Black Fridays: black holidays.

I did not go shopping on Black Friday.  I stayed home except for driving to school to retrieve a few things I need for an upcoming trip.  As I drove to school, I noticed a full parking lot at the nearby funeral home.  My heart was saddened for the people inside.  When a loved one dies, it is hard on those of us left behind.  It is even harder around the holiday season.  I know this because nine years ago my sister died.  She had a car wreck right before Thanksgiving, and she never recovered. 

When someone dies during the holidays, your holiday memories forever include that loss. You see, during the holidays, you are supposed to be cheerful, jolly even.  That is hard to do when someone you love has died.  William Carlos Williams has an excellent poem, “Tract,” that prescribes how people should act when they experience loss. 

In the poem, Williams laments the fact that funerals have become a show.  Indeed, some of the ritual of funerals and wakes and memorials and visitations are a show – a show designed to allow the grief-stricken time to gather and comfort each other.  A time to remember.  A time to mourn.  These are important aspects of the grieving process according to psychologists.  Having a funeral and its associated events are especially difficult during the holidays because people want to be merry during this time.  Being surrounded by societal merry-making while dealing with the sadness of loss is one of the worst sorts of conundrums.  You want to celebrate, but you also want and need to mourn.  It is a difficult place to be. Furthermore, the days are shorter and despite the lights twinkling along the roads, your heart does not light up easily. 

It can be hard to support friends who lose family members during the holidays, as well.  A few years ago an acquaintance of mine died.  I remember overhearing a conversation in which one person complained of having to go to the visitation before his office Christmas party.  Huh?  Is this a valid complaint?  His heart might just be a few sizes too small.  Death is never convenient, and sometimes those of us left living must attend to its details while buying Christmas presents or making latkes.  It’s not easy, but it has to be done.  One of the best things any human being can do for another is to sit, hold hands, and fetch tea for the mourning.  As my mom might say, you get extra stars in your crown if you do this when holiday details are tugging at your coat sleeves.

My sincerest wish for all of you reading is that you do not experience the death of a loved one during the holiday season, but some of you will.  Others of you will be called upon to support friends who lose family members during this most wonderful time of the year.  Still others of you will not experience the heartbreak of holiday time death

Williams writes in his second to last stanza:

“Go with some show

of inconvenience; sit openly—

to the weather as to grief.

Or do you think you can shut grief in?

What--from us? We who have perhaps

nothing to lose? Share with us

share with us--it will be money

in your pockets”

If your holiday is halted (heaven forbid) by a death in your family or if your festivities are slowed down so that you can support a friend who has lost a loved one – go and grieve openly with no shame.  Be sad.  Make tea.  Hold your friend’s hand.  Make a casserole.  Grieve.  The holiday will still be there when you are ready to join it – this year or next or the next.  If your car is one of those in the parking lot of a funeral home this season or if you revisit a loss each season, please know that my heart is with you. 

Turkey Talk

The smell of the turkey, the sound of TV football, the torture of small talk amongst family members.  Say what?  Yes, for many of us, as much as we love our family and as much as we want more time to spend with them, the small talk of family events can put us to sleep or get under our skin or grate on our nerves or send us running to the hills proclaiming that we will live alone in a cave forever.  It can be a challenge to connect meaningfully with those you see a couple of times a year, and sometimes even more so with those that you live with, but now are spending a purposeful day or weekend of proclaimed FAMILY TIME. 

Little ones play and share together more easily than we adults do many times.  Teenagers and young adults run the gamut of helpful and cheerful to sulky and texty.   Adults range from pretentious and all-knowing to silent and judgmental.  We seem to be pretty good at talking with those who are at similar stages of life as we are, but shift the ages apart by fifteen or more years, and silence and resentment may take over.  Making intergenerational conversation can be rough.  Let me suggest a few things that might make connecting with each other easier.

Adults, avoid asking your teenage or young adult interlocutor about school, college plans, or majors right off the bat.  That’s all they are ever asked.  Start instead with what they have been reading, watching, or listening to.  Tell them about a cool TED talk you recently watched or a new hobby you are embarking on.  If you must talk school, ask them to tell you the funniest thing that happened in calculus class or about their most recent poetry analysis for world lit.  Start a real conversation. Remember, young people are people too.  They are not just automatons caught in the machine we call education. In creative writing class a few years ago a student wrote a poem about applying to college in which she lamented that the only question she was ever asked was “Where are you going to college?”  The response she wanted to give was, “Fuck you, where are you going to college?”  The repetition of the same themes is dull for everyone, and for the younger person, the answers to such questions can be filled with fear and angst.  Pretend the young people are real, then your time talking with them will be more satisfying for all involved.

Younger people:  engage your adult friends and family in conversation about something more than the weather.  Do not text or check your phone while talking to them.  Look them in the eye.  Smile a little bit.  If they must ask questions about getting into college or majors, answer and redirect to more interesting or comforting topics.  Ask them what they are reading, their latest promotion at work, or the community groups they are involved in.  If you absolutely can’t stand one more “What are you going to major in?”  - make up some unexpected answers ahead of time, give the answer, and walk away.  Use different answers with different people.  Don’t worry, no one will call you out on it, and you’ll give them something to talk about until Christmas. 

To wit:

What are you going to major in?                     Nuclear Biology 

What are you going to major in?                     Literature of Little People
What are you going to major in?                     Sculpture with a Concentration in Nudes

What are you going to major in?                     Genetics of Prehistoric Reptiles

Where do you want to go to college?             Hawaii-Pacific

Where do you want to go to college?             College of Southern Idaho

Where do you want to go to college?             Talmudic College of Florida

Where do you want to go to college?             FU*

What are you doing to do with that major?    Think “Dexter.”

