Category Archives: Personal

On Turning Sixty

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60th Birthday Hike, EBMUD watershed, Rocky Ridge“How are you feeling about your birthday?”

It’s a common question, especially when the birthday ushers in a new decade.

My birthday, which I recently celebrated, is the one where people say, “Sixty is the new 40!” That’s because it is impolite to say, “Sixty! That’s verging on old!”

Not old enough to get the senior discount at the movie theater, enroll in Medicare, or collect Social Security. But within spitting distance.

How do I feel about turning 60?

I feel great.

Since being diagnosed two and a half years ago with a rare and aggressive form of uterine cancer, there is nothing I have wanted more than to grow old.

I was lucky—my cancer was detected early, and I am completely fine. Still, a serious diagnosis permanently pierces the veil that obscures mortality. And even though I fervently believe that anyone who says “the gift of cancer” ought to be shot, the glimpse of death that burned through all my neuroses and made me feel keenly how much I want to live is the gift of cancer.

In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion writes that when her husband had a cardiac event in 1987, she refused to believe him when he said, “Now I know how I’ll die.” He dropped dead of a massive heart attack 16 years later. Sixteen years is a decent interval, but still, the original diagnosis presaged his end.

That’s how I feel, too. Unlike with Didion’s husband, whose condition was dubbed “the widow-maker,” there is no reason to believe that my cancer will make my husband a widower, my daughters motherless, my future grandchildren unknown to me. Still, it shadows me–not as a morbid preoccupation, but as a plausible outcome. I hear about people who beat cancer 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. Then it comes back with a vengeance.

A few months back, my husband and I were chatting about life after retirement.

“I don’t care about living till I’m really old,” Jonathan said. “As long as I make it to 80.”

I began to cry. “I don’t think I’m going to make it there with you,” I said softly as he put his arms around me.

I hope I do, just as I hope to get the senior discount at the movies, know my grandchildren, celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary.

But whatever happens, I have made it to 60! We celebrated exactly as I wished–a thirteen-mile hike through rolling green hills with Jonathan, followed by an intimate dinner with dear friends. We toasted with gin and tonics, bemoaned then solved the problems of the world, and gorged on an incredible gourmet spread topped off by chocolate Kahlua cake. I couldn’t have asked for anything better.

Lorrie's 60th

Here’s wishing for many happy returns.

Transplant

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A pot of flowers doesn’t seem like much. It can’t begin to compensate for the loss of rose beds, lemon trees, azaleas just coming into their glory. But at least it’s something to greet my in-laws the day they’ll cram what they can from sixty years of marriage into two tiny rooms in their new retirement home.

My husband’s parents have never much cared about material things; flowers are the one indulgence they allow themselves. A pale yellow Cecil Bruner rose foams over the entry of the Craftsman bungalow they are about to leave behind. Bluebells, daisies, holly—every season’s bounty—grace the coffee table in their living room. Now the vases, furniture, and garden tools have all been donated to charity. My father-in-law, who disapproves of brooding as a foolish waste of time, has banished all misgivings about their imminent uprooting. Still, he confessed to me a few days earlier that he felt a pang as his prized roses started to leaf out. He will want a bit of dirt to fuss over.

At the nursery, I select lemon-yellow ranunculus, blue pansies, white impatiens, and a single periwinkle to spill over the edge of a big ceramic planter the color of cream. The rich black potting soil tumbles from bag to bowl. I carefully ease the flowers out of their plastic cubes and transplant them into the readied dirt, adding soil to fill in the empty spaces. I give the pot a gentle soaking. It looks perfect.

I arrive at the retirement home an hour before the movers and my in-laws are due. Yellow caution tape, the kind used in crime scenes, blocks the path to the 4- by 6-foot concrete pad we charitably call a patio. Perhaps the dismantling of a long life is indeed a crime, but I am too rushed to appreciate the symbolism.

I inquire at the front desk about the obstruction.

“Which unit are your in-laws moving into?” asks the receptionist.

“It’s on the end, overlooking the swamp,” I say.

“We don’t call it a swamp,” she admonishes before explaining that the path is cordoned off due to high tide warnings. “We say ‘marsh.’”

Since my in-laws refer to their fellow residents as “inmates,” I imagine them bristling at the euphemisms, if not the rising waters, about to engulf them. They may be old, but they’re nobody’s fools.

Swamp or marsh, it is clear that no senior citizens will be allowed to wander off into a flood zone, so I resign myself to a treacherous detour. Bracing against the weight of the pot, I gingerly pick my way across soggy hillocks toward the patio. A few more steps and I’ll be home free on the solid concrete.

