Never Forget

If I may so bold, a re-post from 9/11/10:

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.

I'm Ergless for Him

How do you like that? I just realized today that I've been dumped. It didn't occur to me until now because I'm usually the dumper, not the dumpee (maybe because I tend to dump right before being dumped) but I guess if you don't hear from someone for a month, you're done, yes? Here's the sitch:

So I walk 3 miles a day around a lake for various reasons, most of them neuroses induced, but you know, some in the name of health. For several years I see this skater-man who grooves to his own beat. At first I think he's somewhat bizaare because he's around my age and moving like one of the Central Park teen brigade, minus the spot-on rhythm and so I ignore him completely. Then, sometime around Spring of this year I see him have some kind of "spiritual" awakening (Spring, go figure) and his groovin totally turns my head. Somehow it's become extremely attractive.

Now, all of a sudden I must meet this man, in the biggest way, and I'm itching with quasi-obsession - but how? He never slows down! My daughter suggests stalking him to find out where he parks, but as I consider this I find it not only to be too creepy, even for me, but impossible, because I can't flippin' catch up with the guy!

My friend tells me to hand him a business card as he wheels by with my name and phone number on it - I find this horrifying, even for me, and rule it out immediately. However, after a couple of weeks of yearning, I decide that this is exactly what I must do. I write something like, "I like your skating, would you like to have coffee sometime - Nancy 206-555-5555" and after carrying it around stuffed in my back pocket for about a week, finally I see him coming around the corner and, although I feel enough anxiety to incite a stroke, I hand it off to him.

I'd love an instant replay of this moment, just to see what kind of face I had on. Or maybe not.

Anyway, he stops, we talk a bit, both of us quite stunned by my brazen hussiness, I find out he's an engineer (how functional, I think) and, of course, totally different than anything I had imagined, yet I kind of like this. We get a little info, find the little curiosity spark going on, etc.

Okay, flash forward - four months worth of at least twice a day contact, twice a week seeing each other, meeting my kid, seeing my house, fixing my lawn mower, etc., etc. and -

And what?

Nothing. One day, nothing. No call, no see, no household implement maintenance.

Three and a half weeks later I get a text. Something like, "I've been blah, blah, blah. How are you?" I'm well, thank you.

Another week goes by and I text him something about getting together, just because I'm baffled. He texts back. It's chilly, short. He basically just tells me when he'll be skating the lake.

Like what, I'm going to chase him around the lake? Didn't I already do that last Spring?

What happens to men? Where do they go when they disappear? In telling this story to women friends, not one of them was surprised - outraged, maybe, but not surprised. Every one of them had a story - this has happened, numerous times, to all of us. He's there, then he's not.


What I used to do is wonder why: why did he disappear, was it something I did or didn't do, why would someone just disappear without a word? I have found this serves no purpose, because in reality, it doesn't matter why. No one, no man, woman, friend, lover, no one should just be there one day and not the other and think it's okay to disappear. It's simply not nice.

And so, not another erg of my energy is going into this one. I'm spending my ergs elsewhere.

I Can Always Shave My Legs Again

I see couples in cars, couples walking down the street hand-in-hand, couples speaking intimately in low voices in restaurants. Of course I do. I'm single. I pray to the gods, swearing that if I ever get the chance again, I will never take my couple-dom for granted, I will show up, I will nurture, I will cherish.


So now I've been "seeing" someone for awhile and we're "taking it slow." We met in public and since then we've always been in public. Always. In other words, I haven't bothered to shave my legs.

Until yesterday. That's right, in the complicated world in which we both live (I have a teen daughter who lives with me, he a son) I actually discovered a time when we might actually be able to be ALONE. My daughter was going to be at school and we both had the same day off. Empty house, many hours...?

So, pencil it in! Let's get this show on the road - we're adults, right?

Right. We are adults who have lived with and for our kids, shown up for work, put in overtime, paid the bills, grocery shopped, made dinner, gone to school functions, helped with homework, schlepped to the mall and back. And ignored the fact that we have been quite alone as adults, both of us, and have been for a long, long time.