What are you doing to do with that major?    Move to Vladivostok for graduate studies

What are you doing to do with that major?    Laboratory experiments on mole rats

What are you doing to do with that major?    Move back home

Adults, please, please, please do not condescend when a young person tells you what they want to do.  Don’t tell them it is a mistake.  And, whether you think what they are doing is a mistake or not, ask questions.  The more questions you ask about a young person’s goals or plans or ideas, the more you will understand their generation and that precious individual.  Avoid phrases like, “There’s no money in that…” or  “We never really agreed with what your dad did, and well…”  “Are you sure?  You used to be so good at math…”  Listen actively to what those younger have to say.  Make suggestions if you must, but these are young people who need questions asked and a sounding board that doesn’t try to negate away their ideas. 

Why is it so very easy to listen to what eight year-olds want to be when they grow up?  We can listen to their most far-fetched ideas, “I want to be a jewelry maker who is a vet and own a business that gives out milkshakes to children.”  Fantastic!  Even the kids who have no idea, “Well, I want to collect garbage” get a positive response:  “Then, be the best garbage person you can be!”  But, if a twenty year-old has decided a four year degree is not for her and she’s going to do a twelve month program in physical therapy assisting, part-time while bartending, we scorn her for not finishing college.  What is that all about?  Think of the negativity of the nightly news, the economy, the world disasters – these are people who are trying to create and launch a life and a career amidst all of this.  Be positive. 

Younger folks, if you find you are stuck with a negative or frightening family member or someone who is hell bent on telling you horror stories about their neighbor’s uncle’s cousin who went to school to major in that and then was unemployed and had to claw his way out of drug addiction just because of choosing the wrong college – well, stand up, politely offer to get that person another drink and be done.  Yes, many of those who are older than you are wise, have good suggestions, and really do want to support you.  Many of them have few real ideas on how to offer that support in a way that is meaningful and translatable.  Some of them believe they have the monopoly on truth and real life. 

In summary, it may all come down to remembering that we are all human beings with common interests and struggles.  We are all people who are trying to do something with our lives.  The more we are genuinely interested in each other and support each other, the better off we will all be – age be damned and pass the mashed potatoes.

*Note:  FU is the abbreviation for Furman University.  All of these are real colleges and very fine institutions in their own rights. 

Big Box Stores and Gratitude

I remember when I actively realized that not everyone was raised as I was.  It was my freshman year of college. And, to be honest, it came late.  I mean, by the time I was a freshman in college, I had studied three languages and the cultures of those countries and traveled to the Soviet Union. Thanks to my parents, I had traveled extensively around the country on a variety of vacations.  While my high school was not a bastion of diversity, I certainly knew peers from different ethnic and religious backgrounds.  I don’t remember the incident that prompted my delayed epiphany, but I distinctly remember that I was walking down Dubuque Street in Iowa City toward Mayflower within sight of the Iowa River.  Something clicked in my brain and I actively, cognitively thought, “Not everyone grew up with two parents, a dog, siblings, and celebrating holidays.” 

The traditions of Thanksgiving are clear: eat, watch football, eat, be grateful, eat, see a parade, eat, hang out with family, and eat.  Or at least some incarnation of this.  Right?  That is what we all are meant to be doing on Thanksgiving.  The next day, of course, we all go shopping on the frighteningly monikered Black Friday. 

In the past few years, there have been more and more Thanksgiving Day Sales at stores and malls. The idea is to beat the crowds and rush of Black Friday (not to mention fatten the wallets of corporations).  This year, I am seeing a sort of grass roots movement  happening on social media that suggests that shopping on Thanksgiving is heretical. While I am not a big box store fan and I understand there are larger issues with such corporations, I see a problem with this logic. This movement equates shopping the “big box retailers” on Thanksgiving with enslaving the people who work at such stores.  The general thought is that if you shop on Thanksgiving, you are forcing the employees of these stores to work, and you are consequently ruining their holiday.  This line of thought continues: if we all band together and refuse to shop on Thanksgiving Day, then the corporate entities that are open on this holiday will be adversely affected, see the error of their capitalistic ways, and close their doors, allowing their employees the day off to spend with family.  And, that is precisely what all Americans want to do on the fourth Thursday of November, right?

The continuation of this boycott shopping-on-Thanksgiving movement equates shopping on Thanksgiving as being against raising the minimum wage and being against unionization. And, if you do not shop on Thanksgiving, you are somehow supporting those who are working for minimum wage in these retail establishments. I didn’t major in economics, but there’s a flaw in that reasoning somewhere. 

Actually, I see several errors in this whole line of thinking.  The first is that by shopping on Thanksgiving you are ruining an employee’s holiday.  What I know is that the day of the holiday is not nearly as important as how and with whom one celebrates it – if one chooses to celebrate it at all. If a person has to work on a holiday, it is possible to celebrate the holiday one day early or later that evening.  Folks, the holiday doesn’t create the meaningfulness of the day – the people with whom and the way in which you celebrate it is what counts.  We can have Thanksgiving on Wednesday or Saturday – who cares?  A celebration of gratitude and food and football can be on any day.  And, those who work on holidays often do celebrate on another day.  Furthermore, not everyone wants to celebrate Thanksgiving.  Some people are pleased to work on this day for their own reasons.  It might surprise us to realize that there are people in this country who don’t buy into the whole media-driven holiday celebrations.  There are families and individuals who celebrate in their own ways that might be foreign to you, but meaningful for them.  There are also families and individuals who choose not to celebrate for their own reasons, and, brace yourself, they are just as happy and well-adjusted as those who do celebrate.

