The NY Times today published an article about a multi-generational family living together due to the recession’s financial impact and outlining the struggles that family faces.
I always wanted to have everyone live together. My mother used to accuse me of wanting to have my entire family living in little houses in my back yard. And she was right. And so that article really hit me hard this morning. People losing their jobs and not being able to find another. People resorting to essentially living in their bedrooms. People holding on to that last step before homelessness.
I’m touched again by how incredibly lucky I am. I have a job I love. A family that’s dysfunctional just enough to be interesting and not quite enough to have turned us all into sociopaths. Loving children whom I get to see whenever I like. A wonderful mom-in-law. A true friend who just happens to be my husband. A good marriage.
And the opportunity to love them all. I have the privilege of being able to help people occasionally. I have a home in a safe place, all the stuff I could ever want or need, too much to eat and good health.
And as I am thoughtful regarding those without, I am thankful for all that I have as I turn my face towards the new year.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Happy Father's Day
Thank you to all the Dads who make their daughters feel like they’re the most beautiful, smartest and best little girls in the world.
And since I’m not a guy, I can only hope that father’s make their sons feel competent and confident in being a man.
Happy Father’s day to my brothers and brothers in law, who do that very thing every day.
Happy Father’s day to David, who takes care of everyone in his life. I don’t think our father taught him that. I think our mother taught him that trick. By the time my sister was 11 and my brothers were in their late teens, our father had died. My brothers are smart men and somehow they’ve figured it out without Daddy to guide them directly.
My brother in law Bob didn’t have a sister. He had to learn to parent a girl. And Allison is confident and smart and gorgeous and I think she knows it yet doesn’t flaunt it. My nephew Kegan is confident and smart and handsome and an individualist. They’re well-adjusted kids thanks to the parenting both my sister and Bob have done. Kudos to Bob on Father’s Day.
Happy Father’s Day to my children’s father, Jeff. Our daughter is comfortable in her skin because Jeff treated her like a princess. Patrick is the McGyver of James Island…because his father taught him in a million little ways how to rely on himself and how to figure out ANYTHING. Katie is a wonderful woman and Patrick a wonderful man because Jeff was their father.
And a huge Happy Father’s Day to Michael. Marrying into a family of grown children and being patient and strong and steadfast for them always. Thank you, Mike, for always being there for them and for me.
Daddy, I hope you can see how well we all turned out. So Happy Daddy Day to all the great men in my life.
And since I’m not a guy, I can only hope that father’s make their sons feel competent and confident in being a man.
Happy Father’s day to my brothers and brothers in law, who do that very thing every day.
Happy Father’s day to David, who takes care of everyone in his life. I don’t think our father taught him that. I think our mother taught him that trick. By the time my sister was 11 and my brothers were in their late teens, our father had died. My brothers are smart men and somehow they’ve figured it out without Daddy to guide them directly.
My brother in law Bob didn’t have a sister. He had to learn to parent a girl. And Allison is confident and smart and gorgeous and I think she knows it yet doesn’t flaunt it. My nephew Kegan is confident and smart and handsome and an individualist. They’re well-adjusted kids thanks to the parenting both my sister and Bob have done. Kudos to Bob on Father’s Day.
Happy Father’s Day to my children’s father, Jeff. Our daughter is comfortable in her skin because Jeff treated her like a princess. Patrick is the McGyver of James Island…because his father taught him in a million little ways how to rely on himself and how to figure out ANYTHING. Katie is a wonderful woman and Patrick a wonderful man because Jeff was their father.
And a huge Happy Father’s Day to Michael. Marrying into a family of grown children and being patient and strong and steadfast for them always. Thank you, Mike, for always being there for them and for me.
Daddy, I hope you can see how well we all turned out. So Happy Daddy Day to all the great men in my life.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Granny Panties
When did you start wearing underwear?
And stop wearing panties?
For most of us I suspect it’s a gradual thing. We’re 3 year olds wearing easy-to-wash cotton panties. Then about middle school or high school we start off wearing bikini bottoms, or even thongs. After college, we might advance to low slung, high cut legs. We probably move on to a slightly higher waisted model, perhaps after having children and sporting a little muffin top. Next we move one size up. We hang out with these panties for several years. But we buy pretty lacy one.. Black ones. Silky ones. And maybe matching bras.
At this stage we’re still going to Victoria’s Secret. Our significant other is still buying lacy things for us.
