Tuesday, December 21, 2021

No Pomp, Just Circumstance

Claire-Adele finished college this week. I would say she "graduated," but there was no ceremony. All graduation activities were canceled due to concerns about the omicron variant. Last Thursday, Claire-Adele got an email from the university saying "with a heavy heart," everything was off. The keynote speaker was supposed to be Jeff Kinney, the guy who wrote the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" series and graduated from University of Maryland. Actually, he graduated from the University of Maryland first, then wrote about the "Wimpy Kid," a story about a hapless middle schooler and his family. It is pee-your-pants funny, right up there with Captain Underpants by Dav Pinkey.

Claire-Adele has been through two stages of grief, so far: sadness and anger. She cried and sobbed when she found out. She was so upset she dropped a couple of f-bombs. "'We are sorry for the inconvenience,'" she said, reading from the UMD email. She found their wording insufficient. "'Inconvenience' is when the wifi is down, not canceling graduation." She got really salty when she got another email saying they were selling tickets to a basketball game in the same venue.

It was confirmed that selling basketball tickets while canceling graduation was a bad thing. Yesterday, I was walking through Logan Circle in D.C. and I was approached by a guy from CNN filming a segment called "Ask the Ethicist."

"Hypocrisy!" shouted Norm when I told my my daughter's tale of woe. "It is unfair! These institutions are so big that they aren't connected to people anymore. They don't see people's faces when they make decisions. Plus you spent thousands of dollars to travel here! They don't know the impact." This Norm guy was all over it.

"What are you doing for her instead?" Norm asked.

I drew a blank. The notice of the canceled graduation was so short we didn't think of an alternative plan. Neither did the university. There was no Zoom graduation with the kids' names scrolling by, no speeches by the university president designed to make parents cry. We came to Maryland anyway, not knowing what else to do. Claire-Adele said she will go happily to her kids' graduations at some distant date in the future, knowing she missed her own.

Yesterday afternoon was the originally scheduled date for the graduation. Instead of going to the ceremony, we walked around a very quiet campus. The last day of finals is today, but only a few kids were around the campus studying. A few kids walked around in their caps and gowns getting pictures taken. Others were moving out. Others were with their parents, hitting the campus bookstore, buying gifts.

Claire-Adele made a reservation for dinner at a campus bar and grill. She wore a white dress along with her cap and gown, hair done, make-up on, as if she were at her real graduation. It was strange for all of us not have had a ceremony. There was no moment marking before and after, no moment of her marching across the stage as they called her name. It just was. 

Claire-Adele starts a new job in January in D.C.. She is very excited about the role and the position pays well, well enough for her to live in the big city. Even though she could afford her own place, she will stay in her campus apartment through the spring, and then will move. She will be off the family dole next month. For that, I am grateful. She has been growing towards independence, and now she is free.

I didn't take any pictures of her in her cap and gown. We don't have any group or family photos with her. I don't have a picture of her walking across the stage with someone handing her a diploma.

Instead, I have a picture of her in my mind. I see her back, marching out of the bar and grill ahead of me with her bare legs, high heels and gown flowing. Her head was high, ready to take on the world, no matter what it dishes out.

Sunday, December 12, 2021

Why Can't I Want What I Want?

The other day, I was at community group event that had a silent bake-sale silent auction. The committee members baked holidays cookies put them up for sale. I bid on a bunch of stuff that looked good, but on the first pass, I didn't bid on the chocolate covered popcorn, a favorite holiday treat. 

Why didn't I bid on it? I bid on cranberry bread and cookies and whatnot, all of which looked delicious. My body wanted the popcorn, but my buzzkill brain said no. What the heck? It wasn't like my brain was vetoing the Bellagio* at the Cheesecake Factory. My brain should have said no to that. That is why I have a brain. But chocolate covered popcorn wasn't any more or less healthy than any other bake good on the tables. And I was willing to bid on stuff that I didn't prefer as much, so I wasn't saying no to the whole bake sale. My brain was saying no for the sake of saying no. On my second pass around the table, I bid on the popcorn. The rest of my body vetoed my brain's Grinch.

Yesterday, my brain pulled this same veto trick while I was shopping. I found this cute place where a woman makes leather goods, like purses and wallets. In the shop, a beautiful robin egg blue portfolio for a composition book caught my eye. Like, "Wow that is cool." I use composition books all the time for work. Having a nice portfolio would be fun. "That isn't practical. I should get a tan or black one." 

Brain -- you are killing me! Why wouldn't you let me want what I want? Why do you try to talk me out of something beautiful that would bring joy to my life? Why is the first impulse when I see something I like to say no? This portfolio was $60 -- not a bank breaker. I don't already own fifteen portfolios and you are trying to stop me from hoarding. You were just saying no for the sake of saying no. Why?

Why?

Is there some deep seated psychological root to this? Is this a habit that I have developed on my own, no one else to blame? I am so afraid of spending money that anything with a price tag causes me to pause? How long have I been subconsciously--and perhaps consciously--saying no to beautiful and lovely things?

Now that I am aware that I am doing this to myself, I am going to explore this phenomena. But first, you might want to know how the story ended. 

I won the popcorn and it was as delicious as I imagined. And I bought the portfolio.

So far, so good. Let's see what else happens when I learn to say yes.



* I don't know if this is still the case, but the Bellagio used to be the highest calorie meal (2,000) at a national restaurant chain. 

Thursday, December 9, 2021

Crying

Today was a rough day. Yesterday was a rough day. Monday and Tuesday were rough days.

Oy.

For the past six weeks, I was focused on one part of my personal life, and this week there was a break through were things are looking up. There are a few minor set backs, but overall it looks good. This area had demanded a lot of my attention, and everything else was shoved to the back burner. Think of cooking a meal, let's say shrimp and rice. Shrimp are hard to cook because they need to be cooked all the way through so they aren't raw, but nor much more so or else they get rubbery. I was really focused on not overcooking the shrimp. Once I felt confident the shrimp was right, I checked the rice and it was a mess.

Today I cried about the rice. I cried and cried and cried. I probably cried about my worry about the shrimp, too. I talked to Ellen. I talked to my dad. I talked to other friends. And I cried. Before I cried, I had been really anxious and jittery and unable to focus on anything else. The weird thing is I used to live like that. All of the time. I was talking to a friend in my recovery program about anxiety attacks, where you just get spun up. I can't say that I've specifically had panic attack in my life before, but I could relate to her experience.

"I used to think that living like that was normal," I said.

Now I realize it wasn't normal, or at least I was tired of living that way.

When we get in ruts like that, it is easy to think that crazy is normal because we are used to it, and we don't know how to change, how to get better.

The first I needed to do was cry. I didn't want to cry. I wanted to rant and pace and be anxious, but I didn't want to cry. I couldn't hold it back any longer.

When I was done crying, I felt so much better. I was crying about cooking the shrimp and cooking the rice.

When I talked to my dad about crying, he said it doesn't solve the problem and it isn't a solution, but it clears the path so you can find you way out.

Amen.

Thursday, December 2, 2021

Swearing

I've been talking to my dad more recently, and I am becoming aware of how much he swears. I had never noticed it much before. I knew he wasn't a guy who didn't swear, but holy cow! Maybe this is where I learned how to express myself using a variety of four letter words.

Or maybe he learned it from me? 

Oy. I am a bad influence on my son and dad? Pedro swears like a sailor and I certainly know where he gets that from.

Maybe I really need to clean up my act and drop the swearing. That would take a significant amount of discipline. I'd rather not eat sugar, get thirty minutes of cardio every day, do my pre-ski season leg blaster exercises and lose twenty pounds before I give up swearing.

I don't swear (much) at work. When Pedro was little, I told him the key to swearing is knowing your audience and intent. 

  • Swearing among your friends -- okay
  • Swearing at your friends -- not okay
  • Swearing with your friends during class -- not okay
  • Swearing in front of your mother -- okay
  • Swearing at your mother -- not okay
  • Swearing in front of your grandmother -- not okay

He understood right away. He managed it so well that his paternal grandfather after a week of visiting tried to teach Pedro to swear. It was delightful. 