Second, many establishments are open on the majority of holidays: hospitals, fire departments, the army, convenience stores, and restaurants.  A few years ago, the boys and I had just moved into an apartment from a house on a large tract of land.  I did not want to make a Thanksgiving dinner in a galley kitchen to eat at our tiny round table.  I just wasn’t in the mood.  So, we went to a local hotel that serves a glorious buffet all day long, and we enjoyed a hearty Thanksgiving dinner there.  It was wonderful.  I am grateful to this day for the service that everyone involved with the production of that dinner provided.  Almost 21 years ago, I had a premature baby two days before Christmas under emergency conditions.  I’m sure glad the hospitals were open and the doctors, nurses, orderlies, and food service workers did not express that I was ruining their holiday by being there.

Of the people that are working on Thanksgiving, I’m sure that some of them hate it and want to be home.  I’m equally sure that some of them have rearranged their celebrations to accommodate their work schedules, and that there are those who don’t care to celebrate any way.  If you believe that boycotting such stores will be beneficial to the workers, you are entitled to think this and act on it. If you believe that not shopping on Thanksgiving will make the employees of the stores in question happier and make them feel appreciated, that’s your right as well.

How about, though, the next time you are in one of those huge stores and can’t find what you’re looking for, you talk to an associate politely?  I can think of so many of times I’ve been in such a store, seen shoppers huffing around and looking for assistance, then, when they finally find someone to ask the location of the Q-tips, the shopper treats that worker like a mangy dog in an alley.  Want to let the workers in these big box stores know you appreciate their job?  Be nice. Be patient.  Ask nicely and say thank you after they help you.  Here’s another idea: when you are pushing your cart with one box of microwave popcorn in it and an employee of such a store is pushing a giant dolly weighed down with hundreds of 18-count cartons of eggs that he can’t see over – get out of his way.  Don’t stand there, get offended, and mutter obscenity if you have to go around him to the next aisle. 

Real meaningful ways to show appreciation and gratitude to those who work in large retail establishments exist – and, maybe, just maybe, those ways have nothing to do with how or when they or we celebrate November 28, 2013.  Whether you are going to one of these stores this week to buy a turkey and stuffing; or whether you shop on Thanksgiving Day; or whether you never go the big box retailers, remember: not everyone marks holidays in the same way or at the same time.  If we all can appreciate and understand the lives of others, we all might have a bit more happiness this holiday season.  That’s something we all can be grateful for.

Lists and Herpes

My Face Book feed has herpes.  Someone out there has decided that life and all of its good things are best accessed when they are seen in lists.  These lists circulate on websites, are shared on Face Book, tweeted, and sent in those FWD:FWD:SPAM emails that litter our inboxes.  Lists have become the herpes of the internet lately. They are easily passed around, a little itchy, and hard to get rid of.  To wit:

20 Things You Should Never Do In Your Twenties

15 Things To Think of Before Applying to Med School

50 Places Everyone Should Go Before They Die

62 Ways to Stay Married for 62 Years

10 Things That Drive Men Away

44 Mindsets That Make Your Forties Rock

11 Don’ts To Land Your Dream Job

The list (pardon me) goes on.  Who decided that life or any part of it can be boiled down to an enumerated set of suggestions?  Have you read these lists?  Buzzfeed is the worst perpetrator, but not the only one by far.  These lists masquerade as real wisdom and real communication. Granted, many of them are humorous.  Many of them are accompanied by GIFs or memes – Jennifer Lawrence and Disney princesses feature prominently in all sorts of such illustrated lists. 

Despite the glibness of such cyber profferings, I am worried.  Are there people who are taking notes from such boiled down advice?  I suspect so.  Even more worrisome than actually taking list-based advice seriously is the evidence that this trend is contributing to people’s inability to hold a conversation beyond anything numbered and limited to five sentences.  I base my concern on students’ reactions to conversations that extend beyond five minutes or writing that extends beyond numbered sentences.  Actually, I base my suspicion on many people’s inability to read a whole email or to have a conversation that doesn’t involve listyness.

As a course of my job, I send emails to a wide variety of constituents.  I strive to keep most professional correspondence to a salutation, a one sentence greeting, 2-6 sentences of information or inquiry, a thank you and a sign off at the end.  The number of times that I have a response from a person who asks me a point of information that was included in the original email is astounding.  Unless information is presented in very short forms – think tweets or status updates – many people seem lost.  They get lost in words, verbs, and subordinate clauses. 

I suppose it doesn’t help that I teach writing and read long books as a matter of course.  I also find lists woefully inadequate – I find myself wanting to hear the discussion behind each item on the list.  I want to talk about the “what ifs” and “but alsos” that inevitably belong with each item.  It seems like the listyness of current life is inhibiting conversation.  I have also seen a fear of response and depth among people. 

Let’s look at a couple of examples:  I often have a student come to me with a list of questions.  That’s a good thing.  That means he has thought through some issues that he wants advice on or conversation about.  Now, he will sit in front of me and say, “I have some questions.”  Okay.  Once he has shared his first item, and we have addressed the issue, he moves on to the second item.  Often, the second item is related to the first.  So, I connect the second item to the discussion or resolution of the first item.  We have to come back around to a conversation that happened about 68 seconds prior.  They can’t do it.  The connection is all too often lost.  If we can’t stay on item #1, resolve it, and then move on, we are in trouble.  Many people are having trouble connecting ideas and continuing a conversation.  If things are not an enumerated list, conversation falters. 

