Recollecting Impermanence

Hello, Readers. Since last I wrote, the beloved pooch has died. This is terribly sad, and I notice his absence everywhere, for example when I wake up and no longer have to step over a large, sleeping dog. Or when I peel a carrot, and I realize he is not waiting patiently on the doormat for me to toss him the ends. It’s sad and we are all grieving, and yet it was inevitable that we would outlive him, barring unforseen circumstances.To avoid this situation, I would have had to adopt a tortoise, I suppose, but they’re not much good for midday walks. 

Impermanence has, therefore, been on my mind. The truth of impermanence is one of those truths to which we pay lip service. We know life is short, and that change is the only certainty in life, but we usually only know it theoretically, or intellectually, not in a bone-deep way. Yet knowing the deep truth of impermanence is key to appreciating what’s happening right now. Understanding impermanence is the doorway to wisdom, so they say. They, in this case, being Buddhist teachers. 

Buddhist philosophy feels impermanence is so important that everyone, layperson or monk, should contemplate it daily in the form of the five daily remembrances. They are as follows:

1. Just like everybody, I am of the nature to experience illness. I cannot avoid sickness
2. Just like everybody, I am of the nature to grow old. I cannot avoid aging. 
3. Just like everybody, I am of the nature to die. I cannot escape death. 
4. I am the owner of and heir to all my actions. 
5. I must be separated and parted from all that is dear and beloved to me.

Those last two are listed in different order, depending on the translation.

—Upajjhatthana Sutta 

I’m not going to lie, these seem like a bummer. Number five is really hard to take, these days. I lost an earring down the bathroom sink the other day. I swear that thing committed harakiri, because otherwise there is no explanation. Unless it is that my ear holes have stretched and sagged along with everything else on my person? But I mean maybe the earring disappeared to get me to pay attention to the blog post I’ve delayed writing for days. Was this not karma showing me the truth of this contemplation? Really, it’s very sad, this truth. In the way I understand the practice, by facing this idea daily, I am to become less grasping after stasis and more accepting of the true nature of life, that it is transitory, from the briefest mental image or thought, from the strongest emotion to the longest life. Once I accept this, I suppose, I am free from a layer of sadness and anxiety about the inevitable changes, and this extra space allows me to appreciate what is before me more fully than I do when I am worried about something or someone slipping away. Earring. Dog. Daughters. Life. 

I may be a little tender on this reflection, considering the dog, considering that we’ve just dropped the younger daughter at college for the first time. The elder daughter will soon decamp from our comfortable pandemic bubble for a job in Boston. My sister the psychoanalyst is one year older today, which means I am, too. And none of your “she’s only one day older than she was yesterday” folderol. Sometimes the milestones hit you. 

Here’s a secret. I’ve found that when I contemplate these five remembrances, I feel a bit of relief. It’s just the teensiest bit of relief, more of a minute relaxation deep in my gut. I think it has to do with letting go of some of the struggle to collect and keep everyone and everything dear near. I think it has to do with releasing some shame around aging, illness, death, responsibility, and loss. I think there is shame around these things sometimes. We feel that if we experience them, it is our fault for not managing well enough in the world. We didn’t exercise enough, or eat the right food in the right amounts. We didn’t appreciate the gravity of our choices at the time and could have chosen better. Maybe you don’t feel that way, Readers. If so, I am glad for you. For me, I have found it so. Which means, that counterintuitive as it seems for me, these recollections do help me be more comfortable. 

I was informed that my earring, a thing I hold dear, was most likely retrievable from the trap under the bathroom sink. I marshaled my resources to figure that out—by which I mean I texted the husband, who said he would do it when he got home from work.

The husband did indeed find my earring. So what does that mean? It means that sometimes things from which we are separated come back to us. As Sting told us, back in the early 1980s, “If you love something, set it free, free, free.”

Sting’s lyric doesn’t exactly apply to losing an earring. It might apply, however, to letting your child leave for college, and your other no-longer-a-child child leave for a new phase of life as a college graduate working for peanuts and trying to make the world a bit better. By "letting your child" I don't suggest I have any choice in these things. The letting is internal.

However, because of the covid, the new college student will indeed be coming back to us. Her college is only allowing the first years one semester on campus. The rest of the academic year will be remote learning, so that the older students can have a semester there. Oy. Such is the ever-changing nature of things. 

Meanwhile, Readers, I started full time graduate school for social work this week. At the ripe old age of one thousand and ten, I am returning to school for a master’s degree, with a plan to become a therapist. I don’t know if this is wisdom or foolishness, embracing of life, or denial of time passing. Nevertheless, I go forward. I cannot escape illness, death, or aging. I cannot avoid responsibility for my choices or letting go of all I love. Okay. So be it. 

The Just World Hypothesis, and Annals of Successful Parenting

Hi Readers,

Chitchat about the weather, etc. So much has been going on. I’ve been turning the heat off, then on, then off, then on. Fan in the window. Fan out. Window closed. Birds too loud. Birds on the pillows. (Well, so it sounds.) Rain, then sun, then clouds, clouds, clouds. Sweaters packed away in lavender for summer. Sweaters needed. That’s spring in the Northeast. Flowers and rain. Hot at night, cold in the day.

I’ve finished my book draft and reread it all, making notes for revision. This is the good kind of writing, the making it better kind, not the figuring out what I’m trying to say kind. That part sucks.

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about. It’s the Just World Hypothesis. This is a theory developed by a social psychologist Melvin Lerner that says that humans have a powerful intuition that people get what they deserve. I.e., the world is essentially just. If good things happen to you, then that proves you’re good; if bad things happen, well, you deserved them. This is where blaming the victim comes from. In a just world, and here I am extrapolating, if something awful happens to someone else, that awful thing suggests the person is sub par somehow. And if something good happens, then they are being rewarded for being good.