As I bend to put the pot in place, it slips out of my arms. I watch helplessly, unable to reverse the inexorable crash. Dirt and ceramic shards are everywhere. The flowers I had so tenderly transplanted now lay crushed under two cubic feet of soil.

I pull the biggest shard from the rubble, frantically combing through the dirt with my bare hands. The sweet blue faces of the pansies emerge, and here is the tattered head of the ranunculus. One after another I toss the survivors onto the shard. It is a cool, overcast day; with enough soil clinging to their roots, perhaps the flowers will pull through.

But I cannot yet tend to the shocked transplants. I still have a “Welcome” banner to install, a mess to clean up.

I shake the dirt off my jeans and sneakers as best I can, and struggle to unlock the front door. My in-laws are zealously tidy; their new home, with all the charm of a chain motel, at least makes up in spotlessness what it lacks in character. Or at least it did before I tracked in dirt. Now the traces of my good intentions are ground into the carpet.

I affix the “Welcome” banner to the blank walls. Fishing a crumpled tissue out of my pocket, I blot up the mess as much as possible before finally turning my attention to the drooping plants.

Bare handed, I scoop up some of the soil from the patio into the plastic nursery pots, sweep the rest into the grass with the side of my foot, then head home with my load of distressed flowers and dirt.

There I find an old terra cotta pot, slightly battered, with a patina of dirt and mildew. Filling it almost to the brim with the salvaged potting soil, I carefully transplant each bedraggled flower, once again troweling in dirt around the edges, gently misting off stray soil before giving everything a good drink. The blossoms are wilted from their ordeal, but are starting to perk up a little.

I hope they’ll take root in their new home.

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I wrote this four years ago when my in-laws made their big move. They’ve taken root just fine, as has my father-in-law’s garden! 

Lurking with Intent to Mope

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dark_and_brooding_by_markeverard-d5juhy9

“Lurking with intent to mope.”

I burst out laughing when I heard this, even though I was listening to a Fresh Air tribute to David Carr, the New York Times reporter who died from cancer this week. Carr himself provided the laugh, quoting a police officer’s description of him during his years of crack addiction and petty crime. The cop was so tired of Carr being hauled in all the time that he looked up from his desk at the pathetic loser before him and said, “Oh, you again. What are you in for now? Oh, yeah–lurking with intent to mope.”

I can so relate. Not to the crack addict and petty criminal part, but to the wallow of self-pity. So all-encompassing. So hideous. So delicious. And as hard as any addiction to break.

It took cancer to break mine. Cancer is like a white-hot brush fire that burns away neurosis, leaving in its wake a deep appreciation and sharpened clarity about what matters. For a while, at least, it becomes very clear that life is just too short for lurking with intent to mope.

Cancer’s other lesson is that neuroses grow back faster than hair, so although I never brood like I used to,  I’m still an occasional contender.

I happened to hear David Carr’s interview on the first day of Lent, which gave me the inspiration I’d been seeking. As a lapsed Unitarian, I don’t really grok with the notion of self-sacrifice. But since I enjoy the camaraderie of commiseration, I like to cast about for something to give up. Not something impossible, like chocolate, mind you.

But lurking with intent to mope? I’ll try to forego it for forty-eight days.

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Can you relate to “lurking with intent to mope?”  What will you give up for Lent? 

Nature’s Valentine

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Plum Blossoms

Even though we are in the midst of a drought, the Japanese plums are blossoming. They always do this time of year: It’s Nature’s Valentine to Northern California.

To celebrate Valentine’s Day and my 60th birthday, my friend Mary and I went to Filoli the day before, on Friday the 13th. On the drive down, I passed a movie marquee advertising Fifty Shades of Grey. I listened to NPR, which featured holiday stories about polyamory and how Valentine’s Day is celebrated in Ebola zones. I felt a tad conventional (and very, very lucky) with my box of See’s chocolates for my husband all set for the big day. But soon I arrived in the staid territory of Filoli, a refuge for ladies who lunch. Their Valentine feature was fifty shades of camellias spilling out of teacups:

And, better than an assortment of chocolates, more of nature’s confections:

Daffodils

 HyacinthsMagnoliaHappy Valentine’s Day!

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How will you celebrate?

HPV: The Other Vaccine

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Source: http://www.womenshealthmag.com/Has anything been left unsaid in the uproar over vaccination since the measles outbreak? My little sleepy corner of the world, Marin County, has even been skewered by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show for its high rate of personal-belief exemptions. Not since the peacock feathers and hottubs of the 70s have we been so subject to ridicule.