Another example:  I was in a meeting recently where a proposal that would have a reaching impact was presented.  It was presented well.  At the end of the proposal, there was an opportunity for questions or discussion.  No one had anything to say.  No questions to ask.  It was a meaty proposal.  No one had anything to ask.  The list had been read.  It was time to close it and move on to the next.  Even though the presentation was well done, there should have been some more discussion.  After talking with a few colleagues at that meeting, it seems like they avoided a conversation that would have been more complex than numbered ideas. Why?  

One more, just to prove the point:  there is a game going around Face Book where you like a status and the "liked person" assigns you a number.  You are then obligated to reveal that number of interesting facts about yourself in your status.  Another list.  About yourself.  Things that you care about or that are part of you - all boiled down to a list. 

Having a conversation of depth can be difficult, taxing, sometimes contentious, but it is worth it.  Reviewing a proposal or relating one idea to the next or examining that which masquerades as life advice are all good things.  This kind of communication takes time.  It’s not just scratching an itch, but it is much more satisfying.  Lists may help organize life, but real life is messy and not easily enumerated.  Go ahead and read as many lists as you want, but when it comes to real conversation this week, don’t number your sentences.  

Wait, What?

Every now and then I come across something, someone, or some comment that totally throws me for a loop.  Not often, mind you.  I am the kind of person who you tell your life story to in the grocery line.  I guess I just look sympathetic; and, I do that mirror listening thing without thinking about what I want to tell you about myself or trying to insert my own stories into yours.  (Yes, being introverted helps here, but I’ve got it down pat.)  Also, I’ve been teaching for twenty years, so to really, truly shock me is a formidable task.  Gay?  Cool.  Don’t know what you want to do when you grow up?  Join the club.  Want to move to Montana and live as a hermit with only books and a case of beer?  Have fun!  Confused?  Me, too.  Lost and just need a hug?  C’mon in.  In love with your cousin’s best friend’s ex-girlfriend’s dog?  Okay.  Dislike your parents and hate your friends?  I’m your sounding board.  Really – you cannot shock me.

But, just when I know I have heard it all and seen most of it, I’m blindsided.  This past week I was talking with a group of women.  To be precise, I was listening to a group of women talk. I did not know all of them; several of us had just met for the first time. The age range was 40-70. Topics ranged from marriage to children to in-laws to pets to jobs and back again.  At one point, one of the older ladies suggested, “I guess it’s about having a dream.  I mean, you have to have something you want to do.  A goal.  A dream. I’m retired and I still don’t have enough time to do everything I want to do.”  In less than half a breath a younger woman piped up, “Maybe that’s my problem.”  We looked at her expectantly.  “I mean,” she continued, “I don’t really have any dreams except to just be with my husband.”  Wait. What?  She went on to iterate a couple of dreams he has, but she concluded that comment with, “All I really want to do is spend time with him.”

Now, you’ll all be glad to know that I beat down the feminist in me that wanted to lecture her on losing her identity in a man.  I also shushed the counselor in me who wanted to tell her that she needed to do some kind of guided imagery in order to visualize who she wants to be.  You’ll also be relieved to know that I did not allow the reader in me to quote all sorts of literary ideas about becoming your own person.  And, yep, she did it.  This forty-something woman shocked me.  It really seems to me that hanging your one dream on another human being is a recipe for tragedy.

I don’t know lots of things “for sure,” as Oprah puts it, but I do know for sure that if you have one dream that you assign your happiness to and it  revolves around another person, you will be disappointed.  That kind of pressure will doom a relationship and poison a friendship.  My dream depends upon you?  No.  Who – male or female – thinks that wrapping up the sum total of all of your dreams into one person is a good idea?  Her dream is just to spend time with her husband.  Ancillary to cultivating herself as a human being and cultivating her own interests and dreams, it’s not a bad thing to want to spend time with one’s husband.  In fact, many would argue it’s quite excellent to want to spend time with loved ones.  Let me reiterate:  that’s her only dream.  Her one dream for the rest of her life hangs upon another person. Her one dream for the remaining 45 years on the planet is to spend time with her husband.  That’s it.  Wait. What? 

So, the husband-time-spending thing aside, this woman has only ONE dream for her remaining time in life.  That’s it.  One.  That One is a progression of a role in a family. Only that.  I know women here in Augusta, and I assume they exist all over this country if not the world, whose mission in life has been and continues to be:  graduate high school, go to college, find a husband, marry, have children, join the country club, take family vacations, help the children graduate high school, help the children go to college, help the children get married, help the children have children, enjoy the grandchildren and eventually die.  And, yes, before you ask, I have taught and counseling high school girls whose life plan is some iteration of the above sequence.  In 2013.  Yes, there are girls and women whose whole existence seems to bizarrely rotate around others.  Where, oh where, is the desire for personal development?  For cultivating your own talents?  Women, if you are reading this, you have hundreds, if not thousands, of opportunities to make a life for yourself.  And, most certainly, you may want it to include marriage or family life and many of your desires and dreams and talents may dovetail into family life, but please, oh please, I beg you not to roll up all of your dreams into what your husband wants to do or into some future children. God forbid he becomes ill or dies or leaves you – please have some thoughts about what it is that YOU want.  You and only you. What are your dreams for yourself? If you were totally on your own, what would you do to develop your interests and achieve your dreams?  Wait, what?

