Aerosolized Particles of Success

Why does the dog keep nudging me and pressing up against me with his wet self? Does he smell

Maybe it's 'cuz he wants that flower barrette out of his hair.

cancer on me or something? Is he sensing stress? Or does he just want affection especially now, when he’s wet and stinky?

Don’t answer.

I’m operating on too little sleep, and what little I had was interrupted by the husband’s pager. I swear I got dizzy backing the car out of a parking spot today. I looked behind me to make sure there were no children or dogs in my path, and when I turned to face forward, the world went upsie daisie like it does when you’re on a loop de loop rollercoaster. It was time for a nap.

In other news, I thought that in lieu of a coherent blog post I’d offer a brief collection of stuff, possibly factual, possibly misstated, that could be construed as relating to success.

For example, did you know that when you flush the toilet aerosolized particles of fecal matter can fling themselves out of it and land up to six feet away? On your toothbrush? So close the lid.

How about this: multitasking is a myth. You probably already know that, right? Unless you’re me, you haven’t been beating yourself about the ears over your incredible inability to do two things at once the way Jamie Lee Curtis does* as the mom in the remake of Freaky Friday with Lindsay Lohan - a movie I thoroughly enjoyed. Because if common sense hasn’t proven to you that you can’t do two complex things at once, research now has. What we think is multitasking is actually just switching back and forth between activities fast. Each time it takes a little extra energy to re-establish where you left off before. That’s inefficient, and tiring.

And finally, on failure, this: A producer friend of Nora Ephron talked about how she and Nora dealt with setbacks and movies that bombed. They reminded each other that they were lucky to have had a chance at bat, and that it was a privilege to have another. They recognized that, although they were disappointed, they were lucky to be able to pursue their goals, while so many others struggle to fulfill much more basic needs. Always look for ways to be grateful; gratitude puts life into perspective.

And now, as Samuel Pepys so often said, “And so to bed.” Although, to be completely honest with you, Readers, I have to admit that it's, "And so to HBO Go for an episode of 'Spiral'."

*That’s ironic, by the way; Jamie Lee Curtis as the mom is a total fail at multitasking.

Secret of Successful Families: The Family Meeting

Bruce Feiler sums up his research on happy families by offering a “nonlist list of things that happy families do.” This list consists of the following three nonrule rules:

1. Adapt all the time. 
2. Talk. A lot. 
3. Go Out and Play.

Feiler offers multitudes of ways to follow each of these nonrules. One of them is the family meeting. The family meeting appeals to me for several reasons.

• First of all, there is so much in a minute. You don’t even have to have relatives who are psychoanalysts to know this. Nor do you have to be a mindfulness meditation expert. Just think about how (surprisingly) much it hurts if a driver passes you and gives you the finger, for example. And that’s someone you don’t even know, and a situation that’s not even personal. Now think about all the casual remarks that pass among family members rushing around to ballet and soccer and work that affect you. A stray snap on a day when you have a short fuse can have its own sort of a butterfly effect on your mood and life. Yes, it’s true, I do have relatives who are psychoanalysts, AND I practice mindfulness meditation, so I may be a bit more invested in what’s going on under the surface in a moment than most. In fact, this may be the secret to my failure more than anything else – all that time parsing and analyzing can get you into a thoroughly tangled state of conflict and make it hard to move forward with your goals. But since that last sentence completely undermines what I’m getting at, let’s pretend that I’m 100% in favor of trying to understand your emotions in a situation, so that you can make an informed decision, or can react intentionally instead of instinctively. This takes time, and conversation. A meeting provides a forum to catch some of those moments that could use a little dissecting: To address some of those moments that result in decisions on the fly – decisions and their effects that never get fully explained.

• Second of all, a family meeting sounds like a reasonable idea when it’s hard to find regular nights to eat together because this one’s got an extra rehearsal and that one’s soccer game time changed and that one forgot he had to teach his medical students and the other one has a book club, because all of those ones have book clubs; you’re not actually a suburban mommy if you don’t - but that’s another story. These meetings don’t have to be long. They shouldn’t be long. Sunday night, which Bruce uses, seems like a good time to me. Usually everyone is home then, and there’s an opportunity to look at the calendar. This doesn’t guarantee that we won’t be scrambling for forgotten appointments, but it does help us become aware of our commitments, at least for a moment, together. This group moment might well improve the chances that we’ll get where we need to be on time. I make no promises, nor do I have any proof, since as of this writing, our family has had only one family meeting.