Perhaps I need to revisit my own audience list in general. Maybe my early New Year's resolution will be to stop swearing. I wonder how long I could go, and how I could track it. I swear so much, I don't even notice it. And I'll need to find more creative ways to express myself. I don't want to say "crap" instead of "shit," or "dang" instead of "damn." I need to say "That is frustrating" or "That is annoying" instead of "Bullshit."

Bridget Jones would start each diary entry with how many calories she ate, how much she weighed and how much she drank. (Bridget is the best literary creating since Elizabeth Bennett.) Maybe I'll do a Bridget Jones where I list at the top of each post how many times I swore in a day. 

Wish me luck!

Wednesday, December 1, 2021

Conscious versus Subconscious

(I haven't written any blog posts in November. Oy. Sorry about that. Hopefully I'll be back in business soon.)

I've been reading a lot lately in my downtime lately. Reading and thinking. In my diet app (which wasn't open in November, either), there was an article that stated the human mind picks up forty conscious details every second. The subconscious picks up two million cues.

Walk into a different room and it is familiar, right? Unless you have dementia, you will know that you have moved from the kitchen to living room. You won't walk into it and say "Where the hell am I?" Likewise, re-arrange your furniture and you will probably bump into it for a week. Visit a friend's house that you see regularly. You might not know where they keep the colander, but you probably know where they keep the tea mugs. You don't have to rack your mind nor did they say "This is where I keep the teacups. Can you remember?" You just "know" with no work required.

What do we do with those extra 173 billion cues we pick up in a day? The 63 trillion cues we pick up in a year? I saw an article in the New Yorker (that I didn't read yet) about how animals navigate when traveling. Think of the Arctic terns that fly from the north pole to the south pole and back every year. how do they know? Perhaps an individual bird doesn't fly alone, maybe they fly in flock, which brings us to another wonderful idea of hive mind, the collective conscious. I am guessing that these birds must use their subconscious cues to navigate, they tap into these cues they've picked over their fifteen to thirty-five year lifespan.

We invented the internet and cars and refrigerators, indoor plumbing and HVAC systems using our conscious minds. Very cool. But what are we humans missing out on by not tapping into our subconscious? 

"Trust your gut."

"The heart has reasons that reason doesn't know."

I've been practicing mediation for a year, and I find so helpful for staying calm in all kinds of situations. When I was struck with a fearful event a few months ago, my heart rate skyrocketed. Instead of doing my usual freak-out, I stopped and meditated for ten minutes. The short mental break gave me best use of my powers of reason and I could start problem solving. I didn't deny my worry or angst. Instead, I was able to deal with it. When I am not in crisis, mediation helps reduce my anxiety the next day. How do I know this? On days I don't meditate, the next day is usually freak-out city about things that aren't a big deal. Likewise, sometime meditation can uncover the bullshit in our lives, the unacceptable, the crazy, the toxic, the unfair. I've heard that meditation can sometimes trigger depression cycles. While that can be unpleasant, it can be a truth bomb that tells us we need to change, that the status quo cannot hold. I don't think that is a bad thing. Depression at times can be a messenger. Suppression of difficult emotions can only last so long before we explode. Or, we become so good at suppressing our feelings that we forget how to feel. If we can't feel pain, we can't feel joy. It is interesting how life works that way.

Why does meditation work? How does it work? I am guessing that at some level meditation allows our conscious mind to take break (like sleep, but different) and our subconscious mind can reconcile. 

What is prayer, then, and how does that work? I don't believe the usefulness of prayer to ask that UW beats Washington State in the Apple Cup. Instead, if we ask for direction, we are asking our subconscious to take over and help us solve the problem. I've been dipping into prayer lately. When I ask for guidance, insight will usually arrive in a few days. I might see new information that I didn't see before. My perspective might change so I can see things more clearly. Sometimes the direction is to talk to a friend, and listen to how they see things.

I accepted a new job in October. Before I did, I asked a friend if I should take it. He knew all about my job search, and we've talked extensively about my career. I thought he would ask me a bunch of questions about my goals and whatnot. Instead, he cut to the obvious: "Do you have another job lined up?" No. "Then take this one." Of course, nothing is so simple. He knew the job was a reasonable fit at a very good company. He had already ruled out reasons why I shouldn't take the job. He cut through the clutter, which I needed. His insights made what I thought was a tricky question simple. I knew instantly he was right. I didn't need to logic through it. My inner voice, subconscious, Higher Power, my gut, my heart, whatever, knew it was right without needing to get my brain involved. It felt right. I could feel it in my bones, I could feel it in my body, where my subconscious reigns.

Friday, October 29, 2021

After the Rain

It has been raining cats and dogs here in Seattle the past few days. Cats and dogs. Not drizzle, not light precipitation. Not like a little rain for a few minutes here and there, but a steady downpour. Like you need your windshield wipers going full blast. Not that I drove anywhere. It was too wet and icky to drive anywhere. I went swimming one day this week and I got soaked walking back to my apartment.

It kinda sucked.

In the summer when it was hot and dry, I would have loved some rain to cool things down a bit, rinse the sidewalks of their smut, clean the air.

The past few weeks have been a bit of an emotional roller coaster, with both highs and lows. I was offered a full-time job at the place where I was contracting. Yay! That is welcome news. Claire-Adele is kicking ass, which is great. I've been connecting with friends old and new which has made the roller coaster less traumatic. One new friend -- who I deeply admire -- has such a deep practice of acceptance. I want to learn from her how to stay calm and stable while the rest of my world is upside down.

After the rain, I went for a walk. I was so happy to be outside. It was sparklingly beautiful, almost magical. No, it was just magical. The air was perhaps the cleanest I've ever experienced--it glowed. 




Bait chuckers trying to catch squid





See the splash between the railing and the boat? A giant fish grabbed something out of the water.

Friday, October 8, 2021

Parent's Weekend

I am off to Colorado to see Pedro for Parent's Weekend. It is now probably called "Family Weekend," or something, but anyway, I am off. (Siblings Weekend is a whole different adventure...)

I remember years ago when my parents came to visit me at Northwestern when I was a freshman. I was so excited to show off my dorm and new friends and new life. Look! Clean laundry! Except everything white now is a light shade of lavender because I didn't separate my dark colored clothes from my lights and my purple nightshirt bled over everything. I really loved their visit, even though when my dad was driving to the football game he nearly ran over this guy I had a massive crush on. (Sorry, Tom.)

Saturday evening, my parents came by the dorm. We were sitting in the dorm living room and my dad brought out a deck of cards. 

"Let's play poker," he said to me and a handful of other kids hanging out. They all stared blankly at him. These kids were at NU. We got in because we studied all through high school, not by hanging out at poker parties.

"Okay, I'll teach you," he said. Then, in one of boldest parenting moves ever, my dad turned to Byron. "Do you have beer in your fridge?" Byron's eyes popped open, not sure how to answer that question. Was it a trick? Was he going to get trapped by Lauren's father? My dad clarified his intentions.

"Go get me a beer," my dad said as he was shuffling the deck. And Byron did. At that moment, my dad became the coolest dad in the world.

What will it be like for me to be the parent now? I won't be asking Pedro's roommates for beer or weed. I can dance, but I don't think Pedro wants me crashing college parties with him. Maybe the prevalence of pot, maybe college don't have raging dancing parties where the music loud and the room is hot and smells like Bud Light and Screwdrivers and everyone is jumping up in down in time with the bass beat of New Order's Bizarre Love Triangle.

Parent's Weekend is after mid-terms, when kids have just made it over the first major college hurdle. They are tired and stressed and probably hating life. They may wonder "Why did I sign up for this shit?" What will keep them going? A hug from mom and dad, and weekend without dorm food. A gentle reminder of home, and where you came from, that the people you love and who love you are rooting for you, that they have your back.