Yes, I know that what I’m suggesting might be a lecture for human beings, but it really seems especially applicable to women who roll up their own identity in a husband and family or who minimize themselves for any other person.  Who knows what will happen?  Please develop yourself – individually.  Surely you have interests and talents and desires for your own development.  Children grow up.  Children move out.  Spouses are not extensions of who you are – they are (hopefully) wonderful  additions to who you are, but you must always be you first and foremost. 

Perhaps this lady was simplifying what Jean Webster suggested, “I'm going to enjoy every second, and I'm going to know I'm enjoying it while I'm enjoying it. Most people don't live; they just race. They are trying to reach some goal far away on the horizon, and in the heat of the going they get so breathless and panting that they lose sight of the beautiful, tranquil country they are passing through; and then the first thing they know, they are old and worn out, and it doesn't make any difference whether they've reached the goal or not.”  Perhaps my new friend wants to just enjoy time with her husband, and I do wish her all the happiness doing so, but I still say she needs a goal.   “It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach. It isn’t a calamity to die with dreams unfulfilled, but it is a calamity not to dream. Something for ourselves that we are working towards.” (B.E. Mays) 

And that, my new friend, is a tragedy that can be avoided.

When All Else Fails...Snark

I am a professional writer.  Well, let me amend that.  I write all the time.  In my job. School reports.  Recommendations for students.  School publications.  And for fun. Poetry. (see:www.1daypoems.blogspot.com)  This blog.  Most recently, work on a short story based at a bar called "County Line."  I have also taught English for nearly twenty years - high school and middle school. Over the past few years, I have attended the Iowa Summer Writers' Festival.  I teach creative writing and advanced creative writing.  I briefly joined a short-lived Augusta writers' group. I've read my work publicly in Iowa and Georgia. I've been around the block, using writing for various purposes: on the job, in service of others, for personal enjoyments, as gifts, and for publication.

In all of these settings, I have found those who read or heard my work generous and thoughtful.  My work is certainly not perfect, but I am doing the work.  In talking with others who write professionally and personally, I have found that the vast majority of them are encouraging and interested.  Then, I found the group.  You may recall the old saying: "There's one in every crowd."  Well, this is a crowd of them.

I joined a group on Face Book which purports to support writers in a particular endeavor. Imagine my surprise when I came to realize that the group has deteriorated into a group designed to sap the confidence out of its members. Judging from the posts in this group, the idea is to snark at and belittle the other group members because we all know that if you denigrate others then you automatically become more valuable.  And, you will be more successful if others are less successful, right? Of course not. That’s silly, to say the least. However, that’s how these individuals are conducting themselves. There were several moderators of the group who were conspicuously quiet.

"If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." I don't know that this applies in every circumstance.  Sometimes encouragement can take the form of something being said that isn't very nice.  I used to have a sign that read "Diplomacy is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that he actually looks forward to the trip." Even in the high school classroom when a student was curiously off-topic or misunderstanding a text, I would say, “Well, that’s one interpretation,” and then ask the student to support or elucidate his idea. Most often, he came to his own conclusions, “What I said earlier was kind of off-base, wasn’t it?” 

I attended a summer writing workshop where the instructor told us that really the only rule in the session was that you cannot be negative about your work, and if you are thusly tempted, you are to say, “This smacks of brilliance.”  Likewise, at the start of my creative writing course every year, I find a time to give a little talk to my writers about the fact that the world is more than willing to judge and berate them, they don’t need to do it to themselves.  High schoolers being high schoolers, are apt to run themselves down as a protective measure.  For example, “if I note that this poem is weird then it will hurt less than if someone else says it’s weird because I know that it’s not really weird and it’s really about my grandma but I can’t let anyone know that.”  But, if I can get them to be kind to themselves about their own work, we are one step closer to being happier and more thoughtful people.  Plus, if you act like you know what you’re doing, you will find that you often do; you were just letting your inner critic run you down.

In addition to those pesky inner critics, we can stumble and fall on those outer critics as well.  We all know them – the ones who stop mid-sentence the minute you walk into a room.  Or, as a friend recounted earlier this week, “I returned to the table, and I overheard [my mother-in-law] say, ‘She just smothers me.’”  Never mind that my friend was there caring for mother-in-law after a surgery.  There’s one in every crowd.  In teaching there’s a joke that we tell each other when nothing seems to go right in the classroom: 

You know what the headline would be if teachers could walk on water? 

No. What?

Teachers refuse to swim.

So, for today, whatever it is that you are doing – writing, swimming, teaching, gardening, cooking, leading a book club, managing a multi-billion dollar deal, organizing a shoe drive for the homeless, do it well and enjoy it. And, don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.  Don’t let the bastards (or your Face Book groups) get you down.

Peanut Butter and Comfort Zones

Comfort.  That’s what this season that we are embarking on is all about.  Religious inclinations aside, we are all seeking comfort in this season that covers the next seven weeks. Nothing wrong with that at all.  Comfort is, well, comforting. 