Yet one aspect of the vaccination debate deserves more attention. A local newspaper story provides a clue, quoting a parent who said, almost as an afterthought, “There are vaccines I didn’t do. I skipped the one related to sexually transmitted disease.”

She means the HPV vaccine, which protects against the human papilloma virus. HPV is the most common of all sexually transmitted infections. Although usually harmless, it can be far deadlier than the measles—HPV causes cervical and other cancers. In the United States, 12,000 are diagnosed with and 4,000 die from cervical cancer each year. Even those less drastically affected may suffer invasive testing, treatments, and anxiety. There is no way of knowing who will be afflicted or who will spread it to others.

But since 2006, it’s been possible to stay safe from the most serious strains of HPV. All it takes is three shots administered over six months to girls and boys around age 11, before they become sexually active.

You’d think parents would jump for joy at such an easy way to protect their children from getting or giving cancer. Yet even though the vaccines are highly safe and effective, a recent KQED report notes that based on 2011 data, the most current available, “Just 33 percent of girls and less than 7 percent of boys in the U.S. have gotten all three recommended doses.”  When it comes to HPV, there’s no ground zero like Marin County to mock for low immunization rates; they’re abysmal across the whole country.

Many parents fear that vaccinating against HPV condones early sexual behavior, despite evidence to the contrary. Even some doctors are reluctant to bring up the topic because of the link to sex. But such fears fly in the face of reality.

We can keep our heads in the sand and hope that nothing bad happens. Or we can keep our kids safe from cancer and other ills with the HPV vaccine.

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How will/did you choose? What do you think of the vaccination debate? 

For more on HPV and the HPV vaccine:

Center for Disease Control: http://www.cdc.gov/hpv/vaccine.html 

KQED Forum: http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201408040900

Dr. Jen Gunter, Ob-gyn who writes about women’s health: https://drjengunter.wordpress.com/tag/hpv-vaccine/

Groundhog Day: The Quintessential Holiday

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GroundhogGroundhog Day . . .  is a day celebrated on February 2. According to folklore, if it is cloudy when a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day, then spring will come early; if it is sunny, the groundhog will supposedly see its shadow and retreat back into its burrow, and the winter weather will persist for six more weeks.

–Wikipedia

We have made it through the holidays—relatives endured, credit cards maxed out, waistlines larded with latkes, and other wonders of the season.  We have turned the page on the old year, ushering in the new with high hope and resolve.

But now that we’ve paid that first installment on Visa and skipped a session or two at the gym (seriously, setting the alarm a half hour early–what were we thinking?), it’s time to get real.

That’s why I propose elevating Groundhog Day, which best represents who we are as a people, to the holiday status it deserves. Sure, the Fourth of July honors our penchant for blowing things up. And Thanksgiving is a strong contender with its non-denominational emphasis on food. But that gratitude thing can be a deal breaker for some.

Groundhog Day, on the other hand, is for everyone—those who are pulled kicking and screaming into the sunlight only to go back to bed, and those who find a silver lining in a cloudy day.

And that’s just the tradition built around a reluctant rodent prognosticator! The other reason why February 2 should be our national holiday is captured by the 1993 film, Groundhog Day, in which Bill Murray hits the alarm each morning only to find he is trapped in the same dreary day as before.

Sound familiar?

Yet Groundhog Day goes on to transform the Myth of Sisyphus into an embodiment of that all-American saying, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” (Freudians, those jaded Old Worlders, call it repetition compulsion.)

The definition of insanity may be repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. But these do-overs also give us a chance to get it right. Bill Murray, by dint of repetition and infinitesimal change, emerges from the winter of his discontent into the sunny skies of Andie MacDowell’s favor. Surely that is a model worth celebrating.

I forget what happens to the groundhog. Probably it bites somebody and goes back to sleep. Which is another holiday tradition we can all embrace.

 

 

Empty Nest Projects

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Picture of nestFrances McDormand, speaking recently at City Arts and Lectures about Olive Kitteredge, referred to the HBO miniseries she stars in and produced as her empty nest project. Already mourning her son’s not-quite-imminent departure when he was 14, McDormand cast about for something to take his place. She bought the rights to Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, shaped it with screenwriter Jane Anderson and director Lisa Cholodenko­­­, and insisted that Richard Jenkins be cast as Olive’s “tyrannically cheerful” husband. When McDormand’s son left for college, she left for Gloucester for three months of filming.

