Annals of Pandemic Life: Journaling Through

Dear Readers,

Lacking a coherent idea, I am sharing some thoughts from the last few days. Sure, I could wait and try to distill this into something more polished, but I think that might take too long. Perhaps the theme is see-saw: up and down, good and bad, plus and minus, happy and sad.

Thursday, May 14, 2020

Time for a blog post.
What I am thinking about.

Okay, so we all know by now that unless we are essential workers, who have to show up at their workplaces as usual, or teachers, who are expected to teach all day via the interwebs, we have time now to think about Things. We have time to spend with our families, or perhaps with ourselves, with only our image in the mirror for company. I have been taking advantage of this opportunity, Readers, to really notice things.

For example, one of the things I have noticed is that one of my ears is lower than the other one.

Is this deep and important? Well, it is to me. I mean, what the heck? You know how they say if you have a very asymmetrical face, the asymmetry is indicative of some kind of twisted evil inside you? Well, does that apply to ear level?

I’m serious. After five-plus decades of life, is my inner evil, twisted landscape finally manifesting in some asymmetry that’s going to become more and more obvious as the next decades (God willing) go by?

Such are the thoughts of which isolation is made.

Friday, May 15, 2020

This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.  Toni Morrison.

My friend, writer Catherine Goldhammer, posted that quotation on her Facebook page and it was the perfect thing to read. The words pierced through the haze, the scrim, the plaque on the teeth of daily life that I seem to be encountering. Of course, the next thought I had was a little slonk on my virtual kneecaps*: What you write, a blog? That ain’t art. That ain’t books. Not literature. That’s nothing. You’re not an artist. Not an artist-artist.

Setting aside the question of what makes an artist, I responded to that quotation because I did recognize myself in it. Artists examining the world and trying to make sense of it is an aspect of what I do, even in my lowly blog. One may recognize that one is engaged in Important Work, even if one is not engaged in the Most Important Work.

There is art to that, Readers.

That said, what can I tell you? It’s Friday, and every time Friday whips around, I can’t believe it means another week has gone by in Coronavirus isolation. It seems so fast, even though during the other seven days, time seems to stretch and stretch, the days jumbled and somewhat indistinguisable. The husband still goes to work at the hospital, so in fact, our schedule still has weekends. I am thankful for that.

When this shut down began, I was dismayed that my guilty pleasure, the weekday morning talk show “Live With Kelly and Ryan”, was running old episodes. I didn’t want reruns. Reruns seemed so hopelessly outdated when everyone was talking about the new world order. I didn’t want to see the studio audience, when now I knew there was none. So I was relieved when, a few days later, Kelly and Ryan appeared via Skype to do the show live once again. The quality of the broadcast was about as good as it could be via video feed, and that was okay. It was a comfort to see Kelly and Ryan, one holed up in her (probably vast triplex) appartment in New York, the other in his (probably vast) house in Los Angeles. We need to see how others are coping. How others are carrying on right now. We need to remember that the mundane and the frivolous continue, even amid chaos.

Entertainment is essential work, too. We are all depending on the entertainment industrial complex to divert us from the coronacrisis.

*    *     *    *   

I put on a 95th birthday party for the paterfamilias on Zoom this week. Well, when I say “the paterfamilias” I mean the paterfamilias of my family of origin. The husband might take exception to the term if not applied to him in the family we created. Anyway, I was almost as stressed out by this event as if it were an in-person party. Wrangling Zoom boxes full of people who want to talk is a nightmare waiting to happen. Well, it happened. Thanks to the mute button and the stealth and tech savvy of the college senior and the high school senior, the event passed rather well. I had invited everyone to share a memory of the paterfamilias, and to decorate their Zoom rooms if they wished. People had balloons and party hats and banners. We all sang “Happy Birthday” in our little boxes. It was fun. And, not to overdo the silver lining blather, I will say this. If we had met in person, it would have been a bigger party, but some of the people who Zoomed in might not have been able to attend in person. Furthermore, at an in-person party, people would be clustered in their little groups, and it would be very unlikely that everyone there would have the time or ability to listen carefully to what each guest had to say about the guest of honor. So, yes, that was nice.

