Shit happens

Shit happens. It’s one of those proverbial laws of nature. Given that, I’m not so sure why it always seems to knock us for a loop when it comes to pass. The truth is that we craft our lives in ways we think will allow us to bypass the shit nature inevitably is going to splatter all over us. Until we can’t. Until one day you meet the shit storm of your life and it confronts you, collides with you, commands your attention. And when that happens, you’re almost always naked, or wearing your crummiest pajamas and no make-up. But shit is not something you can ignore. There’s no room for denial on the day the facade crumbles. No euphemistic way to steer clear of the storm that threatens to destroy you and decimate your home and family.

I had a friend who used to say, “The only way through stuff like this is…through stuff like this. There’s no plane you can take to rise above it, no speeding locomotive through the beautiful countryside, not even a Vespa.” You have to walk your path, wherever it leads. I guess that’s the scariest part. Once you realize that all the planning, precision and platitudes aren’t worth a hill of beans, you can’t ever go back to the myth that you’re in control of your own destiny.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say it doesn’t matter how you play the game. It matters — a lot. But sometimes the rules change and you didn’t get a say in it. At that point, you can sit on the bench and opt out of playing altogether. But the better options seems to me to be to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, resolve to memorize the new handbook and go at life with a renewed vigor and determination to win that’ll prove to the world who you really are and just what you’re made of.

So forgive me for sparing the details in this little diatribe. Suffice to know that we are regrouping, huddled tightly together as a family, and preparing to face the challenges and uncertainties of life’s fickle finger with bold, fearless persistence, tenacity and commitment.

It’s an adventure. As one of our newly proclaimed villains used to say, “We asked for a roller coaster. Life’s never going to be boring.”

With heartfelt gratitude to all for the love, support and positive energy.
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I can see clearly now…

Levi sans specs

The milestones are flying by me so fast I don’t know where to look first. Bar Mitzvah, overnight camp, his own set of house keys, laptop, cell phone, the list goes on seemingly endlessly. He was a toddler like two days ago. Really. But the most recent milestone affected me more than I’d anticipated. My thirteen year old son, Levi, just got his first set of contact lenses. Now Levi’s been wearing glasses for as long as I can remember. They were unobtrusive at first. But as time went on and his quirky style began to emerge, we were able to find specs that matched his personality and charm. In fact, one of my proudest mom moments was when I bought him a pair of non-returnable, retro, tortoise-shell frames without him even being in the room. They fit him perfectly in every way. “That’s how well I know my kid,” I boasted to anyone within ear shot.

But this contact lens thing has me shaken. He looks so grown up, and so…handsome suddenly. His bright, happy face is now unobscured by frames. He’s more open, more vulnerable, more himself. Can a pair of contact lenses make someone more of themselves? Not sure. I suddenly feel the pain of losing him. I’m scared that he’s growing up too fast. He talks about driving all the time. How am I ever gonna cope with that?

I’ve always insisted that I was the type of parent who welcomed each stage of development. Not one to linger in the past or lament the “good old days,” But what happens when they do grow up? When they go away? When your life isn’t about them anymore? Then who are you? Who do you become? How do you still matter?

It’s really unfair that you go through these huge identity crisis when you’re young. You struggle to figure out who you are and how you fit into the Universe. By your mid 20s you think you’ve got it nailed down. Then by 35 you realize you weren’t even close. You settle into a comfortable routine in your 40s, meaningful work or building your family and fortune. Then suddenly your kids grow up and you have to start the whole darn process all over again. It’s daunting to say the least.

My youngest son, Eli, is in 4th grade. He’s still somewhat dependent. But his stubborn individuality reminds me daily that he too will be flying the proverbial coop just as soon as his minor status terminates. He’s in the stage where everything I do embarrasses him. I remember that stage with my parents all too well. My father used to insist on holding my hand as we crossed busy streets and my heart would crumble with shame if anyone saw us. Sure wish I could hold his hand one last time today.

I think about my father a lot, about how much he taught me and how much I miss him. In my son, Eli’s, fleeting serious moments, he begs me not to die and leave him, ever. Not sure it’s right to promise him what I surely cannot deliver. But I do so anyway. Just like my dad promised me. Life is about broken promises.

In the meantime, I find myself often tearful, lost and afraid of what the future holds. I want to protect my boys from everything and everyone. I want to be able to shield their eyes from pain and stand between them and any potential heartache. The realization that I can’t do that is what’s breaking my heart. For their lives to work, they will have to see beyond my horizon, to see for themselves. I guess the whole contact lens thing signifies something a whole lot deeper than I first imagined.