And for the parents? What do they think and feel about the experience? 

I guess I'll find out.

Monday, October 4, 2021

"All Better" & Falling

When I skinned my knee growing up, my mom would clean up my wound, put a band-aid on it, and give me a hug and a kiss to "make it all better."

I did the same thing for my kids when they were little, giving them comfort when they were hurt and sad. How easy that seemed to be--almost the easiest part of parenting. Providing comfort is easier than setting boundaries and saying no to the candy aisle. It is easier than bedtime. It is easier than teaching table manners or how to ride a bike, though riding a bike is one way kids get skinned knees in the first place.

Then they grow up. When they skid out emotionally, I so badly want to be able to make it all better, to make the pain go away, to help them avoid suffering. Life isn't designed that way, without out conflict (inner or outer) or turmoil or stress. They have to learn on their own to handle stress and challenges.

This is the hardest lesson I've had in parenting--allowing my kids to fail, allowing them to feel their own pain, to feel the consequences of their own actions. It is hard to believe that all of that is necessary for parenting. When kids fall, they need to pick themselves up, whether they are toddlers or eighteen. This doesn't mean we as parents are heartless monsters, watching them struggle. Growth is in the struggle. Struggle builds resilience. Resilience means they can bounce back when they fall again. It means they know they can pick themselves back up, that they are confident they can pull out of a tailspin.

As much as I love riding my paddleboard, I don't know how to get back on it if I fell off. I've watched a YouTube video where I watched how to get back on, but I paddle such that I don't fall in.

This is bullshit. 

I need to fall in in a safe and shallow-ish spot and figure out how to get back on the board. I would be a braver and more confident paddleboard without the low-grade fear I have of falling in.

Sports can be a good teacher, but sometimes those lessons aren't as transferable to regular life as one would think. Sometimes we can fall skiing, on a bike or off a paddleboard and get back up, but when life hands us lumps at school or at work, we might struggle infinitely more than we did on the mountain or on the lake. 

Why?

Why does fear vary so much? Why can someone feel safe on the mountain but not at a desk? 

I don't know. Today, I have no answers. Only questions. 

I guess the answer is there is no answer. I can't take away their pain or struggles, but I can listen. I can be the quiet person in the back while they process and think and feel, not necessarily in that order. I can bear witness, and help them feel less alone in the struggle. I can tell them I have confidence in them, even when they don't have confidence in themselves.

Sunday, September 26, 2021

Grief & Growing Around It

I am part of a recovery group where our weekly topic is grief. My baby who died years ago was a major experiences with grief. Sending Pedro away for treatment for his anxiety and depression was another.

What is grief, exactly? It is sorrow and sadness and loss. My most recent epiphany is grief is how we feel when something big and important to us ending. It could be the end of a person's life, like Ada's, my stillborn daughter. It could be the end of a job, or the end of an important relationship. When the Boy left, it was the end of him living at home for the time being. It was the end of having him around the house.

When Ada died, I felt like most people do when a loved one dies: my entire mind, body and soul was filled with sorrow and loss. Her death was end of her life, but also the dream of what her life could have been. It was the death of potential.

There is a common metaphor for grief, that it is like a balloon in our hearts and minds that expands when we experience loss, making everything else seem smaller. When the grief subsides, other parts of our lives resume their normal sizes. 

I heard a new idea -- grief stays the same size, but we grow around it. We can grow stronger and taller, and healthier if we so choose. I like this idea better. It doesn't mean with need to rush through or wish our grief to be smaller. Grief it what it is, and we grow around it.

Sunday, September 19, 2021

My Daughter Dropped Out of her Honors College...and I Couldn't be Prouder

I got a call last week from Claire-Adele telling me she didn't want to complete honor's thesis this spring. She had a dozen reasons, but the most important one:

"I don't get excited about it. I just don't want to. I am not applying to get PhD, so I don't really need to do a thesis."

When kids are little, they are forced to do a ton a crap that they need to do "because" without any valid reason why they need to, like doing homework in kindergarten. Is that homework of coloring the apple red going to make them smarter? Help them advance in life? Probably not. Is it going to teach them some discipline? Maybe. But mostly they have to do homework in kindergarten because their teacher told them to, and they are supposed to listen to their teachers.

In other cases, they have to do things to contribute to their home, their tribe. We ask them to set the dinner table because we need forks and plates out if we all want to eat. 

Do kids have any free will in most of this stuff? Do they have a lot of choices? 

Not really. Kids are forced to slog along in the world because a bunch of adult humans made up a bunch of rules and things they have to do in order to be "successful" people. Do they ever get a chance to do what they want, to exercise free will? Not often while they are living on their parents dime. 

Claire-Adele is smart and ambitious and works hard, all of which is fine. Most kids like her are good at following orders. I heard a friend today talk about her people-pleasing and how corporations love people-pleaser who put the well-being of others way ahead of their own wants and needs.

At the tender age of twenty-one, Claire-Adele has figured out free will. She has figured out how to make decisions that will impact her own life, happiness, goals and well being. She is making a trade-off where she sees the value of graduating early instead of getting honors. Instead of working on her thesis this fall, she will be a research assistant for a professor in the business school. She will save her parents a semester of tuition. She will get a job, and then maybe apply to law school.

This is her life, not anybody else's. This isn't about her being lazy and copping out of an assignment. She is dedicated and works hard at whatever she sets her mind to. More important than her work ethic is figuring out how she wants to spend her time, what is important to her, and where her passions lie.

She is doing just that. 

I couldn't be prouder.

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Control or Love: Pick One

I've been thinking about love versus control lately.

My guess is that this is the root of many parenting and relationship problems. I think of the types of kids in treatment whose parents want to dictate their children's every move. It can be in work relationships, too. Think of the micromanager or the screaming boss. By control, I don't mean self-control or self-drive, that type of thing. Control is not to be confused with leadership, either. 

People can be controlling or they can be loving. People can have control in a relationship or that can love. They cannot have both. Very often people who are controlling think they are loving, when in fact, they are not.

Controlling someone says: I don't trust you to be who you are. 

Loving someone says: I trust you to be who you are, and I trust myself to be myself. We have respect for each other.

Controlling someone says: I am afraid you will mess it up or make a mistake.

Loving someone says: Mistakes are part of being human. Mistakes are okay.

Controlling can be horrible, like beating someone who disagrees or misbehaves, be it a spouse or child. It can be a deranged and screaming co-worker or boss.

Controlling can look nice when it really isn't. I can be doubting, undermining, questioning, worrying that the other person will fail or make them look bad.

Love is faith in the other person, and believing they are okay the way they are. 

Controlling and loving most often materialize in our lives when there is conflict. Do we insist on getting our way at the expense of the other person's humanity? Or, do we disagree and have faith that it will be okay if the world doesn't go our way? That we can love someone and disagree with them, that the two are not mutually exclusive?

Likewise, when people are controlled, they don't feel loved. They might feel small, insignificant or unimportant, as if they only exist to make the other person happy. Their own happiness is immaterial compared to the controller's happiness.

Sunday, September 12, 2021

Brunch = Two meal day, & the Sugar Hangover

I love brunch. It is my favorite meal of the week and I wish I had it every day. In the summer, my kids ate brunch a lot as they slept in til eleven on days they didn't work. I went to brunch yesterday with a friend around 10:30 Saturday morning. What is so awesome about it?

First, I love big breakfast foods. I love eggs and bacon and hash browns and toast all on one plate. 

Second, it is twofer: two meals for the price of one. When I eat brunch, I only have two meals in the day: brunch and dinner. Yesterday was a weird day, though. I had brunch, but then for an afternoon snack I had Cupcake Royale's awesome red velvet ice cream where they take red velvet cake and mix it in vanilla ice cream. (It is not as perfect as blueberry pie at Salt and Straw, but still good.) I hung out of a friend Saturday night and we drank gin and tonics while she made cookies while I watched and then we played "Go Fish." I ate one raw cookie and two cooked ones.