I, too, dreaded my kids’ departure long before they left home. My empty nest project was writing. I had dabbled in words before, but aside from churning out a clever holiday letter every year, my oeuvre was pretty non-existent. Writing was the one thing I looked forward to, not just to fill the void, but as something just for me after years of tending to others–my consolation prize for the planned obsolescence of motherhood.

It was also good therapy, as writing usually is. I poured my anxiety and grief onto the page. “Soon we’ll be leaving the emerald hills and spring-soft skies of the Bay Area to visit faraway New England colleges, icy sirens that entice my baby away from home,” I began. This turned into my first Perspectives piece. Like most things that well up from the heart, the words came spontaneously, easily. They struck a chord for many listeners, though one felt compelled to write that my daughter was lucky to escape my neurotic clutches!

Olive Kitteredge was accused of much worse. But where would be without our neurotic clutches? They are the wellspring of creativity. Equanimity does not hold one’s interest for long. Nor does it provide good copy. The bulk of my personal essays are about the empty nest—anxiously awaiting it, grieving it, then enjoying it. I knew I was through the mourning process when I began to tire of writing about it.

On to new things. Now that Emma has moved back home after being gone for so long, perhaps my next endeavor will be the Boomerang Project. And looking forward to seeing what comes next for Frances McDormand.

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How have you transformed your struggles with creativity?

On Not Climbing Half Dome

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Half Dome June 2014

As two free-climbers inched their way into the history books and up El Capitan’s Dawn Wall this week, I recalled a trip my husband and I made to Yosemite last June. Unlike the intrepid duo’s, our feet remained firmly on the ground. We enjoyed glorious hikes at Glacier Point and Sentinel Dome.  Surveying the panorama of granite and sky, though, it suddenly hit me: I am never going to climb Half Dome. This brought a slight pang; I always envisioned hauling myself up those metal cables someday. Mostly, though, I felt relieved.

A hiking blog fully endorsed taking the easy way out:

Sentinel Dome gets top marks for the summit views. You get almost everything that Half Dome provides, without the clenching and near-death experience. Geezers can do this hike from a nearby parking lot.

I don’t think of myself as a geezer. This decision was driven much more by choice than by creaky knees and wheezy lungs.  Still, in giving up the hard work that would no doubt reward me with a huge sense of accomplishment as well as stupendous views, was I settling into a twilight of resignation?

But there’s a difference between giving up and letting go. We certainly can be stymied by inertia and self-doubt. Yet maybe we’ve just lost interest or ability, shifted priorities, or never really wanted to climb Half Dome all that much in the first place.

Reality is to dreams as glaciers are to granite. It grinds you down, yet also sculpts and liberates something new: Self-knowledge. Acceptance. Knowing what you want and don’t want. Now that’s a Dawn Wall whose conquest is a monumental achievement.

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What are your Half Domes you’ll never climb, your Dawn Walls you still hope to?

 

Out with the Old, In with the . . . ?

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January 2015 calendarBefore the fresh start to the New Year started going a bit stale, I got a jump on things during the lull between Christmas and January 1. With no more presents to wrap, holiday feasts to prepare, and most of my clients out of town, I had plenty of time. Most of it I spent hiking in the glorious crisp weather we had following the deluges that brought green to the parched hills and a brief fantasy that our drought might be over. (It isn’t, but what’s the point of New Year’s if not hoping for things that will soon fail to materialize?)

When I wasn’t hiking, I was unsubscribing. Not quite ready to tackle the actual clutter in closets and drawers I’d resolved to conquer, I could at least take a stab at virtual clutter. How satisfying to hunt down the microscopic click here from all the defeated congressional candidates we’d supported who were now sending holiday greetings while asking for more money. And kudos to the Sierra Club, which uses a big font for Unsubscribe—not so worthy of praise that it kept me from clicking, but still, I appreciate their thoughtfulness. The ever-persistent requests for $3,$5, $10, ANYTHING, PLEASE, WE’RE SO DESPERATE!!! from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, like the mosquito that whines in the night, were harder to get rid of, but for the moment there’s no more buzz in my ear. Sorry, Nancy Pelosi. Bernie Sanders I kept on board, just in case.