I was reading about this in a very interesting book about fear-based parenting. Fear-based parenting is what most of us parents are doing these days, to one degree or another, according to the book. The Just World Hypothesis is a cognitive bias that colors our perception of events. It’s part of what makes us fearful. We want to prevent bad things from happening to our children, who are, let’s be clear, offshoots of us, because a bad thing happening has an associated taint on our virtue.

I couldn’t help thinking about how this bias relates to our culture’s extolling of wealth and fame and prestige and all those trappings of success. You can draw a straight line from there to there.  And those trappings of success relate to greed and materialism. The need to prove we are successful is powered by fear that unless we amass some amount of these things, we won’t know that we’re good people. We must scramble to amass amass amass to show ourselves and others that in this Just World, we are the Good.

In recent years, I have become acquainted with some purported Christian teachings called the Prosperity Gospels and Dominionism. These teachings are the Just World Hypothesis in Sheep’s clothing. If you have wealth and so forth, it is because you are godly. This by the way, according to Stephen Cope, a writer and yogi and generally wise guy, is also an association you find in Hindu mythology. The equating of godly with goldlyness.

It’s really an endless cycle of misery we step into when we buy into this cognitive bias. And of course we would much prefer that there is a Just World than that there isn’t one.

Yet it was not always so.

Reading about this bias made me think of Boethius. I heard about Boethius during my Junior year at Oxford, where I took a tutorial on Chaucer. My teacher—don, in Oxbridge talk—was an unfriendly woman who was unimpressed by my grasp of Middle English. Her attitude was opposite to that of my main don, who offered me Earl Grey tea and told me I had a nice, intuitive approach to essay writing.

Anyway, Boethius, wrote in about the 6th Century C.E. One of his most successful tracts was a letter from jail. He went on trial for something—heresy, perhaps—because he was a Hellenist and Christian mix. He wrote this philosophical treatise in which he talks to Lady Philosophy about his misery and bad breaks and losses of fortune and material wealth and all the trappings of success. Lady Philosophy tells him that the Wheel of Fortune rules the world. We all ride on it. Sometimes we’re up, and sometimes we’re down, and it’s really nothing about us. We don’t add blame and shame to the burden we carry if things don’t go our way. Failure says nothing about our virtue. Furthermore, because we can’t count on Fortune providing all those external signs of success, we need to live in accordance with more abstract and noble values, such as virtue. That will make us happy.

This wheel of fortune idea, which predated Boethius, became known as The Boethian Wheel of History, and this book, called The Consolation of Philosophy became a best seller in late Ancient and early Middle Ages. Chaucer talks about it, which is why scary don lady had me read Boethius.

Boethius was executed, by the way, for whatever he did to piss off whomever he served in the late Roman Empire. Nevertheless, and most appropriately, his words lived on.


Somewhere along the way came this shift to the idea that dominates our culture now. That if something good happens to you, it means you deserve it. And if something bad happens to someone else, then they deserved that, too.

With an attitude like that, no wonder we’re all anxious and stressed out.

Here’s something I’ve been doing. I spent three days at training for my upcoming job teaching writing to first year students in college. That’s going to be exciting, and maybe the pay will cover the new outfit I bought to attend the training. But, hey, it’s a job, and it will count on a resumé, and at this point, with two teenagers in my house, it seems appealing to know I’ll have 18 other teenagers captive to me starting shortly after Labor Day. They’ll have to listen to me, or they’ll fail.


Here are things that have been happening. The other day the 19-year-old came home for a brief visit before she heads off for a ten week summer internship in particle physics. When we arrived home we discovered the 16-year-old in a tree. With a boy. Or, to be more specific, two bikes were in the driveway, and after a brief look, we saw four legs dangling from the maple tree.

The boy soon rode off on his bicycle, which was when I realized he was biking without a helmet. This caused me to yell after him and generally embarrass the 16-year-old. Then I discovered that she had biked with him without her helmet. This occasioned further yelling. Dignified yelling, I hasten to add. Yelling that sounded jokey but wasn’t. You know, things like, “Sure, it feels good. Until your brain is smushed by a passing car.” And, “Yeah, a helmet flattens your hair, and you look dorky; an accident could flatten your head and then you’ll really look stupid.” That kind of thing.

I told her that unless she wore her helmet, I did not want her to bike with the boy again.

She says she won’t.


I choose to believe her. I have no choice.

Anyway, I suggested she invite this fellow over for dinner, along with some of her other friends. We’d have a nice, friendly dinner, lots of fun. In the background, I would have a couple screens set up, you know, just casual, playing videos, since videos catch the attention. Videos about birth control, sexually transmitted diseases, drugs, alcohol, bike safety, vaping, juuling. That kind of thing. Maybe some Beyoncé or Childish Gambino thrown in to break things up.  I thought it sounded nice, welcoming, and friendly. Also laid-back.

Did I forget anything? Please alert me in the comments. Thank you.

Now the 19-year-old is gone. I am left to experience the inexorability of time. It’s a cliché, and also true. Boethius might talk about wheels of fortune that have a kind of inexorable randomness, but the wheel is a reassuring thing, promising return. Whereas time is just moving forward, moving forward.  Time moves in linearity, never mind what those physicists say. That’s why it’s inexorable. Whether I am tied to the track like a damsel in distress, with tight Kewpie doll curls and mouth moving out of alignment with the subtitles, or watching in horror from inside it, makes no difference to the inexorable train of time.

So, you know. I’m feeling as if I need to find a way to make a mark, to be of use to people. To be needed. It’s not all over, the being needed by the children. It’s just moved into a phase where they don’t know they need me. And I really, really like it when they know it. However, time and all that. Change occurs and one must adjust. I’m needed now to keep an eagle eye on bike helmets and legs in trees. I take what I can get.

I wonder if there is a way to incorporate bike safety into my first year seminar with my captive audience. Will it fit with the Franciscan themes I am required to teach: heritage; natural world; diversity; and social justice? I will find a way.