• Third of all, the family meeting, as Bruce describes it, is child-centered. Or to be more precise, while parents may set the agenda, the children should be vocal participants. This gives them practice explaining themselves, exploring and expressing their opinions, and listening to others’, which I defy anyone to deny is good life training. Since the message in my family of origin was “Children should be seen and not heard,” this idea appeals to my rebellious inner child. Let the children be heard and seen. Then let the parents make final decisions.

• And last of all, the family meeting is a way to solidify or otherwise emphasize the idea of the family unit as a unit. I like this idea of emphasizing the family as a unit. It’s one of Bruce’s ideas that’s so fundamental you don’t even see it: To be a successful family involves focusing on the family itself, and seeing it as a working group, not just as a staging ground for “real life.”

The Meeting

Now, I’d been mulling this idea for a while. I was intrigued and wanted to do it, despite the hoke factor. So when the 5^th grader came home, I think it was the very day I behaved so admirably at the DARE assembly, with a letter announcing that she’d won a leadership award, and that there would be a ceremony at an arena at a community college to recognize her and the other recipients, I had my entrée.

Readers, if you would kindly lower your bayonets, I will continue. After feeling my moment of pride in my offspring – a moment immediately followed by one of complete amazement: I have never won thing one for leadership – I realized that this ceremony would conflict with the 9^th grader’s ballet schedule. Frankly, that went without saying, since the 9^th grader spends less time not dancing than she does dancing. So the question was, should she miss the classes, which were in rehearsals for her end of the year performance, to attend her sister’s ceremony? Perfect for a family meeting.

I’d like to tell you that each participant met the announcement with equal enthusiasm; but that would be a lie. The husband was on board – surprising to me, considering the aforementioned hoke factor.  He was even willing to commit to weekly meetings. However, when we told the children we were having a meeting,  the 9^th grader’s reaction was, “Oh no,” and the 5^th grader’s was, “Are we in trouble?”

But it went well. Or at least, it didn’t go badly. When I brought up the awards ceremony - ballet schedule conflict, I tried to remember Bruce’s advice to let the children do a lot of the talking. The 5^th grader immediately announced that she wanted her sister to attend her award ceremony. The 9^th grader countered immediately with acquiescence. Conflict resolved? More like conflict swept underground. I suddenly saw how good an idea a family meeting was. I think it’s the kind of thing that might just help keep people close. If you’re the kind of person who acquiesces because your sister states a strong preference, despite your own mixed feelings, then eventually, you may avoid your sister, to avoid hearing her state her preferences. But if your sister can start to understand that her preference acts like a command, then she may begin to be a little more careful and less categorical – more empathetic – in stating it.

Since their conversation had apparently ended, it was up to me and the husband to stir the pot. How did the 9^th grader feel about missing the ballet class to go to the ceremony? For that matter, how would the 9^th grader feel about having her sister at her upcoming recital? And how would the 5^th grader feel about the looming conflict over missing a soccer tournament to go to (another) dance recital? I wanted the conversation to be both concrete (about this particular conflict) and hypothetical (attending each others’ awards and recitals, etc.) Okay, I know, this may be slightly nauseating, as if I envision a golden-paved road of award upon award for my children, stretching into the future. However, even the most curmudgenly reader must admit there are many milestones ahead (God willing), with attendant ceremonies. It seems worthwhile to figure out who needs to go to what when.  But mostly, I wanted the big sister to express her preferences and feelings about attending her sister’s award ceremony, and to see how important her presence was to her younger sister. Also, I wanted the little sister to realize that her big sister would be sacrificing something very important to her (dance class) at a difficult time (rehearsing for upcoming recital).

The upshot was that we, the parental units, listened to the children, and then we told them we would make a decision. Meeting adjourned. Not exactly an unqualified success, but not terrible, either. Later, the 9^th grader came to us privately and said she didn’t want to miss her class. We told her we had wanted her to say that at the meeting so that the 5^th grader would know, but of course she hadn’t wanted to hurt her sister’s feelings. I suppose immediate openness was too much to expect from one meeting.

