if only it were so easy

The other day my kids were in the backseat talking about boys and girls, crushes, and who likes who. It seemed a rather risque conversation for a six- and an eight-year old, but I tried to keep my mouth shut and listen. Finally, I couldn’t help myself. “Do you like anyone?” I asked Thomas, who was the one offering the most intricate details of his class’ love lives.

“Oh, yes, I still like Carrie, but she’s in Mrs. Chapman’s class. She likes me, too. We have a lot in common.”

“How so?”

“We’re the same height. We both have blonde hair. And we have the same skin.”

self-doubt

I am amazed at the ways in which I can find to dislike, distrust, disrespect myself. Just a few weeks ago, when I viewed myself as Someone With A Job, it wasn’t this way. Or was it? Are we often hurting ourselves in ways that we don’t realize or admit to when times are “good,” and then the whack job aspect of it all just comes to surface when the hurt is apparent. When it’s suddenly ok to let the demons out of the closet?

just one word: plastic

Trudging through molasses today. Another job rejection came this morning. Almost simultaneously, I heard from Alex that he’d landed in Nairobi. I was finishing two articles for a bank’s annual report. (How to eke out 600 words about customer service?) Then off to a meeting about a possible project. Story of my life: the possible project. Even if it doesn’t go through, however, the house was worth it. I felt so good to be in a room with two smart, nice people batting around ideas. It was like Michael and Elliot. Carole and Gerry. Rushed out of  there and off to a massage that my mom (bless her), gave me for Christmas. I arrived in the darkened room, looked at my old friend – the masseuse who was also the doula for both my births – and immediately started to cry. Part-way through she rested her hand on the middle of my back and breathed. “There’s a hole in your heart chakra.”

“I”m not surprised,” I said. “Not at all.”

Tonight – a trip to Kmart to buy an inflatable mattress so the kids can spend the night at a friend’s. I also got them each something plastic. Dolls and fighting figures. They’re so happy. It was money I don’t have. And yet…   It’s plastic that gunks up the world. And yet…  It’s money and resources that should go to Haiti. And yet …  You can’t buy happiness, but can an exhausted, down-on-her luck mama be blamed for trying? I hope not, God. I really hope not.

I’m sticking with you

Alex was going to Sudan. Then he wasn’t. Then he was. Now he might. We’ll see.

It was a roller coaster of a weekend. Not the least of which for my kids who had tearful goodbyes with their dad, while I stood in the kitchen crying so that they couldn’t see me.

Only to find out that he actually didn’t have his passport. It was being FedExed. But there was an ice storm in Memphis – the last place to which FedEx could track it following its trip to DC last week for a last-ditch effort toward a provisional visa. But it was 3 pm, and his flight was at 4:30, and he was just thinking to tell me.

An hour later, cross – but relatively calm, by my estimation- words were exchanged between us, i.e., “Why hadn’t you thought to tell me before?” I thought I was really quite kind, considering, but I must have been icier than I perceived because after listening to us talk, Thomas looked up at me through the maze of his long long bangs, and said:  ”I guess that’s why you guys got divorced.”

*****

The kids and I went to church this morning  - a new event for all of us – during which our friends told about the three years they’d lived in Haiti. Afterward: “Mom, can we always go church?” Me, trying to explain about Judaism and Buddhism and Jesus and  how they fit and don’t fit and feeling the kids’ longing for a spiritual home but feeling my own dis-ease with The Lord, found myself saying “Yeah-maybe-we’ll-see,” while inside I was mightily regretting the fact that the Buddhist-yogi types haven’t come up with an alternative to Sunday school.

Tonight, while I combed Bea’s hair looking for more nits, Thomas piled stuff in the living room with a vengeance. Puzzles. Board games. Stuffed animals. They all get thumped on the pile.

Bea asked, “What are you doing?”

“It’s for Haiti.”

She gasped: “But I like that game!”

Me: “Um, sometime in the future I’d like to play Scrabble again.”

Thomas, hands on hips, eyes sparkling with indignation:  ”You’re all like ‘Help people, be nice!’ but then you won’t even sell this stuff you never use and people are, people are, poeplelelrellllll ….!!!!!”