Annals of Successful Parenting: Writing

The 10th grader is annoyed with her English teacher, Mrs. Bombadoodle. Annoyed is perhaps too mild a descriptor. She’s been fulminating against Mrs. Bombadoodle. Mrs. B is requiring from her a five paragraph essay of 800 words, comparing and contrasting The Odyssey and The Wizard of Oz (the movie). She’s been complaining about how she can never write only eight hundred words and how unreasonable that is. And she can’t get started. She had to write one paragraph for homework the other night. Then she has the weekend to finish the draft of the essay. Then she will have to rewrite it and hand it in. This job feels impossible to her. 

This is one of those parenting moments when my desire to be Supportive Parent runs alongside my Beleagured Writer. Supportive Parent would listen and say, “Oh my. My, my. You can do it.” Beleagured Writer would say, “Uh, yeah. That’s called drafting, revising, and editing. That’s called writing.” Educators call this “the writing process.” They would, wouldn't they? 

It just so happens I am reading Draft No. 4 by John McPhee, which is about writing. Honestly, I have been mostly a fiction writer, and John McPhee is a famous nonfiction essayist whose work has been often in the New Yorker. By which I mean, in a roundabout, indirect, and therefore perhaps poorly executed way, to say that I haven't read all of his work. However, he is a professor of writing, and he's written a book about his writing process. I have been struggling with my writing, and when I struggle, I dip into inspiration via other writers’ books on writing. The eponymous essay has a great section on writer’s block and self-doubt. In short, the message is that he suffers from it, mostly during the time when he’s trying to write the first draft. Best of all, for this Beleagured Writer, he says that anyone who doesn’t is not to be trusted. I would insert a quotation here, but I’m writing from an undisclosed location apart from my book. Namely, from my father’s apartment. Furthermore, I smell like rancid body lotion, which is not pleasant. While packing, I tossed into my suitcase a hotel bottle from my stash. Apparently, it turned. 

McPhee also says that writing is all about revising. This is my truth, too. Once something is on the page, it is much less frightening and daunting to work with. But getting started. Oh my word. 

And then he has a great passage about trying to write and not being able to, and so writing Dear Mom, and then complaining all about what you’re trying to write but can’t. And then cutting out the “Dear Mom”.

That made me laugh, because he wrote it funny, and it is funny and well-written. Also, it reminded me of probably the best writing advice I got in college. Perhaps ironically, this advice came not from a professor, but from a classmate in my dorm, Darlene. One day, I was whinging about having trouble starting a paper, and Darlene, who was from some place in South America, and had creamy skin and soft brown eyes and hair with bangs that fell over her eybrows, and long limbs and delicate fingers, but whom I had never thought of as any kind of writer, said to me that she just wrote her papers in the first person. “What?” I gasped. I had never considered anything so informal, schooled as I had been in the thesis, supporting statements, conclusion five paragraph essay format. The ten commandments of school essays. First person and flow and informality in an academic paper? What about topic sentence, quotations, and references? 

“There aren’t as many “I’s” as you think,” she told me. “You can just take them out afterwards.” 

Darlene wore pleated jeans. They were fashionable back then. We agreed that our desert island makeup would be mascara, definitely. Darlene had a handsome boyfriend named Peter, who also had dark hair and eyes. I believe they got married. 

When a professor later told me I wrote well and my essays had a nice intuitive flow, it was because of Darlene. 

As for which part of me wins the race with the 10th Grader, Supportive Parent or Beleagured Writer, let’s just say I offered the comment that being forced to write with limits can be helpful.

I added, “It’s all about revision,” which was not what she wanted to hear. So it made me feel better to learn from John McPhee that he told his daughters the same thing. It is all about revision.

And where I am I with my book’s revision? I’m at the stage of avoidance. John McPhee also cops to it in his book, thanks God (as my sister the psychoanalyst says). And he told his daughter to put her draft away for a little while and then go back to it. That is what I told the 10th Grader. She listened, although I must admit that she had already decided to take a break. “These things need to sit for a while,” I said. She was halfway up the stairs by then. 

They need to marinate. I believe in steeping, the subconscious, the unconscious. I believe, as John McPhee says in his book, that while I’m not writing, the work is still percolating in the background, maybe even working itself out. 

And I said it first. 

At least in my life. 

The tenth grader turned in 900 words. We shall see how strict Mrs. Bombadoodle is. Writing is about rules, as so much of life is, and also about knowing when and how to break them. 

Annals of Successful Parenting: Humility

I’m going to come right out and say that this past week I hit a low. I was humbled. A good friend’s mother died, and instead of being able to help her out by picking up her son from school, I was at the vet with our fancy dog. As it happened, what I thought was a matter of some urgency, namely ticks on the belly that I was unable to remove, was something else. 

So, the back story on this is that the husband and I left the 10th grader home over the weekend, while we went to visit the college student for her 19th birthday. Said college student had arranged sufficient buffers between herself and us that our presence on her birthday was acceptable to her. The 10th grader had PSATs to take and the Homecoming dance to attend, so being the freewheeling parents we are, we left her to her own devices. 

Actually, she was well-armed with emergency phone numbers, and had a friend to go to the dance with, who would come and sleep over with her to keep her company. I knew my neighbor, E, would let me know if there was some kind of wild party happening. So all was in hand.

She said, not at all defensively. 

We took the college student to lunch, and then dropped her off at her college and spent the evening with our Yankee friends. Sunday morning, we walked around the lake on campus and fed the college student again. While we were heading home, the 10th grader discovered a tick on the dog’s head and texted us. We were able to guide her through the tick’s removal via speakerphone, while driving on the Mass Pike, thus confirming her interest in becoming a veterinarian. Then, the next day, frolicking in the the yard, I saw these inflamed spots on the dog's belly. Ticks. More ticks. And clearly Deer ticks, vectors of horrid disease, judging by their size and color. So I tried to remove them. With tweezers. With a special tick-removal spoon. I am very good at removing ticks, usually. But these suckers were not budging. And the dog was whining. So to the vet. 