But, hell, opportunity has knocked so...carpe diem. Sure, 9:00's fine.

I get up late, 8:15, and realize that I haven't been off work for over a week - my house is a mess. I run like a mad woman, cleaning what I can and throwing the rest into closets, sweeping the cat fuzz under the furniture. My kid hasn't done her chores, of course, so now I also have to throw the dirty dishes into the oven! It's 8:30!

I hop in the shower and realize that I haven't had the chance to shop for shampoo, crap! But I spot the dog shampoo on a shelf in the bathroom and quickly deduce that it MUST be made out of the same kind of stuff as ours, so how bad could it be?

I soap up and grab for the razor. OMG, it's quite probable that someone other than my kid is going to see my legs for the first time in - ach, don't think about that now, just shave! It's 8:40!

It's my teen's razor. It appears that she's used it somewhere between 150 to 200 times, what with the rust and the dull grey blades. And yet it's all I have, so I shave away. I've only got 20 minutes to get ready - quick, get out of the shower, woman!

Something stings a bit, but I don't have time - I grab what I can to wear, a skirt and a cute little shirt and I blow my hair dry - oy! It feels like hay - oh yeah, the dog shampoo. Shoot. Well, that's okay, I can just pull it back with a headband, even though it's sticking straight out, but only on one side, hell, it's got to be okay because it's 8:50 and I have to put on makeup - oops, the mascara's old and I got me some major clumps...let me just try to wipe that off...oh, no, that's his car! He's five minutes early, oh blast it...I wipe off the clumps as best I can without the mirror and dash out for the front porch. Casual, girl, you're cool, no big deal!

He gets out of the car looking a bit frazzled himself, what with the advent of this quickie set-up, forced intimacy situation we've found ourselves in. He walks to the bottom of the stairs, takes me in at the top and stops. "What happened to you?"

"What do you mean?" I squeak, about ready to stroke-out with nervous insecurity.

"There." He points.

I look down to see that my legs look as though a serial killer has tried and failed. Blood is trickling down my very white, razored legs from about 5 different small slashes. Ugh! I make it into the house only to catch my face in the mirror - my expression is like a deer in the headlights, I have smeared one of my cheeks with mascara blobs and my hair looks like the backside of a jackass on a windy day.

But hey, we've conveniently found some alone time...right?

We hug. He sits. I sit. It's quiet. The conversation touches lightly on politics, religion - and turns very quickly to our mutual hunger for...lunch?

We high-tail it outta there, somewhat relieved to be in public again. After all, we definitely know we both love food.

It appears that prowess, for me, can't be scheduled. And that's okay. I can always shave my legs again.

And so I remain: Uncoupled on North 82nd Street.

I Am A Lady, I Am!

Today I had a discussion I've been avoiding for a couple of years: divorce. The marriage lasted 15 years, the separation four, and the discussion today lasted just over two hours, which felt more like two and a half years, and left me feeling like I had just been worked over by an Eastern European personal trainer who had a secret vendetta to settle. A cardio-vascular nightmare romp through the minefields of wartime Yugoslavia with someone whispering in your ear, "you are responsible for the death of our entire country and you deserve not to die but to live on through all the agony this big palooka can dish out." I was left breathless.

A couple of hours ago I half believed him, with all the attendant tears, shame and self-loathing. What kind of monster am I? But then I remembered I was hungry and that I will believe just about anything when I haven't eaten. A chicken caesar saved my sanity today.

That and a little time with those who love me.

Over the past four years I have been psychically kicked in the stomach more times than I can count - humbled to the ground in what, at the time, seemed like the most bewildering ways - and found that every time, every single time, people came out of the woodwork to help me back up again. Many times, people that I was only peripherally aware of - mainly because most of my time and energy was spent trying to pretend to myself that all was fine, that I could settle for what I had if I only tried hard enough. To not have needs or wants or a life that was worth getting out of bed and stretching for.

