100 Day Challenge #63: College Applications & Form-phobia!

My eldest son is applying for colleges right now. He’s chosen ten. After he had a few sessions with a college essay specialist, I’ve had the pleasure of copyediting and proofreading his personal essay. And my husband and I got to review one of the applications (the Common App) after our son filled it out. He did a great job! With him doing all the leg work with the applications, I filled out the FAFSA (scholarships and financial aid). What could’ve been stressful (and started off that way for him with nervous anticipation and us with unfamiliarity) has actually turned out to be kind of exciting. 

It’s made me reflect on my own experience applying for and starting college. Our son’s process is so different from mine, so much better, if you ask me.

For one, it was my responsibility alone to apply to college—although it was always a given that I would go to college (an assumption I’m grateful for). My parents never offered to help me, and I had plenty of trepidation about the big change. And then there was the application process itself. To this day, I really hate filling out forms! I did the minimum. I didn’t fill out a single application for scholarships. I’m still working on forgiving that regret. That poor girl.

And though I did have an inkling of the kind of college experience I wanted, I didn’t think I could have it. I showed my parents the brochure I had received from Wake Forest University. That was it! A small liberal arts college back east (North Carolina would do, or anywhere in New England) with ivy crawling up weathered brick buildings where you could sit and have meaningful discussions in a place with seasons. Yeah, Baby! 

I don’t remember my parents’ response when I showed them the brochure with shy hope. I suspect it was silence. Silent disapproval. I think they wanted me closer to home, and my dad didn’t want to pay for a private college. Things weren’t often stated directly in our household, but it seemed clear to me that this choice wasn’t an option.

So, I applied only to one college, UC Davis, where my older brother was already attending.

My freshman year as an Aggie was a searching year in which I felt entirely out-of-place. An English major, I took Advanced Calculus, Atmospheric Science and Latin among other courses. 

The calculus professor sat unmoving in a chair in the front of the room and spoke in a monotone. Although high school math had always been fairly easy, this stuff was beyond my interest and sometimes beyond my understanding. It seemed to serve no discernible purpose, at least the way it was presented, removed from any real life application of the equations. It was friggin’ hard! 

Nonetheless, I tortured myself with two semesters of it, earning a B and my first ever C. 

Atmospheric Science was mostly for upperclassmen. I signed up for it at my brother’s suggestion to take a class with him, a senior. Though comparing stratus, cumulus and cirrus clouds was cool, the class was much too demanding for a freshman trying to find her way, so I dropped it. 

My Latin professor had a lisp, which she assured us was actually authentic to the original pronunciation (I have no idea if this is true or not). Other than The Odyssey and veni, vidi, vici, I don’t remember much of my three trimesters. However, loving language and etymology, the study of Latin root words, prefixes and suffixes was cool. I still geek out on stuff like that.

My literature classes were mostly just okay that year, except the experience with the professor who wanted all our papers written with the brevity of a legal brief. That practice, though challenging, still serves me well today.

My freshman roommate was an acquaintance on my high school tennis team. I didn’t know until I got to Davis that she had requested an all-girls floor in the dorms. I had visited my brother during his freshman year and had been entranced with the communal vibe of his coed dorm floor. I was looking forward to that experience.

Hughes Hall, second floor, full of ONLY girls totally sucked! It was usually quiet, not much going on. And none of the other girls were liberal arts majors like me. I felt like the weird girl. I made no lasting friendships from that year.

I rushed as a little sister of my brother’s fraternity, Phi Delta Theta, at my brother’s request. They had an alligator in their bathtub and an old three-story house on B Street close to campus that smelled of perpetual stale beer. The initiation, a kidnapping with pressure to drain a pony keg with twelve other girls and then tell a dirty joke sitting in the dark with a flashlight in our faces was scarring. Back in the dorms that night, I threw up. 

