Random Ideas - Kindness and Vulnerability

Readers, these are the times that try men's souls. Soul-trying times. And while I'm not a man, my soul feels tried. Of late, I've thought how much I would love to be a Jewish Anne Lamott.  But I lack her faith, seeing as how I'm pretty much an atheist with some yearnings for agnosticism. Furthermore, I lack her dexterity in the whole "radical self-care" thing. I'm more of a moderate in that department. And really, have I any wisdom to impart? Hers is the wisdom of giving in to self-acceptance. That one is a tough lesson to grok.

Have I learned anything? Have I changed at all? Am I any wiser?

For example, just the other day I was remarking to myself that I seem to have become kinder. I’m less prone to road rage - now it’s just road irkedness seasoned with a soupçon of crudity. I’m more patient. I look upon my fella humans with more compassion than I once did. I cry about elephants and gorillas and feel they probably, along with other animals, are much more intelligent than we have thought them to be. 

I ponder this softening. I welcome this late arrival of tact and nuance. I thought perhaps it was an effect of meditating, something I have done, off and on, for almost two decades. 

Then I got into the car, because I live in the suburbs so I am repeatedly getting into my car, and tuned into the TED Radio Hour in progress on my local public radio station to hear some TED speaker talk about how humans grow kinder as we grow older. 

Hunh, I thought. And blammo, all credit for my self-improvement disappeared with the click of a slide. There went any pretense to wisdom or enlightenment. If I’m kinder, it’s just because I’m older. That’s no accomplishment. That’s just time and luck. Furthermore, when I think about others in my life who are kinder than me - and there are many - and that they will continue to grow kinder than they currently are, and that I’m already at a deficit for kindness….

Well, these are thoughts that drive others to drink. 

But not me, they just drive me to despair. I’m not much for drinking. Alas, I am still the person I am. Needy, often blind to nuance, desperate for validation from others. And right now, I really don’t like that person. I never particularly liked that person. And this is a pity, isn’t it? To grow old without accepting yourself. 

Thus, the quest for success.

Recently, I read a profile of an astounding personality, philosopher Martha Nussbaum. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/martha-nussbaums-moral-philosophies

A sort of android of productivity and intellect, a person of incredible career success, of apparently unbounded confidence, of intense personal power, of many ex-lovers. According to The New Yorker, she has “published twenty-four books and five hundred and nine papers and received fifty-seven honorary degrees.” She has won so many awards that she apparently compares them to potato chips - something to enjoy, but "warily". 

I have never read anything Martha Nussbaum has written. I feel as if I’ve heard of her, but then again, her name is not uncommon. I’m fairly certain she has no stake in the Nussbaum & Wu eatery on Broadway and 114th Street in Manhattan. I suppose I ought to check out her works, but I was more taken with her relentless schedule and her incredible self-discipline. We’re talking ninety-minute workouts, followed by an hour of singing, daily. Did I mention she is sixty-nine years old?  Her work calls for, she says, “a society of citizens who admit that they are needy and vulnerable.” 

Here I am! But, oops, where is she? She comes across as anything but needy and vulnerable.Talk about radical self-care. Did I mention the "Lamaze is for wimps" comment re: her daughter's birth? The colonoscopy sans sedation? Strength run amok has its allure, as anyone knows who is a fan of Tracy Lord in “The Philadelphia Story.” Isn’t it much more enticing to watch for slivers of vulnerability in the strong than to wade through the marshes of vulnerability with the, well, vulnerable? The possibility that the strong and invulnerable outside will turn out to be on the inside a litter of warm puppies who escape and rollick and frolic in public adorability - isn’t that one of those seven universal plots we love so much? 

Anyhoo. 

Happy week. 

Vive la République! 

Small Successes

This week, Readers, is all about a shirt. My shirt, to be precise. My Hillary 2016 shirt, to be more

Stain barely visible halfway between my toes and the graphic

precise. Exact, even. It's also about sometimes needing to narrow the parameters of your success to something very specific. In this case, success is about a t-shirt.