Where I learned that these were not what I feared.

“These are nipples,” said the vet. 

Nipples! I thought of the tweezers.

“And these are skin tags.” 

Skin tags! I thought of the tweezers again. 

The vet looked at me. I thought, My, this veterinarian is young. 

“This happens more often than you might think, so don’t feel bad,” she said. 

Don’t feel bad! I thought of the tweezers. I tried to remove my dog’s skin tags and nipples with my Tweezerman tweezers. Those are serious tweezers. 

I mean, really, I know about the dog’s nipples. I have seen the dog’s nipples many times. So how could this have happened? I ask myself this more often than is probably healthy. Fortunately, our fancy dog isn’t long on memory and he has moved on. I can only attribute this lapse to the category 5 cold that was collecting in my head. A category 5 cold that moved in and blocked out a great deal. Certainly my powers of reason and my knowledge of dog anatomy. 

So I hunkered down and watched many episodes of “Lady Dynamite.” I’m not sure I recommend the show, so don’t blame me if you don’t like it. And now I feel better. 

Speaking of attempting to remove my dog’s nipples, I’ve been thinking about humility. Humility and success. In one of our recent accountability conference calls, my friends C and E and I were talking about self-promotion. I’m terrible at self-promotion. I can hardly convince myself to post my blog posts. And every week I wonder if I dare bother people on my mailing list with yet another blog post, whose only dubious (if any) benefit might be to reassure the reader that she has never done anything as dumb as trying to remove her dog’s nipples with tweezers. Anyway, at some point in our conversation about self-promotion, C said she was sick of self-promotion. She was going back to humility. It had always worked for her in the past. This made me think of the list of positive character traits I posted on the fridge a few years ago. It’s still there. Humility is one of them. 

Synchronously, I happened to be rereading Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography. I came upon the chapter in which he describes how he developed a list of virtues for himself. Along with each virtue, he created “Precepts” for maintaining them. Many of these precepts have stuck with us, because not only were they essential molecules of wisdom, but also he wrote them such that they stuck as aphorisms. For example, his number one virtue is Temperance. The precepts under temperance are, “Eat not to dulness. Drink not to elevation.” 

Then, to help ingrain these virtues in himself, he devised his famous virtues chart. At least I think it’s famous. Is it? Have you heard of it? He set up this chart in a notebook, devoting a page to each virtue. On each page, he put the virtue at the top, then a chart with the days of the week across the top and the list of virtues (abbreviated to first initial) down the side. “I determined to give a Week’s strict Attention to each of the Virtues successively. Thus in the first Week my great Guard was to avoid every the least Offence against Temperance, leaving the other Virtues to their ordinary Chance, only marking every Evening the faults of the Day.” So each night he would mark by any of his virtues that he failed to uphold, with a goal of having no marks all week along the line of the virtue he had chosen as the focus that week. By running through his set of virtues several times in a year, he hoped to succeed in having no marks at all to indicate failings by the end. 

This is all very admirable, and accounts for Benjamin Franklin being hailed as the original American self-help guru. But what was amusing was that originally, he had come up with twelve virtues. It was the suggestion of “a Quaker Friend having kindly inform’d me that I was generally thought proud,” that caused him to add a thirteenth virtue, humility.*

You didn't ask, but in case you were wondering, I think he should have added a fourteenth virtue: Generosity. After reading Jill Lepore’s fascinating Book of Ages about Benjamin’s sister,  who struggled financially her entire life, I was left wondering why her wealthy big brother didn’t give her more money. How hard could it have been? So, he's not perfect. And perhaps lack of generosity is worse than trying to tweeze the nipples off of your dog. 

But I digress. I agree with his Quaker friend about humility. Caroline Adams Miller talks about the importance of humility in developing grit in her book. "People who are humble are open to self-improvement and are willing to seek out feedback to become better," she says. So I guess that Benjy Franklin did have it. You might as well have it, too. Because one way or another, we all get humbled. It might hurt less if we can embrace it. 

I know, I used this photo before, but Milo didn't want to show his nipples. 

*Precept: Imitate Jesus and Socrates. 

Annals of Successful Parenting - Hazards of Success

Since last I wrote, we have successfully deposited the college student in her dorm. We have successfully provided the bed with the following supporting materials: a mattress topper, a mattress and mattress-topper allergy-barrier cover, a mattress pad; and sheets, a duvet, and a fuzzy blanket. We have met the roommate and found her nice. We have met the college president, who walked through the halls as we were unloading, all of us sweaty in the very humid, hot, unair-conditioned dorm. Within moments of arrival, the college student soon had her wall decorated with strings of lights and a collage of photos. Not a one of her family, I will mention. That’s okay. I’ll sit in the dark. (You’re supposed to say that with a Yiddish accent. “That’s uhkay, I’ll sit in the dahk.”)

As we were leaving campus, we passed a trio of mother, father, and new college student laden with bags and bins from Bed, Bath, and Beyond. The mother snapped a photo of her daughter and said aloud, sort of to us and sort of to the trees, “I’m leaving my firstborn at college. How is it possible?”  Her plaintive, confused voice could have been mine. “I just said ‘goodbye’ to mine,” I said. Then my voice cracked and I pushed my sunglasses up my nose. What else was there to say? There were many of us bewildered moms and dads and sad siblings orbiting the campus that day. 

This is the fruit of success, Readers. I say this with bitterness. Bitterness - because “they” all say that success can be empty. There are several reasons for success to be empty. There’s aiming for the wrong things, things that won’t actually bring fulfillment, things like money or fame or, you know, objects. We’ve had that drilled into us, after all. Rich men and camels and eyes of needles and heaven and such. Success can bring money, but money doesn’t buy happiness. Although, up to a certain point, in fact, money does buy happiness, it’s just that excess money doesn’t. But I digress. 