Monday, May 18, 2020


President Obama gave a televised address to high school seniors. Don’t ask me when, because the days are melting together. All I know is that he spoke, and we in this household listened. Some of us needed Kleenex. One of us, to be exact. Obama was brief, coherent, and inspiring.

Brief, coherent, inspiring. Let that sink in, if you will. National addresses of late have been none of those.

Anyway, his message was simple: do not be afraid of the future; do what you know is the right thing to do, even if it is not the easy choice; and build community.

It was a lot to ask, but it came out simple. Do not be afraid of the future. The United States has gone through terrible times before and has come out stronger. Despite all the bad that’s evident in the country right now, there is no doubt we are better off than before. Well, is that true? I think so. It’s better that all that awful stuff is out in the open. It’s disheartening to realize how much hatred and anger is all around, but if we don’t see it, we can’t address it. Even if it's not true that we are better off now than we were before, now is where we are. The future can be better. So, really, what is the point of fearing the future? We have to meet it, afraid or not, so it’s better to accept that and move forward without fear. That way it will be easier to see the next right thing to do.

*

I am trying to write a blog post and it’s hard. It’s hard to think of something to write when the most exciting thing we did this weekend was go to Target and then to our lawyer’s house to sign wills, powers of attorney, and health care proxies on her back deck.

It is true. That was the most exciting thing. I put on hard pants** and a belt and a blazer. Yes, I said blazer. It wasn’t a tweed blazer, it was made of denim. I also put on my very cute slides with bows that I got last spring. Very impractical shoes. Perfect for a ride in the car and quick run to Target and to walk around to the back of the lawyer’s house. The eighteen year old and the twenty-one year old had the same impulse to dress for the occasion, I might add. I am adding. Their versions of dressing were different from each other’s and from mine, but the effort was there. This reminds me of a phase through which the twenty-one-year old passed in high school. She and her friends would discuss how many “efforts” they put into their outfits that day. Clothes, hair, makeup, shoes were all part of the count. So for me, I would say, for this excursion I put in about five efforts. Out of ten, shall we say? The eighteen-year-old put on a skirt and some platform jelly shoes, and mascara. She did her hair. Eight efforts?

My shoes

The high school senior's shoes

We went to Target first. The husband and I went in. The other two, despite their efforts, “efforts”, stayed in the car, listening to music. I am not lying. They were being respectful of the Coronavirus guidelines. After that, we drove to the lawyer’s house, conducted our signing business on her back deck, wearing masks while she spoke to us through her screen door. Then we went home. The masks went in the laundry and the cute shoes scattered across the mudroom floor. Cooking dinner seemed exhausting, so we ordered pizza.


Tuesday, May 19, 2020

The eighteen-year-old has baked the most delicious chocolate chip muffins. I think my muffin top would agree I don’t need to eat any of them. I should probably opt for enjoying their aroma, which is so wondrous it might just spirit the twenty-one-year-old out of her room. However, I have opted to also eat. Screw vicarious pleasure! So, here’s to muffins and to muffin-tops.

The part of me that meditates, the part that is propelling me towards becoming a therapist, is somewhat stymied by the part of me that is guarded, barbed, sarcastic, and self-conscious. There is a part of me that wants to get down to the truth in a mushy, serious, loving, helpful way, to be Glennon Doyle Meltonish in my sharing and encouraging of others. Or Brene Brownish. But there is this other part of me that just can’t let go. It’s because I feel embarrassed. Or maybe ashamed. Or unworthy. What would I say if I weren’t afraid or inhibited? I would say that this pandemic isolation period is a time to really connect and knit together down low, completely. Some of us are knitting together, stitching together over the top of a split. Knitting together is good, but knitting together from down low, where a split happened is much deeper and more thorough. This opportunity comes from a place of privilege, it’s a positive, it’s a golden opportunity, and it’s available to me and to mine because we are lucky not to have to risk our lives to earn a living. We are not, like one of my students, working full time at Trader Joe’s while trying to finish a full time semester of college because we’re the only person in our immediate family with a job. We are not like another of my students whose family situation has made attending virtual classes so challenging that now her grades are too low for her to receive her financial aid money for next semester. We are home, worrying about our muffin tops and our misaligned ears and enjoying, despite the anxiety and ennui and depression we sometimes feel, bonus time with our spouses and children.

