So which do you like, and what does it say about you?
Window: “I’m gonna sleep, I don’t want to be bothered, I’m not going to have to get up during the flight and if I do, tough.”
Aisle: “I want to be in control. I want to pretend I’m not sharing a row. I’d rather be bothered by people climbing over me than to bother anyone else. I have to go to the bathroom often.”
Middle (is anyone really in this category?): “I’m easy.” or “I booked too late to choose.”
Nobody looked proud or jubilant to be wearing the “Just Divorced” banners on Tyra’s show today. Row after row of young women wore this beauty pageant-like proclamations of recent liberation. And they didn’t look jubilant.
Divorce is a tough topic. Especially for a married person. Many people I love are divorced. And the reasons why it happens are numerous and none of ‘em happy. Nobody sets out to divorce. It’s not a casual thing, even a society that allows somewhat casual dissolution of marriage. In that the casual dissolution comes after the heartache and the smashed longings and the disappointment and the slow or speedy death of a dream.
Yet Tyra’s guest today advocated having a party to celebrate the divorce, putting it in the category of other milestones we celebrate like engagements and babies on the way. I just don’t think it’s something to celebrate even under the best of divorce circumstances (mutual, friendly, “just didn’t work out”).
And one poor young man (18 or so) was asked how he felt about his mother’s makeover from dowdy to the ubiquitous “hot” so that she can now enter the dating scene. How is he supposed to feel? What a set-up.
Yes, ashes can be turned to beauty. God can “redeem the years the locusts have eaten.” But celebrating divorce itself… no. I disagree. Recovering from divorce will come after facing the reality of the death of the marriage, and grieving. And not before.
And the audience members looked like they might agree with me, sitting there wearing banners and seeming a bit sad, even as they sipped their celebratory champagne and considered the plethora of suggested options for their divorce parties.
Not everything is party fodder.
One of my hobbies is hanging out at the arrivals terminal of international airports. I haven’t actually driven out to Dulles just for this yet, but I have a plan to go and interview people and write the stories of reunions and tears, of running from customs to open arms.
Do you remember the end of the movie Love Actually (it’s scene 20 if you have the DVD)? An endless multiplicity of joyful reunions. Try not to cry.
I do have experience hanging out in “Arrivals,” having been there on official business (family-member-retrieval) each time so far. Not much happens between limousine drivers and their charges beyond the head nod and luggage hand-off. But for anyone else who bothers to go wait interminably in the terminal, they are looking forward to “the moment.” And let me tell you… most of the reunions are SWEET.
I once structured a whole talk — about our (humans’) longing for God’s intimate knowledge of us and tender care of us — around a Dulles reunion I witnessed. Two (I’d guess) cousins or sisters were reuniting after a long time (again, I’m guessing)… and they vacillated between mutually-adoring, eye-contact gazes at arms-length and death-grip hugs, for about five minutes. I couldn’t look away. And yet it was too beautiful to watch directly. Like staring into the sun.
It set a standard for me for the sorts of relationships I wanted to work towards developing, of the sort of person I wanted to aim for being — someone who would delight in the other that way and, frankly, someone who would be the object of such delight too.
I think that a few hours a year spent contemplating what goes on in relationships that produce the moments of ecstatic reunion would lead to good relationship choices. What sorts of daily acts, words shared, griefs born, sacrifices made lead to these reunions, unabashed and uninhibited, ecstatic and satisfying? I want to get to the end of my life and have a few close ones with whom I have no regrets, no tearful “woulda-coulda-shoulda.” That would be a life well lived.
That’s why I’m heading out to the airport soon to interview people. There are mysteries of the universe floating around in that international arrivals terminal, mine for the taking.
I love New Year’s Resolutions, or “intentions” as my yoga instructor calls them. The fact that I even have a yoga instructor reveals something about 2010 for me: that my new mantra is “What the hell?” Or “Why not?” Or “Might as well.”
When you’re turning 50 as I am, that seems a good time to say the aforementioned mantra and mean it. It’s rather an “if not now, when?” sentiment.