Well, today I stretch when I get up. A lot. And I will continue to do so until I get all that's out there for me. And although that little whisperer still exists in the bad moments, at least they've become bad moments and are no longer bad days or weeks. Because I know that had I allowed myself to stay stuck that's what they'd be, and more - bad years.

And today proved something else - it's not the divorce that I've been avoiding, it's the fear of discussion of it with someone who doesn't love me and, from what I know of love today, has never known how.


Which leaves me tonight with a feeling of strength and gratitude. I'm strong enough to do what I need to, to have what I want, and to still be able to wish him well.

It is what it is, I am who I am, and for that I'm grateful.

Less Distraction, Please

Yesterday I had a dream, and I had it while I was wide awake. A vision? Perhaps!

I've never allowed myself to dream, whether it seemed something attainable or not. What I do know now that I've had this extraordinarily vivid "dream" is how deprived I've been of hope. Strange to wake up in mid-life (as if I'm living to 100, right?) and find how much I've avoided wanting.

It's simple, really. You want, then you hope, then you perhaps achieve - or you are disappointed. But simple itself has always either alluded me or appeared very frightening. Pose the existential and I'll ponder and wax on for hours, days. Ask me to wash a dish or balance my bank accounts and I'm out the door.

I remember being in the hospital when I was 20 and they asked me who I wanted to be when I grew up. I said no one, that I never wanted to be here. They asked me what I wished to be, what I wanted to be if I could be anything. I said I never thought about it. They said that's impossible. I said not if you're not committed to being here in the first place.

This was a response to an ongoing thread for me. I would ask my mother when I was very small, "I don't understand - why do I have to be here?" and she would look at me, puzzled and somewhat irritated (this came up often) and say, "Where? In the kitchen?"

She didn't get it. Until much later, when I wound up in the hospital.

Alcohol and drugs filled all the necessary slots in for me for a long time after that - the wanting slot, the hoping slot and the achieving slot. They pretty much took up all my time and energy. The problem with them was that in the achieving of what I wanted, I never got what I hoped for and was alway and ever disappointed. Over and over, day in and day out. But I chased them down indeed, as far as to the very gates of hell.

I did "things" during all this slot-filled time, climbed corporate ladders, fell off them, dated, lived with someone, etc., but these were not the main attraction. My chemical busy signal came first and foremost and I was not to be distracted. If I had to be here, let me be as far out of here as I possibly can be.

Then comes rehab, then comes recovery and recovery and recovery...a day at a time forever. But for many years I stayed busy with other things, some addictions, some just other distractions. Compulsive spending, obsessive relationships, overeating, undereating, rah, rah, rah. My closest friend used to say, "Nancy, stop distracting yourself from yourself." But still, I could not want and I could not dream. I was still frightened. Of what? Of achieving? Of disappointment?

Of committing to being here.


So when this dream came to me yesterday - and not only came to me, but actually appealed to me - I was quite smitten by its arrival. Finally, I have an answer to what I dream about. And while there may be more and different dreams, this is my first one, my virgin voyage into the exposition of what the real heart of my matter is. Both to others - but mostly to myself.

Simple? Yes. Frightening? Not at all.

I Have A Dream

I had a dream this morning.

I have met, gone out with and fallen in love with someone I don't quite know yet.

I have received my portion of the settlement of the lawsuit, somewhere in the neighborhood of one to two million dollars. I pay off my house. I invest.

As I continue to work, now part time, I research and enroll in college. I work, I study, I learn, most particularly that I am in love with learning and am eternally thankful for my chance to finally be a part of it all.

I write and write and write.

I am healthy without being deprived. I let go of my self-consciousness and self-obsession and physically become the person I am meant to be.

Life unfolds and I am acutely and gratefully present and accounted for.

I had a dream this morning and was fully awake for it.


I had never had a dream before this dream. I had never allowed it.

And so. Finally. I have a dream.

Where's My Dessert?!

Sasha, my 14 year old daughter, is all of a sudden having trouble with school. She's been a straight A student since Kindergarten and is now getting Cs and, can we whisper this? Ds. Is this puberty?