Not gonna lie. There’s some bathos and some pathos to the situation. I felt it when I shut the door in the Target parking lot and left the kids in the car. All dressed up and nowhere to go. Zooming for a milestone like a 95th birthday instead of being there to share the same cake. However, there is some grace, too. It was wonderful to see my far-flung cousins and their partners on Zoom. It was heartening to remember that Barack Obama is out there in the world. It is heartening to remember the future will come, whether we fear it or no. It is heartening to know that my children and my friends’ children are graduating into that future, and they will remember how this time affected them, and they will shape things to make them better. It’s a lot to ask of them, but in my experience, it’s good to have things asked of you. We rise to expectations. All rise!

*      *      *        *

*”Slonk on the kneecaps” is a literary reference. That’s a lie. It’s a children’s literature reference. Twenty points to the person who knows what book I’m referencing.

** “Hard pants” are pants with a non-elastic waist. I just heard that term for the first time last week, but the college student already knew it.

10 Tips for Creating a Can-Do Child

In response to my previous post about the best advice Martha Stewart ever received, a friend emailed me, "So how do we teach our children what Martha Stewart's dad taught her?" 

Now, Readers, I have absorbed a lot of material about success over the last year – year or two (can you believe) – and it’s changed me in ways I can no longer parse into categories. Things have blended together in my head into a big smoothie of success. This analogy is my acknowledgment that I may repeat something someone else, someone much Bigger, someone much more Expert, someone much more Famous (which is not at all hard) than myself may have said, and if so, I apologize. In advance. In advance of any advance I may eventually receive for work not yet published, in fact.

Now that’s out of the way. 

My amalgamated advice is as follows:

• Believe your children are capable of great things – however they may grow up to define them.
• Tell your children you believe this of them.
• Praise and encourage all effort, persistence, and progress your children make.
• Encourage them to make and meet goals.
• Allow them time to be autonomous when possible and to find the creativity in all disciplines.
• Model, model, model for them your own effort, persistence, and progress toward goals you set yourself.
• Model your creative engagement. As one reader commented, show them that it’s worthwhile to devote full attention to whatever you do, and not to hold back in hope of something better coming along.
• Celebrate achievement – but focus on achievement being the result of effort. And persistence and progress.
• Model resilience after setbacks.
• Hope for the best!

Now, this list may skew a little vague and touchy-feely, and it is. Oh, it is. But I think and hope it works. I guess we’ll find out eventually. 

All of this advice begs a deeper question that came up from several emails and comments from my treasured readers: How much control do we actually have over our children's development? You see, Readers, I've noticed a tendency, a propensity, shall we say, among people to change their views on how much influence parents actually have over their children, depending on how old their children are, and how much of a mess their grown up childrens' lives appear to be. In short, Readers, I’ve noticed that the older children get, the less their parents say they have any effect on or control over their choices and personalities. 

Buddhists, Kahlil Gibran (“your children are not your children, they are blah, blah, blah"), and anyone who’s a grandparent will tell you: NONE.

And Madeleine Levine, my current book mama, says that once your kid gets to 11, 12, 13 and so on, it’s pretty much up to their friends to shape them. Krikey. This is somewhat distressing to the parent who spends a good part of the night obsessing over what courses her child should take in high school. 

So what good is my list?

