Pops

The note sat on the ledge of my bathtub. It was written on a folded scrap of purple lined paper. The words were few. “Daddy would’ve been proud of you this weekend.” It sat next to one of our popped Billecart-Salmon champagne corks, a memory of a time long past. When I was 13, we hid Korbel champagne corks in all of the nooks and crannies of our grandparent’s medicine cabinets, kitchen cupboards and shoe boxes. We were a family that celebrated everything with champagne; birthdays, anniversaries, Jewish holidays. We used to giggle with glee as we stuffed corks into envelopes in my grandfather’s office or snuck them into my Aunt’s pocketbook. It was a game my father invented that just sort of stuck. After we started hiding the corks, we just couldn’t stop — ever.

I think I first introduced the game to my kids several years ago. We’ve been hiding corks ever since. My son’s Bar Mitzvah weekend had been literally 72 hours of unbridled celebration so champagne corks were plentiful. I expected my boys to stash some away in some of their favorite hiding places for me to discover one by one over the next few weeks. But somehow I didn’t expect the one on the bathtub ledge, left by the one person whose shared memories will always be the closest to my own.

My sister and I have always had a rocky relationship. I sometimes joke that she never quite forgave me for being born. We are as different as two people can be. But it was her very presence this weekend that filled my family, my home and my heart with joy, tradition and soulful memories. Seeing her smile and appreciate the world I had created away from the one in which we’d grown up, seemed to infuse my weekend with a sense of momentous value and significance.

I so wanted her to like my home, my friends, my synagogue. To approve of what I’d become and the family of which I stood at the helm. At nearly 50 years old, I still longed for the recognition, acceptance and approval of my big sister. It seems silly, but finding that note filled a space in my heart that had been there for as long as I could remember. “Daddy would’ve been proud of you this weekend.”

The truth is, my father would’ve loved this weekend. It would have filled him with a deep sense of joy and fulfillment. It feels remarkably unfair that he isn’t here to harvest the fruits that grew from his hard work, love and attention. He had lived to create this family, these traditions, and all that we had become. And yet, he had died before ever seeing his masterpiece in full view. Sometimes the injustice of life seems overwhelming to me.

“Daddy would’ve been proud of you this weekend.” And of you, my dear sister. Because somehow we managed to shelve the past this weekend, to burry away our bittersweet rivalries, to suspend our long-standing disappointments and disagreements. For all of that, I am grateful.

May we continue to live our lives in honor of the man whose love and hard work taught us the value of family, tradition, compassion and celebration. Times change. People pass away. But the memory of all that was good will never fade. I pray that we are creating those memories for our children and that they will always drink up the joys that life offers and forever remember to hide the corks when they do.

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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.

Happiness is…

Happiness is…a warm puppy…or whatever you make it!

I heard something interesting on the radio the other day about happiness. Happiness, the philosophical talk show host explained, was different depending on your stage of life. He went on to say that when you are young, happiness comes mostly from thinking about your future. Then, in middle age, it comes largely from being in the moment and living life, often quite hectically, in the present. Old age finally, finds happiness predominately from memories of the past.

I haven’t been able to shake this concept. I find it sad and disturbing. Mostly because I think it’s true. I don’t want this part of my life, where I’m caught busily racing from present moment to present moment, to ever end. I am happy where I am. Yes, I’m stressed out, overwhelmed and run ragged 98% of the time. But I love my kids, my family, my husband, my work, my creative time. I’d like life to go on like this indefinitely. The thing is, I know it wont. I feel the present slipping away from me with each tick of the clock. Honestly, it’s a curse to be so hyper aware of time’s passage. My ardent attempts to suck every bit of marrow out of each passing moment often feels more like a futile attempt to build a lasting sand castle right in the middle of high tide. Try as I may, failure is inevitable.

I remember at the very end of my paternal grandfather’s life, we were all sitting around his bedside celebrating his birthday. He was very old and frail by then, a mere shell of his former self. As the cake emerged with a scattering of representative candles, my maternal grandmother, the only other elder remaining in our clan, posed this question defeatedly to my grandpa. “Oh, Irwin,” she sighed, “Where have all the good years gone?” He smiled weakly, looked around at his children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. and with the same sparkle we’d seen in his younger eyes said, “They’ve been replaced by better ones.”

I will never forget that moment. Somehow, my grandfather had managed to keep his consciousness focused on the beauty of what was right in front of him. He had escaped the trap of only living in the glory of the past. As we age, we can lose sight of the good that stands before us and idealize earlier times when we’d been untouched by loss, pain and trauma.

The truth is, there will always be moments of joy, beauty and wonder, no matter what our age. We just can’t ever stop looking for them.