In the end, we decided the 9^th grader should go to the ceremony. In private, I told the 5^th grader that her sister was making a sacrifice by missing her rehearsal. The 5^th grader said, “Now you are making me feel guilty.” I told her I wasn’t trying to make her feel guilty as much as I was trying to make her appreciate that her sister was doing something nice for her – and that she ought to thank her.

So the 9^th grader came to the ceremony. On the way, the 5^th grader thanked her for missing rehearsal. Afterwards, the 9^th grader hugged the 5^th grader.

Overall, I thought it was good for the 9^th grader to hear her sister characterized as a leader, and good for the 5^th grader to know her sister heard that characterization.

We haven’t had a family meeting since; but I stand by the process.

Other People's Successes - & Bayonets of Hate

Readers, I have finished Bruce Feiler’s book, The Secrets of Happy Families, and I have things to say about it. I want to write, for example, about our foray into one of his suggestions: the family meeting. But before I do, I have a compulsion to tell you something terrible about myself. Here’s why. See, to tell you about the family meeting involves mentioning an awards ceremony for one of my children. As I’ve discovered, the slightest mention of anything about one’s children’s possible accomplishments, no matter how slight, puts you out there in front of the bayonets of insecure parents who want to immediately kill you for bragging, even if it’s only the most incidental kind of mention of anything about your child, even if it’s the humblest. You’re a braggart and jerk and deserve to be beheaded and for all your spawn to grow warts on all their visible epidermises (epidermi?), or you’re even worse – a humble-bragger, begging for notice while seeming not to and therefore deserving of none but contempt. Which is a problem if you want to actually get across a message of some kind. Why not just leave out the bit about the award/event, you ask? Well, that would be fine, except in this case, the occasion for the meeting depended on it. In other words, if I talked about calling our first family meeting without mentioning this event, then I’d have omitted the reason AND the content of the meeting, which would make for a pretty short and meaningless blog post.

So the thing is, before you get all bayonet-y at me, let me tell you about how my child didn’t win an honor and how well I handled it. Then you can decide if I deserve that beheading and if my child can go forth wart free into her uncertain future. And I can tell you about our family meeting (in the next post, because this one is already too long.)

Now the reason I know about these bayonet-y tendencies is that I’ve been jabbed by them – certain comments on my Motherlode posts qualify – but I’ve also been guilty of them. On occasion. And for only the very goodest and most understandable reasons; but I have felt some of those feelings I describe above. In fact, I felt them pretty recently.

I think the compulsion to tell you something unflattering about myself is also related to Anne Lamott. You see, Anne Lamott was giving a reading in Troy, and I was planning to go, even though she’s promoting her new book, Help, Thanks, Wow, which is all about prayer, and which might just be a little much for me, the atheist-ish, sometimes agnostic Buddhist Jew. Then I realized that the 5^th grader’s DARE graduation was the same morning, and I thought, Oh crud, I can’t miss the DARE graduation, because DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) is, you know, the kind of program it’s important for a parent to support and for a child to see her parent support.  Since the graduation was at 9:30 in the morning, the husband immediately bowed out, citing some lame excuse about having to attend rounds on patients with strokes.  This left me to represent.

The day before the graduation, the 5^th grader came home from school saying the essays written by four boys and four girls (one of each from each 5^th grade class) had been selected to be read aloud at the graduation (can we please just call it an assembly, for God’s sake? NO? Okay. Crup. Anyway.) By the way, it’s possible that the DARE assembly is called a graduation for the exact same reason I felt compelled to be at it: to make the students feel it was important. It’s also possible the assembly is called a graduation to make the parents feel important, which sort of thing happens, but I think not in this instance. Perhaps it’s called a graduation to make the police feel more important….

Anyhoo,  I had a vague recollection of my child showing me an essay, a few weeks before, and of me suggesting that it could be stronger if she added a little more detail by way of examples or something. That was the last I thought of the essay until a few days before the DARE finale, when I was driving the 5^th grader’s band carpool and the 5^th grader and her friends began talking about the essay. They spent several minutes wildly proclaiming how much they had “sucked up” to Officer Friendly in it, and how much they didn’t care if their essays got picked. They all agreed the whole exercise in writing the essay had been to suck up to Officer Friendly. Of course, I’d thought. Essays would be picked.

So then the 5^th grader came home with this announcement. She was detailed in her reporting of the teacher’s selection of the essays. The teacher had described narrowing the selections down to four girls’ and four boys’, but had been unable to decide among them, so she had mixed them all up and picked at random. The 5^th grader’s essay was not selected. But, she was quick to say, maybe hers had been one of the four among which Mrs. M had been trying to decide.