And with that he collapsed in tears – hard, solid, chest heaving, rib rocking tears: “It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair.”

Amen, my darling child. Amen to that.

And now he’s drawing and Bea is eating cereal and they’re singing this over and over – a round of Velvet Underground just before bed. I can only think they’re singing it to each other. And you could do a lot worse than to be Bea with only Thomas, or to be Thomas with only Bea. I’d take a Thomas about now.

People going to the stratosphere
Soldiers fighting with the cong?

But with you by my side I can do anything
When we swing
We hang past right or wrong

I’ll do anything for you
Anything you want me too
I’ll do anything for you
Oohoh I’m sticking with you
Oohoh I’m sticking with you
Oohoh I’m sticking with you

b-r-e-a-t-h-e

Matt Willey, artist

I breathe in my children’s health.

I breathe out the window they broke and the shards of glass clinging to the sill.

I breathe in my father’s memory.

I breathe out the illness and the pain of his final days.

I breathe in the easy way Alex and I still have with each other.

I breathe out his leaving for Sudan and the call from the bank regarding an outstanding $900 lien on the house that is hampering my refinance.

I breathe in my friends – their beauty, strength and kindness.

I breathe out their own tough spots – sorrows for friends in Haiti, ongoing relationship woes, illness.

I breathe in my neighbor’s pregnant belly and look every hour to see if the car is still there or has taken off for the hospital.

I breathe out my other neighbor who moved in last fall, has never said hello and appears to be remodeling with a resale in mind.

I breathe in the power of standing on the end of the diving board and the glee of jumping.

I breathe out the trepidation it took to get up there.

I breathe in Haiti – its beauty and strength.

I breathe out Haiti – its suffering and injustice.

I breathe in my home’s safety, the warmth and solid ground it provides.

I breathe out the things that are broken, worn and in need of repair.

I breathe in C.’s hands on my back, his breath on my hair, a knee just there.

I breathe out the complications that comes with “mature” relationships, things that didn’t apply at 20: – children, bodily aches, troves of past lovers, aging parents.

I breathe in J.D. Salinger and Howard Zinn.

I breathe out the State of the Union and Ben Bernanke.

I breathe in gardening catalogs and the dream of soil under the snow.

I breathe out ice,  shovels and tired, brown snow.

I breathe in my dog and her old brown head – 14 years of closing those sweet eyes.

I breathe out her $75/bag dog food and the container of Rimadyl she ate last month.

I breathe in David Byrne, Walker Evans and Martha Graham.

I breathe out Lady Gaga and Diesel’s current ads and  the Super Bowl.

*****

And then:   I breathe in me . All of me. Shaky scared rambling swaying me. Kind-hearted, brave, compassionate me. Deeply, through my nostrils, just like my yoga teachers have reminded me, I breathe.

It is all breath. From the first one I took 44 years ago to the last I’ll take – today, tomorrow, in the future.

Like Salinger. Like Zinn. Like a child trapped under the rubble in Port au Prince or Mrs. Schwartz on the 6th floor of the hospital two miles from here.

Breathing ends. Not easily. Not quickly.

I watched  my father’s dwindle and grow creeky, but it didn’t stop suddenly.

Breath is intent – mesmerized with itself.

It continues until there is nothing more for it to feed on.

Until all of the music for the dance of in and out has fallen silent.

the line between faith and fear

I heard an Old Crow Medicine Show song the other night that has the refrain, “We’re all in this thing together, walking the line between faith and fear.” The day before, I’d been at a friend’s daughter’s birthday party. It was one of those weird situations where there’s all of this adult subtext going on of which the kids are pretty much clueless. For them, it’s cake, games, and presents. But then there are the parents: getting divorced and about to go into some pretty intense legal wranglings this week. Mom’s friends are there to provide an extra ounce of sanity. Dad is a passive-aggressive wild card; there’s no knowing how he’ll be. 