As the weeks wore on, I partied with my brother a little, but I didn’t have the social confidence or prowess of the other little sisters—or the ability or desire to down a lot of beer. I was “Sonny’s little sister,” never asked on a date or to a prom by his fraternity brothers. I just didn’t fit in. It wasn’t great for my already fragile self-esteem.

There was only one thing I knew I wanted to do when I got to college and that was to study abroad. In my second week on campus, I rode my bike to the Study Abroad Program office only to leave angry and disappointed when told I wasn’t eligible until my junior year.

A few weeks later, I picked up a college transfer form. I was thinking of UC Berkeley. But that was awfully close to home. So the form, tucked into my desk drawer, remained blank.

Then, in the third quarter (that’s what it was called even though mathematically it doesn’t make sense at all!) I found the theatre department. 

I took a position on the backstage crew for a production of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard on the Main Stage. I loved it! The smell of the theatre, the old wood, the dust on the Fresnels, the grease of the fly pulleys for the big velvet curtains, the ancient fabrics of well-worn costume pieces. I loved being in the dark wings and watching as a magic world came alight on stage. I loved the buzz in the green room. I had found my place on campus finally. 

I called my mother excitedly. “I think I’m going to double-major in English and Drama.” 

There was silence on the other end of the line (that silent disapproval again). My heart sank. 

It’s important to know that I was a well-trained “good girl.” I was supposed to please my parents at all costs, which equated in my mind to taking care of them emotionally, something, of course, I could never control. That was my belief system. But I had no articulation of any of that back then.

Two weeks later, my mother called me excited, “Lindy, I just talked to a friend of mine whose son teaches English AND Drama at the local junior college.” 

My heart sank even further. My mother wanted me to be a teacher like she had been, something she could understand, a path that didn’t scare her. And I had no idea how to want something different than what my parents seemed to want for me. Maybe if I had a different make-up, but I didn’t.

I stayed at Davis. I had a better sophomore year though, getting even more involved in the theatre department. I ended up performing in at least one production or project almost every quarter for the rest of my college career. I loved it! The green room became my second home. It was like a world-within-a-world, out-of-character with the rest of the rather conservative campus. The theatre department was a place where we called professors by their first names and all hot tubbed together naked. (I hope that peaks your curiosity. :) More on that in another post!)

I just know if our sons call home from college announcing some new interest or direction while in college, I can’t wait to say, “That’s great. That sounds interesting. Tell me all about it.”

UC Davis, 1983 by Ian Abbott on flickr.com

100 Day Challenge #62: My Groupie Experience

I had one groupie experience. And I would give myself a C were I to grade it. But at least I had a groupie experience! My Almost Famous moment, if you’ve seen the movie.

Pete Townshend in Hamburg, 1972

In high school, I fell in love with The Who, specifically with Pete Townshend. It was a latent love, of course, since The Who had been around since the 1960s. But twenty years later, they could still rock, and I was in love with them and their music in the 80s and the younger versions of them in photographs.

The friend Erik who introduced me to the band was a real fan. We’d hop into his boat-of-car, a 1960s Buick Skylark with the personalized license plate: WhoFan2 (number one was already taken), and with Baba O’Riley blasting on the stereo, headed away from our boring suburban town to Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley on a Friday afternoon with a small bunch of misfit friends. We ate a slice of pizza at Blondie’s and then shopped at Aardvark’s Used and Vintage Store, where we bought mod trench coats and two-dollar treasures. 

The windmill!

We thumbed through albums at Rasputin’s Records and then headed up into the Berkeley Hills, parked on the side of a street with a view of the San Francisco Bay, cranked up My Generation, played hacky sack and did split kicks and Townsend windmills on air guitars off the car’s hood. 

By the end of my senior year, I had most of The Who’s albums, including Live at Leeds and Who By Numbers and had listened to Quadrophenia and Tommy all the way through more than once. I had a history of The Who book and a rock and roll history book that I bought at Tower Records. From those books, I drew many pictures of Pete Townshend until I had his face and sizable nose memorized and could doodle his likeness on the edges of notepaper at school. 