No. She's bored. They call me from her school shrink's office for a discussion of this alleged boredom to tell me that "Sasha would benefit greatly from a private school education." Really? Sounds like a capital idea. Do they take food stamps?

As I sit here and ponder this, I start to think about my own situation and find that the parallels are astounding. Over the past [mumble mumble] years I have visited the offices of several career counselors and coaches, taken many assessments, and each time walked away with pretty much the same findings. That I should really be sitting in a CEO situation, me having "big picture" vision, intuitive strategic insight, and individual and group coaching talents.

Well, this is just great! Now I know what to do with my life! I'll just go and apply for CEO somewhere and give lots of references of friends and colleagues who believe the same about me, the number being many. I should be making six figures by the end of the.....

Not so fast, okay? There's that ladder you have to climb. And you have to sit for a while on each rung, right? And what's happened to me, as I see it now, is that, while I'm great at the top, I'm not so good at the quarter-way mark. Them rungs is slippery and sticky and honestly, I'm not too good at them. Which is where I find myself again, for the umpteenth time. Stuck on a rung, wondering why I suck at my job, don't understand what's going on and am bored to death.

Now, I know what my boss should do. The expression of this insight, however, does not make me very popular, not with my boss nor with my peers. I should be doing my own job, right? But my job is not holding my interest and cannot be done to its finest extent unless my boss does what I believe I know he should.

So now what?

It's like my kid, who could really be teaching high school math but is in 8th grade - we both have to buckle down and do what's right in front of us, do it to the best of our abilities and stay present.

Blast it, it's that present moment thing again! The spiritual nature of life being that the "magic's in the moment," that if you do what's right in front of you and be present in that moment, so many opportunities can present themselves in that "now" that you may miss seeing them while dreaming off into the "what ifs."



ARGH!! So much work. Screw dinner. I just want dessert.

Here They Come Again

Every year on the day before Thanksgiving I begin to feel as though I'm coming undone. And every year I wonder why. Most years it's taken until the second week in January for me to put it together, that it's the holidays and that it's practically hardwired into my person to "BELIEVE" and be let down, but this year I actually woke up and knew right away - shit, here it comes again. While this early realization and awareness may mean I could be getting "better" it doesn't make it feel less real.

I awoke every hour on the hour last night to my new cat sitting on my head, mewing for reassurance, and next to my daughter, who sleeps as though she's a practicing Olympic gymnast, her flying elbow jabbing the insecure kitty in the face. We're all sleeping in my bed these past few days because we still don't have a working furnace, thus we live in two and a half rooms of our house while the freak-to-Seattle-snow swirls about outside. And all I could think was, "jeez, no wonder people drink."

And then, "maybe if I just smoked pot..." After that it was, "If I could just dig my car out and make it to the bus station, I'd head for Tennessee or Kentucky, change my name to Pearl and become a waitress at a truck stop." And finally, knowing that I could never get away with any of it, I come to the big one, "My gravestone will read simply, "'She Endured.'"

My question to myself today is, why can't I just let myself be? Why can't I just clean the house and read a book and knit a scarf like the rest of my neighborhood? I just feel like I've got so much work to do before I can even begin to catch up on being normal - so I don't know where to start to get it together at all.

So this is what I've come up with for this morning - ten things to be grateful for:

Sasha, sobriety, warmth, Diva, coffee, income, friends...come on Nanc...health, my computer...books. Antidepressants, when they work.

That's eleven. I'm going back to bed.

Polly Who?

My Last Date - by Nancy Jordet

I met this guy a while ago, at a party of a friend of mine. We connected in a very big way, talked for a couple of hours straight that night, went out a few times, had deep talks and light conversations, had fun. By last night I was anxiously giddy about what was going to happen next, but willing to take it however it presented itself.

Right.