Readers, I would like to tell you that this didn’t bother me, but I would be lying. It bothered me a little that my child’s essay hadn’t been chosen and that my child would not be up there reading her essay at this graduation that would be keeping me from hearing Anne Lamott. What also bothered me, was how my child rationalized the situation by saying hers could have been one of the finalists. Was this some weird ego-protection device on her part? Or a pre-emptive assuaging of feelings I might not hide as well as I think I do?

As I said, it only bothered me a little. A first. It was just one essay. It was just DARE. What bothered me more was that the 5^th grader had done a pretty half-assed job on the essay, but still thought she might have been chosen. Or hadn’t thought about the long-term effect of doing a half-assed job. She hadn’t been strategic. Neither had I. I thought, my kid should’ve sucked up more. That’s what you’ve gotta do in this life to get noticed. You’ve gotta suck up. You’ve gotta be strategic. And you’ve gotta be whole-assed.

Directly I thought this thought, I became much more bothered by this non-winning. If I didn’t mind that she didn’t get selected, I did mind if other kids did. Certain other kids. Like the 5^th grader’s best friend, who hasn’t been so best friendly to her this year and has delivered one too many put-downs. It might not be so bad that my child hadn’t won; but what if this girl had? What if some of the other girls, who from time to time, had done things like turn their backs on my child at recess (true), won?  I tried to find out from my child who the other winners were, but she showed an annoying lack of knowledge, concern, or interest, so I would have to wait until the morrow.

Natch, the first mother I saw at the graduation was the mom of the 5^th grader’s bestie. She was chatting with Officer Friendly. Sure, I thought, Suck up, suck up. I sat down far away from her. I beamed hate bayonettes at her. Look at her in her yoga pants. So smug.

The first essay, read in a spindly voice by a nondescript girl, provided several details and facts that the 5^th grader’s had not. Next up was a boy. More facts. I began (continued?) to have uncharitable thoughts. Chief among them was involuntarily imagining these kids reading these essays aloud in ten years, whilst a montage of their descents into drug-addled depravity played behind them on a large screen. It was possible that these essays were selected by Officer Friendly and the 5^th grade teachers, not because they were so well written about the positive lessons their authors had learned from DARE, but because these kids needed the whole community of students and parents to bear witness to their promises to never smoke or drink or do other drugs; because, clearly, they were likely to become abusers. So it was actually good, in other words, that my child, had been overlooked.

Let me say, Readers, that I was aware of my state of mind. Envy, insecurity, anger, check, check, check. They were all present, and I knew it. Thanks to mindfulness practice and years of therapy, I was in touch with my mental formations. Helpless before them, but at least aware of that, too.

Now, I’m late posting to my blog this week. In fact, I missed posting last week. Not for lack of subject. I wrote this last week. It’s just been hard to click “publish” on this one; because this essay really makes me look bad. I mean, here I am, searching for a definition of success, and resenting others who have some. I know this is not pretty. Yet I feel compelled to go on. I might as well say it. I think, in my heart, I am no worse than many in my pitiful inability to channel what Oprah might call “My Best Self.”

In conclusion, I must say that the bestie’s class was announced next, so my suspense came to an end. The essay selected was – not the bestie’s. I sagged back into my chair. There was a second of relief. Immediately after the relief, though, came the remorse. I’d done a disservice to the friend, and worse, to her mother, with whom I’ve been quite friendly. It was ugly, people, ugly. I tell it to you now. 

Next week: The Family Meeting....

No Such Thing As Failure

Last night, the husband and I went to listen to a talk by Stephen Sondheim. It was actually not a talk, but a conversation between Stephen Sondheim and some lady named Mary. Sorry, Mary, I have forgotten your last name, as I almost always forget names. It’s to your credit that I remember your first name. You did a fine job. To give myself credit, let me say that I bought the tickets as a birthday present for the husband, who performed in “Sweeney Todd” in college, who was a composer before he was a doctor, and who just may get back to composing one of these years. Except that he’ll never be able to retire, because I, his wife, make too little money; but eventually, we will run out of British crime dramas to watch on Netflix, and he will have time of an evening to create.