I saw a movie on an airplane recently. It was called Yes Man. The premise is that a guy with a dull life, depressed and apathetic, is challenged by his friends to say “yes” to everything that comes his way. And he does. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, considering Jim Carrey’s facial contortions get lead billing. Zooey Deschanel is in it, which is another reason to see it (I want to be her or have her be me, but that’s another story). She says this line, “ The world’s a playground, and somewhere along the way everyone forgets that.” The movie encouraged me to think about why I say “no” so often. It usually has to do with inhibition, insecurity, my thighs or not embarrassing someone else who would or wouldn’t do some particular thing if they were me, which they are decidedly not.
And when someone asked me recently if my life had a tad bit more wiggle room in it than I thought, it jarred me out of complacency, leading to the year of “what the hell?”
I like it so far. Join me.
And I never thought that I’d see… James Taylor seeming like Mister Rogers’ younger brother. Adorable. Attractive. Earnest. Not a negative thing, mind you, but just a little surprising. Blinking. Hand motions. Even calling me “special.” Everything but the cardigan. Not only looking and acting his age, but sedately and winsomely welcoming me to his website and thanking me for “falling by.” Ah, times have changed. And I’m thankful my childhood heroes are going with me into the valley of menopause. Come with us: http://www.jamestaylor.com/
I remember being 10 and showing my grandmother the cover of Sweet Baby James, and I told her, in my prepubescently insistent way, that “James Taylor is the best-looking man alive.” And she was shocked, mortified, depleted… and replied with a sure-fire deal-breaker (if her intent was to dissuade me), saying “But what about your father? He’s so handsome.” It seemed that some unknown part of my future character rested on realizing the error of my ways for finding such a long-haired hippie (and an insouciantly lounging one, at that) attractive.
Anyway, I’m a big fan, and I’ve paid scalpers’ rates, and sat through deluges in lawn “seats,” and I check out his website from time to time, and in short I am — as I said — a big fan. My children even think that James Taylor is the author of the only lullaby ever written, “You Can Close your Eyes,” cause it’s the only one their momma ever sang.
I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain…but I never thought I’d compare James Taylor to Fred Rogers.
New York magazine posed this question to 100 Soho pedestrians:
“Which of the following nominally free things would you pay for if that was the only way to get them?”
I was interested to learn that “public bathrooms” beat out “the right to vote.” Not surprising. But they also beat out “sex.” And “network television” beat out sex.
And “copies of The Onion” beat out not only all three of the above-mentioned items but also “drinking water” and “air” and “the love of parents and family.”
And one heartening discovery is that 14 people would pay for “subway musicians” if that was the only way to get them. I agree. One of life’s great pleasures.
Right up there with The Onion.
I once said to a priest, to whom I went for career advice, “You know how people write down ideas all the time for things to write and do?” And I was met with a blank, but kindly, stare. Before he said, “No. Not everyone does that. That’s a clue to YOUR calling.”
Well I’m buried under the scraps of paper, grocery receipts, margin notes, scrawlings on my own skin, post-its, notebooks with illegible scribblings (done at traffic lights). And when the pile is growing and the ideas are only forming and not getting expression, I am becoming buried psychically too.
I tell my nearest and dearest, if you don’t see me writing (or see proof thereof), steer clear. I’m safer to be with when my head isn’t exploding with ideas, images, unexpressed words. Not that anyone wants to or needs to hear all my words. That’s what writing (and tucking much of the product away) is for.
But while I postpone, let life intervene, delay, wait, get distracted, other people are writing my books. And I am bugged by that.
Take, for example, Kathryn Stockett’s The Help. I have talked about that topic (the relationship between white children, their mothers, and the black maids who served in their homes in the South) for 15 years. I wrote my Masters’ thesis on the topic. I interviewed, researched, cried, wrote, challenged myself and my culture, excused myself and my culture… and turned in that thesis, duly graduating and going on to the next thing in life… but always wanting to turn my lengthy academic tome into something creative, winsome, right.
So when I went to a reunion of college friends recently, and the subject of that book came up, and they good-naturedly teased me, saying, “Did you ghostwrite that book? It had to have been you,” I was pulled in several emotional directions, with a headache-inducing “woulda, coulda, shoulda” angst. I should have. I couldn’t have (don’t lean towards fiction gifts). Stockett did it beautifully, and I should just be thrilled that someone did it. But I wasn’t. I was jealous. Mad. Frustrated at myself. Flattered that my friends knew my passion for the subject, that they thought (if only remotely) that I could have written such a great book. In short, riddled with regret and disappointment.
