Zen and the Art of Personal Maintenance

For my 37th birthday, I pierced my nose.

I was on a fall vacation in Maui lying on warm rocks by a swimming hole listening to the friend beside me chat away, but all I could focus on was the small, sparkling stud that adorned her nose. I’d had a fascination with nose piercings for a while. There was something alluring to me about the women I knew whose delicate noses were bejeweled; each one seemed artistic, free-spirited, and exotic...a far cry from what I’d known as a little girl growing up in dark, cold Northern Europe.

My first real sense of Who Am I? in terms of fashion came in my late twenties when I became a teacher in a progressive school. I threw myself into that liberal world wholeheartedly; my students called me by my first name, instead of giving letter grades, we wrote long narrative reports on each child, and I wore overalls to work. I had at least four different overalls from corduroy to denim and wore them with my Converse or heavy work boots. And yes, I did think I was all that. Not that overalls are all that extreme, but there was a definite search for identity involved. After all, I was the one who couldn't wait to grow up and dress like my mother in her Swedish, middle class uniform of slacks, skirts, blouses, pumps, and an Hermes silk scarf knotted around her neck. This was not that.

A decade later, I lay on a rock in Hawaii; I was about to turn thirty-seven and was again contemplating what was next for me. Before the day was over, my friend stood beside me in a tattoo parlor. Pain shot through my nostril. I started laughing hysterically in a panic as the blood rushed from my head. This was not what I had envisioned. First of all, my nostril was red and sore and stinging, and imbedded in it was a large, metal stud - - a starter piercing, if you will, that would need to stay in for at least a few weeks. Second, it hurt! And finally, I was told that I’d need to soak the piercing in warm, salt water every couple of hours for the next twenty-four. Flash forward to my ten-hour flight back to NYC the next day with my nose dipped into a paper cup for most of the flight. Really.

My process from this to the sweet, bedecked nose I had envisioned would apparently take time. And patience.

Enter Zen.

Now, I am a very, very patient teacher. In fact, I am at my most patient with my students, no matter their age. One of my assistant teachers, upon meeting H. for the first time, exclaimed, “I love your sister! She’s so Zen!” H. smiled politely, but no sooner had he left us than she turned to me and said, almost gritting her teeth, “Zen? When are you Zen? I’d like to see a little of that Zen!”

In all fairness, H. was at that time my roommate and that experience did apparently not spell Z-e-n to her. Most of my impatience is directed at myself. Give me a child who needs to redo a math problem five times. Piece of cake. Give a classroom full of five year-olds with glue sticks and scissors in hand? I can usually breathe through it. But give me a tough stain on my stovetop that isn’t gone Right Away? No can do. I imagined H. with a montage of my best unzenlike moments flashing through her head: Why won’t this printer just print ALREADY? Where are my keys? Where’s my f*#king wallet? I’M LATE! Why can’t I cook an artichoke without burning it – just ONCE?!?!

Back in New York, my piercing was received with varying degrees of enthusiasm and a few eye rolls. Unsatisfied with the metal stud, I - too soon - had it replaced with a small, sparkling bit. Within days, the stone fell out, so I walked around for a week or two with an empty, metal socket in my nose. I tried again. Alas, this stone fell out as well. It was promptly replaced by an obstinate pimple larger than the stud itself. I steamed it for what felt like weeks and weeks to no avail. I gave up.

Within three months of the initial piercing, I was standing in my bathroom naked drinking scotch. I was trying to twist out the metal nose screw (this is the technical term, by the way) but it was the Mary Poppins bag of nose screws. No matter how much I twirled, there was more to come. My nostril throbbed. I twirled. I sweated. I swore.

H. came home hours later to find me in a heap on the couch, nose screw on the coffee table.

Five years have passed. I believe I'm a more patient person now thanks to yoga, meditation, more yoga and, quite frankly, the simple mellowing out that happens over time. And the perk to aging, at least for me, is becoming ever more comfortable with myself.

I turn 42 tomorrow. In celebration, I painted my toes a muted purple. And just to appease my wild side, I painted my fingernails, too. That oughta do it.