One way of looking at this problem is that our parental understanding develops as our children develop from infancy to adulthood. We move from the SENSATION of having no control, except (and this is big) over their physical selves, due to our relative gigantism compared to them, to FEAR that we have no control over them, to HOPE that we aren’t responsible for them. That is, unless they turned out fabululious, and then we take CREDIT.

Another way of looking at this trajectory of responsibility divestment is that by the time our kids are adults, possibly with children of their own, they’ve defined themselves by making many mistakes and having many triumphs, and we are developing dementia. Because we humans tend to forget things were ever different from how they seem in the present, we feel we have no influence on them anymore and that, therefore, we never did. Neither of which is true, as anyone who has spent any time in psychotherapy will know. We did influence them, and we still do. Their eyes are always on us. But the enormity of responsibility for how a person grows up to interact in the world is much easier, perhaps, to disavow than to accept. Which is fine, Grandparents, if you must. You may wash your hands of our stupid choices. But then you aren’t allowed to take credit for our successes, either. And that extends to the offspring of those children you feel you had no ability to influence. And our eyes are on you.

For some reason, I am recalling that when the 9^th grader was two, she became obsessed with dressing herself. And undressing herself. And re-dressing herself. Her room was a shambles, with everything always spilling out of the dresser and onto the floor. Needless to say, her outfits were not exactly matchy-matchy Garanimals. That didn’t bother me, actually. I’m not into matchy-matchy. But I didn’t want her wearing bathing suits or party dresses to school. Her very wise Toddler Time teacher suggested I designate one or two drawers of her dresser into which I was to place several outfits appropriate to the season, which she was allowed to wear in any combination she chose. I could rotate these outfits as needed. So, freedom to choose, but limited freedom. Parameters. It worked like a charm. Stripes and florals, skirts over pants, whatever. I didn’t care. In fact, I liked it. Eliminated some of the mess and all of the power struggle.

What does this have to do with the reader who responded that he felt it would have been useless to tell his daughter she could do anything she wanted to, because he knew it was untrue, and she would have known he knew it, too? He went on to explain that there were too many random factors at work in determining what a person could be; ultimately, he said, citing Daniel Kahneman’s book, Thinking Fast and Slow, success depends about 30 percent on ability and 70 percent on chance. This is a pretty bleak outlook, in some ways. It’s tempting to say, why bother trying, then? And yet, because I am not yet old, I persist.

I guess the connection is this: that we all operate within constraints, and yet those constraints can be the mold for our creativity and for our sense of autonomy. None of us can control the external world, but we can still learn agency from within that constraint. The point is not to say that the world is going to throw you curveballs, so you’d better spend your life ducking. The point is not to say that you must wear a red shirt with your blue pants, or else. The point is to say that given the need to wear clothes and your parent’s need for some kind of order, your choice is limited by circumstances, but within those limitations you can create your own outfit. Similarly, teaching your child that she can do whatever she wants allows her to stretch. The world may – will – prevent or hinder or complicate circumstances, but the child who believes she can do, will do what she can with what life hands her. Goals may need altering, but the can-do child will accommodate that. That’s better than not trying stuff in anticipation of chance working against her. Besides, hard work and creativity may alter goals and circumstances in positive ways.

Sonnets. Villanelles. Sestinas. Sometimes restrictions are liberating. Look at it this way. By frustrating your young child’s desire to do whatever he wants (wear a bathing suit to school in winter in Albany, NY, say) yet giving him some choices, you teach many lessons. One is that the world will not always bend to his wishes. Would you not say that is a useful lesson? Another is that he still has some control over himself and his person. Is that not also useful? And a final one is that there is satisfaction from working within constraints. Again, useful. It teaches him he can do anything he wants to do. In this case, he wants to pick his own outfit. It also teaches him to modify his goal to accommodate his limits - to revise what he wants to do, if necessity forces him to. And that, I think, is the way of the world. Success is determined by how fully you express yourself within your limits. 