I learned to play Pinball Wizard and Behind Blue Eyes on my guitar and my favorite, the more obscure Blue, Red and Gray.

I finally had tickets to see The Who that spring at the Cow Palace. I would see them live! Well, not Keith Moon, of course, sadly, with his wild stick-flying style and mischievous smile.

Then my parents decided to take a trip to New England and Washington DC and invited me. That was another love affair for this California kid, ever since fourth grade when we were assigned to do reports on a different state, and I got Connecticut. I learned I could write a letter to state tourist boards and receive all kinds of mail. That was great!

I gave up my ticket to go traveling. Other than being annoyed with my mother the entire trip (mother-teenage daughter thing—with the complexities of our own personal dynamics), it was a great trip, picking berries at a farm near Walden, smelling the sea air and seeing fishing cottages in Groton Long Point, eating lobster in Boston, walking through a skinny tree forest in Eastern hills, going to Ford’s Theatre and touring the Smithsonian and FBI headquarters. 

But it left me wanting for my Who.

Fast-forward to college. I was out-of-place and lonely at UC Davis my freshman year, just trying to find my way, a liberal arts gal amongst the Aggie Econ majors. I found a few things I liked though, writing features for The Aggie newspaper, for one, and taking in some of the great concerts on campus. Then I heard a Townshend would be playing in the Coffee House. It wasn’t Pete. It was his youngest brother Simon. But it was still a Townshend. I went by myself. 

In that intimate venue, I somehow found four or five other young women who were all there for the same reason as me: Pete Townshend fans there to see the near-thing. Simon—only five years older than me—had just released his first solo. It was okay. And he was cute, but it was his older brother Paul—the tour manager—that had us all ogling. He looked so much like big brother Pete. 

The crowd at the show was not that big and afterwards, we got talking with Simon, Paul and their other manager, a slimy old geezer who used to be a touring manager for The Who, at least that’s what he said. They gave us the address of the after-party they were attending in town. Off we all went. We hung out with the Townshend brothers and the rest of the band late into the night, and they invited us to their gig the next night at Wolfgang’s in San Francisco. Despite the old geezer coming on to me, I was too curious not to go. 

The next evening, we hung out in the dressing room and backstage and watched the show. Wolfgang’s was a great old venue! When the show was over, their tour bus pulled up and we got on with them to check it out. 

But it was time for them to go. They had a long drive to their show the next day. So, we said good-bye and headed back to Davis. 

That’s why I give myself a C grade. I was a groupie for about 24 hours—with the brother of my teenage idol! 

There is an addendum. My junior year, I studied abroad, choosing the University of London, Hampstead campus on Finchley Road. It was a life-changing year. I told everyone I chose London for the theatre, and that was one of the reasons. I saw shows nearly every week, on the West End and on the second floor of shabby pubs. I performed at the Edinburgh Festival. It was awesome! 

But honestly, I also chose London because of my infatuation with The Who. 

While there, I had one more opportunity to be a Townshend groupie, this time with Pete! I attended the Deep End Live! concert with David Gilmour of Pink Floyd and Pete playing together at the Brixton Academy, a part of London I hadn’t ventured into previously. I went with a couple other exchange students, who were all pretty big Townshend fans. 

While waiting to get in, I was talking to a security guard. For some reason, we hit it off (but he didn’t seem to be trying to seduce me—I don’t know; I was awfully naïve) and he had just agreed to get me a backstage pass, when the other girls suddenly surrounded me all smiling and wide-eyed. 

“I can’t give out that many. Sorry,” he said. 

I was pissed. But the concert was still amazing.

It’s okay. I’d rather sing on stage than be a groupie anyway. Although, I have to admit, I still get easily star-struck! And I’d still love to meet Pete Townshend!

Pete Townshend 2012

100 Day Challenge #61: Old Lady Compliment

I received an old lady compliment today. And I didn’t mind!