He comes to pick me up at a meeting, where I am secretarying in front of a group of about 80. He walks in and brushes the back of my neck lightly with his fingertips, a slight blush to his face, sits in the back and smiles my way often through the next hour. It's sweet, and publicly so. So much so that a friend of mine sitting close to me leans over and says, "Nancy, I don't know who the guy in the back is, but he looks like he's really into you." Awwwwww....

After the meeting he comes up and hugs me, strong and close, whispering lightly in my ear how happy he is to see me again - let's get out of here.

We leave, sit in the car catching up on what's happened in our lives since last we spoke, taking our time, deciding to see a late movie at the Crest. The American with George Clooney. Of course the movie opens post-coitally, with a nude woman kissing Geo's ear. My guy, let's call him something...how about Bark? Okay, Bark leans his fabulously large and very male shoulder in toward mine and we rest side-by-side against each other through the movie, both laughing at the same inappropriate times, making fun in all the right spots of this supposedly Euro-noir film. A good one to be sure, but really contrived in parts. During the sex scenes, Bark's leg approaches mine and, looking down, I swear you can actually see the heat waves coming off us as off asphalt in the desert sun...

Okay, not really. Nonetheless.

It's....hot. We stay after the movie, through the credits, after the lights come up, after the theatre's empty, after the last employee comes in and stares us down - just whispering and laughing and having a easy, playful time with each other.

Til it's time to go. Oooooo, I'm thinking. I haven't felt this good with a guy in many, many years. So myself, so real, so female. Wow. I SO deserve this.

We get outside and he checks his phone. He's got a text.

He drops his head and shakes it. It's my roommate, he says. She's not coming home again tonight.

Oh? I say absent-mindedly, half-skipping through the parking lot.

Yeah, I asked her to let me know if she's not coming home from now on because last week we were going to stay home and watch a movie together but she didn't show up and apparently she spent the night with her boyfriend. I was so disappointed.

Oh? I say, paying a bit more attention, slowing down to a walk.

Yeah, he says. We haven't even lived together that long and I want all of her attention. It's crazy. I'm so into her, I've got such a mad crush on her I can barely stand it.

First I say nothing. Then I hear myself say, like in a bit of a squeak, Oh?....and stand still.

Does he catch himself and stop talking? Does he possibly think that perhaps he should be sharing this with another guy friend of his and not with his date? No. He continues on using her name and shares a few other tidbits about her that I don't hear because I feel as though I've been belted in the solar plexus and I am trying as best I can not to lose my so far successfully expressionless face.

We get in the car and for the love of god he won't stop. And what do I do? What codependence has trained me to do - I listen. Then I comment. Poor Bark, I say, it's hard to be lonely, isn't it?

!!??!!

Yes, it is. And this is why he thinks that perhaps the solution for him lies in what she has told him about her own lifestyle - polyamory.

Okay, what? Polly who?

She's polyamorous. She believes the solution to living a life possessed of intimate relationships is in plurality - she has more than one boyfriend and they have more than one girlfriend and they all have more than one boyfriend who have more than one girlfriend....

Polly what? I say. Polymorphous, polycystic, polyurethane? I guess I'm not hip, I have not heard this term yet.

We used to refer to it as free love, yes? Why don't you just drop acid and move into a commune, mofo. But do I say this? No. I still don't know what's just hit me. For I was just a minute ago on the verge of getting what I thought I deserved.

But do I deserve this? No. So after a short schpiel I deliver on the merits of true intimacy, from which I am completely detached as though I am walking through jello and wondering why I am talking at all, I just stop and say - hey, look, I could never do that. I can barely deal with one man at a time - good luck with that. Just don't drink.

We are outside my house at this point and all I want to do is run screaming into the night. But he then hangs his head in apparent angst and says, jeez, he really doesn't know what he wants and something about he doesn't really feel very good about where this is going - when his phone rings.

It's his drunken ex-wife and she's upset.

What planet have I landed on? Has it really only been half an hour since I was so over-the-moon happy?

I've got to go, thanks, it was a good movie, best of luck with your complexities. He leans over to hug me big and it actually looks as though there is possibly a kiss headed my way. Duck!! Done, and I slip out of the embrace and say adios.