When we’re not nude we’re sleeping in teddies on our anniversaries and maybe our Sig O’s birthday. A little sumthin sumthin. But children come along, and they’re climbing into bed with us. They’re puking and peeing and generally being little people. We put clothes on to sleep. A big tee shirt. A cotton nightgown.
And some time between 40 and 50, we find ourselves at Wal Mart, in the cotton underwear aisle, buying 6/pk Hanes for Her. Two sizes larger than when we were 18, if we’re lucky.
We’re buying granny panties. The kind you can hoist up a make shift mast on your home made raft when you need a sail to get you off the deserted island Gilligan landed you on.
Maybe we’ve left a husband and THANK the GODDESS we can wear something comfortable again! He might be out there with a thong-clad 24 year old, but at least we can be comfortable in our great big undies while we eat Turtle Tracks right out of the carton, over the sink.
Maybe we’ve reached that absolute time in our lives when we give up uncomfortable clothes that ride up on us and lodge in the very places we’re trying to cover.
For me, it was when my aunt died, and I flew home without packing undies. My sister and I went to the mall and I went to Belk’s and I bought white cotton underwear. The kind my aunt used to wear. The kind I caught my grandmother in. Comfortable, dependable, breatheable cotton underwear. No one to impress. No one to worry about whether they thought I was getting old. Just comforting. Comfort-ing. Simple times. Simple underwear.
We come full circle. Cotton to cotton. Comfort to comfort.
Kiddie. To Granny.
Panties to…underwear.
And stop wearing panties?
For most of us I suspect it’s a gradual thing. We’re 3 year olds wearing easy-to-wash cotton panties. Then about middle school or high school we start off wearing bikini bottoms, or even thongs. After college, we might advance to low slung, high cut legs. We probably move on to a slightly higher waisted model, perhaps after having children and sporting a little muffin top. Next we move one size up. We hang out with these panties for several years. But we buy pretty lacy one.. Black ones. Silky ones. And maybe matching bras.
At this stage we’re still going to Victoria’s Secret. Our significant other is still buying lacy things for us.
When we’re not nude we’re sleeping in teddies on our anniversaries and maybe our Sig O’s birthday. A little sumthin sumthin. But children come along, and they’re climbing into bed with us. They’re puking and peeing and generally being little people. We put clothes on to sleep. A big tee shirt. A cotton nightgown.
And some time between 40 and 50, we find ourselves at Wal Mart, in the cotton underwear aisle, buying 6/pk Hanes for Her. Two sizes larger than when we were 18, if we’re lucky.
We’re buying granny panties. The kind you can hoist up a make shift mast on your home made raft when you need a sail to get you off the deserted island Gilligan landed you on.
Maybe we’ve left a husband and THANK the GODDESS we can wear something comfortable again! He might be out there with a thong-clad 24 year old, but at least we can be comfortable in our great big undies while we eat Turtle Tracks right out of the carton, over the sink.
Maybe we’ve reached that absolute time in our lives when we give up uncomfortable clothes that ride up on us and lodge in the very places we’re trying to cover.
For me, it was when my aunt died, and I flew home without packing undies. My sister and I went to the mall and I went to Belk’s and I bought white cotton underwear. The kind my aunt used to wear. The kind I caught my grandmother in. Comfortable, dependable, breatheable cotton underwear. No one to impress. No one to worry about whether they thought I was getting old. Just comforting. Comfort-ing. Simple times. Simple underwear.
We come full circle. Cotton to cotton. Comfort to comfort.
Kiddie. To Granny.
Panties to…underwear.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
A Neighborhood
I grew up in a poor family. Until I was thirteen I shared a room with my two little brothers in a 4 room apartment in Norfolk, Va. Naturally, like everyone else in a poor childhood, we didn’t know we were poor. No one in our apartment complex had money. But we had free run of our apartments which faced the Lafayette River. Woods ran down to the inlets of that river and we played there and in the large open fields throughout the apartments until our parents yelled for us to come home for dinner. After dinner we ran out again. “You all better be here when the street lights come on!” our mothers would warn us.
We went to a high achieving school with the richer children whose homes surrounded the complex. We walked to school like everyone else. We brought our lunches like everyone did. I was so sheltered that I didn’t know until junior high school that my clothes were ten years out of date, hand-me-downs from my older cousin Lois.