Comfort food leaps to mind.  For many of us, we associate this season with big warm meals and small warm drinks.  Turkeys, hams, buttery rolls, yams with small marshmallows torched on top, and plates of green beans smothered in something akin to what the cat leaves on the carpet from time to time…well, you get the idea.  We all have the meal that is our ultimate in comfort and very often it shows up this time of year.  My most comforting meal has little to do with the holiday season.  In fact, I have this meal once every six weeks or so, and it must meet certain standards to qualify as my comfort meal.  An open-faced smooth peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich with the jelly spread on the whole wheat bread so that all bites have a bit of jelly and peanut butter; sweet pickles (on the side, not on the sandwich) chilled and in a dish that will prevent the juice from soaking into the sandwich bread; three small pieces of extra sharp cheddar cheese; Lay’s potato chips, preferably from a newly opened bag; and, a large glass of cold skim milk.  That’s it. I’m not too picky, am I? 

It’s not just this season that urges me to look at comfort, but also the concept of what makes life pleasant on an on-going basis.  I read recently that it’s not what we do occasionally that makes a difference; it’s what we do regularly that makes the biggest difference in life.  Many people around me are constantly challenging themselves to do more, to be more, and to get more.  While such challenges can be part of what life is made of, comfort is important, too.

Consider this:  for about the past six months, I have been feeling unwell.  It has been difficult to get up in the morning, all too easy to go to bed unnaturally early, and to neglect that which I would not normally ignore.  In short, I have been horribly uncomfortable.  In examining a variety of causes of this unwellness, I realized that I have been waking in the morning, and the first thing I have been doing is checking work email and Face Book.  Innocuous.  One needs to be informed and know what the day has to bring.  Nevertheless, I have decided that I do not need to know what is going on at work until I get to work.  The world and all 1000+ of my close, personal friends will conduct their lives as they see fit whether or not I read their status or see the latest pictures of their cats.

Another thing I know is that I have been neglecting physical activity.  Part of this neglect is due to organic issues that are now being corrected.  However, I did think about driving from my home to the pool house where we have our homeowners’ meetings.  I don’t know how far this is, but I can tell you that on a bad day, I can walk there in less than five minutes.  Please note:  After 16 minutes of self-debate wherein I could have walked there and back at least twice I did not drive. I walked. On the scope of daily exercise: no gut pounding aerobics classes (I have never enjoyed that).  No boot camps where I am the last one to finish every exercise. (I did like boot camp for a while, though. Shout out to the instructor; you know who you are).  I will ride my bike in the neighborhood with youngest son.  I will walk or elliptical to tunes that make me feel like I’m in a Rocky training montage. And, I have realized that at the times when I felt best physically, I was swimming regularly.  I’m naturally buoyant and I have a strong stroke.  The pool is comfortable, and I am there a couple afternoons a week.

A thing that I don’t do is read the daily newspaper or watch nightly news.  I can’t.  The daily local newspaper is The Augusta Chronicle, and I cannot read this rag without a red pen in hand. When I first moved to Augusta, I applied for a job as a local interest writer with the Chronicle. (My shtick was:  new resident to the area discovers life in Augusta.)  I was told that I was overqualified.  Perhaps so, but if they had employed me, there would be many fewer misspellings and ill-placed commas.  The nightly news brings stories of tragedy from around the world directly into the living room.  I can’t have thousands dying in front of my fireplace every night. I can’t have the politicians screaming across the kitchen at me.  It’s too much.  I read news summaries and often read beyond those, delving into detail.  Still, I can’t experience every bus wreck and house fire on a global scale.  It’s too much.  And, yes, it makes me uncomfortable.   

In a variety of settings I have heard people talk and preach about “getting out of your comfort zone.”  This is code for challenging yourself: challenging yourself to get more involved in world issues or movements that need support or run a 10K.  While routine can be overdone, I say, “get into your comfort zone.”  Find your sweet spot.  Check Face Book less and watch the leaves in the wind more.  Give up the bone jarring run and stretch in the yoga studio.  Or, if you love Face Book, get on there more often and like more cat pictures before your seven mile run.  Watch the nightly news and debate politics.  Make a peanut butter sandwich.    Whatever works.  If you must challenge yourself, I would suggest challenging yourself to enjoy your comfort zone instead of feeling guilty.

N.D. Walsch suggests that “life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”  I disagree.  Life is based well inside your comfort zone.  Having a comfort zone wherein you are confident, feel good, can perform at optimum levels makes it possible to reach outside of your comfort zone.  And, perhaps you will expand your comfort zone.  But, it is precisely that life inside the comfort zone than enables us to do great things.  Without a zone of comfort, we will feel forever unsure, constantly doubtful and be rendered unwell. 

Find the comfort zone, the sweet spot that works for you. Then, keep that comfort zone.  Live in it.  Invite others in.  Visit outside of your comfort zone.  But, keep comfort as a mode of living, not a seasonal pursuit.

The Icing on the Cake

 “Mom, I think you're going to find the love of your life one day.” 

Son #3 and I went for a walk yesterday after school.  The walk is a new addition to our routine, and he has always been known for blurting things out.  These walks are designed to clear the cobwebs before homework time; they must also shake loose ideas he has floating around.  More often than not, his exclamations have granules or even cupfuls of truth.  Yesterday was no exception. 

“Oh, really?” 

“Yes, you’ll definitely find the love of your life…just not here in Georgia.”

Yes, that is precisely what he said.  And, I nearly fell over.  What proceeded from there was a conversation about the time that we have in life and the things we choose to do with it.  “Being in love,” as this twelve year-old understands it is what everyone is looking for.  Of course, there are plenty of 50 year-olds that think this, too.  If you don’t believe me, go have a look at match.com or okcupid.com or some other equally heinous website.  True enough that in middle school there is a lot of effort being put into being liked.  Wearing the right clothes and avoiding saying the wrong things – these are key to success in the middle grades.  Son’s thoughts on this no doubt swirl around his anticipation of his first ever middle school dance. 