Why was I so nice? Why am I always so nice when some guy decides to dis me?

Because my knee-jerk reaction to what I perceive as rejection still lies in wondering what is wrong with me. Unfortunate but true. But the key words are "knee-jerk." Because on reflection, and with a lot of input from loving friends, I can clearly see that it's not something I misread or deserved. It's someone else's mess.

So why am I still so sadly disappointed?

Too Quiet

I'd like to just go to sleep for a week. My reset button feels like it needs that much down time.

A couple of years ago, amidst a flurry of bad life-weather, I became convinced that getting a dog was the answer. Fixated, actually. And I began my search, through private agencies, kennels, online pet sites and finally craigslist. Where I found Gus. He was staring up at me in the picture, this little mutt that looked a bit like a newborn calf, all orange and white with a little pink freckled nose and amber eyes. He was just a couple of weeks old, living right outside of Issaquah on a small "farm." His mom was a breeding greyhound that had had an illicit affair with an unknown neighbor dog and created six pups that didn't really look like any breed you could quite put your finger on. We later guessed some kind of retriever/bully mix.

So we drove out, my friend Dave and I, and met Gus. He was so excited to meet me that he peed all over the place. I knew right away he was mine. Terrified but thrilled, he rode home with me and my friend Dave, laying next to me on the front seat whimpering and shaking. But once he got here, that was it - he had found his people and his home and he settled right in like one of the family.

And that's what we were: a family - me, Sasha and Gus. And we hung out like a family and we ate like a family and we snuggled on the couch and watched TV and read like a family and we sometimes slept in a Gus sandwich. We had group hugs every day. When Gus broke his leg and was in a cast we moved our mattresses onto the floor so he could still sleep with us.

He followed me absolutely everywhere - when I paced, which I do when I write or think, he paced right next to me with his nose stuck in my hand. He did the laundry with me and cooked with me and surfed the web with me. He was always here and almost always looking right at me with them sweet amber eyes.

After Gus turned one and we had a little birthday party at the dog park, he almost immediately began having seizures - the first one, freaky as hell, was to become a regular thing - stiffen, fall down, eyes ablaze and frozen, body clenched and paddling, foam spewing from the mouth, bodily fluids let go, all...until he'd get up, blind and frightened, and pace, walking into walls and furniture, wailing for me to comfort him until it all passed. Which I did.

We went to the vet, who told me it was epilepsy, put him on phenobarbitol and they seemed to stop. Until they didn't again. Then he would have two, three, four in one day. Then more phenobarbitol, now twice a day. Then later up to the highest dose without it becoming toxic. Then adding potassium bromide from the compounding pharmacy. Meds, meds, meds. Three times a day, and if you're a couple hours late, you know it's going to mean another seizure. Or two. Or three. But then you get it down, get into the rhythm and it becomes normal and every day you do it right. But finally, in the end, it doesn't matter anymore if you do it right, the seizures break through it all anyway.

The day before the last day I came home from work and found evidence of at least three grand mal seizures, one big enough to have moved chairs across the floor and leaving a large bruise on Gus's leg. He was frantic, jumping all over me and finally calming enough to conk out. Only to wake up while I was writing that night to have another grand mal seizure next to my chair. And this time he couldn't seem to shake it; he'd walk around and stare at things, his water dish, like he'd forgotten why he was there. We slept with the light on because I was afraid he wasn't done yet.

The next day when I brought him to the vet I was beside myself. Without being able to think about it clearly or articulate it to myself, I knew what had to happen. They said they would keep him there and take blood levels to see if they needed to add a third medication. I went home. They called me and said they couldn't keep Gus there, he was too upset and agitated. When I went to get him, I told them to hold off on the tests, they were very expensive and I knew I had some searching to do on my own. I brought Gus home, where he continued to flop down and sigh and tremor with his head. My baby boy was very sick.

