On Merc(ur)y

I realized in spin class on Saturday morning that I’m pissed off. The instructor warned us we’d be riding hills – the best way to transform instantly into a panting, sweating mess – and advised us to think of something that made us angry, adding “I find that when I’m angry, it’s much easier to push through the hardest parts.”

It turns out I’m angry about a few things these days. The debate around the proposed Islamic community center near the World Trade Center sets me off but good. I’m usually pretty adept at expressing myself, but I turn into a sputtering version of Elmer Fudd when I try to clearly express all the reasons for why this debate shouldn’t exist at all.

I got through the first hill without even realizing it. I snapped out of my internal rant midway through the recovery period.

Hill number two.

I’m also pretty damn hot under the collar about my dying cat. Mercury’s my step-cat, but we’ve spent over two years together. O and I came home from vacation and found her on the brink of death with sudden renal failure. She’s hanging in there, but it’s been shocking, depressing and just plain sad. Our little family has been thrown for a loop, and our other cat, Z, has not escaped unscathed from the trauma. Instead of booting her out of the way when the food bowl gets filled, he’s taken to sitting back, as if he knows she needs it more. On the worst nights, when we don’t know if she’ll make it to morning, he holds vigil beside her, waking us up with his crying. O’s dedication and care with them breaks my heart a little. If Mercury’s time didn’t seem foreshortened, I’d be doing better with this, I think. But she’s only nine. I wasn’t prepared to watch my loved ones hurt, furry or not. First I get sad, then I get mad.

After the second hill, I realized this anger business was really doing the job. On the third hill, simmering over the fury I’d whipped up, I realized I need to find a way to keep my negative stewing at bay when I’m not working it out at the gym. To dissipate my bitterness, I am going to focus on O’s kindness and Z’s compassion. I am going to pay more attention to Mercury’s grace in her new, transitional place. I will continue to surround myself with people who make sense to me and remain thankful for the people in this world who stand up for tolerance and acceptance.

Forty five minutes had passed and all that anger had been poured into my workout. I felt so good I signed up for five personal training sessions. If I keep this up, I should be the embodiment of Zen by October.

Fleas and the Universe.

My dog has fleas. Not only does Petey, aforementioned dog, have fleas, but my sweet man just fractured his collarbone. And the house that I rent and - I should mention - moved into a just a few months ago is being foreclosed on, so I quite likely have to move out. There's actually more, but you get the idea. As I was moaning and groaning about my current plight during my daily call to H., she offered the following, "I wonder why all this is happening to you at once?” which I interpreted as “The Universe is trying to tell you something.” I should add here that I wasn't, in that moment, all that open to H.'s thoughtful comment because I don’t know what the Universe is trying to say. It’s all mixed-up smoke signals and flea bomb clouds to me right now.

Back in the summer of 1991, right before my father became ill, he was feeling blue. I didn't know this at the time because he was a private person who didn’t want to burden his daughters with the ickiness of life. I have since learned that that summer, he carried around a list in his shirt pocket of the all the things that were bothering him; they included financial stress, something to do with work, and finally, the fact that our dog, Riley, had fleas. It’s true. Riley’s fleas were on the list.

I sometimes wonder if all that sadness being literally placed near his heart was the impetus for the cancer to bloom. Within days of feeling shaky on his left side, my father was paralyzed by a tumor from the neck down and rushed from our little seaside town to a reputable hospital two hours way. My sister had just begun college in Illinois, so it was my mom and I who sent the dog to the kennel and headed up to Boston for what was to be the better part of five months. During that time, Riley’s fleas, at loss without a host, populated like gremlins in our three-story, wall-to-wall carpeted home. It was a nightmare situation, times two. Not only was I watching my father rapidly disappear, but during the respites from the hospital I had to walk around my house with plastic bags tied around my legs. To top it off, I also had to disrobe in friends’ garages, plopping clothes in the washing machine, before being allowed into their homes. My mom and I waged war on the fleas over and over again until we won. It took a while. We saved our house, but we could not save my father.

I had forgotten all about his list until this morning after days of bombing and vacuuming every inch of house, washing as much as I could in the hottest of water, trying to entice the cat to eat anti-flea pills by hiding them in cat treats only to discover that Petey has been eating them (he is currently way over-medicated), sprinkling and watering kill'em kernels all over the lawn, etcetera, etcertera, etcetera. I have been a crazed woman.