If I really looked at my diet yesterday, I ate a total of three meals one of them was dessert. As I write this, I feel like a preschooler writing about my dream meal plan. 

Today, though, I am super tired. I only had one G&T, so I don't think that is causing my sleepiness. Maybe the sugar is trying to kill me with a sugar hangover.

Saturday, September 11, 2021

Need Another Good Cry?

The Broadway musical Come from Away is on Apple TV. 

I've had the good fortune to have seen this three times on stage -- once in Seattle before it went to New York, on Broadway and then again in Seattle.

I laughed. I cried. It was better than Cats.

Seriously. This is an amazing show.

It takes place in Newfoundland, Canada on September 11, 2001 when 200 international flights were diverted and ordered to land in the tiny town of Gander. Gander used to be a refueling spot for transatlantic flights before the planes could carry enough fuel to get across the ocean. The story is what happened to the town and the people that landed there during a week of deep uncertainty and fear.

My next door neighbors in Ravenna were coming home from Paris when their plane landed in Gander on 9/11. They were two of seven thousand people people who "came from away."

Where was I when I heard of the first plane crash? I was in St. Louis, Missouri. Claire-Adele was just a year old. I was watching the news, waiting for the weather forecast for the day. I called my mom when the second plane hit. In the afternoon, I had to turn off the news so I took Claire-Adele to the zoo with my friend Kari and her son Jackson. It was so quiet. No planes overhead. No cars in the street. No one at the zoo.

I am not sure how to close this. "Happy 9/11" seems horribly and terribly wrong.

Perhaps, "Remember."

Friday, September 10, 2021

Need a Good Cry?

There is a brilliant article in The Atlantic about a family whose son died on 9/11. It is a story about grief. I listened to it while eating lunch. So powerful.

WHAT BOBBY MCILVAINE LEFT BEHIND

Grief, conspiracy theories, and one family’s search for meaning in the two decades since 9/11

From the article:

Early on, the McIlvaines spoke to a therapist who warned them that each member of their family would grieve differently. Imagine that you’re all at the top of a mountain, she told them, but you all have broken bones, so you can’t help each other. You each have to find your own way down.

It was a helpful metaphor, one that may have saved the McIlvaines’ marriage. But when I mentioned it to Roxane Cohen Silver, a psychology professor at UC Irvine who’s spent a lifetime studying the effects of sudden, traumatic loss, she immediately spotted a problem with it: “That suggests everyone will make it down,” she told me. “Some people never get down the mountain at all.”

Monday, September 6, 2021

Is "Ted Lasso" in a Twelve-Step Program?

My new favorite television streaming show is Ted Lasso on Apple TV. It is my favorite show since Schitt's Creek

For those of you who haven't seen it, Ted is an American Division II college football coach who is asked to coach an English Premier League team. Ted is a mensch--a nice guy. Rebecca acquired the AFC Richmond through a divorce, and she wants to sink the team to spite her ex-husband. The show is both funny and endearing. I've only watched Season 1 so far. I am saving Season 2.

As I have been watching, I feel like this show is indirectly about a twelve-step program, where the themes and content are similar to those groups recovering from addiction. Ted and company hang out in pubs and drink a lot of beer, which is not necessarily in keeping with the Alcoholics Anonymous principles. Nevertheless, the show feels like recovery.

Some of you may be asking, what are twelve-step programs? For the easiest definition, I went to Wikipedia: they are "mutual aid organizations for the purpose of recovery from substance addictionsbehavioral addictions and compulsions." While more than two hundred programs use twelve steps, Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon were the first two.

Back to Ted Lasso. [Spoiler Alert: I won't tell you how Season 1 ends, but there might be a few spoilers in here.]

  1. "What's your name?" Ted asks Nate the Kit Manager (the equivalent to the equipment manager for an American football or baseball team) in the first episode. The first thing that happens in a twelve step meeting (in person) is group goes around the circle and everyone says their first name. This is the first time anyone from the team has asked Nate his name.
  2. "I appreciate you." Ted is full of gratitude and expresses it freely. Gratitude is a major theme in recovery programs. I find gratitude to be a natural upper. For one of my birthdays, I spent two weeks thinking of why I appreciated everyone in my life and I wrote it all done. It was the best two weeks.
  3. "That's stinkin' thinkin'" Ted tells someone on the team. This is a classic line from AA for when people use bad logic to justify bad behavior or feel sorry for themselves.
  4. Fellowship: Most twelve Step programs call other members "fellows" where they share their struggles with each other. In Episode 8, Ted is recovering from an emotional bender in Episode 7. What does he do? He calls upon Coach Beard, Nate and Higgins to talk about his feelings. They form a group called the Diamond Dogs. The Diamond Dogs are a mini-fellowship where the guys can talk about their feelings.
  5. Tradition 1: "Our common welfare comes first; personal progress for the greatest number depends upon unity." The show isn't just about Ted's growth. The show has an ensemble cast and many of the characters experience their own arc and growth, not just Ted.
  6. Step 8: "Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all." Episode 9 is called "All Apologies." Rebecca realizes the harm she has done to Ted and Higgins, and she apologizes.
  7. Step 9: "Continued to personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it." In Episode 9, Ted has to bench his team captain and aging star. Initially, Ted wants to keep Roy in even though he has been playing poorly. Coach Beard and Nate disagree. They think Roy will hurt the team's chances of winning. Ted concedes. He also reflects Tradition 1 in this moment, that the common welfare comes first instead of the welfare of one player. Likewise, in Episode 5, Ted has to pull a selfish and self-absorbed star player who is hurting the team.

Thursday, September 2, 2021

Pumpkin!

This morning, I watered the plants on my balcony and I found this:


I am growing an urban pumpkin. This is the best things ever. Yay!

This spring, Jack brought over some compost from the house and I boosted the soil for all of my container pots on my patio and balcony. In the mix were pumpkin seeds from pumpkins I composted years ago. When the volunteer pumpkin vines started showing up, I didn't hack them back. I could have treated them like weeds that were invading my cultivated pots. Jack used to tease me that I never pruned any of my plants. "You think all growth is good growth," he said years ago when my ficus tree collection took over our apartment in Chicago.

I didn't pull the scrappy and unkempt pumpkin vines, and now I have a baby pumpkin. I wonder how big it will get. Maybe I will find a few more. Will my baby pumpkin have brothers and sisters? I hope so. 


The green circle is where I found the pumpkin.



Here are other pumpkin vines on the patio. Will there be more pumpkins this fall?

Sunday, August 29, 2021

Before and After, Then and Now, & This Too Shall Pass

A few weeks ago, a friend called and asked how I coped with a teenage son with anxiety and depression. She was struggling with her child, and wanted to talk to someone who would understand and not pass judgment on her or her kid.

As I talked about the Boy when he was a young teen, I realized how far he has come since then. I was talking to her about the before. We are now living in the after. 

Still, I struggle with what was then and what is now. I wasn't present for a majority of the Boy's recovery, nor was he present for mine. While the Boy was living in Montana going through his therapeutic treatment, I was going through my own.

Because of this gap, I had a hard time differentiating between who Pedro was when he was sent away, and who he is now. Then, he was sleeping all day. In the meantime, he got organized and graduated from high school. He studied, did his homework and took exams, while also going through therapy. He also made friends outside of his therapy group. He did a lot, and just because I wasn't physically present for it doesn't mean it didn't happen.

So how do I honor and recognize my son where he is at now? There is a cliche-trap that moms of kids in treatment fall into: They see their children as the cute, adorable toddlers or first graders that they once were, and then wondered what happened. The adorable kid who made mud pies and finger-painted is now a nineteen year old druggie who stole their car sold it for coke. 

"What happened to my sweet baby boy?" they wonder.

Sometimes the past sweetness is what keep us holding on so we don't let go. The hard part is acknowledging and accepting the present. The word "and' helps. For example, "My kid was _____ and now they are ______."