It was really some kind of miracle that I found out about this Stephen Sondheim gig. I’m so out of every loop – except my own internal, neurotic ones – that it amazes me that I came across this event, in time to order tickets for it.  It was, of course, sold out last night.

Mr. Sondheim is 83, and still working. Artists never stop. He talked about his shows, mostly. He also gave little glimpses into the wild evening life he used to lead and had a couple stories about Elaine Stritch, who played Jack Donaghy’s mother on “30 Rock”, in case you don’t know her from Broadway. I learned that the phrase “Everything’s coming up roses” is from the lyric to the eponymous song from “Gypsy,” written by Stephen Sondheim. He admitted that coining a phrase that entered the lexicon was satisfying. I should think so.

But really, the most compelling thing he said, he said early on in the conversazione. (Throwing in a little Italian, just for kicks.) Mary Whose Last Name Escapes Me asked him if, when he was starting out, he worried that he would fail. He said, “I don’t think that ever occurred to me.”

Thank you, and good night. That explains a lot. That explains why I was sitting in the audience listening to Stephen Sondheim, and not the other way around. Or, at least, it explains one reason. It never occurred to him he might fail? That’s pretty much all I think about when I consider my writing.

Of course, it might have been a little easier for Stephen Sondheim to forget to consider the possibility of failure than it was for me. He had Oscar Hammerstein as a father figure. I had a father figure, but he wasn’t Oscar Hammerstein. He was my father. (Still is.) A fine man, a lawyer, but in no position to help me become a successful writer. He did help me get the job in a law firm that led me to decide against pursuing law. This was helpful, in its way, although more for defining what I wouldn’t do than what I would do with my career. Kind of like negative space in a drawing is important, but it’s not where the artistry lies. Usually.

So Sondheim’s first job was in the “family business,” too. Although he had some lean years, Sondheim had Oscar. Oscar Hammerstein helped him develop his skills and got him involved writing lyrics with Leonard Bernstein for “West Side Story,” when he was twenty-five. If he wasn’t working for Oscar Hammerstein, he could call Oscar Hammerstein for advice. So, you know, failure seems pretty unlikely to me, too, in that scenario.

I am glad that I didn’t call it a night after that astounding proof of self-confidence. After hearing that, I just listened and marveled at a person who had such self-confidence that he could question aspects of any of his works, without questioning his basic right and ability to work at that art.

In fact, he had a few shows that didn’t do all that well. One of them, “Merrily We Roll Along,” of which I’d never heard, closed after 9 shows on Broadway. It was, you know, a flop. Guess what? He revised it. He fixed it. That's the growth mindset at work, by the way, Readers. He kept on working at it, and eventually it showed in London and then on Broadway – years, indeed decades, later – and garnered great reviews. So he believed in his idea, and he had strength of character enough, or confidence enough, to deconstruct the parts that didn’t work for audiences, and to keep on revising them until they played well. Along the way he did “Company*,” and “Sweeney Todd,” and “Sunday in the Park with George,” and “A Little Night Music,” and a bunch of other musicals that you probably have heard of, even if you don’t care for musicals. 

All of these works were collaborations, by the way, and all developed over months and often years. He’s working on something now that’s been steeping for twenty-five years. What really struck me, was that once Sondheim felt some idea he came across had “something to it,” he didn’t look back and question that judgment. He worked, and continues to work, to get that idea out. All of that work is built on a steady foundation of accepting his judgment of what is worth pursuing. For those of us who work at bringing ideas into the world, that is a great lesson in success. 

*Video clip of my favorite song from "Company," sung by Carol Burnett here. She sings it a little slower than others do, but you can hear the lyrics clearly.

Annals of Gardening: An Inventory

It’s taken nearly four years, but I am pretty sure we’ve finally killed the pachysandra. Yes, I know. You readers who are gardeners are amazed. Killed pachysandra? I thought that was impossible, you are thinking. If I’ve learned one thing in all my research on success, however, it’s that almost nothing is impossible.

To be honest, I didn’t kill it. At least not directly. In fact, I’ve regularly shaken little granules of fertilizer on it from a container left behind by the previous owners of our small cottage. They left behind the fertilizer, but managed to “lose” – that is, to toss out in a fit of pique or thoughtlessness, probably the former – every manual for every appliance in the house. But what does it matter? Every appliance has broken since then, so whatevs. I digress.