Yes, I’m for Hillary Clinton. #I’mWithHer c’est moi! But that’s not my point. I’m not going to wax political. At least not more political than that. I’m talking about a t-shirt. So. Yes. A t-shirt. I bought this t-shirt practically a year ago. I bought it online, I waited many weeks for it to arrive, and when it finally arrived, I put it somewhere safe until I felt safe enough among the Bernie supporters in my community and in my own home to wear it. 

Well, you guessed it, didn’t you? When that moment arrived, I could not find the shirt. I looked everywhere. Everywhere I did look. I looked in the back of the closet with the beach towels and assorted outdoor games - balls, chalk, rackets, and so on. I looked in all the closets. I looked in the cabinet at the bottom of the laundry chute where I’ve found lost items before. I wondered if my kids, feeling the Bern, had destroyed it. Or if I had developed some memory problem that was going to become monstrous. (This remains a question, actually.) I also wondered if perhaps the disappearance of the shirt might be prophetic, or symbolic, or in some way emblematic of the fate of Hillary Clinton, whose supporters had all gone to ground while the Bernie supporters tried to make us feel like bad liberals. 

I ordered another shirt, which, when it arrived, turned out to be teddy-bear sized, not middle-aged woman-sized. 

Then came the time to switch the winter clothes into the basement and bring the summer clothes up from the basement. In our family, we call this “the big switcheroo.” 

And, you guessed it, somewhere sandwiched in with my summer clothes in a big plastic storage bin was my Hillary t-shirt. I’ve now worn it three times, mostly indoors or underneath a sweatshirt. Because I do feel a little vulnerable with it on, I admit. Today, I decided to wear it loud, proud, and public. By which I mean I would wear it, get into my car, drive to Pilates - which I take with a friend from a gay man who is definitely not crazy and is therefore not for Trump, although we don’t talk politics - get back into my car, and drive home. So I put it on, and it has a stain right on the front. A stain. Right on the front. 

Symbolic? Of Hillary Clinton’s reputation? Perhaps. Of the state of her presidential bid, in which she will ultimately prevail, despite being tarnished? 

Of my life?

Yes, indeed. The stain on my life right now is the tick I removed from my head the other night. Well, I discovered it, and the husband removed it with tweezers. I’ve poured over images to identify this beast: male American dog tick, I’m 99% certain. Phew, right? Well, no. American dog ticks can carry Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever and Tularemia. The doctor was not overly concerned. She simply told me to call back if I have any symptoms. Well, as I told my sister the psychoanalyst, “Call back if you have any symptoms” is the exact wrong thing to say to a hypochondriac. Although, come to think of it, I’m not sure there is a right thing, except for, “It’s no big deal.” Even that can be problematic; what if the doctor missed something?

So here I am, trying to avoid thinking about symptoms. That is my goal. To escape worrying too much about symptoms - and ultimately, to escape symptoms of Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever or Tularemia. That is my narrowed definition of success.  That, and Hillary Clinton defeating that Trump guy. 

I am not faring that well.

Just before I hung up with my sister, she said, “Let me know if you have any symptoms, such as, say, wetness in the mouth.”

Good one, sis. Yeah. I’m wondering about that right now. 

#BlackLivesMatter is Us

Oh, what a week. Readers, life has been very hard of late. For me, I’m talking about me. First, I have to rewrite my sample chapter AGAIN. It wasn’t perfect the third time. And the brownies we ordered for the husband’s office party were stale and unsatisfactory. Then I had to look at the tuition bill for the 17 yo’s private college and take my fancy dog to the vet for shots. Then, I downloaded Pokemon Go, but I forgot my password and couldn't register the app. 

Life just gets you down, you know? 

Okay, perhaps sarcasm is not the way to go right now. Let me be frank, Readers. Here’s what I feel after the last week, after Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, after the shooting of the police in Dallas. I feel frustrated. 