The vet called me back and we talked. Gus's future was not going to be bright. He may look like the beautiful puppy he still was, but he was not going to get better. They could possibly find a combination of medication to hold off most of the seizures, the vet didn't really know, but it would be extremely costly and he would be maxed out, drugged up, most of the time. She said she would be willing to do that, but that she also thought that she wanted to give me permission to think about something else: humane euthanasia. O God.

And so it went. I called Sasha in a haze and we talked about it and she wanted to come home and say goodbye to Gusgus, which she did. Then my lovely friend Michelle came over and said she was coming with me and we went. And they shot him full of valium and it didn't slow down his anxiety and they shot him full again and finally it did and he lay down next to me and put his head on my lap. And then they gave him an overdose of anesthesia. And the vet looked at me with the stethescope to his chest and nodded and I knew it was over. He was so soft and so light and so beautiful and he sailed away.

It's been hard to forgive myself for what seemed like my snap decision that day, but you know, I think that's more about trying to feel some kind of personal control rather than actual guilt or maybe the unrelenting pain that goes with losing your best friend. I tried for almost a year after he got sick to find a happy medium - one where he could still be the goofy pup he was and where I could keep up with taking care of him - but in the end I was told that he was too substantially sick to hope for that. He was not wired well, he was beginning to become brain damaged, it wasn't going to get any better and it would only get worse. I know I spared him having to live through worse, but I also spared myself watching it, and that's where the guilt steps in. But guilt is only a feeling, it's not a fact.

I come from a family that thinks it's stupid to have pets and that if you do, to give and receive affection from them is silly and ridiculous. But I don't. I loved Gussie with all my heart and he knew that. He loved me with all his and I knew that too. Many people never get the chance to have that sacred bond with their pet and I feel bad for them. The love we have for our animals is what makes us even more human than before and to receive it from them? Unconditional love is never something to turn your back on. Never.

And so it's two days later and I'm having trouble eating and I sleep with his collar wrapped around my wrist and the clothes that I was wearing as he drifted out of this world and I think I'm going to lose it regularly. I cry and I walk the streets Gus and I walked together and I'm so, incredibly, profoundly lonely. I'm going to feel better some day soon, I'm sure of it, and I'm going to be able to forgive myself too.

But for right now, it's much, much too quiet here.

Not Even An Astronaut

This morning I sat a stop sign and watched people board a city bus, most of them dressed for work. And I thought, "Wow, I bet they have no idea how big and valuable their day is." I drove on and saw many more, walking toward cars and bus stops, doing "the trudge." I know it well. I used to be employed.

Three and a half years now, I can't find a job. Not as a grocery packer, a baker, a candlestick maker, an astronaut. Nada. I apply and apply and hear nothing most of the time. Every once in awhile I hear something, every once in awhile I get an interview. But nothing has come of it. For three and a half years.

It's said that the only way to really get a job these days is through someone you know. I know a lot of people. They do the best they can for me too. Alas...

Yesterday I asked for a job that I knew was opening up in the company I work for part-time and got a no. They don't have it to give. Gads.

So on the way home from taking Sasha to the hospital this morning I thought, "Well, this could well be it. This could be all I'm going to get, this part-time job and social security and food stamps." Although soon my food stamps will cease too. I guess my next job is to find a way to live within what I already have. Which would mean abandoning my house. Again. Everything else is really quite gone.

It's looking like a tiny future. I'm gonna have to make it work.

I Would Hum For You If I Could

Last Wednesday, my friend and co-worker, Casey, disappeared. She was last seen leaving Barnes & Noble at 10:30pm in her white Outback wagon. Over the week following she was in the newspapers, on the television news, had her own website built to help find her. They showed pictures of her, of her car, of her two little sons. Please come home... We waited. We prayed - and we hoped for the best.

This morning her body was found outside of Lake Tahoe. They say, "no foul play was suspected." Well, I beg to differ.

Suicide or not, it's foul play. No one should ever feel that alone. Ever. And if they do, we're not doing our job as fellow travelers on this planet. There are two little boys without a mother, not to mention a husband without a wife. Seriously, not to mention him, but that's a story that I am not qualified to tell.