We can’t write every story. But we can write the ones we’ve lived. The ones that are bubbling up so vigorously and completely that we choke on them.
And chances are that even in the muddle and piles of paper with ideas on them, the ones that have to be written will rise to the top and scream out for attention.
May I be paying attention on that day and not focused on the lesser stories, or those that aren’t mine.
I’m sitting in a restaurant performing an act of bravery. I’m eating the food they serve. Sushi. Raw fish. Uncooked. Not heated up and boiled to death. Raw. Cuz that’s what sushi is – raw fish. Much of it anyway.
And yet at the front door of this restaurant, one I frequent (especially when my daughter is in residence), there is a sign warning me in huge word-processed letters (Cambria, probably, if you are wondering):
WARNING…EATING RAW FOOD CAN CONTRIBUTE TO FOOD-BORNE ILLNESS.
I know that. And I count on sushi chefs to know it and handle their fish accordingly. Yet it’s a bit unappetizing to be met with the sign at the door.
It reminds me of a Chinatown spot I saw recently, the “Eat First Restaurant.” What could that name mean? That it’s advisable to eat before you arrive?
Enticing, huh?
Just like it’s not advisable to eat the food at my favorite sushi place?
Life’s too sanitized. Too litigious. Too safe.
I’m going to sing along with Mary Chapin Carpenter, the patron saint – whether she meant to be or not — of women stuck in the suburbs, “I take my chances.” Woo hoo!
What if we actually did what means the most to us instead of just letting things happen. What if we actually spent time with the people we love the most instead of just letting things happen. What if? What if? What if?
Somebody I really loved died recently. He was my plastic surgeon who put me back together after breast cancer. I considered him a friend. I considered him a God-send in the midst of the ordeal of cancer. The appointments with him were a bright spot in a dark sky. I occasionally ran into him at community functions or around town, but hardly ever. I stopped by to visit him this summer but he wasn’t in the office. Yet I considered him a favorite person. And he’s gone now, having died young and suddenly and unexpectedly.
I don’t know what to do with the fact that we have favorite people that we barely know and — sometimes — close friends that we don’t even like so much and we don’t do anything about it. In terms of where we put our time and energy. Or bothering to express to people that they are favorites. Or working on the relationships that should be more but, frankly, aren’t. We let it be. And then it is. And then it was. And then it’s over. A waste.
Or the issue of how we spend our time. I’ve got wiggle room I don’t use. ”The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places,” as Psalm 16 says. Yet I live as if I have no choice. Up against the wall. Tired. Resentful. Burned out right now.
Makes me think of that Bible verse about those who trust in men vs. those who trust in God and how they “don’t see prosperity when it comes.” Ouch. Jeremiah had it right. Drought-resistant tree by a stream or parched bush in the desert… those are the results depending on which source of nurture and nourishment we choose.
I think it relates to living life in reaction to outside forces vs. intentionally choosing (based on freedom and in-touch-ness with our hearts) where we’ll go, what we’ll do and with whom.
Before it’s too late.
Today I watched Oprah. And the news follows Oprah. And during the 42 minutes that I watched her show, there were at least 6 ads for the upcoming news, and they included dire warnings that “actual breast self-exams would be shown on the news” so we should take cover, run and hide, be discerning, throw blankets over our children and husbands… basically, we were instructed to “prepare to freak out” or “dare to see if you can handle this.” WHAT? This will save lives. A breast self-exam is how I found my own cancer. This matters. This is life and health, not lurid information.
And yet anytime I look through the cable guide to see if one of my cooking shows is on, I am barraged with titles of shows that I didn’t ask for. And that’s just the titles; I don’t now how many years it would take me to get the images out of my brain if I clicked on these shows. Lest my blog become a go-to site for racy keywords, I’ll not go into the details… but suffice it to say that I am exposed (or so it feels) to shows about every manner of sex, not just extramarital but extrahuman.
Hmmm… prudish America. Breast exams are threatening. Sexual fantasy and explicit content come without warning and are marketed to kids.