But here’s the thing. I can’t fix my man’s collarbone and I can’t control the foreclosure. I haven’t decided what to do about those eggs hanging out in my ovaries, and I don’t know if teaching is the career for me for the rest of my life…or what else I would do. I do know that I don’t want to keep a list of my fears and worries next to my heart, so I'm writing them down and sending them off. I know and appreciate that my own collarbone is intact and I'm while I have to move, I'm not losing my investment in a house. And dammit, I’m not going to let these fleas get the best of me, or of Petey.

There’s a lot I can’t control in this life despite my greatest of attempts, but there are few that I can. The rest, I get to choose how to handle, imperfect as my approach may be. Is that message, Universe? Okay, then. Just...easy on the fleas, please.

Recipe for a Snit

I have never been one to apply my creative instincts towards cooking. In my lifetime I have made a decent dish or two, but no one who has ever known me will argue with me when I say that my talents do not lend themselves to the culinary arts. I am, however, a whiz at whipping up a spectacular snit.

It’s important to differentiate here between a snit, a tizzy and a huff. The variations between the three are subtle but distinct. A huff is more of a mild snit, whereas a tizzy is not as refined or directed. To be sure, it takes skill and finesse to navigate your way around the perfect snit.

You’ll need:
Involuntary Audience Participation. This is key! There is absolutely no point to working up a snit if one is alone. The ideal audience is one who refuses to engage yet knows to ride it out. This approach feeds the snit wonderfully. Stay alert to verbal and physical cues from your audience. If you cross their tolerance limits, you will be forced to abort or dilute your masterpiece-in-the-making and will leave you unsatisfied.

Hunger and/or fatigue. Being both hungry and tired works best, but one or the other will do in a pinch. If you have neither, experiment with skipping to the next step. Snits are very individual art forms – find what works for you.

Indignation. This element acts as a fuel. Without it, you may accidentally snuff out your snit due to a lack of momentum. If you find that it is not already present at the start of your snit, one can easily be created by lightly tapping a hot-button issue with said audience. Caution: broach this step delicately, lest you bypass your snit and move directly to an argument.

Righteousness. Most times, you will know deep within that you are wrong to incite a snit and are doing so primarily for selfish reasons. A pinch of righteousness will help keep the snit active even when your conscience prompts you to stop.

Mix the ingredients together, sampling as you go until it feels just right. Serves 2 to 4.

Note: For dessert, always plan on a big slice of humble pie. A good snit dissipates quickly, and there is simply no better way to rid oneself of the admittedly bitter aftertaste than a sincere apology to those subjected to the snit and an earnest thanks for putting up with you.

Intro, Part II: The Storyless Story

In my first post, my Blog Motivation Bullet Point #3 notes: “We had been living in the shadow of our parents for too long.”

This merits elaboration.

When I was a teenager, my parents revealed to me that my father was a spy. As in, a real-life CIA undercover agent. The reason for my being informed of this had to do with my father coming out of retirement to do some part-time work, and I was now of an age when I would start asking questions. It was decided that I was ready to know the truth about my father’s occupation, and that I had the maturity to keep it a secret from everyone.

Needless to say, there is more to this story, but for the sake of this particular post, the point is that my dad was pretty fucking cool. I was extraordinarily proud to be the child of a man whose remarkable career I imagined to be right out of the movies.

More to the point, however, is that it was virtually all in my imagination.

In fact, I know very little of my father’s work. I can speak in sweeping hyperbole about ideology, his fight to bring down the Iron Curtain, his dedication to democracy. I can tell an anecdote or two about an ill-fitting disguise and a harrowing escape from a drunk defector. But that’s pretty much all I can share.

And it’s a tough act to follow.

When I took a Solo-Performance writing class to work on a one-woman show, my theme of Secrets caught the attention of my teacher, but the material proved thin. When my sister and I sought feedback from a book draft about our parallel experiences following the death of our mother, our adviser asked us to flesh out the background on our father. When a film documentary about children of spies was looking for participants, I didn’t make the cut.

In comparison to the imagined life of my father, my real life has felt lacking in excitement. I have spent the better part of my adult life afraid to live and die in obscurity. Being labeled “ordinary” was my biggest fear. Surely I had something to say! Surely I was as special as my father? Didn’t I have something to give the world? Anything?

I may not. But I may, just maybe, have something to contribute to the greater good in my own, little way.

And that hope is precisely what makes me ordinary; little in this world is more human – and more common – than one’s aim to make a difference. While the Peace Corps volunteer may impact a village, and the doctor a community, my impact may not reach beyond my immediate circle of loved ones. But I have one hell of a circle, and I will do everything I can to make a positive impact in it.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit feeling a twinge of envy walking past a black-tie event on my way home to do laundry, but I wouldn’t trade the people in my life for glamor and recognition. Beating myself up over Where I’m Not is a waste of my time and energy, and Where I Am is pretty great, after all.