Which brings me to "This too shall pass." I was talking to some friends this week about this topic. "This too shall pass" applies to bad times and good times. As we were talking, I realized this expression also comes with letting go. As we are parents, the ages and stages kids go fly by. The colicky infant becomes a cranky toddler who becomes and curious kindergartener. I can't hold it against my daughter that she was colicky. Sure, it sucked parenting a kid who cried all of the time, but it passed. She is not that way anymore. Likewise, I need to separate who Pedro was from who he is now. Of course, I can hold a dear spot in my heart for the kid who said "waterlemon" and built a "Stomp Drop Rocket" out of legos. Parents build a bank of fond memories of their kids so when the times get tough they remember why they are still a parent and don't sell their child to the circus. 

And sometimes the rough times last a long time, seemingly without end. I think of the addictions and mental health issues that persist. I think of chronic, debilitating diseases that won't get better. I think of Viktor Frankl surviving the Holocaust. On a much less impactful situation, I think of when I tore my ACL and spent a year in physical therapy re-learning how to walk. I knew I would become mobile again if I did the work, which at times as painful. I couldn't change the path of my recovery, but I could accept the discomfort and work instead of wallowing in self pity.  Once we get to acceptance, we can think about what to do next. I had a choice about my attitude. I had a choice to do the work or not.

I can hold the sweet and the sour, and I can separate the past from the present. I can hold Pedro as the adorable toddler, the angry adolescent, and the depressed teen. I can see him as the leader of the Lego Club and the captain of the soccer team. I can see him as a kid who turned it around and graduated from high school. I can see a kid who is brave and courageous.

And I can see him now as a college freshman, living on his own. 

The Imperfect Lily and the Bee

As I live blocks from Pike Place Market, I often pick up a giant bouquet of flowers from one of the dozens of flower vendors.

This week, I bought a red, yellow and orange bouquet, with dahlias, lilies and sunflowers. The scent is usually too powerful for me, so I often leave the flowers outside on my patio table. I can still enjoy them and skip the allergy attack.

Yesterday, I looked at the flowers and thought they were past their prime. The dahlias were withering and one of the lily buds had been munched on by a bug. I was going to chop it the bud off and dump it in the compost. Fortunately, I was too busy and/or lazy yesterday to get rid of this deformity. Instead of dead-heading the flowers, I turned the vase so I didn't see the wilted one.

This morning after I walked Fox, I sat on my patio eating breakfast*, drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. On the table was the vase of flowers. I was thinking about my scrappy flowers, and how I let them go past their peak. 

The deformed lily bud had opened. Some of the petals had chew marks, but what was ugly when the lily bud was closed was barely noticeable once it had bloomed. 

A bee came. He hovered over the wobbly anther** of the stamen, and collected pollen. 

To the bee, these flowers were perfect.













* A croiffle -- Croissant dough pressed in a waffle iron. This is best high carb breakfast to be had. Not to be compared to high fat (e.g., quiche) or high protein (e.g., omelets) breakfasts.

** Yes, I googled that. I am not a botanist.

Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Final Draft!

 ...which is totally ironic because the name of my blog is "Rough Draft." Oh well.

I posted my first article to Medium.com. They had a writing contest and I was inspired.

Here you go! 

https://medium.com/@mcguirelauren

I'm not behind the paywall...yet!

Sunday, August 22, 2021

Wilderness & Mercury in Retrograde: Part 2

Pedro's father was working twelve hour shifts at the hospital the week my son came back home. Instead of staying with his dad the house, Pedro decided to stay with me while I was working from home. I was grateful. I thought it was better that Pedro have someone to talk to when he woke up instead of being left alone in an empty house until dinnertime. And to be honest, I was grateful for the company. I just started a new job a few months earlier and I was lonely working at home during the pandemic. There were weeks where I only had one or two meetings. I didn't spend much time interacting with other people. At times, I felt like I was in solitary confinement. My quarantine prison cell had a nice view of the water, but the same could be said of Alcatraz.

For two months, Pedro lived with me. I felt like the time was an aberration--when you send your kids out in the world, they aren't supposed to come back as children. Two years ago, I had grieved his departure, and now he was home again. This felt like when the inner planets Mercury and Venus are in retrograde. There is an optical illusion when the planets appear to be moving backwards in their orbit around the sun. In fact, their orbits haven't changed at all. My son was home was a brief stop on his way out again.

I had been a busy mom for so many years, driving kids to soccer practices, going to band concerts, watching cross-country meets. Unexpectedly, I became an empty-nester two years earlier than expected, grieving that loss of time. Pedro's oldest sister had left for college the year before Pedro was sent away. I had been looking forward to the time Pedro had his chance to be an only child, to get his parents' full and undivided attention. I was looking forward to not having to manage two kids at the same time. I was looking forward to slowing down, and just having one kid to focus on. That was all lost. Now, he was back, just for a short bit, before he leaves for college.

While Pedro was moving from a group living situation, I had a roommate for the first time in a few years. At a basic level, I enjoyed it: I had someone to talk to over breakfast, someone to decide what do with for lunch. He was much more amenable to taking direction and taking care of himself. Sometimes he would forget to eat, but a gentle nudge from me telling him to get a bowl of cereal was not met with hostility. He would make jokes. Sometimes he would make me breakfast. I had to learn to be patient when he didn't do things as fast as I would have liked. It took him longer to get a job than I would have liked, but in the end he got a job walking distance from my apartment, which locked in where he was going to live for the summer.

The funny thing about life is that when it is easy, peaceful and serene, sometimes it isn't all that memorable. The blow-ups were few and infrequent. I often had to remind myself that my son was eighteen, not exactly the easiest age for young men. 

There was one instance about three weeks in. After I had finished work, Pedro and I drove forty-five minutes away to a local river to fly fish. On the dark trail back to the car with my headlamp lighting the way, Pedro started busting my chops about how I wasn't a good enough fly fisherman, how I wasn't taking those dream vacations I had on my bucket list, and on and on for an hour. I didn't tell him to stop or set a boundary or ask him to be kinder and gentler to his dear old mother. When I got home, I freaked out for letting him rag on me. Here it was, I was the one relapsing first, not Pedro. I was the one falling into old patterns.

I was terrified. What I couldn't do this? What if I couldn't effectively be a mom? What would happen to my son?

The next morning, a friend called and asked if I wanted to get out of town for the weekend. I said yes. I packed my bag and texted Pedro and his father that I taking off for a few days. I needed them to watch the dog.

"Are you okay?" Jack asked. He called when he saw my text. Instead of being angry or annoyed that I was leaving town and leaving him with the kid, Jack seemed worried about me.

"I need a break," I said. "I am falling back into my old ways." The old me would have asked Jack for permission, checking that his schedule was clear before I made any plans. Fuck it, I thought. If I don't get a break, I will completely lose my mind and that won't serve anyone. 

On the ride out of town, I called one of the other mom's at Pedro's boarding school. I was worried that Pedro would feel abandoned, that he would be mad at me forever. She cheered me on. 

"Go have a great time," Diana said. "You will be a better mom for this in the end." I needed the support from someone whose son also returned home this summer. She knew as close as anyone else could what I was going through.

On the trip, I went fly fishing with a guide along the Kootenai. I improved my cast and learned how to mend my line. I learned how to hook a fish once it bit the fly, and how to pull it in. I learned how to spay cast. And I caught five fish, including a beautiful fifteen inch rainbow trout.

When I got home, I talked about my fishing trip and how I took my paddleboard out on a lake. I was relaxed and happy. Pedro was actually happy for me.

Pedro had his relapse, too. One day at work, he was feeling overwhelmed and he came home in the middle of the day. This was a test for both of us: Would Pedro be able to bounce back from his set-back, and would I not freak out about it? Would I catastrophize and imagine my son never going to work again? Would he get fired? Would he decide it wasn't worth it to participate in the work force and give up? Would he become a sponge and never get a job and just fly fish for the rest of his life? I was an expert at mentally spinning out on the smallest gravel patch.