I belong to a generation that felt like we just missed out on the great, inspiring social movements of the 50s and 60s. I was too little to be a hippie and to march for civil rights. I am also of the the generation that thought these questions of equality were pretty much taken care of by those heroic Baby Boomers. I am the generation that got distracted and forgot to pay attention as all those gains were slowly and systematically almost destroyed while I experimented with Girl Power and other fake social justice stuff fed to me by that vast right-wing conspiracy that turned out to actually exist. While schools were resegregated, while voting rights were limited, while prison populations grew, while access to abortion dwindled; while education was eviscerated, the social safety net tore, job security vanished, and income disparity grew. While the NRA bought the Republican party and a couple of Democrats, just enough people to block meaningful gun restrictions. Well, guess what? I am paying attention now. 

What’s a liberal white woman like me to do about all this crap happening? The kind of stuff that makes you despair? We’ve got weapons. We’ve got racism. We’ve got violence. The husband and I had a long talk about racism and what we can do to make things better. But we don’t really know. Our particular government representatives, both state and national, vote the way we like, mostly. Should we move to a different state, where we would be in the minority politically, and get active? I’m ready to march. I’m ready to protest. I believe in democracy, just not in unregulated free-market capitalism. Clearly that is only for the wealthiest. 

I say first, listen. Bear witness. Pay attention to these racially motivated incidents. Be aware. It’s the very least we can do. 

I listened to an interview of Michelle Alexander, a civil rights lawyer, half black, half white, author of an important book called, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, about how systematic incarceration of black people has created a caste system in our country. 

And second, talk. The husband and I were talking about what it would be like to be black parents of black children, to live constantly in fear, constantly under a sort of siege mentality and to wonder if calling the police in a dangerous situation could backfire on us. 

Really, there are no words for how terrible I feel about this situation. But we have to find some. Children want answers. I said to the 17 year old, the world may look like it’s going to shit, but that’s just because of video technology on phones. This racial profiling, harrassment, and murder of black people has been going on since black people were kidnapped and brought to this country in 1619. It’s not worse, really. It’s just really visible now. And visible has to be better than invisible. Right? Shit is still shit. But at least if you can see it, you can start to clean it. 

It’s easy to extrapolate from police shooting innocent black people (and latinos) and people shooting back at police in retaliation to the world coming apart and crumbling into pieces. But Mr. Rogers said, “Look for the helpers.” And so I remember there are people working to change what’s bad, and they are using our system, which I honestly believe is fundamentally good, to do so. 

A friend's daughter works in prisoner education. Another friend is a lawyer who helps people know their rights and convicts navigate re-entry into society. And what about that amazing photo of the demonstrator in Baton Rouge, standing like a queen in her dress, calm, noble, and firm? That was inspiring. 

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/img/notes/2016/07/RTSH3XR/lead_large.jpg?1468180530

That is why in my better moments, I think that this racial mess and all the attention brought upon it and the demonstrations are actually signs of change and hope. 

As I said to the 17 year old, it’s like the pimple bursting. It’s yucky, it’s awful, it’s hard to see beyond; but it’s really a sign that (perhaps) things are clearing up. 

Imposter Syndrome

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/0c/a4/4b/0ca44b31621d0d78d06a5b15183828f1.jpg

I was recently infected with Imposter Syndrome. You’ve heard of it. It infects many women. You know you have it if you feel like a fraud in your own life. If you’ve got a PhD. in Physics, for example, which I’m not saying I do - indeed, I’m saying I don’t - but if I did, and I felt like I didn’t really know what I was talking about when I was talking about physics - which I don’t, because I don’t have a PhD. in physics - but if I did, and I felt unqualified to weigh in on some topic in physics, then that would be imposter syndrome in action. 