Game On

As Julie Andrews wisely advised in The Sound of Music, let's start at the very beginning.

One night after work last month, I went to see The Solitary Man. Michael Douglas plays an aging man who is not growing old gracefully. I chose to see this movie because I had read a review lauding Douglas' performance and was intrigued. That, and my boyfriend, O, who was disinclined to see it anyway, was playing poker. The night was mine, all mine, and so I happily headed to the Angelika for a date with myself.

I had not expected to leave the movie theatre intent on changing the course of my life, but there I was, minutes after the credits rolled, calling my sister and declaring the following:

1) We were getting old
2) We were not making the most of our creative lives
3) We had been living in the shadow of our parents for too long
4) It was time to do something about it

I was in no position to walk the mile and a half home, having just gotten stitches in my leg from a(nother) mole-removal. And yet, there I was, so completely focused on my newly-enlightened sense of purpose, that by the time I limped into my apartment, my right lateral thigh throbbing*, I felt completely energized.

*(Digression: In dermatology speak, "lateral thigh" means outer thigh. I asked them what they call the inner thigh. They said, "inner thigh." I followed this up with what seemed to me the next logical question. "Then why not call the outer thigh "the outer thigh?" They had no answer for me.)

I was ready to discover the Woman I Was Meant To Be. Then I spent weeks thinking about it. And then I spent ten days on vacation occasionally thinking about it. And then my sister posted two pieces about getting closer to the Woman She Was Meant To Be. And I knew it was time for me to step up to the plate.

So this is my introduction. My goal is to inform, to amuse (when the mood suits), to entertain (see preceding parentheses), and most of all to be courageous enough to share this journey of pointed self-discovery with you, the reader. Stay tuned. I'm already thinking about my next post.

The Third World Blues

And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?

And have you changed your life?

- Excerpt from Mary Oliver’s The Swan

A couple of weeks ago, I returned from a trip to Rwanda. It was my first visit to Africa. I spent almost the entire three weeks in the rural village of Musha, staying in an orphanage and training teachers at a nearby public school. The area was incredibly poor without electricity or running water, except for where I was staying. Villagers, no matter their age, spend their days laboring in fields and filling yellow, plastic jugs with water in order to cook and clean. No matter their plight, the young and old smiled each day, greeting me as I passed them in the mornings and again on my way home in the evenings.

One of the first things I did when I arrived back home was head to Home Depot for some flowers to plant. Now, I don’t like indoor plants at all, the possible outcome of a bad fourth grade experience that included a teacher who smelled of mothballs and a classroom full of hanging plants. Also, I have no green thumb; the tidbits of greenery that I've planted outdoors over the years die sad, dry, forgotten deaths. Honestly, I've never given gardens too much thought. Living in Manhattan, it was simpler to pick up a bouquet of tulips or lilacs at the corner deli, plop them in a vase, and that was that. And yet, fresh off the plane in Maui, there I was filling my shopping cart with purple and pink blossoms.

Since my return from Rwanda, people have asked me how I’m processing the experience, and how I’ve changed. My brother, having traveled extensively in Southeast Asia, called to see if I was falling into the Third World Blues. Did I feel guilty for Western riches? Irritated? Angry? Depressed? I’m not sure yet.

Now and then, the faces of those I met in Musha pop up in my mind. I think of Mattias, the elderly man who cooked for us with a swollen wrist and shuffled home in the evenings. Each morning, he’d take my hands in his and greet me, “Ste-pha-nee! Maramuze.” And Placide, sixteen years old, who lives at the orphanage. He was just a baby when his parents were killed in the genocide. Despite his age, he is still in fifth grade. He’ll age out of the orphanage in two years. Then what? He has a smile that outshines misfortune. And Jean Paul, Florence and Sam, all teachers at the school. Everyday, I’d arrive at the school feeling grimy in wrinkled pants, the hems covered in red dirt, and my hair barely clean after a quick, cold shower. And everyday, they’d arrive at school from homes without running water and wearing the same clothes as the day before, but they looked sharp and utterly spotless. And the little girl who kept her one notebook safe by stuffing it down the front of her tattered, blue dress.

After spending three weeks witness to people living hard lives in a country where the average life expectancy is fifty-seven, my deepest fear is that I haven’t changed at all, that I won’t “do” the right thing with the experience, that I won’t live my life any differently, won’t be more productive, won’t complain less over the trivial, won’t be able to decide what to do about children and a family and the rest of my life.

How have I changed? I don’t know yet. But I planted some flowers outside and I’m trying to keep them alive.