I wasn’t looking forward to it – kids’ birthday parties aren’t my cuppa –  but much more so I  knew that my friend was dreading it. It turned out, that the husband was on polite terms. We adults all did our jobs, which meant pretty much putting our heads down and tending to the kids’ needs. In the middle of ferrying water to the table, folding up wrapping paper, and writing down the gifts and their givers, I was hit by how we were all in it together:  my friend – me – the two other moms – the kids, each growing up in different households under different circumstances –  the husband. We all live in this neighborhood, this town, this state, this region, this country, this world at this point in time. We are all in this thing together, walking the line between faith and fear. As the song contines, “This life doesn’t last forever. When you cry, I taste the salt of your tears.”

Compassion, it turned out, is an art form and the more you practiced it, the bigger your heart gets.

Compassion is a practice that didn’t come easily to me. I was pretty sure that my situation was the only situation for too long in my young life. What helped to jolt me out of that way of thinking was the practice of Metta Bhavana meditation, or “Loving Kindness.” I started it in my late 20s, sitting in the upstairs of a craftsman bungalow in Seattle, with a group of about ten people who were taking a class from a local Buddhist group. Joyce, a Londoner who would eventually marry Alex and me, taught us mindfulness first. Counting my breaths – ten in, ten out, paying attention to the breath entering through my nostrils – made me queasy. But Metta, which works like a ripple on a pond and begins with cultivating loving thoughts toward oneself, then toward a friend, next an acquaintance, then someone with whom you’re having difficulties, and finally out out out to the world, was powerful. I found it was easy for me to sit in my mind’s eye next to the checkout clerk from the grocery store or even an irritable co-worker and imagine what it must feel like to learn of a parent’s illness, or to not have enough money at the end of the month. Compassion, it turned out, is an art form and the more you practiced it, the bigger your heart gets.

About a year into it, I was standing at the lunch counter of the deli where I worked. It was lunchtime and the place was packed – a line out the door. I had a spoon  in my hand and was ostensibly scooping pasta into a container for the trenchcoated man in front of me. But suddenly I was floating above it all, looking at him, at my co-workers, at people I’d never see before and feeling a silken thread of connectedness between each one of us. It was an amazing feeling – one that I’ve never forgotten. I still have semblances of it – which is pretty much how I felt at the birthday party on  Sunday – but nothing as shattering as the first time. It shattered the distances. It shattered the assumptions. And though I can come back to my old habits of thinking, the distance between myself and others has never been so great as it was before. We are all truly in this thing together.

nothing a tray of Manhattans won’t cure

Per usual, Sandra Tsing Loh is on the mark with this NY Times Op-Ed:

Dreaming of a Mad Men reality:  “…Aside from that, there was a leisurely trip to the hair salon, a spot of tennis and a lively game of bridge, where the girls shared tips on the making of this very roast. If there are children, let us say first they are in school, then afterward they ride their bikes freely around the neighborhood, settling their own disputes and devising their own entertainments. (Here we invoke the curious statistic that working mothers today spend about the same number of hours per week with their children as stay-at-home moms did four decades earlier.)”

To read more…

trust women

…such a word – trust. “Trust women.” That’s the theme of NARAL’s Blog for Choice Day - which is today – meant to celebrate the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Trust women to know. Trust women to do the brave thing in the face of ambivalence – no matter which way that decision goes.

I worked for the National Abortion Rights Action League when I was in Seattle in my early twenties at a time when abortion felt much more  immediate than it does now – much closer to a time when it was outlawed – a time when medical procedures, as opposed to pills, were the only options. I worked stuffing envelopes and collating papers in the days before we twittered and Facebooked and blogged with breaking news of stories affecting women, about laws that could help or  hinder us.

A few years later, I got pregnant. Second date. No foresight on my part, nor on his. No certainty about our relationship, nor even about ourselves. And so:  an abortion. I went to a clinic in Portland that was run by a friend’s mother. It was safe; my needs were met; the people were kind. But it was far from easy. The experience made me want to give back to other women, and soon after I started volunteering as an advocate at a clinic in Seattle. That three-year experience was very powerful. I held the hands of dozens and dozens of women and girls, reassuring the fearful and wiping tears, rubbing backs and pepping up wilting partners. I got an entire education in the power of women – the activist who ran the clinic, the women who worked there – usually brought by their own experiences of early pregnancy or rape or some moment of powerlessness. I learned of the  strengths and depths of the women who bravely made the decision to be there, as well as the mother, sisters, aunts, and grandmothers who accompanied them.