If not me and the husband, then who? The dog, of course. The dog killed it. He and his best friend, who lives across the street, have mowed it down, wrestled in it, lounged in it, peed and pooped in it (sorry – TMI?) while their owners stood idly by, chatting and waving off the school bus. The stuff has given up.

And yes, it has been almost four years since we moved into this house. It’s been nearly four years since my venerable father visited and left me with these words, “You’ve taken on a mature garden with this house, and it’s going to require a lot of work – staff – to keep it up.” More or less. I didn’t record him, and I am pretty sure my entire head filled with a mental drumbeat – “staff/can’t afford, staff/can’t afford, staff/can’t afford” – thereby blocking out the few remaining mental capacities I retained after moving from the city to the suburbs. So his exact words are lost. The rest of my brain, aside from the drumbeat, was screaming, “Fool, you were a fool, why didn’t you buy a house with a tiny yard? But he said pretty much that, because the words seared my innermost accesses, and there they remained, waiting until now to prove true. The way a father's words can. 

Now, when I say the pachysandra, I don’t mean all of it. Just the patch of it dead center in the middle of the front yard. Just the most obvious patch of it. There’s plenty on the side and in the backyard, still.

But there’s more devastation. I may have been overzealous in pruning the variegated dogwoods by the front door. The dog had nothing to do with that. 

Although, again, I am being perhaps disingenuous if I don’t mention that an actual, official, and not incidentally, very handsome tree specialist told me that they usually only last about eight years, which is probably how long they’ve been there, so I might as well give ‘em a last ditch effort to come back bushy and handsome. So I did it in good faith. There are a few buds. Same with the over-leggy hedge along the garage. A major hack job in a last ditch effort to revive it.

Not so the roses. There, following only advice I gleaned off the backs of cereal boxes, we seem to have under pruned some and outright murdered other bushes. Not a whit of green on those stems.

On the bright side, all the evergreens are still thriving. The rhododendrons are doing just fine. (Those are jokes. They require no effort, people.) The crabgrass, dandelions, and moss are also doing very well. And the ferns. (Ditto, and ditto.) Live and let live, I say.

Furthermore, as we say up here in the Northeast, it's early days yet. The dogwoods may well do me proud. Spring has only just begun. 

So what does this have to do with success? Well, Readers, this may be a stretch, but how ‘bout this? I still hold my head up when I walk the dog around the neighborhood, and the neighbors still say hello. I’m not an ulcerated mass of suburban guilt because my yard isn’t perfect. Nor am I trying to keep up with the next door neighbor, whose grass is definitely greener. I am putting my mark on the yard. Now, those marks may be lethal, but they are mine. I do have plans. If the roses and the dogwood and the garage hedge don’t come back this year, we will tear them out and replace them with something else. Probably pachysandra. (Kidding.) And that dead patch of pachysandra front and center? We may turn it into grass. The yard may have weakened since we moved in, but I am feeling more rooted. That’s one kind of success.

Agility isn't Just for Physical Phitness Anymore

Okay, there’s a book I’ve been avoiding: The Secrets of Happy Families, by Bruce Feiler. It’s bright and yellow and friendly looking, and it’s been sitting on my shelf for a few months, but I’ve avoided it. You have to admit – or at least, I have to admit – the title is a little threatening. Sure, it’s catchy, and there’s that reference to Anna Karenina implied in it, but the thing is, my family is on the old side. The 9^th grader is, well, in 9^th grade, and the 5^th grader is also no longer a small child. As for the partnership slash marriage slash union between the husband and me, that’s also in its teens. It’s not like we’re newlyweds, or just starting the kid process. What if everything we’ve been doing so far is, you know, wrong? 

Even scarier is the question that follows a book with that title, like night follows day and yin follows yang: What if I learn those secrets of happy families, and discover that our family doesn’t know them? What if my family isn’t happy?

I mean, is it? I mean, I think, objectively speaking, we’re a happy family. Or happy-ish. Within the bounds of love, we like one another. We laugh – and not only at one another. There’s some yelling and some pouting and some crying. That’s normal.

Right?

I’ll admit, I read a column Feiler wrote a couple of weeks ago that gave a little glimpse into the book. The column was about fighting well. Or, perhaps I should say, about resolving conflicts. There was a nifty bit about how if you need to have a difficult conversation with someone you should make sure everyone is sitting at the same level. Don’t have someone on a footstool and someone on a counter stool. The butts should be on the same level. Level playing field, so to speak.