Come to think of it, I’ve been infected with Imposter Syndrome for a long time. For example, with my book and my blog. As I thought about taking a leadership role in my own life by redefining success and sharing that with others who might be struggling with the term, I found myself wondering some of the same types of things as real, live successes wonder: Did I have anything to contribute? Was I qualified? Shouldn’t I go back to school for a PhD in Positive Psychology before continuing?

It’s very common for women, especially, to feel as if they aren’t ready to take on a challenge unless they are super-prepared. Studies show that men will apply for a job if they meet sixty percent of the listed qualifications; women, however, don’t apply unless they meet all or almost all. Women often fail to put themselves up for promotion because they feel like they need to get really, really prepared for the next step; meanwhile, many men just raise their hands and figure they will work out problems when they get there.  Recent research suggests that our culture encourages males to be brave and take risks, but encourages females to be perfect. Really, who is perfect? No wonder so many women feel like imposters.  

For example, consider this. Recently, the husband took up triathlon training with a trainer, let’s call him Roberto. This training involved open water swimming as well as stroke improvement; weight training; cycling indoors and out; yoga; and running. After several months, a bunch of Roberto’s trainees, including the husband, ranging in age from twenty to sixty-five, ran their first race, a mini-triathlon. Everyone completed it, even an obese woman and a woman with a neurological problem with her extremities. The husband has a bad knee. In other words, there were many challenges for Roberto as a teacher.

At the celebratory meal afterward, I asked Roberto if he had been triathlon coaching for a long time and if he had a lot of experience with personal training.

“No,” he said. “This was my first time. I don’t really have any experience. I work out, mostly I cycle – I work in a bike shop - but I figured, what the heck. I’m learning as I go.”

I gave the husband a look. He had trusted this guy’s advice for handling his bad knee. (It was fine.) He had trusted this guy on the open water of a lake in fifty degree weather. They all had. (No one drowned.) Roberto had succeeded. He didn’t seem to feel like an imposter. He hadn’t let doubt stop him.

Meanwhile, Readers, consider this. I recently did exactly what studies say women tend to do. There were two openings on our town’s school board. I decided I might like to run. So I started talking to people, to other board members, to board members in other districts, asking about their experience, their backgrounds, and their campaigns. I felt like before I ran, I had better attend several BOE meetings so I would know what was going on and be able to answer questions. I would have to run a whole campaign. Maybe even debate another candidate or two. Eventually, I decided I wasn’t qualified to run, so I didn’t. What do I know about education in our town, after all? I only have two children in the system. Oh, and a Master’s in Education. But I wasn’t prepared. I let the deadline to sign up pass. I then discovered that for the two openings on the Board, only two people had signed up. They had been both been selected. No campaigns necessary. No proving themselves. Just diving in. Both were men. 

I’m not saying we should take huge risks, like Roberto. But I am saying, take action. Take a power pose a la Amy Cuddy, then step forward. Hold a pencil between your teeth, which mimics the action of smiling and triggers positivity in the brain, and - much as I hate to say this now overused phrase, but it is perfect for this situation - lean in. I decided that next time there’s an opening on the board, I’m going to sign up. Imposter or no. 

Don't Pickle It: Success Lesson

Hi, Readers, now that graduation is past, and I’m still standing - just about - I have some advice for you. 

Don’t Pickle It.

This is something my Aunt Wisdom says to me when she gives me something nice, like a bracelet my great grandmother gave to my grandmother and she gave to my mother when she graduated from high school. It means use your nice things, don’t just save them. I immediately put the bracelet into my jewelry box for a special occasion, contrary to Aunt Wisdom’s advice. 

It’s hard not to pickle things, I find. When I buy a new item, I resist wearing it right away. I’m waiting for the perfect occasion. Although I get Aunt Wisdom’s drift: use it, enjoy it, don’t save it for some perfect moment. We don’t have that many moments as it is, so we might as well enjoy them while wearing the platinum filigree bracelet studded with sapphires. 