Crying shame

I am a crier. This is hardly a shocking admission to anyone who has spent more than twelve seconds with me. I cry at everything; from touching Maxwell House TV ads to tragic hit and run reports on the nightly news. I cannot seem to detach myself emotionally from anything. It’s always been a problem for me. But it’s getting worse.

I now find myself crippled with anguish as I peruse the aisles of Walgreens or CVS. I am not exaggerating. They play horrible, sad muzak everywhere I go these days. And for some reason, drug stores play the most heart wrenching songs imaginable. Why do they do that? I mean, what’s wrong with some upbeat Jazz or twangy Blue Grass? I bet they did research and found a link between devastating dirges and increased profit margins, kind of goes with the whole “retail therapy” concept. The more depressed the consumer, the bigger the buy. Well, it doesn’t work for me. I have been unable to step foot in a grocery, big box or other retail establishment in weeks since I broke down in front of the dairy case at Frys listening to John Denver singing “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”

I just can’t block it out. That’s what everyone tells me to do. “Just don’t listen.” “Think about something else.” “Turn your attention elsewhere.” But, I am mentally unable to do that. Music has a direct path to my soul. It bypasses my brain and intellect and goes right for the jugular of my internal core. It’s like my Kryptonite. A soft lilting tune, even barely audible in an elevator or as I walk to my car in a mall parking lot, can reduce me to a whimpering idiot after mere seconds of listening to it.

The other day we attended a birthday celebration for a friend’s mom who had reached the age of 90. Quite the joyous occasion. They showed a video montage of the honoree’s life. I was sobbing by the second photo. I tried biting my tongue and digging my nails into my arm to create physical pain that might distract me from the pictures and the medley of sentimental Frank Sinatra ballads. But, nothing worked to slow the flow of tears that gushed from my baby blues.

My husband offered me a napkin with embarrassment. “This isn’t even your family,” he chastised. “You don’t even know these people.” “I can’t make it stop,” I lashed back. “It’s not like I’m doing this on purpose.”

I weep at services at our synagogue every single time I go. My son’s taking bets on whether I’ll be able to make it through his Bar Mitzvah service without mascara zebra striping running down my cheeks. I’ve bought commercial grade waterproof mascara for the event. You need turpentine to remove it. But I’ve yet to find anything to address the bulbous red nose, blood-shot eyes and crackling voice that always accompanies my tearful outbursts.

About a year ago I had a play reading at a theatre in LA that happened to be connected to a church. The actors had a meeting prior to taking the stage. They concluded it with a few moments of shared prayers for people in need, asking Jesus to step in and guide the poor souls who were struggling. While everyone else seemed to manage hearing the tales of poverty, divorce and other unexpected woes that had impacted people’s lives, I became completely overcome with anguish and wept as if each story was about my very own family. Please understand, I’m not talking about a faint stream of tears inconspicuously streaming down my face. I’m talking about a waterfall of wetness, snot pouring out my nose, and hyperventilating gasps of air as I tried to compose myself unsuccessfully. “Remember, you’re Jewish,” my friend whispered as everyone held hands and thanked the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. It didn’t matter. Nothing could suppress my sobs.

How do I live? Well, basically I’m trying to avoid every person, place or event that might trigger some sort of sentimental reaction. As you might imagine, this makes living life rather tricky. No TV or radio for fear of an update on Nairobi or a reality check regarding Rwanda. No mall shopping in avoidance of sad, twenty-something break-up songs. No grocery jaunts or prescription pick-ups so as to miss those sappy Carpenter songs (It really was tragic what happened to Karen).

So, if you’re hanging around and have only good news to share, call me or shoot me an email, just don’t attach any .mp3, .wav or .aiff files. K?

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Be here NOW!!!

Think about something you feel passionately about today. Now envision yourself 10 years from now. Do you feel the same way? Slightly different? Radically changed? A new study published in the January 4th journal, Science, asserts that most adults change significantly over a decade but when asked to predict their future selves, fail to recognize just how much change they will actually see. Huh?

According to an interview with Harvard psychology professor, Daniel Gilbert, in Health Day magazine, “People dramatically underestimate how different their future selves will be.” That got me thinking about my own life and how much I’ve changed over the last decade.

Ten years ago my political beliefs were strikingly…how to put this…different. But I think that has more to do with having and raising two children. Suddenly the whole “do what you feel” and “follow your bliss” approach to life seems to wither as you raise kids. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Or is it?

Teaching kids about right and wrong seems to make parents concretize their own belief systems in a way that’s hard to predict. The practicality of life, the ups and downs, the immense challenges that pop up unexpectedly, all of these change us, make us harder, less willing to trust the whimsical mysteries of nature. Well, not for everyone. But it’s worked that way for me.