For me, this is worth writing about. 

Because old lady and compliment don’t often go together! (Not that I’m that old, thank you very much, but it’s all relative—)

I was waiting in Kaiser at the injection clinic to get my shingles shot and my flu shot. I’ve been stressing out about the shingles thing lately, ever since talking to a good friend who developed the rash on his scalp and thus didn’t see it for a long time, until the case became severe. He was out of work for months, had debilitating nerve pain, and all kinds of other symptoms and a year later, still has residual issues. Ever since talking to him about it, I’ve had an itchy scalp! I watched my mother go through a case of shingles when she was about my age in incredible discomfort. Of course, she doesn’t remember the pain being that bad, calling her case “mild” when I mentioned it to her recently. She’s 86 years old. She says the same thing about childbirth. Selective memory! “I just did what the doctor told me,” she says. Not very helpful to a daughter looking for some guidance.

Anyway, I was sitting there in the waiting area wondering what I was going to write about today for my 100 Day Challenge, looking through notes about different topics, when the woman who had checked me into the clinic walked by and stopped. She said, “Excuse me, I hope I’m not being too forward. I just wanted to tell you that when I checked you in, I couldn’t stop looking at you. You are so stunning. [or something equally flattering!] I had to look up your age on your chart. You look amazing and much younger than your age. I’m 43, and I hope I look like you when I’m 56. When will that be?” She stops to think about it “Thirteen years from now.”

“Thank you,” I replied, “I really appreciate it.”

And I did! In the past, this might’ve been a left-handed compliment. It’s always wonderful to be called attractive! But attractive FOR YOUR AGE? In a certain frame of mind, all you think about is the “for your age” part.

But I’ve recently moved on to another phase of womanhood, more at peace with being a woman in her late 50s. No one is ever going to ask me for my ID for alcohol ever again! The only heads I turn have gray hair. I can’t hide the veins on the backs of my hands. I have reading glasses at all times. And that’s okay. 

It was a great compliment.

And I thought it was pretty cool coming from a 40-something. The last time I heard something like this was when my husband and I attended a Pentatonix concert at the Fox Theatre. I was very excited to see Pentatonix in person. At the end of the show, another concert-goer, a young woman who couldn’t have been more than 16 or 18 years old turned to us and said, “Oh my god, you two are SO cute. I hope I’m like you when I’m old.” 

Yeah. That happened. 

The second element of today’s experience at Kaiser that I really liked was that a stranger stopped to give me a compliment. And she really meant it. She seemed a little embarrassed by it but was inspired to say something. It made my day! I needed a little boost. It was a pay-it-forward kind of moment. I love that it came from another woman.

A third element was the context before all this happened. There was a dozen or so people spread out in the open waiting area in the Kaiser Fabiola building second floor, and there was a surprisingly friendly and helpful air. One lady, in her late 60s or early 70s asked another lady a question. Both answered each other amiably. I could hear a woman just inside the clinic compliment the desk person on being so polite and helpful. Another woman helped a blind person find her way to the elevator, while yet another held the helper’s place in line for her. The lady who first asked a question asked me the way to the exit and thanked me when I provided directions. And what did these polite people and good Samaritans have in common? All were “older” women.

Reaching this age can be challenging for women, and men too, but especially women in a society that emphasizes looks and beauty and is youth-loving, consumer-driven, and image-conscious. It can be hard to grow older sometimes, eye sight going, hearing too, wrinkles becoming more pronounced. Although I promised myself a long time ago that I would treasure the experience of living an entire life, including getting older. Georgia O’Keeffe had a beautiful face, like a landscape of stories. 

Today reinforced that idea. Today, I belonged to a pretty fine club of women 55 and up. Not that all women at my age and older have the degree of thoughtfulness I experienced (Oh boy, no!), but at least for today, it felt pretty damn good to be a 56-year old woman!