One valid reason for pickling: bracelets are difficult to fasten without help

Use or lose, after all, right? Although that phrase reminds me of an erstwhile friend, who had a fierce attachment to various items which were once impeccable but were now used to the point of almost unusable, like a chipped china teapot and a J. Morgan Puitt linen dress now ragged, which she kept nevertheless. “They’re on preservation,” she said. Which I understand. Because if you don’t use, then you lose by not using. But if you do use, well then you also lose because you use up and wear out. But at least you used. Thus, the paradox of the special material item, ours for now, which we want to last forever, but we know it never will, to paraphrase Cat Stevens.*

Anyway, “Don’t pickle it” is something my Aunt Wisdom says. She says her mother said it to her, which means that, technically, the saying comes from my grandmother, Baba, although Baba never said it to me. Precision, precision in all things. It’s because I’m a lawyer’s daughter and a former potential librarian. I’m a stickler for giving proper credit. That’s because I never felt like I got credit for anything. Or maybe because my parents would interrogate me when I came up with a declarative opinion. 

“Where’d you get that information?” one or another of them would say. As if to suggest I couldn’t have come up with that information on my own. 

But did I want to go dark just now? No, I wanted to talk about Don’t Pickle It as a rule for successful living. The word “successful” here means “pleasant” or “comfortable”, which I think is fair, if a stretch. What else is this blog about if not about stretching the definition of success so that it encompasses just about everything? 

So, yes, I’m thinking of Don’t Pickle It and success, because just the other week, I went to an Event for the husband. For this Event, I pulled out some evening sandals that I’ve had for a long time. Eighteen years, precisely. Precision, precision. I bought them when I was pregnant with the 17-year-old to wear to a wedding in which I was a bridesmaid. An eight months’ pregnant bridesmaid, if you must know. Indeed, the last time I wore them was when I was pregnant with the 17-year-old and a bridesmaid. The sandals have traveled from Boston to Albany to New York City and back to Albany in the meantime. They have definitely been pickled. Now they have come back into fashion, sandals with a blocky heel. So I pulled ‘em out and put them on. Finally, the moment was right. This Event was that moment. And when I returned home and pulled the sandals off, much of the lining of the sandals’ straps and inner soles remained attached to my feet in a tarry substance, sort of like painted on sandals, if the paint were tar, and requiring much scrubbing to remove. And the shoes had to go buh-bye. Lesson learned.

With that experience still fresh, I permitted myself to wear my very nice slingback shoes to the 8th grader’s moving up ceremony, instead of saving them for just the right occasion. And I was glad I did. Even though I was sitting on an uncomfortable bleacher in a high school gym while four hundred 8th graders processed and received diplomas, I was glad I was wearing the nice Ferragamos I bought for my sister the psychoanalyst’s wedding 13 years ago. My feet, at least, were as nicely dressed as some of the boys, who were in blazers and bowties, and I felt festive.

So, Don’t Pickle It.

Expensive upfront, but cost per wear over time makes up for it.

*Cat Stevens's song "Oh Very Young." It's about love, not things. But whatever. 

Nora Ephron and Me, Exhaling

I feel vindicated. Judith Shulevtiz’s article in the Sunday Review* pretty much lays out all the conflicts I have felt about choosing to put mothering as my top priority, all the while watching my “viability” as a worker erode and the lost financial rewards pile up. It’s a lot of pressure either way, trying to maintain a career while being a parent, or trying to parent without feeling like you f***d up by not having a career. Or trying to parent while cobbling together gigs and part time work - forget that lofty ideal of a career. I realize that’s a privilege when so many people just have to make ends meet. 

She says, “What if the world was set up in such a way that we could really believe - not just pretend to - that having spent a period of time concentrating on raising children at the expense of future earnings would bring us respect? And what if that could be as true for men as it is for women?”  