We all drop the ball somewhere. It's hard to keep track of all the balls in one's life, truly it is. But for the sake of our fellows, we must try to stay mindful. The world, particularly right now, seems mad enough as it is without remembering to care about our friends and families. Or even making a small, little effort every day; to smile at a stranger on the elevator who looks down, or to tell a co-worker that they're doing a good job, or maybe even tell a barista that you appreciate what they do for you every morning. The will to go on should never be taken for granted, but it is - it probably has to be or we'd all be living a bit too close to doom for comfort.

Too close for comfort: It was three years ago when the man I was just about to leave, my husband and the father of my child, became catastrophically ill and lay in a coma for four months with no skin, no ability to breathe, eat, pee or think on his own. Our daughter, who was almost phobic about illness already, was only 10 and in need of a lot of extra care. We had a new puppy that I couldn't bring myself to let go, as it would further traumatize our child. I showed up at the Burn ICU every single morning, washed and sterilized my hands and arms, put on a robe and some days a mask and went in to sit with him for hours on end, mesmerized and dumbfounded, just listening to the 13 machines he had in him whir and beep and alarm and hiss - only to leave and pick our daughter up from school and go back home to try to provide some semblance of "normal" life for us. Make dinner? Train the puppy? Then I'd wake up the next morning and do it all again. It was a sick time, and I was sick, and every morning I would wake up and stare at the ceiling, listening to the blood pump loudly in my ears and feeling my heavy chest swirl in what felt like impending insanity, beginning to sweat - my anxiety about simply existing through another day at a fever pitch. How on earth was I going to stay alive, much less function, for another day? Much less be a mom, or a friend, or a health advocate, or a collector of the social services I now needed as our income had ceased, or on and on and on. The buzz of insanity almost, ALMOST, outweighed the hum of the will to live. Many times.

Why did I survive and Casey did not? Crap. I don't know!! I just don't know. I would've hummed for her if I knew.

What I do know is that I'm sad, so heartbroken for her, for what must have been her last hours, feeling alone and choiceless, knowing that buzz and that hum, and how each works and works harder, crashing up against each other, only one to win out.

Sweet, beautiful Casey. I'm so, so sorry. We will miss you.

Please. Practice kindness.

Desiderata

-- written by Max Ehrmann in the 1920s --

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Insufficient Funds

I continue to be astounded by how underdeveloped the financial lobe of my brain is. I wonder if it just didn't get enough oxygen during childbirth.

Oh, wait, I was a C-section...

Regardless, one would think that with as many times as I've heard the term "insufficient funds" said to me I would find a way that would work for me to keep track of what I spend. I mean, I'm on welfare, it's not like there's a lot to keep track of. It used to be that I'd $10 myself here and there into insufficient funds. What with inflation it appears that I $50 myself there even faster. But that's what things cost, dammit!

No matter what I've earned, I've always gotten lost down the road of solvency. I've even been a member of Debtor's Anonymous, which was a valuable experience and got me out of credit card and IRS debt and on the way to learning how to be an adult with money. But even that didn't close up the windtunnel in my brain through which tumbleweeds of money blow and never stick to anything. I can write down every penny I spend and it still doesn't mean anything to me. It's like a foreign language - why?

Today I went to the mechanics to pick up my car, the 22 year old Mercedes with 197,000 miles on it. I had to throw in the Mercedes part, right? I thought it was dead, unresuscitatable, right? But no! YAY! He saved it with a distributor cap and a couple of rotors! YAY! It cost under $400 and the average car repair is $750! YAY! And yesterday I had $700 in the bank. YAY! Or was that Saturday...?

There was PCC and PetSmart, then the compounding pharmacy and the fixing of the dishwasher...the gas station...the cable... aaaaaaannnnnnddddd - it's gone!

Seriously, this is nuts! They say food is mommy and money is daddy. And both those substances baffle the hell out of me, as did both of those people.

I guess here I need another Higher Power, right? Does God deal in cash?

Help!!

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.