There was another nifty bit about making sure, when discussing topics of potential conflict, such as curfew violations or other infractions, that you sit side by side with your child, because that position encourages collaboration and minimizes the confrontational aspect of your, uh, confrontation. Here, butts should rest on cushions, because flexibility under the butt contributes to flexibility in the head.

Very interesting.

What’s so threatening about that stuff, you wonder? Well, I’ll tell you.

Readers, there is always a chance that everything I have ever done as a mother, adult, person, embryo, and zygote has been a mistake. So I read that piece, and I thought, geez, we haven’t had many fights and arguments with the children. We’re not a big fighting arguing punishing family.

Is that wrong?

Maybe the children are just not old enough for that kind of problem and it’s comin’ down the pike. If so, I have now made note of all cushioned seating in the house and will be sure to use it. Maybe, though, something in our parenting style has squelched the children. I have enough amateur psychological knowledge to know that feelings is feelings and they don’t just vanish. Perhaps our style, the husband’s and mine, the rule-with-the-invisible-fear-of-invoking-our -displeasure style, which has so far SEEMED to serve us well, has created a system of stealth rebellion in the children. Maybe we have forced them to stuff their negative emotions. Maybe they are slowly simmering cauldrons of resentment, the kind that never boil over. Maybe this style will in turn drive them away from us and send them to the far pillars of the world, from which they will only return periodically, armed with spouses or partners, and never for more than three nights.

So I had a little fear about reading the book. Plus, a quick glance at other books Feiler has published revealed they skew religious. At least their titles do. Walking the Bible, Abraham, and Where God Was Born, for example. Which. Well, I’m wary of yet another book (or person) telling me I need to have some particular religious faith to flourish.  Also, a quick check of my search engine revealed that he’s already had four nonfiction bestsellers, has done a TED talk, has suffered from cancer, and is seven months younger than me, to the day. To top it all off, he has worked as a clown.

Despite these fears, aversions, skepticisms, and – let’s call ‘em what they are – jealousies, however, I cracked the book last night.

Not being at all competitive in any way - not that there’s anything wrong with being competitive, I have plenty of friends and relations who are competitive, it’s just that I am way above petty competitiveness - I wasn’t at all pleased to discover that the concept Bruce introduces in his first chapter, Agile development, is one I’ve learned already from my editing work on technology articles for a web content management company.

I’m calling him Bruce, now, because his book’s cover is after all so friendly yellow, and because it makes me feel more equal to him. Not that being equal matters. (See above, re: competitiveness.) Also, I was being ironic in that last paragraph, in case you weren’t reading with full attention to detail.

Anyhoo, yes, me and technology go way back. Back to high school, in fact; back to the Daisy wheel computer we had, with the password I just might have leaked to someone (a boy) at another school, thus causing an early hacking scandal.  I was never blamed for this, because apparently, someone else had also leaked the password to someone (a boy) at another school. She got caught, and I didn’t. So, my feelings of competence with technology were encouraged.

It occurs to me that this example is really something totally different than competence with technology. More like competence at lying low, a skill I honed, and which came in useful later in an episode involving several people (a boy) and Great Falls, Virginia, and some illegal substances. Which I actually hadn’t used, but I was there, it is true.

But I digress. I was trying to get to the story of how yesterday the 9^th grader asked me how I would explain what a computer was to someone who had never heard of one. I asked her, “How would you explain it?” but she was having none of that kind of parent-answer that really turns the onus back on the questioner. So off I went on a ramble about code and ones and zeros, and was filled with fond remembrances of how I used to hang around with lots of MIT grads and how they could explain it to the 9^th grader much better than I. But we got through it, somehow.

Anyway, Agile is a methodology, adopted from software developers, as an alternative to a traditional management approach to project development. Agile is based on a team model with lots of feedback and revisions at each step of the development process. It’s catching on in all kinds of enterprises, and it’s been quietly making a mark on family life. Says Bruce, “The core idea of agile development is that life is constantly changing, and we have to organize ourselves in ways to allow us to react to changes in real time. The centerpiece of the program is a weekly review session built on the principle of ‘inspect and adapt.’”  Thus, Bruce discusses establishing a weekly family meeting with a regular agenda of answering the following three questions: 1. What went well in the family that week 2. What things could be improved in the family? And 3., What will the family commit to in the next week?  The main benefit of the family meeting is that it provides a consistent slot for communication.