When I was 13 we moved to a small town in North Carolina. Once again, we rented but this time it was a house in an old section of town, across the street from an even poorer neighborhood. While still poor ourselves, we lived on the fringes of another world. Yet my brothers and I were never afraid to walk through that section of town. We went to school with kids from there. We went to the same little neighborhood credit grocery stores they did. We played softball and baseball and basketball with these kids. And we were never afraid to be in that neighborhood. The worse thing we saw was old men in the alley behind “RB’s Independent Grocer”, drinking out of brown paper bag covered bottles and hooting and hollering occasionally. Or the old crazy woman who took her reclaimed Piggly Wiggly shopping cart around the neighborhood to pick up bottles to turn in for the deposit.
Drugs. Drug users. Drug dealers. Drug buyers. That’s the major difference I see in the poor neighborhoods now from the poor neighborhoods of my youth.
When I was a little girl, we could live in a poor neighborhood and not be afraid. If you were poor, you could raise your children there and not be afraid they would end up in a morgue. You worked to get your kids out of there. Like my mother, you expected your children to work so they would have it better than you did. You sacrificed for your kids and over and over and over again let them know that there was another way out of poverty….education and hard work. Now, I’m not sure hard working poor parents in poor neighborhoods can get that message to their children.
Today I read that the murderers of a bright 15 year old teenager were sentenced to life in prison. The child, a twin, was killed as a substitute for his brother, who owed drug dealers $200. And because “You can’t be seen as sweet,” one of the killers said. So when they couldn’t find the brother who owed them money, they took the next best thing.
Would you live in this neighborhood? Where no one would come forward to the police, even though they see a murder? Where many people know who shot a 15-year old but won’t tell? A neighborhood where you’re not sure you could let your children play with someone else’s child because you wouldn’t know who would be hanging out at that house? Where you were afraid to stay in your own living room if it faced the street because of stray bullets? Or you worry every time your child walked to the school bus stop that they would see someone getting robbed or accidentally shot in a shower of drive by retaliation?
You would if you were poor.
We went to a high achieving school with the richer children whose homes surrounded the complex. We walked to school like everyone else. We brought our lunches like everyone did. I was so sheltered that I didn’t know until junior high school that my clothes were ten years out of date, hand-me-downs from my older cousin Lois.
When I was 13 we moved to a small town in North Carolina. Once again, we rented but this time it was a house in an old section of town, across the street from an even poorer neighborhood. While still poor ourselves, we lived on the fringes of another world. Yet my brothers and I were never afraid to walk through that section of town. We went to school with kids from there. We went to the same little neighborhood credit grocery stores they did. We played softball and baseball and basketball with these kids. And we were never afraid to be in that neighborhood. The worse thing we saw was old men in the alley behind “RB’s Independent Grocer”, drinking out of brown paper bag covered bottles and hooting and hollering occasionally. Or the old crazy woman who took her reclaimed Piggly Wiggly shopping cart around the neighborhood to pick up bottles to turn in for the deposit.
Drugs. Drug users. Drug dealers. Drug buyers. That’s the major difference I see in the poor neighborhoods now from the poor neighborhoods of my youth.
When I was a little girl, we could live in a poor neighborhood and not be afraid. If you were poor, you could raise your children there and not be afraid they would end up in a morgue. You worked to get your kids out of there. Like my mother, you expected your children to work so they would have it better than you did. You sacrificed for your kids and over and over and over again let them know that there was another way out of poverty….education and hard work. Now, I’m not sure hard working poor parents in poor neighborhoods can get that message to their children.
Today I read that the murderers of a bright 15 year old teenager were sentenced to life in prison. The child, a twin, was killed as a substitute for his brother, who owed drug dealers $200. And because “You can’t be seen as sweet,” one of the killers said. So when they couldn’t find the brother who owed them money, they took the next best thing.
Would you live in this neighborhood? Where no one would come forward to the police, even though they see a murder? Where many people know who shot a 15-year old but won’t tell? A neighborhood where you’re not sure you could let your children play with someone else’s child because you wouldn’t know who would be hanging out at that house? Where you were afraid to stay in your own living room if it faced the street because of stray bullets? Or you worry every time your child walked to the school bus stop that they would see someone getting robbed or accidentally shot in a shower of drive by retaliation?
You would if you were poor.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Truth and Facts
Is a fact truth? I’ve been pondering that a lot for the past several weeks.
Our minister seeded that thought in my mind on Easter Sunday. Unitarian Easter services often revolve around re-birth, the coming of spring and renewal. He chose to talk about Wanda the Fish, who’d died but came back to life as she was about to be buried. He told the children the story of Jesus, who’d not been a popular person with the authorities, had been tried and sentenced to death by them, and then born again. Each, an allegory about being born again.