I miss my more childlike view of the world. It was a view that allowed me to trust in the goodness of people, to always follow my heart, to imagine that a spiritual force greater than myself was guiding my every step. Nowadays I feel consumed by the violence in our streets, the senseless genocide occurring around the globe, the carelessness people exhibit towards their neighbors and family. But I sure didn’t see this coming. I thought I’d always be wide-eyed and open to the possibilities of life.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still a fairly positive gal. I still find ways to express my creative spirit each and every day. I try really hard to believe that life has a purpose and that somehow I’m on a path, albeit circuitous, towards discovering that purpose. But I feel a constant weight, a heaviness, that rests on my shoulders as I meander through life these days that wasn’t there a decade earlier. That makes me wonder about where I’m heading and what life will look like in the next ten years. Maybe I’ll make a total 180 degree personality swerve and end up more like the bohemian, free-spirited person I used to be. Or maybe I’ll do a full 360, grow a goatee and pursue my dormant dream of becoming a Krill fisherwoman in Antarctica.

Daniel Gilbert explains that people are just not very good at predicting who they’ll be in the future. He tells the New York Times, “Middle-aged people — like me — often look back on our teenage selves with some mixture of amusement and chagrin. What we never seem to realize is that our future selves will look back and think the very same thing about us. At every age we think we’re having the last laugh, and at every age we’re wrong.”

Kind of depressing, no? I mean I hate to think that in ten years I’ll look back with embarrassment over my funky fashion foibles or trendy hair coif. Because looking back now, I can see that the whole Jennifer Aniston Friends “do” wasn’t my best look. But at the time, I thought I was red-carpet ready.

So we can’t accurately project ourselves into the future and we’re pretty much assured to be horrified by who we were in the past. Sounds like a lose-lose for all of us. Guess that’s as good a reason as any to live in the present.

I am a camera

Cable car cuddling: Don't we look sweet?

I’m sitting at my computer watching a slide show of photos of happy kids, untroubled parents and a family that clearly loves life, each other and having fun. Who are these people? They look an awful lot like my family. But there’s no way these happy-go-lucky folks are even remotely related to me, my exhausted husband, or my increasingly annoying two children.

Why can’t life be more like a photo montage? I mean, in all fairness, I took a lot of these pictures. I was actually present for each and every happy moment that’s parading before me on my computer screen. I can even remember most of the events without a great deal of prompting. I ought to feel as joyful and carefree as my celluloid image. But I don’t.

The mom in the photos is young, happy, and easy-going. I, in contrast, feel tired, ancient and about as close to breaking as an overstrung archery bow. I can’t even imagine my two sons sitting next to each other without trying to kill each other. And I’m not sure I can remember the last time I saw my husband smile. This is making me sad.

Maybe there’s some way to “fake it till you make it.” If I just pretend to be as happy as photo me, maybe I’ll somehow morph into her. Maybe if I act like her, my family will follow suit and my kids will burst out into peels of laughter instead of screeching furiously at one another. Maybe if I can just convince myself that she is me I can bring a sense of joy and ease back into our lives.

That seems kind of impossible from my current vantage point. Maybe I’ll just write a play about a writer who wills herself into her computer to relive all the happiness depicted in her iphoto albums. I bet that’d get old pretty quickly though. I mean, how many chilly San Francisco cable car rides would it take before even photo mom got bored?

No. I guess I’m stuck out here, being me, watching her, wondering how we all got so frustrated and disgruntled about life when it really is filled with so many opportunities to love and enjoy each other. Maybe I just need to realize that we do have joyful moments, mixed into the misery of 113 degree days, unending errands and piles of dirty laundry. Maybe it’s all about focus. When you take a picture you take a moment, you breathe, you stay still and snap, the perfect shot. Most of the time in life I forget to breathe, am running 150 miles per hour and never even look where I’m headed.

I am that woman in the photos. I just need to aim my eagle eye at the good things, the happy moments, the daily victories, and not to concentrate so hard on the tirades, the tantrums and the tragedies. It’s all about where you aim the camera, set the F-stop, and how you choose to compose each shot. Plus one can always add a little bit of flash to brighten up the image a bit. Remember, as Gentle Giant once sang, “I am a camera.”

With a grain of salt

Taking life with a grain of salt, might humor and surprise you.

I try hard to do things right. I realize that’s a subjective term. But I can’t help feeling that in every task I undertake, there is a right and a wrong method of action. As a parent, I consistently and heartily aim for “right.” However, more often than not, I land smack dab in the center of “Wow, you really blew it. This is so utterly, completely and totally wrong.”