Other ways success can bring emptiness include an all-too-human tendency called hedonic adaptation, a tendency for people get used to their circumstances, good or bad.  I suppose it’s a type of regression to the mean, returning to a base level of happiness, which is a tendency of organisms, which we humans are. We seek homeostasis, right? This adaptation is good when you’re in a concentration camp, for example, because it allows you to endure and ultimately survive - unless you get killed, I mean. But in regular life, it can mean that once you attain a longed-for, worked-for goal, the happiness it brings you pales. For example, for years I wanted an agent. Now, I have an agent. This was super exciting for me for awhile. Now, however, I’m anxiously awaiting the next step: the publisher. (Please send good vibes, even if you don’t believe in sending good vibes) 

And then there’s the dubious success of raising children who leave. Literal emptiness. Which brings me back to my favorite subject, myself. How am I feeling? Last week, a friend invited me and another friend out for a “sad moms coffee.” We met when our children were toddlers in preschool. One sad mom summed up my feelings about the college student’s departure perfectly. “I know my child is where he is supposed to be, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But I am mourning the end of his childhood.” 

Naturally, this coffee event ended in tears. No, it didn’t end in tears, because we are not total idiots. It contained tears, though. 

And yesterday, the first day of school in our town, a friend texted me after her two kids got to their first days of middle and high school, that she understood how I must be feeling about the college student being at college and the 9th grader starting high school, because she was so sad and crying. I texted back with attempts at sympathy, saying something about how every life landmark our children reach creates mixed emotions of pride and nostalgia, but really, I couldn’t help adding, “Yeah, we’re gonna get old, mama.” Which is what this is all about, isn’t it? I mean, not about the getting old, which we will be lucky to do, but about the end result of all this life: death. 

This may have something to do with the well of hypochondria I’ve fallen into this week. There was a tooth scare (it’s fine), and a pulled muscle in my torso somewhere that I know is from the insane amount of weed-pulling I did this weekend but that I fear is something ruptured or malignant.  Even a mosquito bite on my neck that flares up when I watch TV has me twitchy. I kid not. Zika? Malaria? 

Man, success sucks. 

Now, perhaps this post is not as uplifting as I might like it. So, I offer this tidbit of wisdom from the definitely wise Pema Chodron. It's something I'm working on right now. Perhaps you should, too. 

SEEING CLEARLY"Meditation is about seeing clearly the body that we have, the mind that we have, the domestic situation that we have, the job that we have, and the people who are in our lives. It’s about seeing how we react to all these things. It’s seeing our emotions and thoughts just as they are right now, in this very moment, in this very room, on this very seat. It’s about not trying to make them go away, not trying to become better than we are, but just seeing clearly with precision and gentleness."Pema Chodron.

Being Okay In the Moment

I have Olympics fatigue. If I see one more car commercial, I’m going to scream. And where is the footage of the Decathlon and Heptathlon? And why do women get “hept” and men get “dec” athlons? And why do beach volleyball playing women wear wedgie-bikinis?

I’m also thinking ‘bout Aly Raisman. Gymnast extraordinaire. The one right up there with Simone Biles, just under her on the podium, usually sporting silver to Simone Biles’s gold medal. Thinking about her parents. Have you all seen the footage of them watching her compete? It’s hilarious. It’s also so painfully relatable. Sports being a metaphor for life and all, that is parenting in the proverbial nutshell: You want to be there for every moment with your child, to support her, to root for her, to encourage her to go out there and take risks, but you suffer. Her parents looked like they were ill from strain. They were twisting around on their seats, especially Mama Raisman (actually Faber), who was weaving and wringing herself like a white flag of surrender hung out in a storm, battered by the wind, pelted by the rain, shredded and weathered by the seasons, but hanging. I totally related.

Well, what did you expect, Readers? I’m at a moment - that’s Moment with a capital-M. My elder will be leaving for college in nine days. It feels like the end of something. Even though I know we will see her again, it feels like a change. I remember when I left for college. I didn’t think it was really going to change things, but after the first summer, I never went home permanently. So I am having this Moment. 

Another thing Aly Raisman has me thinking about is mudita, a Buddhist term interpreted as wishing well for others. Rejoicing in others’ good fortune. I think Aly Raisman has exhibited mudita towards Simone Biles, who is the only one on the US gymnastics team who performed better than her. Sure, maybe it’s easy for Aly Raisman to feel - or, let me be clear, appear to feel - happy about the little Tide Pod’s extraordinary accomplishments because her own have been quite amazing, too. 

But I could see things turning dark for Aly Raisman. After all, this is her second or third Olympics, and she is in her prime, and here comes this first time Olympian with her unbeatable degrees of difficulty in her routines and her plethora of lucrative product endorsements (Tide, for example). Aly could go dark. She could go all, “Why me?” She could get all in her own face for not being just that tenth or two of a point better. She could wallow and wail about all her effort and being thwarted in her “quest for gold,” as I can just hear that suit-wearing Bob Costas saying. 

But she does not appear to be at all frustrated. She appears supportive and encouraging and - dare I say it - proud of her teammate. She seems not to take losing personally, as indicative of something she lacks, but rather to see Simone Biles’s success as reflecting on Simone and not on her. She doesn’t seem to be zero-sum about things, even though there is a zero-sum quality to a competition. The gymnast seems to feel comfortable with herself. 

Earlier today I was talking to a friend who said, “I’m thinking about being okay in the moment and okay with what I’ve done.”  Good idea. 

When you can do that, you can have mudita for your teammates. When you can do that, you can say you have done the best you could for your soon-to-be 18-year-old-college-first-year child. When you are happy with who you are and what you’ve done in the moment, you have succeeded. 