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Georgia O'Keeffe, Ghost Ranch House Patio, 1944 Maria Chabot CREDIT- Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Gift of Maria Chabot

100 Day Challenge #60: Humbled by Humanities

A bit of a rambling memory piece today…

When I started teaching high school in 1990, fresh out of teacher certification after college, I inherited a Humanities class. Its creator was a full-career teacher of 35 years who had nurtured the course, collecting some twenty or more rounds of slides from his travels of artwork, architecture, sculpture, and historical sites around the world. But it was almost all Western Civilization. The textbook was a massive tomb, full of great pictures and information but overwhelming. 

I loved the idea of teaching the course, absolutely loved it! I love art and human expression in all its forms, history, culture, the study of people. But I knew shit all about a lot of it. I mean I knew about the Renaissance Period, some of the art and personalities, but I couldn’t tell you the political history. I couldn’t properly explain why we called it the Renaissance. Not until I had to teach it. I had never taken a Humanities course nor taught one before. That first semester, I would learn something the night before and teach it the next day. It was seat-of-my-pants stuff! Very stressful at times.

But I wasn’t into lecturing and book work. We did some, but I preferred hands on activities, lively discussions, discovery learning.

I started venturing into styles of curriculum of my own. I tried my best to bring in Asian history, African history, Central and South American history. It was still quite lacking, but I tried. We did a comparative religion unit one time with the students teaching about various religions, often from their own experience. All of us learned a lot from the Muslim students in the class, for example.

I decided we’d look at a historical period for a few weeks and then break to look at a field of humanities as a theme, like really focusing on architecture in a unit with another on art history and different genres of art, including modern art. 

One assignment was to create “found art” or art from found objects. Students were to name their pieces thoughtfully, provokingly, and then we turned the classroom into an art museum, everyone touring the room to look at the art. Then we discussed what stood out, what thoughts we had, how every day objects could take on new meaning when removed from their context or when looked at strictly for their design or given some other meaning with a name. 

We separated art as human expression and as a business.

I started each school year on the first day by writing the word: Humanities on the board, underlining human, asking what it means to be human. For their first journal entry, I had them answer the question: Has humankind evolved? In the 300,000 years we’ve lived, has our species evolved and if so, how? How do you predict humans will evolve in the future? Or will they?

My favorite thematic unit was philosophy. I put poster paper up around the room, each with an ethical or philosophical question, like what would you do if you found a wallet with several hundred dollars cash in it? What would you do in a grocery store if you the clerk fails to charge you for a large item? If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to see it fall, does it make a sound? etc. Students moved around the room, writing their anonymous answers. We had discussions about some of the questions and different philosophies and philosophers. It blew their minds sometimes! 

rom Great Dialogues of Plato (Warmington and Rouse, eds.) New York, Signet Classics- 1999

Another favorite lesson involved enacting Plato’s Parable of the Cave for a closer understanding of the parable. 

I’ve thought a lot about the Parable of the Cave over the last six years, how well the allegory applies to our times. I hope to do another post, explaining and reflecting on the allegory.

The best part of the class was the accompanying field trip program, which I opened up to the entire school and expanded to up to ten trips each year. I took students to see plays at ACT in San Francisco, to SFMOMA and the DeYoung and East Asian Art Museum. I took them to look at architecture in the City. And we went to the opera. It was amazing. They had no idea it was a “high brow” art. “Carmen is the bomb!” Said one student. We walked to the BART station and took BART into San Francisco, an adventure itself, especially when public transportation included city bus rides to Golden Gate Park! 

And I only lost a student once. Maybe twice. A case of headphones and music and missing the BART train. It was nerve-wrecking, especially because a lot of these kids had never been over the Bay Bridge before, but they made their way back to us. 