Even then, though, before I’d had kids, I could see that while a decision to end a pregnancy was never an easy one, never made lightly, the women who were the surest and also the most deeply moved by it were those who already had children. They were the ones who understood fully both what they could not do  - because of financial responsibilities or time constraints or physical exhaustion. And they were the ones who knew at their core what they were giving up, the pure joy and love that was passing from this world. They were the ones who lived in the liminal zone between the dogma of the two sides of the abortion debate. It wasn’t about policy for them. It wasn’t about statistics or even the Constitution. It was about life. Purely. Simply. The life they could lead, the life they could provide, the limitations and fullness thereof.

This fall, I joined them. I was disbelieving. I was heartbroken. I was sure. It was the easiest and the hardest decision of that magnitude I’ve made. Single. Exhausted. Soon to be without a job. Nearing my mid-40s. It was clear. My friend who was there with me after I read the pregnancy test – a friend in a similar life situation to me right now – looked at me and gave me huge amounts of love but equal amounts of understanding and forgiveness. “It’s ok,” she said, without saying it.

Eight weeks later, I sat in the home of a woman who administered the pills to me. Working under the table, one could argue that she is the modern equivalent of a back alley abortionist. She is also beautiful and kind and wise. What I experienced that afternoon and later that night in my own home, with my partner making me soup and sitting up with me through the night, was the most humane medical experience I’ve known. It was my decision on my timeframe. I was surrounded by people who both loved me and loved the soul that I was choosing to allow to pass to another time and plane, a soul to which I knew I could not give my fullest at this time. There was humor and grace in the experience, smiles and hugs, sorrow and – most of all – knowledge of the import of what was occurring. We all knew – we all trusted – that some of the most important things that happen in our lives are those about which we feel ambivalence. Did you make the right decision about the cancer treatment? How would your life have been different if you’d gone to a that other college? And your marriage, really – was it the right choice? So many things that we could go back and do differently. But in the moment, what do we have? Our gut. Our knowledge of what we’ve done thus far, and what we might be capable of in the future. The experience of those who have gone before. Our spiritual beliefs. We take this all in and stir it together. We let it rest as long as we can allow. And then we must decide. We must trust. And know that whatever it is will be good enough. It will be the right thing for today and tomorrow because we have chosen to the best of our abilities.

I sat in Harry Blackmun’s chambers about fifteen years ago when a friend was his law clerk. I can’t fathom that that pale man from Minnesota ever really had any idea of what it is like to be a woman – whether at 23 or 43 – who sits on a toilet and pees on a little plastic stick, then watches the little window for results while her stomach lurches in disbelief. But I thank him all the same. I thank my friend’s mother who led that clinic in Portland against weekly protests. I thank all of the women who worked alongside me in Seattle, sometimes harboring heart breaking stories. I thank a friend who has collected stories of abortion – doctors’ stories, women’s stories, activists’ stories – despite having bomb threats against her readings. I thank the woman who ministered the pills to me recently. I thank the researchers who came up with the pills that would allow for a more private, humane process to occur. I thank everyone who has purchased a pregnancy kit from an all-night drugstore, fearing its results. I thank the grandmas who couldn’t know they could still get pregnant, and the teenagers  who didn’t know they could get pregnant yet. I thank the knowledge that women pass from one another, quietly but surely, onward, onward. Trusting each other to each do what she needs to do. In love.

and then what?

Alex came over this morning with a serious look on his face. He barely got in the door before he made his announcement. “I’m leaving for  Sudan for two months or more. I leave in a week.”

I’ve been trying to prepare myself for this. I thought I was more ready. It turns out, I’m not. You’re never ready for the trapdoor to open, even if you’ve rehearsed the scene dozens of times. Swoosh! There you go, flying into the darkness of the unknown.

How will I pay the bills?

How will I find time to myself?

When will I go to yoga?

What happens when C. goes away next month?

Why can’t my mom be there more?