After all of the books and therapy sessions, the biggest beacon for me was Simone Biles and the twisties. What if I were her parents? Would I have been supportive of her not competing, or would I have told her suck it up, buttercup and get her butt on the beam? I was horrified that I might have been that nutjob parent. 

Internally, I was freaking out. Externally, I was calm. I asked Pedro what I could to support him. If he needed space, that was fine. I'd see him after I got back from paddle-boarding and we'd have dinner. The dog had surgery the day before. Before I left for the lake, I put the dog on Pedro's bed and asked him to take care of Fox. As I was leaving, the dog snuggled up next to Pedro. I saw Pedro's posture soften as he held the dog.

When I came back a few hours later, Pedro was restored. I don't know what did the trick: the dog, calling his girlfriend in Montana, or me giving my son space to sort through all of his mixed up and confused feelings. Maybe given the space, my son was able to tap into all of the emotional tools he had learned over the past two years, and work it out himself. Maybe it was all of those. 

Maybe part of it was just me and my view and reaction to my son's challenges. How often before would I try to swoop in and save him from unpleasant feelings, to fix his emotional bumps and bruises instead of letting him sit with his own feelings and figure it out? How hard was it for me to do something different, and not fall back into my rutted behavior? My re-entry to motherhood required me to use emotional muscles that I had never used before. I was a little sore--just like I was after learning to paddleboard--but I was in a much better place.

Just like Mercury's perceived backwards loop in his orbit, my loop back into parenthood came to an end as Pedro left for college last week. Now I get to re-enter another world: life without kids.

Saturday, August 21, 2021

Wilderness & Mercury in Retrograde: Part I

[Hello, fair readers. I am going to enter this piece into a writing contest, which explains why this deviates from my usual style of writing about the day-to-day. You get to see the first draft.]

This summer, my son returned home to live with me in the brief window after he graduated from high school and before he went to college. I returned to full-time motherhood after a two year hiatus. After Pedro turned sixteen, he went to Wilderness therapy and then on to two years in a therapeutic boarding school. He was sent away by his father and I, but mostly me. Jack didn't think Pedro's crippling depression and anxiety was a real problem, but I did.

"It is not like he is doing drugs," said Jack.

"He isn't getting out of bed," I said. "He isn't going to school. He isn't participating in life." I didn't see how he going to get out of this funk without a major intervention.

Pedro had already thought his life was ruined: "If I don't graduate from high school, I won't go to college. If I don't go to college, I won't get a job. What is the point?" Every evening when I came home from work, I feared I would find my son dead in his bed. A few months before we shipped him off, Pedro knew he needed a change. "If I go to boarding school, I will be forced to wake up in the morning and go to class."

When a co-worker who suffered from anxiety and depression found out about Pedro's continuing low mood, he lambasted me for an hour: "How can you leave him home alone during the day? You have no idea how dark it can get." My friend had another bout of depression after he broke up with his long-time girlfriend. Weeks later, he found a replacement. As a mother, I don't have that option. There is no Tinder, JDate or Match.com for me to round up a random sixteen year old boy and call him my son.

Willingly, Pedro went to camp in the high desert in Colorado for eleven weeks surrounded by other lost boys and a team of therapists. While my son was sleeping under a tarp and learning to make fire from sticks, I was in my own emotional wilderness. Even though a good part of me was relieved that my son was getting the help he needed, I now needed to face the many issues I had neglected in my own life while focusing on my son. I was spinning and obsessing about everyone's life but my own. I worried about things outside of my scope of control. My life had become unmanageable.

Both of my son's programs required parental involvement. These were not places where you gave them a low functioning child and they send you back a fully formed and functioning adult human. Parent participation was key.

"If your child is here, you should be in therapy, too," said the leaders of the Wildie program. "Your child didn't get here alone."

"What did you contribute to your child's being here?" was a frequent refrain at the therapeutic boarding school. 

"I dragged him here like a wet bad of cement so he wouldn't kill himself," was my immediate reply in a group therapy session with other parents.

"Lauren, what are you doing to take care of yourself?" asked a more seasoned mother in the program. I burst into tears at the question. All I did was take care of other people. My own therapist often asked me what I wanted. I didn't understand the question. What I wanted didn't matter, as far as I was concerned.

During the two years my son was gone, I wish I had gone to wilderness therapy, where I could skip out on my current reality, practice meditation and yoga, and sleep under the stars. Instead, I worked my day job full-time and in my spare time I went to family therapy and a twelve step program. I meditated and prayed. I read books on self-awareness and parenting challenging teens. Everything had the same theme: You need to change yourself if you want your world to change.

My re-entry into parenthood wasn't planned. Initially, Pedro was going to live with his father and stay in his old bedroom when he came back from boarding school. If I wanted Pedro to stay with me at all over the summer, I would need to convert the landing in my condo--which was serving as my home office during the pandemic--into a welcoming bedroom. Like a new mom, I was nesting: making new curtains for the room, moving out my desk making room for a bed, making space in my closet for my son's clothes. I was reading parenting books like I was cramming for an exam. Instead of What to Expect When You're Expecting, I was reading The Parallel Process, Not Left to Chance, and The Journey of the Heroic Parent, along with other favorites like Untamed and Man's Search for Meaning. For fun, I would watch Schitt's Creek to see how one dysfunctional family could pull themselves back together. To be honest, I hadn't read a few of the half dozen parenting books recommended. Was I missing a secret that would have explained everything? Should I bother reading these books now, or was it too late? Would it make any difference?

The books could not answer any of my real doubts: Could I parent this child who was gone for two years? Would he slide back into his old patterns and not get out of bed again, watching YouTube videos and looking at Instagram? Would I slide back into my old patterns of walking on eggshells around him, fearing if I made my son upset he would kill himself? Would I be able to speak up? Would we both relapse and regress, making a waste of the past two years of progress?

["Tune in tomorrow to find out..." 😁]

Thursday, August 19, 2021

Exhausted & Jigsaw Puzzle Mecca

I am exhausted.

Utterly exhausted.

I probably should just go to bed, but instead I'll write about how tired I am.

I feel like I gave birth and after a big, eighteen year push, I am done.

I can rest.

The Boy is out the door, out of the house, out of the nest. He is out. Out of my hair. There is a Boy sized hole in my heart.

Tuesday, the Boy moved into his dorm. Wednesday, he hung out in College Town with his father and I, with no complaints and no demands. He was perfectly accommodating to everything we wanted to do.

"Do you want to stop at a bakery cafe and get coffee?" Sure.

"What to stop at this cute gift shop and poke around?" Sure.

"Lunch?" Sure.

"Hike?" Sure.

"Do you need anything?" Not really.

Wow. It was a lovely day, and also surreal. Normally, the Boy doesn't like us that much. But now that we were in College Town, to the Boy we were familiar. And familiar is safe.

Today was different. The Boy texted and said he was fine. He didn't need anything. I burst into tears.

Tears of sadness, relief, and joy. Salt water can have so many shapes, colors, meanings. It can be clear, or it can match the color of the sky. It can be a tear or it can be the ocean.

Of course, I worry. The opposite of worry is faith. I can hope and wish for faith. Wishing for faith is a substitute for real faith, but it is a starting point. 

The best I can do while the Boy is away, is to take care of myself. After I cried, Jack drove to Jigsaw Puzzle Mecca, a side trip on the way to the airport from College Town to Seattle. I had fifteen minutes in the store. I picked out two puzzles, both of which were cheaper than the condo I bought when Claire-Adele left for college. 



Birds for Ada, fish for the Boy. After Ada died, I became very fond a Robert Frost poem about his daughter's death. Her voice melded into the song of the birds. "The song of the birds will never be the same. And to do that to birds is why she came."


The Boy hasn't died, and yet I grieve. I will miss him, and I am glad he gone. I am happy for him, though he isn't happy yet for himself. He will be, though, I hope. He will be.

