotion to Jesus, the Book of Revelation and the daily signs she passionately shared with us that pointed directly toward the end of the world. Ninety-four years must have been one helluva long time to live with a sense of impending doom, but she did it. And without a scratch.

The Sense of Impending Doom appears to be a genetic predisposition for the women sharing in my gene pool. I am beginning to believe that my true purpose on earth is to put an end to that cellular chain of command, both for myself and for the sake of my daughter, Sasha, although she’ll probably have to carry on with my work considering what she’s already lived through in her short years here. The glass is going to be half full, dammit, and I’m not giving up on faith in that principle. I’m not going to let go of that belief no matter what happens, but I’m here to tell you that hopefully, I’m going to learn let go of just about everything else before it’s over.




I'm just grateful I'm writing at all.

Oreos In The House

How is it that moms everywhere go shopping for school lunch stuffins and stay thin? Why do they all look like Peg Bundy or Elise Keaton? Look at them lanky ladies from Laurelhurst who load up their 3.2 kiddies with all kinds of packaged fabulousness and remain a size 2. I mean, they must keep it around the house, right? Is it under lock and key and their significant others are the keepers of the keys? "Honey, time for lunches..." she yells into his shower in the morning.

Whilst he finishes shaving in the special fog-free mirror he got from the airline catalogue they kept in the first class seat pockets off his last flight to Buenos Aires on business, he replies, "Okee dokey, sweetums! Right after they finish off the Wall Street Morning Report" and turns up the sound on the waterproof, hi-def, flat screen, multi-app, GPS-laden device that shows up with the flick of a finger off the extremely clear mirror. Have you ever noticed these guys never have them little pieces of toilet paper hanging off their faces where they nicked? I have.

He comes out and unlocks the lunch locker (pronouced "Lock Air") they had specially made to match their Peruvian rain forest kitchen cabinet grouping and she loads up them younguns with oreos and cheese food and pb&j and Ruffles and he stands by, making sure she doesn't secret a bag or two off to the side by the juicer or the yogurt maker or the scale she uses to weigh her breakfast, lunch, dinner and two snacks on. Both satisfied that this is the case and that lunches have been successfully packed, they lock it back up. Maybe together, like two hands on one key. Awwww, isn't that a loving partnership? Okay, a bit much? I'm jealous.

I'm a single mom in the upper-poor income group who works from home. Look out. Here's my Monday: I get up and pack the lunch from the stuff in the cabinet I reserve for lunch fixins, send off my 13-year old to school. I walk to the coffee house with my dog to get my first coffee (a wake-up hangover, er, holdover from New York City living) and walk back home to breakfast, which is a granola bar and a banana, 1/4 of my caloric intake of the day. I write. Then I do my yoga tape with Rodney Yee and "meditate" as best I can. During my meditation, the double stuffed oreos float by several times - ah, not today, little black and white devils! I write some more, then search for jobs. I walk to Greenlake, walk around Greenlake, walk back from Greenlake. Upon entering the house, almost in a trance, I head for the lock-air and I eat four to six double stuffed oreos.

Dammit!! I turned up my ipod shuffle trying to drown out the calling of them, and they still got through!

I look for stuff I don't like when I shop for school lunches so I won't be tempted but there aren't that many things I don't like. I mean, you can only pack her up with lamb and okra and eggplant for so many weeks in a row before the other kids start making fun of her! Who's she going to trade with? Someone from Lebanon?

So I get her what all the other kids are getting and I try as best I can to just stay-the-hell out of it. Not an easy order, since I don't have a loving keyholder in my life without little toilet papers hanging off his nick-free face traveling to South America regularly on business.

Oops. Off subject again.

Today I'm grateful for Rodney Yee's help in stretching me out of it.