How will I deal with the kids’ hurt and anxiety and anger and sorrow?

How will I do the thing on February 5 I’d planned to do now? Or the thing on the 13th? or the thing in March? All those little dates and times that I’d planned and was using, like breadcrumbs, to see myself through. To get through this cold, dull winter  of no paychecks.

The breadcrumbs are wiped clean- just like that. The path in the forest: gone. The silence: deafening.

Everything is change. Unknown. Unknowing. Going forth in blindness takes more courage than anything. Only trust provides a guide.

vulnerable

“When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability… To be alive is to be vulnerable.” ~Madeleine L’Engle

Feeling like the little hair-covered animal that I am…  One friend who lived in Haiti is in deep grief and shock, shaking with the fear and agony of it. Another friend, dear, dear one is sitting with news of an illness – the big, scary kind (though what other kinds are there?). There are divorces and depressed husbands, crazy exes and lawyers, sadness and stillness and waiting in a place of pain.

Here at my house, there’s been the oddest kind of blended family experience. C. brought over a nit comb for me to check his head. His daughter has had lice and had recently slept at his place. I checked him to no avail. Then I checked my kids – just cuz. And there they were, little live things, silvery eggs, black creepy crawlies. So I called Alex: “Guess what we’re doing tomorrow?” And a day of laundry and shampooing and head soaking commenced. Alex was here at 9 sharp the next morning – wonderfully present for the kids. Then at the end of the day, when I was so very tired and overwhelmed by my friends’ news and sorrows, C. came over and just held me.

Hunkering down now. Trying to be at peace with the colorless, monotone of late-January. Trying to be ok with all of the soft spots.

cherry red

I wish I could find the Greg Brown version of this song. He nearly spits the words, “…your favorite flavor, cherry red.”  The song is entirely new coming from his deep, bluesy, slightly sardonic voice. But an aging Mick and all-out light show will have to do. It feels the right song for this day that’s warmer but not as warm as I’m craving. For trying to figure out emotional lives with exes – what’s too much? too little? The complications of child support payments. Confusing over so-called “blending” with a new man. Fear, trepidation, excitement over job apps.

Lots on the table. Lots that could land here. Or maybe it will land there. And you just have to keep walking to see.

spilling over

My son expands. He fills the room. His energy – blue and black and green, angry and kicking, fuming – streams out of him, from his eyes, his hateful words, his punching hands, his kicking feet. He is venom. He is pure energy. He is BIG. Too big, I fear, for me. Too big, perhaps for the world.

(And I worry: Would he be this way even if we hadn’t gotten divorced? Would he be this way if I were different? if his father were different? Is it something I ate? Something I did do? didn’t do? How big will he grow, this little six-year old boy?)

He is exploding. Staring at me which such a look. I dip a toe into his froth: “Do you want me to hold you?”

He stares. Then almost imperceptibly, he nods. I go to him, and tentatively at first, put my arms around his slight back, seeing the little whispy hairs that cover it, the animal being of him. We lay down and he cries. Big gulps. Then settles, slowly slowly. Allows himself to be held.

“You are a very powerful person,” I whisper in his ear. “I hope that you will use that power for good.” And suddenly, I am crying. The tears run from my cheek on to his.

This morning, over cereal, he says, “I’m sorry I told you that I hate you.”

I look at him, not smiling but also not angry; “I know.”

don’t think – it won’t make sense

My tenant just told me he’s moving out. A 22-year old, sweet-as-hell kid who is the boyfriend of my former babysitter. He hasn’t been as All In the Family as I’d hoped he’d be, sharing meals and whatnot, but the kids loved having him here, and I took some comfort in know that he was up in the attic – his energy floating down, another body, another human working life out. Turns out he was working out more than I knew. He’s going home to try to figure out some mental health issues that have been dogging him. I’m sad for him, sad for his parents, sad for me and for my kids. And sitting here – no job, no tenant – pondering the term “mental health” and wondering just when you have it and when you don’t. As a single parent, do you ever really have it? The woman I talked to yesterday would say no; she’d say you’ve just got to keep putting one foot in front of the other and don’t worry one moment what silliness resides in your brain, because there’s sure to be a whole hive of problems up there.