Sunday, August 15, 2021

The Paradox of Motherhood

The Boy is leaving the nest today. We are flying him to college. Of course, this is sad for me. I've enjoyed having him around this summer. Having him in my day-to-day makes me realize how much I've missed these past two years when he was "sent away." Not my first choice, but necessary.

There is a Bible story about the wisdom of King Solomon, who served as a judge. (I learned this story--I'm not kidding--in kindergarten. It had a super big impression on me, but I might be fuzzy on the details. Anyhoo...) Two women went before King Solomon both claiming that they were the mother to the same child. Solomon had to determine who the real mother was, so he said he would cut the child in half and they could share.

One of the women screamed, "No! Don't! She can have the child." Solomon knew the real mother would rather see her child live away from her than die.

I can relate to the screaming mother.

Anyway, yesterday and this morning, Pedro been angsty and irritable. I was a little weepy about him leaving. He told Jack he didn't want me to be sad, which is fair. 

So then Pedro was upset and saying he didn't want to go to college. Here in enters the Paradox of Motherhood. Was I happy that he didn't want to go to college twelve hours before we were supposed to leave? 

No.

No.

Hell no.

No.

I internally panicked and freaked out.

"He's leaving tomorrow. Where he is going is yet to be determined," I thought. "If doesn't get on that plane to college town, I am packing up all of his shit and he can live with his dad."

Our flight to college town was delayed for more than twelve hours. Fortunately, we were able to go back to the condo and hang out. He apologized for being angsty, and I thanked him.

"Just because I am sad because you are leaving doesn't mean I want you to stay," I said. "I am happy to kick you out of the nest."

He laughed. Someday, when his kiddo goes off to school, maybe he will relate.

Saturday, July 31, 2021

Only the French...

...can have a highly regarded television show where a lesbian gets pregnant in a three-way with her boss.

In most shows, this scenario would either be in a sitcom of craziness or a melodrama or a soap opera.

Nope. This is Call My Agent on Netflix (aka Dix Pour Cent in France) an office drama where talented people flounder and flail in the personal and professional lives. Just like real people, except their jobs involve movie stars.

Kudos to Camille Cottin for playing a smart, hardworking woman with an indiscriminate sex life with dignity, grace and complexity.

Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Simone, Self-Care and the Twisties

Pedro is a skier. When he skis, he pushes his limits jumping over hills at high speed, hopefully to land safely on packed snow. It is beautiful and sublime to watch people jump on skis. It is also terrifying. One of Pedro's friends was skiing at Mt. Hood this summer and broke his leg. My motto to Pedro is "Ski so that you can ski another day." If he chickens out on a jump, that is fine with me. I trust that he and only he knows when he feels safe.

As everyone on Earth already knows, Simone Biles, the 24 year old GOAT of women's gymnastics, bailed on the Olympics. She was doing a vault when she got the "twisties," a gymnastics term for the mind losing track of the body in the middle of a complicated trick. She claims she was suffering from stress and wanted to protect her "mental health."

Why must we distinguish between "health" and "mental health"? Like it is okay to bail if you broke your leg but not okay if you broke the concentration and focus required to do the physically near impossible? As an athlete, Simone Biles isn't just a body. She has a mind, too. Her mind is just as--if not more--important than her arms and her legs.

This is a remarkable amount of self-care to be on one of the largest stages in the world and step back. As my mom used to quote some dead English guy (I'm too tired to google the exact quote), "Discretion is the better part of valor." Simone is the greatest in the world, but knowing when to stop allows her to vault another day. Simone used her discretion, and that took guts. Likewise, her discretion likely helped her to get so far in the first place.

I know millions of people are commenting on Simone, but how are those who are nearest and dearest to her supporting her? Her coaches, her teammates, her family, her friends? Her mom, her dad, her siblings, her grandma? Are they asking her WTF? Or, are they giving her a hug, telling her she has their love and support, no matter what, that they respect her right to take care of and protect herself.

I think of myself and the people I know. Am I as kind and gracious when people I know and love bow out, on smaller stages, on things that are moderately important but not epic? In the past few weeks, I have known a few people who have imploded, who said "I need to take a step away from my life right now." (I did it myself a few weeks ago.) 

How do we hold these people when they break? Do we push them? Do we allow them to slide? Do we hold them? I'd like to imagine Simone's family, wrapping her in their arms, telling her they love her. I imagine that I would do the same. But would I? Have I in the past? Or, was I jerk who pushed my friends and family--mostly my kids--to do things they didn't want to do? There is encouraging. There is enabling. There is letting people have the right to listen to their own inner voice that tells them what they need to do to stay safe. 

A friend of mine said she told her son, "I have faith that you can take care of yourself." I told my imploding friend "I am here if and when you need me. Let me know that you are safe, otherwise I will give you time to sort things out, to feel your feelings. It sit with those feelings, uninterrupted. I will welcome you back when you are ready. 

"Remember I love you."

Thank you, Simone. You made me think how I treat myself and those I love when we need to step away. Thank you for teaching me to be kinder and gentler to myself and to those I love.

Saturday, July 24, 2021

I Fear Dying of Climate Change

I was reading the New York Times the other day when I saw the Quote of the Day followed by the "Here to Help" article.



In case you can't read this picture above, the quote of the day is from a Russian who is fighting fires in Siberia as the permafrost is melting. "This is not a phase, this is not a cycle--this is the approach of the end of the world."

Followed immediately below, is an article summarized as "OMG! Bathing suits cost $250? WTF?"

Right.

Rome is burning and we are worried about how much bathing suits cost. More specifically, Oregon, Washington and California are burning, blowing smoke into the jet stream and floating as far east as Maryland and New England. Russia is burning. Europe is flooding. Seattle had a heat dome a few weeks ago where temps reached 108F.

My son is a fisherman. He has gotten me interested in the sport.

Fish are dying in Montana. Having lived in Montana for two years, Pedro learned to fly fish. He reads voraciously about rivers and trout and flies. He also reads about how the rivers are warming up and killing off the fish. While one could ask, why do I care about fish? If you care about fish, then you also care about people. Fly fishing brings in $500M a year to the state of Montana, which is lots of jobs.

I can see why people focus on bathing suits instead of climate change. Buying a bathing suit is in my control. Containing forest fires and floods is out of my scope. Plus, most days climate change isn't a big deal.

Until it is. My daughter is coming to town next week, as is Pedro's girlfriend. I ordered 50 KN95 masks in case we get smacked with forest fire smoke while they are here. (I already googled that the KN95s which are the Chinese standard are just as good for smoke as are the N95s.)

Do I really think I am going to die of climate change? Not specifically, but it is now on the list of things I could die from. Before I thought the most likely cause of my death would be due to being overweight and out of shape. Think getting Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, or a cancer.

Jack, Pedro and I were eating dinner, and Jack said the coronavirus was a bigger threat than climate change. I can see his point, as the docs at his hospital are still taking care of people who are dying because they didn't get vaccinated. Yet, Pedro and I disagreed with him.

"When the virus is contained, climate change will still be here."

We can do two things: We can try to stop climate change and all drive electric cars and whatnot, or we can figure out ways to live with fires and floods and other biblical levels of catastrophes. 

Or, we could do both.

Or, we could do nothing. 

Doing nothing is a bad idea. First the fish die, and then us. I know we all will eventually die, but no one wants to die unnecessarily, before our time and due to otherwise preventable causes.

We could get closer to the fish, to the waters and the streams, to help us realize the smallest things we need to protect.






Monday, July 19, 2021

Newton's Fourth Law of Therapy & Why I Meditate

"For every problem in the child (identified patient), there is an equal and opposite problem in the parent."

                                                                                        -- Pedro's Fourth Law of Therapy

A friend of mine recently asked me about my meditation practice. We didn't get a chance to finish the conversation, but my first thought was because meditating doesn't cause a hangover like gin and tonics do.

I'm kidding.

Sometimes you can get a meditation hang-over.

I'm kidding again.