But I don’t wanna talk about that. I wanna talk about Nora Ephron. I picked up a tome at the Wellesley bookstore, The Most of Nora Ephron. She was a Wellesley grad. And now I want a round dining room table again. I say again because several years ago I read Nora’s piece, “About Having People to Dinner,” on not getting wazzed out over the food (my paraphrase, not her terminology), on giving people a seating plan - “they get very nervous when there isn’t one” - and on the absolutely “essential”  round dining table. So you’re not “trapped talking to the people on either side of you.” I wanted a round dining table after reading that piece then; and I want one again, after reading it again last night. 

Shall I ask the universe for it? 

Or perhaps our accountant?  She will gently remind me that we have college tuition to pay - for the next eight years - and that the FAFSA believes that our household could actually contribute $94,500 of tuition per annum. Seriously. I kid you not. So, instead of purchasing a round dining table, we might consider selling every bit of furniture we do own, and moving into a refrigerator box. Then she will tell me she’s leaving for a two week cruise. 

Why am I not an accountant? 

But I digress.

And anyway, the idea of a cruise is not so appealing. All that potential for gastrointestinal illness. 

But the round dining table? That is appealing. The husband and I argued about the feasibility of such an item in our dining room after I made him listen to me read aloud Nora’s essay on knowing all along who Deep Throat was. Perhaps it made him grumpy - we have a detente on reading aloud to one another, since, as charming as it sounds to share tidbits in turn, and indeed, whole marriages have kept romance alive by doing so and then trumpeting this strategy to readers like me, the truth is that neither of us likes to listen to the other read. We only want to read aloud:

Deep Throat and Me: Now It Can Be Told, and Not for the First Time Either

For many years, I have lived with the secret of Deep Throat’s identity. It has been hell, and I have dealt with the situation by telling pretty much anyone who asked, including total strangers, who Deep Throat was. Not for nothing is indiscretion my middle name.

Come on, that’s really funny. (It’s from 2005, around when Deep Throat came out in Vanity Fair.)

Anyway, as I said, that might be why the husband insisted that a round table would not work in our dining room because the room is rectangular. I countered with my in-depth knowledge of geometry that a circle can fit inside a rectangle. I power-beamed a diagram at him telepathically

It was a more basic diagram, but I couldn't make it work today. 

but he would have none of it. He continued with his St.Aubyn and I with my Ephron. We chuckled to ourselves in our little pods.

The table talk, so to speak, was purely an academic discussion, because what we do have, and what we will continue to have as a dining table, is a plank of plywood 8’ by 5’ atop a smaller IKEA table. This serves us well at Xmas time, when we have a sizable number of guests for a couple of days. However, it’s a bit large for the usual evening party, when we have only a couple of extra people .

Anyway, this is all  a distraction from alligators eating two year olds and the NRA allowing unstable people to massacre innocent people at a gay club and Doonuld Drumpf revoking the privileges of the press at his campaign events and insinuating that President Obama is secretly conspiring with terrorists against the US. 

This is a distraction from the Senior’s impending graduation and the planning of the party for this event, and from the inevitable end of summer, when we drop her off at college and have to return home. What shall we do then?

Immediately buy a dog?

Readers, I do not know. I do not know many things. But I am glad Nora Ephron wrote so much to amuse us, and continued to work and live and be vibrant and upbeat even when she knew she was dying.   

So I will leave you with this quotation from Nora Ephron, on blogging, which she did, by the way. 

"...one of the most delicious things about the profoundly parasitical world of blogs is that you don't have to have anything much to say. Or you just have to have a little tiny thing to say. You just might want to say hello. I'm here. And by the way. On the other hand. Nevertheless. Did you see this? Whatever. A blog is sort of like an exhale. What you hope is that whatever you're saying is true for about as long as you're saying it. Even if it's not much." 

Amen. 

*http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/opinion/sunday/how-to-fix-feminism.html

Update Sans Success - Perhaps

Readers, here's an update from New Netherland. 

1) It was an emotional week. So many final thisses and thats. We attended the last 8th Grade band concert and a middle school awards ceremony, events signifying endings of middle school and, of course, while I don’t want to downplay the transition of the 8th grader into high school, the transition most prominent for me is the transition of the Senior into the College First Year. Freshman? Freshwoman? Fresher? First Year, I think will do. No bowing to the patriarchy around here. 