I’m a very Gaellic drinker – a glass of red wine a night – but boy oh boy, Blog, does an entire bottle sound good tonight. Instead? tucking the kids into bed and sitting down with Barbara Kingsolver and some chamomile tea. This perhaps is the essence of mental health? Or just middle age.

don’t think, do

Yeah, it sounds a little Yoda like — “Try not. Do.”  But the woman I interviewed this morning for my single moms project really struck a nerve when she said she stopped worrying and just lives on faith that it will be ok. “Everything about being a single mom is impossible. You can budget it out week by week, every year, and still, it ain’t gonna work. It will never add up. Never. So you accept that somehow, things work out. God takes care of scrappy women and little kids. I used to worry, but now I wake up in the middle of the night and think, ‘I can’t pay the phone bill! Oh, my god!’ and then I think, ‘So what. Really? So what.’ And I go back to sleep.”  LOVE IT!!! Now, to do it…

and now for something less dreary!

To hell with all those researchers with their slide rulers and surveys. Here’s a conversation between one of my favorite writers and a writer who took the world by the storm with a damned fine book and is about to do so with its follow-up.  Ann Patchett interviews her friend Liz Gilbert about marriage (the topic of the latter’s new, about-to-be-Everywhere book), and the results make me smile.  Like this:

Maturity brings—among other things—the ability to sustain and survive enormous contradictions and disappointments. Marriage is—among other things—a study in contradiction and disappointment, and inside that reality there is space for us to truly learn how to love.

(I don’t think I’ve ever used pink on this blog, but it seemed a fine moment for it!)

I find interesting – and generally agree with – Gilbert’s supposition that in American, “married” is really the only choice. Of course, a tiny tiny part ofthe pie chart elects civil companionship; foregoes the cake and the flowers; but they’re fractional. As Gilbert puts it, ” … in America [as opposed to Europe], marriage still has a mystical, intangible power: It is a passport to adulthood and respectability and to a certain extent citizenship. Any relationship less than ‘married’ is considered temporary and not worthy of honor.”

The flip side of this, of course, is how verboten divorce still is here. It comes with a certain degree of shame. I think of the decision to get divorced and how much I struggled with this internal sense of shame, as though I were choosing leprosy. I know, I know – statistically, this makes no sense. If so many of us are divorced — what? 40% of all marriages end in divorce, right? — then why does the shame continue? I think because of the reverence that Gilbert is describing.

radio documentary

I didn’t actually hear Sasha Aslanian’s radio documentary about divorce in the 1970s, but I read what I take to be the entire transcript on her website. And, wow, was it a downer. I have been in a quiet, worried, petulant place ever since. Worrying about my kids. Feeling selfish for having left a marriage that did not entail violence or other serious harm. DOUBT is what Sasha Aslanian has brought me, with quotes like:

The prevailing wisdom at the time was that if the parents were better off getting out of the marriage, the kids would be better off, too. Wallerstein’s young study subjects didn’t agree. Eventually, other researchers would confirm what the kids were saying — they struggled more with mental health problems, trouble in school and relationships. “It’s one of the few issues in a society where what’s best for the parents is not necessarily best for the children,” said Wallerstein.

And this, from perky-happy researcher Nick Wolfinger:

“You would expect to see good benefits from a stepparent,” said Wolfinger. After all, a stepparent may restore family income to two-parent levels. A stepparent is another adult in the home to provide social control and nurturing. The stepparent might be a role model for a good relationship. But the bottom line, according to Wolfinger, is having a stepparent makes a kid even more likely to divorce later in life. Wolfinger thinks having a stepparent shows spouses are replaceable if things don’t work out.

A friend of mine who heard the entire thing on the radio and who is in the middle of a not-so-nice divorce, said, “I just don’t buy it. Really – staying in something unhappy is better? Really?”

A quote from another researcher particularly seems to fly in the face of my friend’s feelings – and mine. It comes from a woman whose career is dedicated to studying other people’s marriage (ok, can I just nicely as possible say, “ICKY!”): “What do children learn from a loveless marriage? They learn about commitment, about loyalty, about putting other people’s needs first.”