But I’ve realized that my children, no matter how “right” I may be in my parenting decisions, will remember only the silly, foolish, unmistakably “wrong” choices I seem to make. I have thus determined to stop lamenting my “wrongness,” and to instead live an unexamined life in which I do not dwell in the deep caverns of guilt, remorse and debilitating self awareness.

I came to this rather startling conclusion yesterday when I picked up my boys from school and cheerfully announced that we were having a picnic for snack today. Of course their immediate focus was on the lack of appealing beverage options and my forgetfulness for leaving the outdoor blanket behind in our garage. We instead headed to Starbucks.

But, since I’d gone to Trader Joes specifically to indulge my children with favorites like fresh mango, pineapple and decadent chocolate brownies, I insisted we snack on our picnic items while sipping our apple juice and iced passion fruit teas (unsweetened). My disgruntled imps argued about seating locale, size of beverage, and state of boredom. But I remained calm and upbeat, determined to enjoy a pleasant afternoon.

The mango was too hard. The pineapple, too sweet. I saved the brownies for last, knowing that they were my ace in the hole. I might be horribly disposed to doing everything wrong, but at least I knew my chocolate delights were going to land me in good stead. When I could wait no longer, I pulled them out. They were met with gleeful cheers and expressions of maternal adoration. Finally, I was doing parenting “right.”

My youngest, Eli, bit into his first. His reaction was abnormally neutral. Brownies were his favorite sweet. Yet he seemed oddly displeased by these. But it was Levi’s horrific face and gag reflex that pushed me over the edge.

“Ach! Mom, these are DISGUSTING!” He cried shrilly.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I asserted impatiently, decidedly done with accepting my role as maternal doormat. “You love Trader Joe’s brownies. You’re just being impossible.”

“No, mom,” he was still spitting out brownie, “They’re like…salty…and gross!”

“Levi,” I announced, “I am through trying to do nice things for you. It is simply not worth it.” And without my consent, my bottom lip charged into pouting position, my arms crossed and my body turned as far away from the table as was possible.

Then Eli piped up tactfully, “Mom, They really aren’t so good. I mean, I’ll eat it. But it’s not my favorite.”
Frustrated and defeated, I grabbed the lid with the label to read the ingredients. It was then that I saw the truth. I started to giggle in spite of myself. I couldn’t stop. The boys watched me as if I were a straight-jacketed patient in a padded cell. Perhaps they thought I had finally snapped.

“Mom,” they cautiously inquired, “What’s so funny?”

It took me a few moments to regain my composure. Then I showed them the label. “Sea salt brownies,” it claimed. “A savory twist on a traditional favorite.”

Suddenly, we were all chortling. The more we tried to hold back the peels of laughter, the bigger they became. And it was then, for a brief unadulterated moment, without even a hint of self consciousness, that I realized I had finally done something “right.”

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Six word memoir

Who are you really, In six words or less?

I was listening to NPR today and they promoted an upcoming segment on writing your own memoir — in six words. The minute I heard it I was hooked. Six words to tell the world who you were, what your life meant. Fascinating. Tricky. Impossible. I became obsessed. It’s like that game we used to play as kids; “If your house was burning down, what three things would you save?”

If you only had six words, who would you be? Can you hone a description of yourself to that fine a point? Without cliche? Without limiting all that you are?

I began to work:

So much laundry, need to write.

Write to live. Mother to love.

More than mom. Creator, artist, dreamer.

Watch stars. Play Clue. Want more.

Seeking balance — motherhood and self expression.

I asked a friend what his would be. He said, “I would have done it different.” That made me sad.

I kept working. Then I checked out the NPR transcript since I hadn’t even heard the show. Apparently the idea came from “Smith,” the online magazine. Based on the legend that Hemingway once responded to a challenge to write a complete story in six words with, “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn,” They asked readers to tell their life stories in a single sentence. What resulted was a book,“Not Quite What I Was Planning,” by Smith founding editor, Larry Smith and his memoir editor, Rachel Fershleiser.

Here are a few excerpts from the book:

After Harvard, had baby with crackhead. - Robin Templeton

Watching quietly from every door frame. - Nicole Resseguie

Savior complex makes for many disappointments. - Alanna Schubach

Born in the desert, still thirsty. - Georgene Nunn

Almost a victim of my family - Chuck Sangster

Painful nerd kid, happy nerd adult. - Linda Williamson

Then I went back to work on my own. Clearly being a mother was key to my self description. But so was being an artist, an independent creative being. I netted out with this:

“Deep loving mom, creating art to live.”

What would your six word memoir say?