Anyway, after the ceremonies, I headed east for my college reunion. Beforehand, I stopped for lunch with a childhood friend I hadn’t seen in twenty years. Ah, those childhood friends. The ones you see or don’t see, but whose voices on the phone are as familiar as family. I was gobsmacked by how the time had gone by since I had seen P.  Conversation was so easy. How was it possible I had not even met her second child, or she my first or second child? What is going on in my life that I can look back over decades like rolling fields of wheat that stretch forever but seem just a quick traverse? 

Yeah. So take that melancholy elegiac tone and head over to your reunion. Your 30th reunion. Notice how I adopted the second person, here? That's me dissociating from that traumatic reality. Thirty years? Oy. 

Anyway, back into the cradle of adulthood for the weekend. A reunion is a strange thing. I think I may become a regular reunion-goer. It’s relaxing to slip into your peer group where everyone is sharing a bunch of experiences. When everyone is your age you do have a lot in common, even if life has pulled you in different ways. People all seemed happy to see one another, even people who weren’t really their friends in college. I think the reunion-goers may turn into another set of friends. 

But all that reaquainting and recapping is exhausting. 

2) After the reunion, I returned home (I still want to put that in quotation marks - “home” - because it doesn’t really feel like home exactly) to attend the Senior’s final ballet recital. Talk about draining. It was open faucets time. And not just for me, for all of us. And the other moms. I am very proud to say that this time we did remember the flowers for the dancer. This has not always been the case. We are not that family that always shows up with a bouquet. We are that family that sometimes remembers to buy the flowers and then leaves them at home. That sometimes forgets to buy them at all and then scrambles out at intermission to find a sad bunch. That sometimes just throws up its hands and says, “Oh well.” For this last show, however, I brought her roses for her middle name. 

After that, several families went out for dinner, and had a marvellous time. Until it was time to pay and the restaurant seemed unable to manage our requests for separate amounts on separate bank cards and it took SO long for them to figure this out that we were all thoroughly sick of the sight of one another and were happy to say goodbye, go home, and have restless dreams about aging and dying. (I’m confident I speak for everyone there.)

Of course we will see one another again this weekend for a different dance performance at Jacobs Pillow, but that’s another story. 

3) It’s been a long time since I reported on the garden. I spent a lot of time obsessing over it in 2010.   Eventually, the moss won and the roses died and things were looking really bad. But I am happy to report that now my garden is looking great. Thanks to somebody else. I did a little of the work, but mostly it was done by our trusty crew of landscaping professionals. I provided coffee and appropriate laughs, since one of the crew is also an improv comedy performer. Are they friends? Employees? Somewhere in the middle. 

Of course when I think of all the money we spent on the yard, I think of the stove with only 3 working burners that still has only 3 working burners, and of the broken microwave that’s part of a microwave and oven combo and would require a lot of money to replace. And I think, perhaps, rather than dribbling money into the ground, we could have replaced our oven and stovetop. 

But that would invoke a whole Brady Bunch redecoration scenario. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? I'm talking about the episode when Carol replaced the carpet (deep, shag, I presume) in the master bedroom; the new carpet made the bedspread and the curtains look dingy, and next thing they knew, the whole house needed a redo. That’s all well and good, if you don’t have to pay for other things, like college and food. But we do have to pay for those things. So the broken stovetop will remain that way until we can afford to replace the counters and the stovetop and the oven. Which might in fact be never. How about never? Is never good for you? 

That’s a quote from the best New Yorker cartoon ever: 

http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/How-about-never-cartoon.jpg

But I digress. The point is, we have dribbled money into our yard, and now that it’s summertime in Upstate New York, we are reaping the reward. 

This has nothing to do with success, any of it, unless success is related to endurance, growth (of people and plantings) and change. Let's say it does, okay?