And seeing people be unhappy? Haven’t kids been watching mothers, in particular, be loyal and, um, selfless, for AGES? So what good does this do? Yes, I get that in our plastic, disposable world, understanding commitment is good, but at whose expense? Or is that part of being an adult – you take one on the chin — or a hundred on the chin — for the home team.

*******

Bea is writing about her two houses: Mom’s house and Dad’s house. She’s drawn both houses. And she’s identified the one constant in her life: Thomas. It’s not a drawing I ever wanted my daughter to have to make. It would be easier if I knew that Daddy’s house was more permanent, that he’d be there for longer than a few months. But I don’t think that’s the case, and the fact that she has no idea of how impermanent her dad’s life is right now breaks my heart. Knowing that Bea’s drawing will change and change is nearly as hard on me as it may be on her.

How can something so common as divorce still feel so shitty? Still be laden with such grief and shame and, essentially, a lack of understanding of how best to deal with it? We really are just all little children.

Choosing a new street

I think what we learn more than anything from our relationships – as we become awake – is how not to make the same mistakes. I’ve been having scrapes with Thomas lately, and each time, I breathe a little more deeply and try to think, “What didn’t work last time? What could I try differently?” It may just be the tone of my voice. It may be the decision not to be physical this time (he’s still small enough for me to carry him upstairs to his room, even if he’s flailing, but I’m aware that this won’t be the case much longer and I need a different approach). I see with C. how may of the same points of contention that I experienced with A. arise — or the possibility for them to occur arises. It’s not so much that C. and A. are alike; it’s more that I am still me, and I could be having a relationship with a ginger dwarf from Kurzikstan or a Nubian wrestler and my habits of relating to a partner would repeat/repeat/repeat. At first, this gave me a headache and helpless me feel helpless and inevitable. Now, I see Opportunity.

I just came across this excerpt from the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, which is all about doing things differently and the opportunity to change. It seems perfect for January 2 and what may just be the coldest day of the year.

Autobiography in Five Chapters

1) I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost … I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

2) I walk down the same street.
There is a hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

3) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it there.
I still fall in … it’s a habit
My eyes are open
I know where I am
It is my fault.
I get out immediately

4) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I walk around it.

5) I walk down another street.

- Excerpt from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

by Sogyal Rinpoche

permission

“There’s a real commodity in permission,” my friend Jen said to me today. We were talking about the permission I need to give myself to take chances in terms of work and creativity. But we’d had a wide ranging conversation, much of it about marriage and love, and this made me think of all of the parts of our lives in which so many of us don’t give ourselves permission – at least I didn’t, and I’m just recently realizing that many other people do not either. So go ahead, write up a badge or two and stick them to the inside of your coat or on to your mirror or inside your journal – wherever it might do you the most good. Say them out loud and turn them around, wondering at their various meanings and watching the ways in which they make you squirm. Whisper them. Yell them. Type them. Share them with a friend. Fold them up on pieces of paper and put them in your pockets or under your mattress. But begin to believe.

I give myself permission to be loved – out loud.
I give myself permission to be adored.
I give myself permission to have great sex, to explore the edges with respect and curiosity while also finding tender spaces.
I give myself permission to be angry with the person I love and to feel safe in doing so.
I give myself permission to ask for what I need – be it time or money or “a little more to the left.”
I give myself permission to be taken care of and to take care of in a mutually beneficial dance.
I give myself permission to believe I am worthy of a relationship that will do all of this.

dominoes

I got a call from an old friend a few days before Christmas. We hadn’t spoken in over half a year. She was quick and friendly - How’s it going. Yeah, we’re fine. Ok, well, nice talking. It all seemed too fast, so I drew the conversation out and then tried to get her to talk a bit more. It turns out that her husband has been having some pretty severe depression this year. He’s lost his job and was even hospitalized for awhile. A marriage that had already been rocky and which she’d thought of leaving now feels like a prison to her. She’s working full time, commuting, taking care of their two kids, and now also taking care of him to a large degree. When we’d last spoken, I’d gently but persistently encouraged her to leave – or to take a break, to give herself some time and space in which to consider possibilities. Now, I’m not sure what to tell her.