So my Moment requires preparing for change. Change is constant, as they say, and yet I've always approached change like a maniac holding onto a slender tree trunk caught in a flash flood. That is, I try to avoid it. Well, that's where I am. I'm experiencing that and trying to be okay with it. Being present is one of the elements of my scaffolding of success, and right now, that's my focus. I'm feeling a bit like Mama Raisman (actually Faber) looks while her daughter performs. So be it. I'm hanging in there. It's what's required of me right now. I'm kind of okay in a difficult moment, and when I look at my daughter, of whom I'm so very proud, I'm okay with what I've done.  

And yes, I would like a gold medal. 

Grown and Flown

There are so many ways I have to learn to let go as my children grow up. One of them is letting go of detailed knowledge about what they are doing.

I'm delighted to have a piece up at the excellent blog Grown and Flown. It's about the weekend we left the senior at home alone, and she announced that she wanted to try getting drunk.

Please click here to read my post.

Update - Includes Advice From An Expert

Here’s what’s going on around here:

• My neck. I have this skin cancer on my neck and it’s not going away until Feb. 22nd, when the plastic surgeon can take it off. No one is concerned about this skin cancer on my neck except me. So I am concerned enough for all of them. My concern about my skin cancer on my neck can stretch to envelop the concern not shared by the husband, the dermatologist, the dermatologist’s nurse, the receptionist at the plastic surgeon, and the plastic surgeon. Although he did say it isn’t something you’d want to leave alone. Which statement would have sent me scrabbling in my purse for a stray Xanax, if I’d remembered I might have one. My ability to recall this potential savior was blocked by the enormous wave of concern this statement by the plastic surgeon loosed within me. Yes, my concern is flexible and expanding, like a mother’s love flexes and expands to encompass each new child. 

• Speaking of a mother's love: The senior. Apparently college application deadlines weren’t the last time the applicant had to communicate with her schools. Now we’ve entered the stage when, apparently, the applicant is expected to ping these schools with updates on her awards, grades, and activities. I thought we were going to be allowed to just pretend there was nothing going on until late March when the notifications will come out, but no, apparently, there is no rest for the stressed. 

• Speaking of the Senior: Externalization:

Externalization is a technical term describing how teenagers sometimes manage their feelings by getting their parents to have their feelings instead. In other words, they toss you an emotional hot potato. 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/parenting/drama-queens-whats-really-going-on-in-a-teenage-girls-head/article28549947/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=Referrer:+Social+Network+/+Media&utm_campaign=Shared+Web+Article+Links

I am pretty sure I’ve been juggling hot potatoes for the last couple of months. Now I understand.  I’m going to buy this book by Lisa Damour.

There’s a short interview with her on this website. 

• On the plus side, I’ve been working on the draft of my book and that’s going well. 
• I'm excited about Einstein's gravitational waves proving to be true. 

Have a nice weekend, catch those hot potatoes, and for heaven’s sake, wear sunscreen. 

Reach, Target, and Safety Goals

Hello, Readers, I am just writing a quick post this week, as this evening marks the start of the Season’s Festivities around here and I have a frittata and a soup to cook. 

It’s been a blergh week. That means no news on the book front, and lots of work on the parenting front: the Senior danced her final Nutcrackers. Much emotion involved in that. Following that came assessment of the school work she needed to complete, as well as the college applications. She’s working up to the deadline on those things. It’s not how I wanted it, but that’s how it is. Since before Thanksgiving, she’s been dancing all weekend, every weekend, in different cities around Massachusetts and Vermont, on top of her regular classes - oh, and school, too! So there wasn’t any time for essays. Or sleep, actually. (I can practically see Frank Bruni flexing his writing hand for another Op Ed piece on over-achieving children and their terrible parents.) What can I say? Some kids want to overachieve. You really can’t stop ‘em. 

On the plus side, I got some good advice during my monthly conference call with E and C. I told them I’m in a waiting mode, and it’s frustrating. Waiting and rejection are also wearing at my noives. (Say that with a New Jersey - Joizy - accent.) I’m starting to say self-deprecating things in front of my children, which they hear with dismay. Not healthy. E told me to try to find some activities that boost my self esteem that aren’t related to publishing. Good advice. My old NYC therapist gave me that advice, too.

C told me to take Seth Godin’s advice and “pick yourself.” Stop waiting for permission. That resonated, since giving yourself permission is definitely one of the keys to success I identified. Once again, therefore, I must remind myself I do have permission to undertake this goal - or whatever goal is important to me. So while in this waiting period, waiting to hear from publishers, I should choose myself, which means write the dang book, get immersed. Get excited. Do it for me. Keep moving and going. 

Maybe I should look at my situation in college parlance. After all, around this house, we’ve been thinking in those terms for months. Okay, sure. My Reach goal is publication by a traditional imprint, with an editor and all that. My Target goal is self publication. And my Safety goal is getting that book written, which will achieve a few things: get it done; provide me with new material to blog on and for articles; allow me to see the next project. As in the college search, it is wise to find your safety options appealing. You want to be happy with yourself and where you are, even if you fall short of your reach. 

Happy Seasons Greetings Holidays! 

Annals of Successful Parenting: Modeling

Oh, hello, Readers. It's kind of grim out there, don't you think? Shootings and bombings and bombast and rain. Well, I don't want to be grim. Or deep. One commenter on the blog said my blog was the deepest she'd seen in a long time. I suspect it wasn't actually a compliment - although I took it as such for an hour or so. It might actually have been code for, "Wow, this blog is a slog."

So let's talk about this photograph of the big glass and the little glass. Also, yes, of the speck of something on my counter, and the slats of my appliance garage. I have an appliance garage. Isn't that funny? Just forget the slats and the speck. Look at the big and little glasses. Mamma and baby. This is a snapshot of something that cut the grimness for me. It's cute. Not because it's objectively cute, but because it reminds me of something cute.

See the big glass? It's mine. I keep a big glass, usually with water, good old H20, next to the fridge every day. Lately, little glasses have started to appear next to my big glass. Someone in the family, one of the offspring, has picked up my habit. That's cute, don't you think?