We do spend a lot of our time looking for love or wanting to fall in love or wanting to fall back in love or some variant.  But, it’s really so unnecessary.  As I told son #3 yesterday, there are so many, many things to do and thoughts to think and books to read…and…he added: “Doctor Who episodes to watch” that looking for the “love of my life” is pretty low on my list right now.  He looked a little worried.  He assured me I could find someone.  I couldn’t tell him it’s not on my list at all because I think that the cats eating your corpse story if you die coupled with the cat lady jokes that son #2 and I bat around when talking about my future may have gotten to the youngest. 

If I could convince pre-teens, teenagers, and young adults (or all those folks on match.com) of one thing it would be this: searching for love and/or having lots of sex should not be your primary activity in life.  You are worth more.  Do not waste time, money, or tears on these activities.  Go and live your life.  Find things that are interesting to you that have nothing to do with finding a significant other.  Read.  Write. Dance. Sculpt. Compose music.  Eat food.  Have friends.  Have lots of friends.  Quit making Pinterest boards for a distant-future wedding.  Quit hooking up.  Do not spend time pining for the “love of your life” or “the one that got away” or even “the one that sleeps next to me but I don’t trust him or her enough to not go through his or her phone when he or she is asleep.”  Quit.  Go and live.  Find things that fascinate you.  Live life.

This is a hard pill to swallow and there are certainly hundreds of clichés and self-help books that lurk around this pill but here it is anyway:  Fall in love with yourself.  By doing this, you free yourself and your friends to love fully.  So many young people seem to believe that “needing” someone is equivalent to loving someone.  They convince themselves that they need someone to complete them, to insert in their Face Book relationship status bar, or to spend Saturday nights with.  If you fall in love with yourself, you free those around you.  This bit of dialogue from the 1985 movie Out of Africa illustrates:

Karen: But I do need you. You don't need me.

Denys: If I die will you die? You don't need me. You confuse need with want. You always have.

Sure, most people want love.  Someone to come home to.  A partner.  A wife.  A husband.  A “love of their lives,” but it is not a necessity.  You won’t die if you don’t have that someone.  You very likely will wither up and die if you neglect yourself.  It may sound selfish, but in the moment when you fall in love with yourself, you will find that you won’t need anyone else.  If someone else is in your life and you love each other, it’ll be icing, not the cake.

“Well, son, I’m pretty busy right now; I don’t really have time for anyone else.”

“Okay, but, Mom…at least you have me and the brothers.”

And that’s my icing.

An Attitude of Gratitude - Sort Of

A few weeks ago I was out with some friends for a drink and a snack.  During the course of this outing, everyone was on and off their phones – texting with absent spouses; responding to teen children who were out doing their own thing; or checking in with the babysitter of smaller children.   I was not above the obligatory phone check.  However, when I returned home, I was perusing Face Book, and I noticed that one of the friends who had been at our outing had updated her status:  “Having a great time with friends – love them all!”  The time stamp was in the middle of our time together.  Huh?  Why did she post this for others to see rather than putting the phone in her purse, and telling us all how much she was enjoying herself and how glad she was that we were all together?  I was flummoxed.  But, she is not alone. 

A similar phenomenon circulating on Face Book is appreciation memes.  Such stickers are a way of showing love or appreciation for someone in your life.  And they are almost as annoying as the if-I-can-get-one-million-likes-I-get-a-new-spleen-or-new-puppy memes.  To wit:

What?  How about if you love your daughter, call her have a meaningful chat?  If you love your son, take him to dinner?  Proofread his college app for him?  Take your daughter to the movies? I don’t believe my mom has ever posted this kind of thing, but I kind of hope she doesn’t.  I know my mom loves me, and I bet you do, too.  You don’t need this kind of cheesy virtual sign to remind you.  And, if this kind of sign is the first inkling you have of your mother’s love, there is something amiss. 

How about this one:

Hey, if you really love your husband, I bet I can think of a few actions he’d rather be the recipient of than your liking and sharing this.

Now, to add insult to injury, it is November again, and I have another thing to be curmudgeonly about:  thankfulness statuses on Face Book.  Some of my friends and many acquaintances will spend the next twenty-eight days posting one thing a day that they are thankful for.  They started out big yesterday:  “I’m thankful I’m a child of God” and “I’m so thankful for my wife and children; they are the lights of my life.”  But, these attitudes of gratitude will peter out by mid-month, and I may have to block some people: “So thankful for plastic grocery bags to scoop the poop into” and “Love that we have indoor plumbing.”

Before you label me a year-round Scrooge, let me clearly point out the problem here. We all need to be grateful in an on-going and active way, especially for the big things. If you are reading this, it is likely that you are educated, have a roof over your head, and reasonable nourishment for the foreseeable future.  You are better off than approximately 73% of the world’s population.  You need to act on your gratitude.  Why confine expressions of thankfulness to November? On Face Book?  And, how can one really sum up one’s love and gratitude in a four line status?  Are the recipients’ hearts warmed? Or do you simply feel better about the eleven months in which you take these people and things for granted?

I think electronic media has shrunk our ability to express ourselves in all different ways, and many of us have relegated expressions of gratitude and love to statuses and tweets.  Saying “I love you” is much safer through the bits and bytes that carry computerized messages than saying it face-to-face. Distance ameliorates the heartbreak of a non-response to proffered love. Furthermore, I have noticed that very few people – from the cashier at Target to my own children – don’t know how to say, “you’re welcome.”  If someone shoots them a “thanks” – that person may get back nothing, a grunt, or if they're very lucky, “no prob.”  Saying thank you should be a daily and face-to-face thing.