And today – another phone call. This one from a guy with whom I spent a summer listening over and over to James Taylor’s Greatest Hits and floating down the murky Iowa River on intertubes. We just saw each other this summer for the first time in decades and it was so good – familiar, easy, a sigh. He, too, spoke a lot about his marriage. About his unhappiness. About the ongoing unhappiness that wouldn’t budge, no matter what they did. About his worries for his daughter and what divorcing might mean for his relationship with her. And yet, NO, he wouldn’t leave. “I can’t,” he said surely and simply. We’ve spoken several times since on the phone and he always made the marriage sound like a disease that was holding steady, the pain somewhat under control but the underlying problem without improvement.

Today, he called again. Today, he said he’d left. Today, he was sure. Today, he sounded sad but relieved.

“What if we’d stayed? I guess people just used to stay…” My friend trailed off as she thought of all of the marriages that held steady – the status quo scenario — for years and decades and centuries. The winter sun was coming in the windows of her painting studio, just a week before Christmas. My divorce had finally gone through; her husband had done yet another jackass thing that had reminded her how right her decision–a decision she’d pained over–had been. She’s been my Divorce Buddy (though thanks to full court schedules and an inflexible husband, hers won’t be done until spring) and both of us have provided a mirror to the other, a reassurance that we are indeed taking the right route. Sometimes, like on this afternoon, we might sound a little smug to an outsider. We are both happier people now than we were a year ago, and sometimes it’s hard for us to see why anyone would want to stay gripping to the top of the cliff when they could jump. There are all sorts of reasons for staying up there. And among the crowd on top, many will ultimately be glad that they stayed.

The decision to end a marriage is wrapped up in our own narratives, of course, the stories of our parents’ and grandparents’ relationships, the habits and norms of the communities in which we grew up (e.g., were there many divorced families in them or were they the anomaly?), the level of acceptance and flexibility of of our religious/spiritual heritages, the patterns developed in our first relationships, and our beliefs/myths/wishes for long-term love and devotion.

When I try – sometimes tenderly, sometimes perhaps a bit too fiercely – to encourage a friend to consider this leap, I fear that I sound like some 20-year old at a teenagers’ party – a pocketful of Ecstasy and a world-weary promise: “Just do it. You’ll feel better.” I don’t want to be smug. I don’t want to sound like I’ve done the right thing and by staying, you haven’t. There’s a card over my friend’s work desk in her studio that I gave her last winter, if memory serves. “Leap and the net will appear.” I believe that. I still get scared – very; but in my gut, I believe this. What might be a better saying, however, is one from MLK: “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”

Leaping infers a BIG action, a scary action. A step, however, can be small. But it’s still an action. It may mean picking up flowers for your spouse tonight and setting within yourself to try anew. It may mean returning to Al-Anon, or to church, or taking those tango lessons she’s asked about for years. But it’s an action. And there is faith behind that the action will lead to something else, something more, something better.

desire and action

Tonight at yoga, I was struck again by my desire to teach. The class was being led by an old friend, a woman with whom I went to junior high and then lost touch with until we moved in to the same neighborhood. She’s held many jobs, including owning a pet care service, but being a yoga teacher clearly suits her. She’s only been doing it a few years, but she never appears lacking in confidence; her tone is that of the joy of giving.

What I would teach — writing through difficult situations, yoga to kids — is unclear to me. What I do feel is a strong and, I think, generous desire to share. And a knowledge that through teaching comes much learning. Despite this desire, I’ve been sitting on the fence, unable to actually turn this desire into action. This excerpt from the meditation teacher Sharon Salzburg helps me recognize this:

In order to practice, we have to surrender, we have to take a risk. Otherwise what we’re doing is standing back in order to judge, in order to feel superior. Often the obstacle is fear: we don’t think we’ll ever succeed. And so we’d rather stand apart and be cynical, to feel protected in that way, not having to try….

We need to be able to utilize the positive energy of wondering, of wanting to know the truth for ourselves and working to do that, and not get lost in cynicism or endless speculation.