There are lots of other details, but this post is getting too long. And there’s a friendly yellow-covered book to read if you want to know more. It’s only one of Bruce’s many ideas, and it’s pretty interesting.  Not at all scary. I’m going to read on. 

Hello

I was all set to post a new blog post about this picture, but I woke up yesterday to the Boston lockdown, and frankly, I was riveted. I, along with almost everyone else, was relieved and happy that Dzhokar Tsarnaev was taken alive into custody.

Considering the way the week has gone, with two people being terribly successful at doing bad things, it's ironic that my previous post was about the powerful connection between doing good and being successful. Although last week I poked fun at overachieving Adam Grant for the potentially pathological origins of his urge to help others, I am really very happy to believe that humans tend towards the good, biologically speaking. If scientists confirm the existence of the rumored "altruism gene," I will be delighted. I was one of the zillions of people who shared the Mr. Rogers quotation about looking for the helpers in times of tragedy, because they are always there.

I also recalled listening to the Dalai Lama talking about how the newsworthiness of terrible events like the marathon bombing is proof that humans are inherently good. These horrific events shock and anger us - not to mention, make front page news - because they are rare. They are not the norm. They are extraordinary. Ordinary people aim for the good.

Nevertheless, the mug pretty well sums up how I'm feeling. Despite the capture of the Marathon bombers, the fact remains that overall the news has been bad. Shitty, really. Bombs in Beantown, bums in the Senate. Booms in Texas. And my arms, from those allergy shots: They are swollen, hot, and itchy.

But I didn't just post this picture of Grumpy Cat because I'm grumpy. I posted it because the mug makes me smile. Everything in the picture makes me smile, as a matter of fact, and while it may seem a stretch at times of national strife, one thing I've learned is that if you want to feel better, you have to smile. You don't even have to FEEL the smile. You can just use your smile muscles. The Buddha said so, and so did Daniel Kahneman in his incredible book, Thinking Fast or Slow. Studies show that just holding a pencil between your teeth - which activates your smile muscles - will make you trend optimistic.

I'm not a Grumpy Cat fan. Grumpy Cat is a meme, and I know what a meme is because my children have told me. The mug makes me smile, though, because I won it. When I say I won it, I mean I won it in a random drawing on a funny blog I read, so that makes me smile. And the box next to it, and the vintage pin come from excellent friends who visited from Boston last weekend, so they make me smile, too. The box, by the way, holds a musical egg timer. You refrigerate the timer with your eggs, then put it in the pot when you hard boil them, and the egg, which is painted to look like mini Delft china because it's Dutch, plays the Dutch national anthem when the eggs are done. Supposedly. My eggs weren't as done as I would have liked, but that is probably because they are fat American eggs, not slim, Dutch bicycling eggs. Still, the whole business was very entertaining. Plus, all the instructions are in Dutch, which is funny to try to pronounce, if you're me.

I put all those things together because they remind me that despite the bad news, I notice myself straining to find something good. Straining is the right word, here, because effort is involved. I'm no Pollyanna, but I do want to find a way back to good when something terrible happens. I don't think I've always felt this way. There have been times when I have been overwhelmed by traumatic events and pretty much pummeled by them. Readers, I believe this trend towards optimism in me is a result of my struggle to define success. I've changed. I think it's all the reading I've done about success, motivation, positive thinking, intelligence, and happiness, and meditation. Possible simply due to meditation, if what I've been learning about meditation's effects on the brain is true.

Whatever has caused this change, I'm grateful for it. I feel more resilient. If I didn't have that sense of possibility inside me somewhere, I might not be able to see those helpers. Sure, they're in the paper. But I mean, if I didn't have the little light of optimism, I would probably be overwhelmed by a sense of the helpers' ultimate futility.

So I am grateful, so grateful not to feel that way, not to feel that bad. I'm as grateful for that as I am for the helpers.

Thursday morning, I went to my NIA class, and the teacher, who is a friend, told the group that that day, instead of a particular body focus, she wanted us to have a focus on gratitude. Because of the bombing in Boston, about which she felt so angry and sad, she felt it was important to be grateful for our legs and feet and bodies, for the chance to move them around at will. It made me cry. Then I danced.