Selected Bibliography

Dweck, Mindset

Faber and Mazlich, How to Talk So Your Kids Will Listen & Listen So They Will Talk

Ginott, Between Parent and Child

Halvorsen, Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals

Levine, Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success

Mogel, The Blessing of a Skinned Knee

Pink, Drive

Expectations and Success, Part Deux

http://www.allfamousquotes.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/expectations.jpg

It's one thing to feel a terrible pressure to go to law school because your father wants you to, a pressure so strong that you have to let yourself fail out to convince him to let you choose your own career (true story - not mine); but what about the people whose parents, families, friends expect little or nothing? Or say little or nothing?

Did you read Jhumpa Lahiri's article in the New Yorker about her start as a writer? How she disappointed her parents' expectations for her, and that even with all the success she's had, she has struggled to feel successful?


Lahiri notes that her father never read fiction, and though her mother did, she read in Bengali, and kept her stories at a distance from her daughter. She says, “But my parents did not read to me or tell me stories; my father did not read any fiction, and the stories my mother may have loved as a young girl in Calcutta were not passed down.”  So that when she became a reader and a writer, she felt she was “trespassing” and “defying” them. Guilt. Treading into territory that wasn't meant to be hers.

What they most wanted for her was steady, reliable work--becoming a professor was good, assuming it would lead to steady, reliable work. So when she went into a creative writing program instead of continuing her PhD, her parents remained "neutral." A devastating neutrality, for sure.

She writes, "Even after I received the Pulitzer Prize, my father reminded me that writing stories was not something to count on, and that I must always be prepared to earn my living in some other way." 

If this is how Jhumpa Lahiri feels, well I can just put down my peeler and leave that carrot alone. 

What strikes me in what she writes is how much of what she incorporated into her sense of what her parents wanted was unspoken. Simply by remaining "neutral" about creative writing, her parents sent her a loud message. 

Remember the 1960s PhD candidate who dropped out before writing her dissertation, despite her star status, and despite the respect of her peers? She disappointed those expectations. Consider, though, the societal expectations for a woman at that time. It’s possible to view her decision to leave her program as fulfilling a more common expectation for an educated woman then. Perhaps her parents never expected her to have a career in academia--though surely they expected her to excel in school, and supported her education all the way. So perhaps she bowed to an unexpressed expectation that spoke through silence.

Trying to fulfill someone else's idea of how you should succeed is one kind of challenge. The flip side of great expectations to live up to, is none, or low.

It's hard to conceive of great expectations for oneself if others don't have them for you.

http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/bgr/lowres/bgrn1411l.jpg

My own parents adopted a studied silence on most aspects of my life after college.

I could rely only on my own interpretation. To me, based on our rocky relationship during my adolesence, their silence registered either disapproval, or a fear that if they spoke out one way or another, I'd likely choose the most perverse road imaginable, so they'd better not trigger me.

Sort of a don’t wake the baby feeling.

I've come to see that there was a sense, conveyed to me through silence and intuition, that people were just hoping I'd "make it." I call it the "poor Hope" phenomenon. Sort of a sense that my parents took a look at this damaged goods they were educating, feeding, and sending off to therapy, and every so often they lobbed an idea at it to see if it would stick, but really the idea was just to get this package up and out, and make sure it earned some kind of paycheck and wasn't a burden on society, and that was really about all you could expect from it. 

Other people who were more supportive or encouraging also reinforced this "poor Hope" phenomenon. Trying to be helpful, they would say, "Look how well you've done, considering." Considering the dead mother. Considering the challenging stepmother. Considering the restrained father. 


I always listened to this kind of talk with a mix of self-pity and irritation.


Yes, I would think. Yes, yes. Poor me. I don't have a mother, I have a shrink. But on the other hand, I have food, clothing, and medical attention. I have the best education money can buy. I live in the United States. I've never experienced war. Many others have been through much worse and succeeded. Why should the traumas of my early childhood define me? 

What were the silent or negative expectations you faced? Which ones are you passing on to your children? 




*http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/06/13/110613fa_fact_lahiri#ixzz1SSYiLawd