Every culture has stories of rebirth. But was the story of Jesus’ resurrection just that, a story? Or was it a fact?
A few weeks ago I posted a message on my Facebook account about a Christian church group picketing outside a high school with signs that read, “God hates fags.” That sparked a lot of debate from friends and family weighing in on the issue. Many quoted the Bible and that popular phrase about men lying down with men. A few sent me messages about the inconsistencies within the Bible and “how can people believe in a faith where one minute you should take an eye for an eye and in the next, commit a mortal sin if you murder someone?”. Some wrote that God hates the sin but loves the sinner. Others wrote that the church doing the picketing isn’t really a Christian church despite those members’ claims. Quite a few of my Unitarian friends just nod their heads and tell me it’s hard for them to be tolerant of such intolerance of others. Communion is flesh transmogrified, but no, it’s just symbolic
So what is the truth here? How can so many people have such different views about this and so many other volatile subjects? And why would anyone rely upon a book written 2000 years ago to justify wars and killing and hate towards others? How can people I know be so unremittingly sure of themselves about something that’s contrary to what millions of other people believe?
I think, like the allegory of Jesus’ birth and death and resurrection, it’s a matter of truth versus fact. For some reason known only to them, the religions they’ve chosen meet their needs. If it didn’t, they search for something else to meet those needs. That search might or might not lead them to their own or another religion. They may have to re-think the way they think about beliefs.
Burt Keller, a Congregational minister, once told me that people have their beliefs and they swim along quite happily until something comes along to jostle that belief. It could be a war, or someone’s death, an illness or a natural disaster. And once shaken, they’re never quite the same again. Their faith may be stronger, or it may weaken. They may look around at the diverse world we live in and wonder how so many faiths others than theirs can be wrong. And once they’ve thought about that, perhaps they will be able to see their beliefs as not a literal fact, with only one person’s interpretation, but perhaps, just for a moment, they may be able to see a message. Not a fact. But a truth.
Our minister seeded that thought in my mind on Easter Sunday. Unitarian Easter services often revolve around re-birth, the coming of spring and renewal. He chose to talk about Wanda the Fish, who’d died but came back to life as she was about to be buried. He told the children the story of Jesus, who’d not been a popular person with the authorities, had been tried and sentenced to death by them, and then born again. Each, an allegory about being born again.
Every culture has stories of rebirth. But was the story of Jesus’ resurrection just that, a story? Or was it a fact?
A few weeks ago I posted a message on my Facebook account about a Christian church group picketing outside a high school with signs that read, “God hates fags.” That sparked a lot of debate from friends and family weighing in on the issue. Many quoted the Bible and that popular phrase about men lying down with men. A few sent me messages about the inconsistencies within the Bible and “how can people believe in a faith where one minute you should take an eye for an eye and in the next, commit a mortal sin if you murder someone?”. Some wrote that God hates the sin but loves the sinner. Others wrote that the church doing the picketing isn’t really a Christian church despite those members’ claims. Quite a few of my Unitarian friends just nod their heads and tell me it’s hard for them to be tolerant of such intolerance of others. Communion is flesh transmogrified, but no, it’s just symbolic
So what is the truth here? How can so many people have such different views about this and so many other volatile subjects? And why would anyone rely upon a book written 2000 years ago to justify wars and killing and hate towards others? How can people I know be so unremittingly sure of themselves about something that’s contrary to what millions of other people believe?
I think, like the allegory of Jesus’ birth and death and resurrection, it’s a matter of truth versus fact. For some reason known only to them, the religions they’ve chosen meet their needs. If it didn’t, they search for something else to meet those needs. That search might or might not lead them to their own or another religion. They may have to re-think the way they think about beliefs.
Burt Keller, a Congregational minister, once told me that people have their beliefs and they swim along quite happily until something comes along to jostle that belief. It could be a war, or someone’s death, an illness or a natural disaster. And once shaken, they’re never quite the same again. Their faith may be stronger, or it may weaken. They may look around at the diverse world we live in and wonder how so many faiths others than theirs can be wrong. And once they’ve thought about that, perhaps they will be able to see their beliefs as not a literal fact, with only one person’s interpretation, but perhaps, just for a moment, they may be able to see a message. Not a fact. But a truth.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Vanity
Isn’t it ironic that the things you’re the most vain about are often the very things you lose? Ironic? Or justice? And if justice… from whom or what?
When we lived in Florida my ex husband used to remark that the only group of people of whom he was prejudiced was the group of people he’d be a member of --if he was lucky…old people. How ironic.