I meditate because it clears the noise and busyness in my mind, giving my soul a chance to speak. 

In Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Towards an Undivided Life, Parker Palmer writes about his battle with depression. While there are dozens of reasons why people get depressed (and cures), he describes his own depression rising from "burying true self so deep that life becomes one long, dark night of the soul." His depression "was the soul's call to stop, turn around, go back, and look for a path [he] could negotiate...When I was living my outer life at great remove from inner truth, I was not merely on the wrong path: I was killing myself with every step I took... We can reclaim our lives only by choosing to live divided no more. It is a choice so daunting...that we are unlikely to make it until our pain becomes unbearable, that pain that comes from denying or defying our true self."

I meditate in the hopes of aligning my inner and outer life, and meditation is one of my many hedges against insanity. My flavor of crazy isn't depression -- it is a spinning and obsessing mind, constantly trying to avoid and control and figure things out so nothing bad ever happens, which is impossible. Bad things do happen. Of course I want to be careful and not careless, but there should be a word that means being too careful to the point of failing to thrive. My favorite elementary school teacher Ms. Kolin affectionately called me a worrywart. If she had seen me two years ago, she would have called me the worry-melanoma.

I can hide my worry-wart-ness from the public and co-workers, but privately I can spin and spin and spin, which is unhealthy, not just for me but for my kids. See the Fourth Law of Therapy: for every problem in a kid, there is an equal and opposite problem in the parents. In the past two years since Pedro was away, I've had a lot of time to do my own inner while Pedro was doing his. 

Unfortunately, there isn't yet a drug for worry-wart-ness. The only way out for my disease is through. 

And so I meditate.

Sunday, July 18, 2021

"Professional"

I was at coffee the other day with a new friend I made during the pandemic. She has a kid about Pedro's age and we were comparing notes about teenage boys. This mom is super smart and well educated, just like most of my friends. (I would never say I have dumb friends. Why would I be friends with someone if I thought they were dumb? That makes no sense. I do however, have some friends who never finished college, and that is fine, too.)

Where was I? This woman is also a professional. She has a professional job and is very competent at what she does.

Competent.

You know how sometimes you are sitting across the table with someone for coffee and you realize you are looking in the mirror, and you discover something about yourself that you NEVER saw about yourself until you sat down with them? Recently, I went to dinner with a friend and we had butterscotch pudding for dessert, passing up carrot cake and some decadent chocolate thing. I would never order butterscotch pudding ahead of anything chocolate.

And the butterscotch pudding was delicious. See? I learned I like butterscotch pudding! Who knew? I also realized I like cocktails better than wine! Again, who knew?

Back to the main point. We often learn about ourselves through other people.

This woman was just like 95% of the moms in NE Seattle. There is nothing unique or exceptionally different about her: all women in NE Seattle are exceptional and unique. 

I have had the same conversations with many moms over and over again. Maybe this distance in time and space from the quarantine allowed me to uncover this. Maybe it is because I no longer live in NE Seattle. 

As parents (moms aren't the only ones who do this), how often do we apply a professional approach to dealing with our kids? How often do we treat them like colleagues instead of kids? How often do we connect with our kids head-to-head, and not heart-to-heart? Our children might come crying to us with a broken heart, and we give our kids an intellectual solution?

How much of our professional culture has infected our homes? Kids aren't residents or fellows or interns or Analysts in our families. We aren't there to train them in the ways of the professional world.

I grew up in home where my dad was a professional. He does my taxes (thankfully) every year and he offers me advice on how to manage this long-term care insurance law that is hitting the State of Washington. All of that is well and good, but what I most love about my dad is I can call him when I am happy, sad, frustrated and/or thrilled with the world. (I mostly call about the things I am frustrated, worried, annoyed or sad about, TBH.)

Does he respond to me in a "professional" manner, giving me advice? Nope. He just listens. He meets me heart-to-heart.

Where did me and my friends lose our way? Did we fell like we needed to raise our kids to become professionals, so therefore we must treat them as such?

I need to stop. I need to focus more on being a mom and meeting my kids where their heart is at, not as much their heads. School and work can and will meet them where their heads are, but they won't meet them where their heart is. That is why we have family and friends, people who care about us and want to understand our hearts.

Saturday, July 17, 2021

Lily Pads and Lotuses, and the Wonder of the Water

This evening I took my paddleboard to Green Lake and I actually stood up on it. 

Yay! Go me!

Below is a map of my excellent adventure.

I started up at the northwest corner of Green Lake. The water was calm and still so I decided to stand. Which is the first real time I've stood on my paddleboard since I've owned it. When I paddleboarded in Tofino on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, I stood up just fine. Since then, I've gotten a case of the jitters. I don't feel so bad since 80% of the paddleboarders I see in Seattle are also sitting. Standing was fine, except I couldn't look around. I was too focused on the water directly in front of me instead of looking around for birds.

The yellow line is where I stood on my paddleboard. The green is where I sat. At the end of the first yellow, I heard the wind roar through the trees and punted--I was back on my bottom.

As I turned south, the wind and the waves picked up. My paddle board rocked in the water, but I was moving along fine. I had to paddle on my left side to keep my board going in a straight line. As soon as I switched to my right hand, I was turning and heading straight back to shore. This is interesting, I thought. it was harder than I thought, but I was doing okay.

Part of my problem is that I didn't really think of Green Lake as a real lake. I've walked around it hundreds of times since I moved to Seattle, but this is only the second time I've been in or on the water. I had thought of it like a Disneyland lake or something equally contrived and perfect and not impacted by forces of nature. I mean, it is not like Lake Washington or Lake Union or the Puget Sound. I had thought those were real bodies of water. Green Lakes was like--meh--not a real lake. The first time I paddleboarded on Green Lake last weekend, it was easy-peasy. The weather was hot and sunny and water was calm. There was a gentle breeze. Most of the people on the water were laying down on their paddleboards either sleeping or sunbathing. 

Not so today. The wind and waves were such that if I stopped paddling I would have drifted to shore.

"This is kind of hard," I thought realizing that Green Lake is a real lake. If I am struggling on this glorified pond, how on earth did people manage to get across the ocean before steam engines were invented? I started humming Row, Row, Row Your Boat to myself to distract myself from the wind and waves.


Once I got to the south end of the lake, I turned around to head back. I wanted to paddle past my favorite part--the lily pads and lotuses.

Except I couldn't. 

I turned around just fine, but I was rowing against the wind and the current, which were not subtle. I looked to the shore and I saw a father and daughter walking. I paddled and paddled and I looked at the shore again.

I saw the same father and daughter, except this time they were watching me. That was when I realized I wasn't moving. I paddling and staying in the same spot.

Which totally sucked.

I wanted to go to the lily pads and then back to my car, but the wind and water had other plans.

I was at the opposite end of the lake from where I parked my car. I seriously considered taking my board ashore and walking a mile and a half carrying my paddleboard back to the parking lot. The paddleboard isn't super heavy, but it is cumbersome. It is a pain in the neck just to get it the 200 feet from the parking lot to the water. I didn't think I'd make the mile walk. Maybe if there were an unexpected thunderstorm I would have gotten out of the water, but this is Seattle. We don't have thunderstorms.

Instead of paddling towards the lily pads, I went in a direction that I could go, where the wind and water would take me. I ended up heading straight north, and I was able to clip along fine without getting stalled.

I still wanted to see the lily pads, so once I made it far enough north, I tried to cut over to the left.

Success! I saw the lily pads! I started to stall a little bit again, so I got back to a spot where the water and wind would take me.

I paddled past Duck Island, where I saw a dozen ducks going home after a day of ducking. Just east of Duck Island, the wind was minimal. I took off my shoes, tucked them into my bungee cords and stood up. I paddled my way back to the launch spot.

In typical Seattle fashion, I saw both a beautiful heron standing majestically on a log, and a rat scampering along the shoreline, probably cleaning up after a day of picnics at the park.

But that is the wonder of the water.