Since I felt so good about purging emails, I moved on to purging my stacks of unread New York Reviews collecting dust on my night stand.  Vowing to be ruthless, I decided beforehand to stop only for articles about “The Serial.” Since the New York Review is too high-falutin to traffic in the most popular podcast ever, I was able to make short work of my tall pile, though I did pause for a few essays, including Michael Chabon’s  short paean to Oakland, before remembering why I had never made it through Kavalier and Clay or The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. More successful at drawing me in was an article on the theory of broken windows policing—perfect for the New Year, since it’s another hopeful idea that hasn’t panned out too well. I passed on “What Happened to the Arab Spring?,” “Is There an Answer to Syria?,” and “Did Patrick Modiano Deserve It?” I guess I will never know, nor will I ever know who Patrick Modiano even is.

“Oh no!” my husband cried in dismay when I told him with relish of my purge, of my disloyalty to intellect and knowledge. But disregarding the opinion of others is one resolution that has gained traction over the years. My NYR-free nightstand has meant I am almost caught up on New Yorkers. And I finally began Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, which I have been magically thinking about reading for years.

Then there’s my favorite ritual of honoring the change in the calendar: packing away all the holiday ornaments and tossing the Christmas tree over the balcony.

Of course, now that I’ve unsubscribed from 2014, the question remains: What do I want to subscribe to in 2015?

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How about you? What do you want to unsubscribe from and subscribe to this year?

No Joke

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The Pain of the Watermelon JokeI’ve come to expect the blatant and dog-whistle racism routinely sounded by Fox News. But Lemony Snicket?! For it was none other than the beloved children’s author of A Series of Unfortunate Events–aka Daniel Handler—who recently made racially insensitive remarks while emceeing this year’s National Book Awards. Right after his friend Jacqueline Woodson won for Brown Girl Dreaming, Handler told an unfunny joke about watermelon. He drew deserved criticism for his racially insensitive words, and quickly apologized. Woodson wrote about the injury in an eloquent essay called, “The Pain of the Watermelon Joke.”

In grappling with my very different reactions when prejudice comes out of the mouth of someone I like rather than someone I hate, I’m reminded of another unfortunate event involving poor word choice from my childhood.

I grew up in an all-white, affluent Boston suburb. My parents had moved from Tennessee because they did not want their children to grow up hearing black people called “Nigger.” Civil rights activists, they worked tirelessly to end racial discrimination in housing and schools.

Life was simple because we knew who to hate—bigots like South Boston politician Louise Day Hicks, a rabid opponent of court-ordered busing to end school desegregation. Buses may have burned in working-class Southie, but racism was far more genteel in our privileged enclave. Homes for sale would just suddenly disappear from the market should the prospective buyers turn out to have an abundance of melanin. My parents were outspoken critics of this northern variant of discrimination. Apparently racism knew no geographical bounds, as my mother was reminded every time she picked up the phone to hear the whispered hiss, “Nigger Lover.”

Undeterred, my parents spoke frequently at civic and church gatherings in favor of fair housing. At one such meeting, my mother rose from her seat next to her black friend Bernie and approached the podium. Particularly furious about the latest example of redlining that kept non-whites from living in our town, my mother shook her fist and proclaimed, “Let’s call a spade a spade!”

Realizing with horror the racial slur she had just uttered, my mother prayed for the earth to open up and swallow her whole. Meanwhile, her friend Bernie threw back his head and roared with laughter.

I wonder if their friendship could survive today in light of the furor surrounding this year’s National Book Awards. Much of the ensuing commentary fell into two polarized camps: what an unforgivable racist Handler was; or an attack on black people for seeing everything through a racial lens. One commenter wrote, “I cannot imagine that they are still friends.”

My fervent hope is that they are. I like to imagine the two friends sitting down together for a good, long, honest talk. Racism must be called out, but we must also know the difference between malevolence and ill-spoken ignorance.

I am saddened by the pain oblivion causes, whether it is Handler’s or my own. I want to do better, be better, even if I am clumsy in the process. There are plenty of times my fear of offending or of being upbraided for saying the wrong thing makes me say nothing. I do not want to remain adept at this kind of silence, where no one is the wiser, and no one learns a thing.

The National Book Awards created a stir, but also offer a way forward. In a recent Fresh Air interview, Woodson spoke further about Handler’s remarks: “I’m sad that so many are not connected to the deep history [of the African-American’s experience of racism]. Daniel didn’t know. He made the mistake of thinking we’re beyond that. Friendships are complicated. But he has a good heart. A lot of people who are ignorant have good hearts, and that’s what this kind of racial mistake looks like.”

So I’m guessing she and Lemony Snicket are OK, just as my mother and Bernie were, just as I hope to be with whomever I offend.  Such unfortunate events open up opportunities for understanding, if only we keep talking honestly with one another.