No one could ever have been as vain of her legs as was I. They were my best feature. But now… now they have those teeny tiny red road map lines travelling from my knees across to my inner thighs. And a strange sort of knot has arisen from my shin… the result of too many track meets when I was in high school and not enough warm ups. The cellulite on my thighs laughs out at me when I try on bathing suits. Why can’t they make those pantaloon suits, so popular in the roaring ’20’s, popular again? I have bursitis in my hip which wakes me every night as I lie on my right side, facing away from my husband so he doesn’t have to listen to me snore in his ear. At least one of us should get some sleep. Yes. My legs are gone. I can camouflage them in the winter in black tights and still look stylish. But come summer, its long skirts for me- eccentric is beginning to look good.
As my legs have deserted me, however, a stranger vanity has replaced them. I have never been proud of my hair. Its’ limp curly strands never behaved like the shampoo ads promised. Now, however, just when it’s definitely time to start thinking about abandoning the hair color aisle, my hair starts to do exactly what I always wanted it to do. It’s become straighter. And a bonus! Thicker. And even better… it’s gotten long. OK, I agree that the long thing has something to do with me. A few years before my mother died she commented on my hair, “You can’t be letting it grow out. Old women don’t look good with long hair.” Some part of me believed her because after that conversation I chopped it all off and up until now have never let it get longer than my chin.
But a few months ago I decided to let it grow. Defiant of my mother I thought, “Mom, I’m letting it grow to my ass.” I like that vision- my long half-gray hair swinging down my back in one long braid. Or wound, grandmother style, around my head.
Ironic? Now that my hair is graying and probably getting finer and definitely falling out a little… to decide to shake my fist at my mother and all other naysayers… and, yes, to my knees too… and let it be what it wants to be. Is it vain to enjoy something about yourself that you know will leave you? Does it make one a little shallower to be proud of something which you surely don’t have any control over… be it knees or hair or skin or eye color? And if you’re proud of it, will you grieve when it waves goodbye?
I’m sad that my good looking legs aren’t what they were when I was 20. But they’ve taken me places that I never could have envisioned. They’re worn and the knees sag a little. But they’re me. And the hair? That’s me, too. A wiser me that knows not to kick a gift horse in the mouth. And not to get too attached to something that can detach with a few snips.
I hope my Mom can see me. And I hope my Grandmother is standing beside her somewhere… her own hair, which I would brush for her, wound in braids around her head. And I hope they’re both smiling.
When we lived in Florida my ex husband used to remark that the only group of people of whom he was prejudiced was the group of people he’d be a member of --if he was lucky…old people. How ironic.
No one could ever have been as vain of her legs as was I. They were my best feature. But now… now they have those teeny tiny red road map lines travelling from my knees across to my inner thighs. And a strange sort of knot has arisen from my shin… the result of too many track meets when I was in high school and not enough warm ups. The cellulite on my thighs laughs out at me when I try on bathing suits. Why can’t they make those pantaloon suits, so popular in the roaring ’20’s, popular again? I have bursitis in my hip which wakes me every night as I lie on my right side, facing away from my husband so he doesn’t have to listen to me snore in his ear. At least one of us should get some sleep. Yes. My legs are gone. I can camouflage them in the winter in black tights and still look stylish. But come summer, its long skirts for me- eccentric is beginning to look good.
As my legs have deserted me, however, a stranger vanity has replaced them. I have never been proud of my hair. Its’ limp curly strands never behaved like the shampoo ads promised. Now, however, just when it’s definitely time to start thinking about abandoning the hair color aisle, my hair starts to do exactly what I always wanted it to do. It’s become straighter. And a bonus! Thicker. And even better… it’s gotten long. OK, I agree that the long thing has something to do with me. A few years before my mother died she commented on my hair, “You can’t be letting it grow out. Old women don’t look good with long hair.” Some part of me believed her because after that conversation I chopped it all off and up until now have never let it get longer than my chin.
But a few months ago I decided to let it grow. Defiant of my mother I thought, “Mom, I’m letting it grow to my ass.” I like that vision- my long half-gray hair swinging down my back in one long braid. Or wound, grandmother style, around my head.
Ironic? Now that my hair is graying and probably getting finer and definitely falling out a little… to decide to shake my fist at my mother and all other naysayers… and, yes, to my knees too… and let it be what it wants to be. Is it vain to enjoy something about yourself that you know will leave you? Does it make one a little shallower to be proud of something which you surely don’t have any control over… be it knees or hair or skin or eye color? And if you’re proud of it, will you grieve when it waves goodbye?