Now, you may argue that people move and fall out of touch.  These virtual messages are a great way to get back in touch, aren’t they?  Post a status about what a good friend he is and tag him in it, preferably with a funny throwback picture (bonus points if the picture is on a #throwbackThursday). A notification pops up on his phone; suddenly, you’re back in touch, right?  This computerized thankfulness seems to have degraded our communication skills and, seemingly, our real emotions.  It is also this kind of thing that encourages distance between people. 

If really want to thank you for something, I should come to you and thank you.  I should shake your hand.  Give you a hug.  At least write you a hand-written note. Bake you cookies? How about a sincere expression of real emotion? Shouldn’t I?  Has it become just too easy to fire off an email or a status an call it done?  Sure seems like it.

So, if you really feel you have to participate in the thankful status November thing, that’s fine. But it’s not enough.  Step out from behind the computer and actually thank people – in person.  And, when someone thanks you – say “you’re welcome” and mean it.  After all, love is an action, a verb, and it is out of love that gratitude springs.

Thank you.

One, Two, Freddie's Coming For You...

 My youngest son thinks I’m a curmudgeon. I do not like Halloween.  I don’t recall ever liking Halloween.  Still, to my credit every year we carve a pumpkin; costumes are bought (sorry Mom, no sewing here); pumpkin seeds are roasted and dutifully stored in an airtight container until they mold; trick-or-treating candy is purchased; children are taken trick-or-treating; and, we even do a little display on the porch with a skull, a ghost, and lights.  I do not like Halloween.  This is the one holiday of the year that I really want to sit out.

I don’t understand the fun of carving pumpkins.  I’m not artistic, so perhaps my disdain in this area comes from barely being able to use even a good knife to fashion some triangle eyes and a distorted mouth.  A very distorted mouth.  So, then the gourd sits on your porch for a few days, molds, looks kind of yucky, and eventually collapses in on itself. Not good.

Costumes. I will stick to a review of children’s costumes and steer away from the women’s sexy anything costumes.  Commercial children’s costumes are a racket: money makers for movie makers.  Yes, of course, the more attentive parents fashion wildly fantastic costumes from three hairpins and a skein of multicolored yarn.  I’m not that parent.  Sorry, Mom, I’ve never sewn an Indian prince or wizard costume for even one boy.  I have, however,  pinpointed the root of my costume annoyance:  I grew up in the Midwest.  One October, you might have an elaborately hand-sewn and beautifully sparkly gossamer angel costume (thanks, Mom!) complete with wings and a halo. The temperature plunges.  It snows.  A record snowfall, mind you – not just some flurries.  So, you wear your angel costume under a heavy coat, snow pants, snow boots, and mittens.  No one knows you are an angel.  So, the next year, Mom makes you a heavy felt Indian princess outfit – complete with fringy heavy felt leggings, a warm headdress, and even sleeves long enough to cover your hands to avoid the frostbite which is sure to come.  October rolls around and it is the warmest one on record in a century, so you trudge, sweltering in your felt from house to house, begging melty chocolate.  Costumes were no fun.

Scary things.  No.  Just no.  My middle son watches “American Horror Story” regularly.  He has enjoyed going to haunted houses and the place called “Plantation Blood” almost every year since middle school.  He and friends watch scary movies throughout the year.  This son will watch a scary movie, recount the plot to me, and I will laugh.  The writers of most of these movies obviously drink too much cheap vodka to think coherently, much less write a well-conceived plot. But, ask me to watch one and I will run.  I am spooked by the smallest scary things; and, being the age I am, I see no reason to challenge or change this part of who I am.  I watched a number of the Nightmare on Elm Streets with my sorority sisters.  The nights that followed such viewings were filled with mini-heart attacks as I walked home from the library late at night.  The smallest rustle was transformed, “One, two, Freddie’s coming for you…”  

I know there is a crowd of evangelical folks who feel that Halloween is Satanic and therefore we should protect our children from this pagan holiday.  Whatever.  The vast majority of children in this country love Halloween because they get to dress up and get candy.  The majority of the adults that I know like Halloween because they have kids who like it, or they like dressing up and getting drunk.  I know a lot of people – I’ve lived across the ocean and back, and in several states.  I even lived in the purported witchcraft center of Europe: Latvia.  I have friends of all religions and non-religions, from all ethnic backgrounds.  I have never even met a Satanist.  Are our churches really worried that one night of candy collecting amidst lighted pumpkins will turn our children into Satan-worshippers?  That logic doesn’t hold enough water to bob for apples in.

Perhaps the combination of the costume disappointments of my childhood coupled with my feeling that children dress up and play whenever they want combined with the fact that I always keep a little bit of candy in the house for my kids have all caused me to be blinded to the point of joyfully participating in this holiday.  As an adult, I have no motivation to dress up as anything, and I most certainly don’t need Halloween to encourage me to have a drink.  Perhaps I am a curmudgeon.  But, just because I don’t like Halloween doesn’t mean I begrudge others their festivities. Have fun making your costumes and parading around.   Enjoy the candy-collecting; come by my house – I buy the good stuff; no tootsie rolls here.  And, when you want to get out of the freezing rain or steamy unseasonable eighty degrees, knock on the door.  I’ll have a light supper, a drink, and comfy chair for you.  I’ll sit out, but I’ll save you a seat.