Or maybe it's not so cute. It's certainly illustrative of the corollary to the maxim, "Do what I say, not what I do." The corollary is something like, "Kids learn from what you do, not from what you say."
In this case, no harm done. I'm demonstrating that you don't need to take a clean glass from the cupboard every time you need a drink of water, as well as the importance of regular hydration.

Now if you're peering closely at my glass, you are correct, that is not water in there. It's kombucha. This weekend I had coffee with someone who didn't know what kombucha is. My explanation wasn't very enticing: fermented tea and something about The Mother, which is the starter for the kombucha. Just as sourdough bread has a starter, kombucha has one, too. The bread starter is fermented yeast. The kombucha starter is fermented tea that turns into really a very disgusting, mushroomy-looking thing. You can make kombucha. After every batch, just like sourdough bread, you have to save a little bit of starter - The Mother - to make your next batch. I know this because once we had a hipster twenty-something stay with us. She was perambulating around the country with a jar of kombucha and a camera. When she left, she left me the recipe for kombucha, as well as a jar of starter in the fridge. It was not pretty. It looked like a giant fungus, which I believe it indeed was.

The husband took one look at it and said, "What is THAT?"
"It's The Mother," I said. "I don't know what to do with it."
"Throw it out," he said.

If that wasn't a deeply symbolic conversation, I don't know what would be.

So I buy my kombucha bottled. It's kind of fizzy. I like it mixed with seltzer. I drink it and I feel like I'm being productive. It has lots of probiotics, which are very in, hip, and now - and also very 1970.

This weekend I also had coffee with someone who didn't know what absinthe was. Okay, it was the same person who hadn't heard of kombucha. I was like, you know absinthe: the green poison - wormwood? Toulouse-Lautrec? French Impressionists? Paris, 1880s? Oscar Wilde?

This was during a conversation in which my companion told me she was pretty naive and always had been. By the time we got to the question of absinthe, I believed her. But then I thought about why I know what absinthe is, and I thought about how, in high school, I used to say - rather, I used to pronounce - "I may be innocent, but I am NOT naive."

I'm sure I was extremely irritating when I said that. I know I was not entirely correct in that self-assessment.

Pondering what I've modeled for the offspring besides saving glassware and remembering to hydrate. Scary.

Family Meeting Check-In

Remember that book I read, The Secrets of Happy Families? By Bruce Feiler, who writes a column for the NYTimes on family life and gives TED talks on successful families? I really liked that book, and I really like his ideas. Which I mentioned in this post. 

And since that post, we have stuck with family meetings. We have them every Sunday – almost every Sunday - either before or after dinner.  With an agenda and everything. I have this notebook from Staples (from the Martha Stewart Collection, in case you want to run out and get one), and in it I write the agenda, with occasional input from the husband. Here’s a typical agenda:

So we go over the week’s calendar and come up with tasks we have to do. The 13- year-old records everything because she is that way, and I record everything in my master planner, because I am the mom and thus in charge of remembering it all. I usually try to add something deeper to the agenda, maybe we talk about something we are grateful for that week, or an accomplishment, or set goals for the week, or play a round of Bananagrams or read a poem out loud. Then we adjourn. 

Now, I’d really like to tell you that our family meetings are going well. So I will. They are going well. Really, really well. We all love them and look forward to them. 

This might be a teensy exaggeration. 

Now, a big part of the idea behind the family meeting is that everyone participates. That means everyone can add to the agenda. That means that the children have a big role in the meeting itself. 

The other underlying idea is that the family is an agile system. This term originated in the software industry and has spread to other businesses. It refers to self-correcting project management. In other words, instead of working on a project from beginning to end, then handing it off for review, regular meetings ensure that there are no bad bugs in the system, and allow for fixes before the product is complete, when it would be much harder to change. Meetings are for self-correcting. You look at problems that crop up and tweak them immediately, rather than run farther and farther off course with no correction until your project is completed (or your children grow up and run as far away from you as they can as fast as they can and start intensive therapy.)

Well, this participation and self-correcting aspect (remember, these are fundamental to the idea) have been kind of hard to implement. I’m just not sure I have total buy-in from the key players, possibly including myself. 

Just recently, I heard a snippet Brucie’s TED talk on the family meeting, and he said that you ask at each meeting, What has been working well this week in our family, and what hasn’t been working well? So, I have been a little FRUStrated lately by the laundry situation. The children are supposed to do their own laundry on Sundays. We tried other days, but Sundays was decided to be the best day. 

Yeah. Well, guess what? Laundry isn’t getting done. Maybe it’s getting started on Sunday, but it’s not getting done. And Someone is beginning to suspect there is a strategy behind this – if the laundry molders in the machine long enough, and school starts, then Someone Else will take over and do it. 

Do I need to explain this photo? I think not. 

So. The husband and I were walking the dog, and I mentioned this laundry situation and the idea that the kids were supposed to contribute to the meeting and everyone is supposed to draw up a list of his or her responsibilities at family meeting so there is something to check in about. So I say to the husband, "Maybe we should talk about the laundry, which is definitely not working." And I also want to draw up the lists of responsibilities. So we decide that since the 17 yo is in the middle of applications and school, we will forego doing both at the next meeting and just lay the ground work for the laundry situation by having everyone draw up that list of responsibilities. 

So here is how it went. 

Ding, ding, ding, everyone to family meeting. 12^th grader stands by table, looking at her phone. 8^th grader grabs the Martha Stewart Collection notebook and a sharpened pencil and is ready. We go over old business. We go over the calendar. I fail to note that I’ve written down that the husband has ballet pick-up duties on Monday night, which is not the usual schedule.

We move on the agenda item – activity: list responsibilities. I pass out paper and pencils. We begin to write our lists. Except the 17 yo. Who refuses. 

Why won’t she do this, we ask?

"I just think there is a hidden agenda," she says. 

"What do you mean?" We say.

"Well, obviously, you want me to write ‘laundry,’ and I’m not getting the laundry done." 