I’m sad that my good looking legs aren’t what they were when I was 20. But they’ve taken me places that I never could have envisioned. They’re worn and the knees sag a little. But they’re me. And the hair? That’s me, too. A wiser me that knows not to kick a gift horse in the mouth. And not to get too attached to something that can detach with a few snips.
I hope my Mom can see me. And I hope my Grandmother is standing beside her somewhere… her own hair, which I would brush for her, wound in braids around her head. And I hope they’re both smiling.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Take a breath and let it go
Not only have I turned that corner of Fifty and Forty Street but now I’m flying down Highway 53. And it’s dawned on me that I am loving this ride. I love the wind in my face and my grayish hair blowing wildly about the car. I am comfortable in this seat and the steering wheel feels at home in my hands. I have learned, not completely but better, how to take a deep breath and to let go.
It started in my 40’s, I think when I took a drawing class. I have no natural art talent yet I love art and museums. So when I saw an ad in our local paper for a community drawing class, I thought I’d give it a try. It was cheap. It was in our local high school at night. I could walk there. No reason not to go. And I loved it. I loved it because I let myself love it. No expectations. No Picasso wannabe or even a Grandma Moses. No requirements for a grade. Just me, drawing a circle over and over and over again. It was the first thing I remember attempting, in my life, where I allowed myself to not even try to be the best. Just to enjoy. It took a long time to get to this one point. Like 3 years of weekly classes.
And the lesson I learned there has bubbled over into other areas of my life. I can see it in my relationships with people.
A young woman came into my office today slightly tearful. She is deeply in debt and desperate for a solution. She asked my opinion about making a dramatic move in her life. She needed to act.
I listened to her and then asked her to take a deep breath. And to imagine the very worst thing which could happen. And what would her life be like if that thing she dreaded happened. To take a breath and to let go.
Lately I’ve noticed I’ve become better at listening to the other side of an argument. I think I’ve gotten more patient. And I’m smarter about knowing which battles to fight and which ones won’t matter. It’s a lot less stressful to little things go.
Lydia was one of my dearest friends. She was at least 50 years older than me when we met. She lived across the street from me when I was a young mother and I idolized her. A sort-of-family member distantly related to my husband’s mother, Lydia took an interest in me. Eccentric and independent, a staunch liberal and highly educated, she was and is what I would like to be. “Never get in a battle of wills with a two-year old,” she told me. “Dishes don’t have to match,” she said on another occasion. And my favorite advice was this: “Don’t worry about something unless it will matter when you’re Eighty.”
Dearest Lydia, thank goodness it only took me thirty years to absorb this.
It started in my 40’s, I think when I took a drawing class. I have no natural art talent yet I love art and museums. So when I saw an ad in our local paper for a community drawing class, I thought I’d give it a try. It was cheap. It was in our local high school at night. I could walk there. No reason not to go. And I loved it. I loved it because I let myself love it. No expectations. No Picasso wannabe or even a Grandma Moses. No requirements for a grade. Just me, drawing a circle over and over and over again. It was the first thing I remember attempting, in my life, where I allowed myself to not even try to be the best. Just to enjoy. It took a long time to get to this one point. Like 3 years of weekly classes.
And the lesson I learned there has bubbled over into other areas of my life. I can see it in my relationships with people.
A young woman came into my office today slightly tearful. She is deeply in debt and desperate for a solution. She asked my opinion about making a dramatic move in her life. She needed to act.
I listened to her and then asked her to take a deep breath. And to imagine the very worst thing which could happen. And what would her life be like if that thing she dreaded happened. To take a breath and to let go.
Lately I’ve noticed I’ve become better at listening to the other side of an argument. I think I’ve gotten more patient. And I’m smarter about knowing which battles to fight and which ones won’t matter. It’s a lot less stressful to little things go.
Lydia was one of my dearest friends. She was at least 50 years older than me when we met. She lived across the street from me when I was a young mother and I idolized her. A sort-of-family member distantly related to my husband’s mother, Lydia took an interest in me. Eccentric and independent, a staunch liberal and highly educated, she was and is what I would like to be. “Never get in a battle of wills with a two-year old,” she told me. “Dishes don’t have to match,” she said on another occasion. And my favorite advice was this: “Don’t worry about something unless it will matter when you’re Eighty.”
Dearest Lydia, thank goodness it only took me thirty years to absorb this.
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