A girl can dream

My issues with bicycles go way back. What’s the average age when children get their training wheels? Let’s start there. Our house had a large terrace in back with steps on either side leading down to the yard. The length of the terrace was lined with a cactus garden. Do you know where we’re going with this?
The day came when my father surprised me by removing my training wheels. He had such confidence in my ability to transition to a big girls’ bike that I did not want to disappoint him. I embarked onto the terrace and within seconds veered off the edge, straight into the cactus garden.
It gets worse. My parents had friends visiting. Witnesses not related to me watched as my mother laid me over her lap, pulled down my pants, and proceeded to pull out cactus needles one by one.
Oh, the shame.
It was downhill from there.
There was the time I discovered the difference between girl bikes and boy bikes by dismounting the wrong way. Even now, my girl parts wince at the memory.
There was the time I rode straight into a tree because I did not know until after the fact that sometimes there are no brakes on the handles and that the only way to stop is by pedaling backwards.
And let’s not neglect to mention the time I bicycled too close to the curb and when the wheel rubbed up against the sidewalk, I began to fall in slow motion, went over a fence and landed in some poor person’s tomato plant patch.
My ten year-old self had envied the skill of Jennifer Beals in the opening sequence of Flashdance as she cycled through steam and cobblestone streets with urban panache. I finally accepted I would never be Jennifer Beals.
And then I learned of in-line skates.
I watched an Olympic-related special on TV about an ice skater who trained during the summer months by skating up Colorado mountainsides. I can picture her now, Olympically-fit, cute as a button (as is the tendency of ice skaters), skating UP A MOUNTAIN on in-line skates.
Perhaps I couldn’t control bicycle wheels, and sure, awkward and unwieldy handlebars stymied my efforts. But wheels attached to my feet? This, I could manage!
I received a pair of Rollerblades for my birthday. It was as if the box alone would transform me into someone who could zip uphill without exertion. By now I was in college. I envisioned myself becoming one of those hip kids, weaving fearlessly in and out of traffic, zooming from school to job, the wind in my long, flowing hair. Of course in this fantasy, my tummy would be taut, as well.
That’s not quite how it turned out. You’re shocked, I know.
I wasn’t terrible. I could get from A to B. I wobbled but a little. I got the hang of it. I went rollerblading with a friend one night after we had been drinking. It seemed like a good idea at the time. The upside was that it made me less frightened of speeding downhill in the dark. The downside was that my inebriated confidence made me less cautious about the bump at the bottom of the hill. The upside was that it didn’t hurt so much.
The demise of my rollerblading dreams came when I was felled by a one-two combination of a loose ankle buckle and a bad-ass pothole. I still have the scars where the pebbles embedded themselves into my knee. I was miles from home. The pain of the fall, my inability to get home easily and my newborn fear that I would fall again sealed the deal for me. I was just not good at this whole wheel business.
I decided that I was an excellent pedestrian and I should stick with what I do well.
And anyway, I like walking.
Naturally, I married a man who treats his bicycle like an appendage. Completely uninterested in recreational biking, O. sees bicycles as the ultimate exercise in practicality. He regularly tries to convince me of this. Walking to a movie, “we’d be there by now!” Waiting for a bus, “we’d be there by now!” Explaining why he was late meeting me, “well, I couldn’t take my bike, so of course I’m late.”
On vacation in Berlin, we rented bikes for a day. It had been years since I was on one. I was trepidatious, to say the least. I pedaled behind O. cautiously, forcing him to stop and wait for me at regular intervals. And then we came to a large intersection where he headed into the far left lane without warning and turned left as the other light turned green. I had no choice but to follow as four lanes of traffic moved towards me while we cut across the length of the road to end up on the right hand side. O. nonchalantly continued on into a park and started to comment on the prettiness of our surroundings. In reply, I lit into him. I accused of him of trying to get me hit by a car. I had been terrified. I was shaking and crying. (Yes, yes, I was a total wimp, but in my defense, please refer to the aforementioned “not good at this whole wheel business.”) My dramatic tour de force petered out, and we ventured forth tamely.
I still want to be that woman who rollerblades down the Bowery and through Chinatown every morning to get to work. I want to whip through town with ease and a devil-may-care flair. Alas, such is not my fate. Not if I want to stay in one piece.
Nowadays, I get my dose of risk-taking by jaywalking. It’s no joke: those bike messengers come at you from every angle. They’re lunatics! (, I say with envy.)