Ahem. 

So we had to admit that, yes, the laundry situation is part of it. But also, the point is to write down our responsibilities to ourselves as well as basic chores. (of which there are way too few, probably, for us to create contributing members of society, but I feel helpless to change that.) 

More balking. 

Eventually, she wrote this: 

Then we adjourned the meeting. 

The next night, Monday, we forgot to pick up her from ballet.

So you can see it is all going very smoothly.

#TBT When I Have Fears

Well, I missed my Wednesday deadline this week, Readers. I apologize. So much busyness abounding in life that I just didn't get to everything. Nothing new here. More frustration on the writing front. And we’re mired in performance rehearsals for both children, in ballet and musical theater.  

Of course there is drama related to these performances. You know - who got what role and the appearance of favoritism - not in favor of my children, otherwise I would likely be unconcerned - let’s be honest. Many tears and self-recriminations from one child. Much stiff upper-lipping and monotoning from the other child. And I am rocketing between if and how or if at all to respond. 

This drama actually followed me to the doctor a couple weeks ago. There I had the  the strange and humorous experience of being at my annual gynecological (cover your eyes if you’re squeamish here) exam, literally with my feet in the stirrups and hearing my writing complimented. (For a response I did make to one situation.) 

For those of you who like to sip a cuppa something while reading my blog - and I've heard there are at least two of you - I'm attaching this piece from November, 2012. While the participants have aged, I must say, the Keats poem seems apropos. My fears, apparently, are timeless. 

When I Have Fears

By John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, 
Before high-piled books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

I don't know why this poem struck me so much tonight. I read it to the children at dinner. Reading entire books aloud has become too difficult with everyone's schedules, but I decided we could fit in a poem a night, at dinner. The rule is to pick a poem quickly, from the Norton Anthology, even at random, and it has to be less than a page long. The 5th grader is into it. She loves to read aloud. The 9th grader endures it, sometimes with interest, despite herself. We've been at it since school started. I agree with the 5th grader. It is more fun to read aloud than to be read to; but it's good to do both.

Okay, I do know why this poem struck me tonight. It's because Keats is laying out his ambition and his fears. He's worried about dying before he gets all the good creative stuff out. He doesn't just want to get the "grains" out of his "teeming brain," though. He wants to put them into books. Plural. A stack of them. "High-piled." He wants success, people, and he's in a hurry.

He doesn't only want writing success, however. He also wants success in love. He wants it all. Well-rounded success.

I can relate. To the wanting part. And I have the benefit of history. Keats was right to be in a hurry. He was ill, and he died at 26. He loved Fanny Brawne, but things didn't go smoothly, because he had money troubles.

How does this relate to me? I am now closer to being twice Keats' last age than his last age, and I struggle with fear and ambition, too. I am under no illusion, however, that I'll write anything that will outlast me, and that causes me melancholy. Howevs, I am grateful I am tuberculosis-free, and only have a faint rash, probably caused by the synthetic fibers in my new workout shirts (according to the dermatologist.) So life goes. A little poetry, a little steroid cream, some generalized free-floating anxiety.

I am grateful to Keats.

Annals of Successful Parenting, Volume: I Forget

I think we’ve visited our last college. Vassar. A gorgeous day, a gorgeous campus. By now, I could run an information session for any liberal arts college on the Eastern Seaboard. Not that Vassar is on the Eastern Seaboard - at least not technically. In spirit, though, it is definitely a fine little ship docked on the Eastern shores of our great nation. 

My she was yar

Vassar: My she was yar. That’s a reference to Katharine Hepburn in one of the best movies ever, The Philadelphia Story, which pretty much sums up the Eastern Seaboard experience. Or at least the WASP version. (And is there a more important version?)

Anyhoo, as I was saying, I could run an information session, but I wouldn’t trust myself to run a tour, because walking backwards is not recommended if you don’t know the campus. Although now that I think about them all, on one of our tours, the tour guide announced that at that particular institution (Small Liberal Arts College in the East - SLACE) the guides do NOT walk backwards, but walk forwards - yes, for safety reasons, but also to emphasize the forward-facing attitude of that SLACE. 

Gag me. 

No, really, do, because I’m about to spew a generic information session, from the diversity of the student body to the “holistic application process” to financial aid "meeting one hundred percent of demonstrated need" and believe me, if I hear it one more time, I may actually die of boredom. 

However, I have enjoyed hanging out in the student center of whatever SLACE we visit. It’s always fun to observe the clothing and footwear on the students. Yesterday netted some white platform sandals over black tights on one, a pair of floral combat boots on another, and a totally nondescript looking boy accessorized with black cat ears, a little black nose, and whiskers. “Possibly a furry?” the Senior suggested. Hard to say. I'm not even sure what that is. He wasn’t wearing anything furry. All he reminded me of was the phase that the 8th grader went through when she was in pre-K of wanting a little black nose and whiskers on her face every morning before school. I complied. Sometimes you need a little mask to get through the day, I guess. 

Better than a drink, right? 

Speaking of which, we dodged a bullet regarding teen drinking this past weekend. The husband and I left the Senior at home alone while we went off to visit friends in Boston. The 8th grader went to a friend’s house. So it was a ripe set-up for a "Risky Business" teen blowout party. I felt obligated to leave my child alone at least once before she goes away to some SLACE. 

Before we left, we brought the her to tears with stories about how you can die from alcohol poisoning, and Roofies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flunitrazepam), and not letting drunken teenagers into our house because we could be held liable for anything that happened to them. When we returned, the house was in excellent order. In fact, in better order than we left it, thanks to some of the Senior’s friends, who know how to, say, fold blankets and comforters - something the Senior seems to have avoided learning. (She is so busy, after all. Not my fault at all, at all..) She told us she had nothing to drink at all, at all. And we believed her. 

As a fellow mom recently told me, she has been so overwhelmed of late that she has decided to consider everything a success. And so it is, Readers.