I still contend that I learned more from my students than they did from me. To be perfectly honest, I had burn out days too, when all I could manage was a lesson that lasted half the class or, yes, I showed the students a movie for three days. Teaching is the hardest job I’ve ever had. More on that later, how during my first full year of teaching I was assigned five different preps (or classes to prepare for) in five different classrooms in three different departments, overseeing two accompanying after school programs, including putting on the school plays and musicals. My first year was a survival year. But I cared deeply about my students, about learning—and still do, and became and always will be a student of the humanities. It was worth it! 

100 Day Challenge #59: In the Yard at San Quentin (Continued from #46)

From the old San Quentin dungeons, we walked back up to the main exercise grounds. It was crowded with men. There were no guards around us. Nothing separated our tour group from the general population. I could hardly believe it. We took in the scene: a paved walking/running track around the perimeter, a tennis court, fairly new-looking basketball courts, a baseball diamond, and small area with a weight bench and barbell. On the far side of the track was an area with what looked like an Indigenous wigwam. 

The tennis and basketball courts were in active use, as was the weight bench. Men lingered in small groups in the various areas, while many inmates walked around the track. Some glanced at us, some looked longer, most guys took no interest in us at all.

Several of the incarcerated men who had spoken to us earlier came and stood near us, becoming both our tour guides and what felt like body guards. That included Wall Street and Clay. (By the way, since I started the San Quentin stories I found this great interview and story about Wall Street on MarketWatch.com. There’s a Wikipedia entry about him. And evidently, he has done a TED talk since I met him! And it’s really inspirational; and I want to take his class!)

We learned that the Warriors funded new basketball courts, provided practice jersey for the San Quentin Warriors, and that folks from the Warriors front office came every year to play against the prison team. Likewise, the tennis court had been a donation.

It was odd, the separation between some of the loitering groups in the yard. Clay, the tall martial arts expert, explained that the prisoners segregated themselves. The track and the tennis courts were neutral and integrated. The basketball courts were sometimes neutral, sometimes not. He pointed out different areas where the White guys tended to hang out, Hispanic, Black, Samoan, Korean, and Chinese-American groups. They each had their territory. Some areas, like the weight bench, had allotted times or days for the different racial groups. The wigwam in the dirt area in the distance was indeed for Indigenous People. Clay said he like the integrated parts of the yard best and had a regular tennis game each week in which the guys were White, Hispanic and Black. He sounded proud but cautious of this fact. 

Manufactured in San Quentin_photo by D. Ferguson, 2019

It was a harsh reality that in this confined world, the men racially segregated themselves. 

From there we visited a factory, a warehouse-type building, where inmates created office furniture. This has been an occupation in San Quentin since around 1900. I found a Getty Image online showing prisoners in the factory making chairs and desks for schools and offices in 1949. I learned that inmates earned about thirty cents per hour, not much more than a dollar or two dollars a day at most. For someone like Clifford who had to pay reparations to qualify for parole, it was impossible.

During the Covid pandemic, the Chair Factory became an alternative care site, 2020

Next, we walked along the perimeter of the yard and beyond and saw where the condemned and most dangerous inmates got their exercise. In outdoor cages about ten feet square. There were several rows of them. It was from here, Sam told us, that we had heard the chants of solidarity when we first approached the entrance to San Quentin. What an existence that was.

After that, it was time to see the inmates’ cells. We were going inside.

Exercise pens in San Quentin Prison

100 Day Challenge #58: I'm in LOVE with Ted Lasso!

I don’t tend to watch TV much these days, but I am absolutely in love with the AppleTV show Ted Lasso. While watching it, I feel like it was written for me (I’m the perfect demographic). It’s about kindness and problem-solving, and friendships and relationships and different types of love. It’s character-driven. The characters grow and reflect and change, with support. They work through flaws and difficult transitions and emotional moments. Nobody gets murdered or raped or perpetrates or is victim to hate crimes. The show is witty and fast-paced in its play-on-words humor and cultural allusions. And there is compassion in the writing. 

I find when I watch TV or movies these days, I often am on edge, expecting the worst, some unexpected bloody or inhumane plot twist blatantly thrown at me. So many shows do that these days, portraying human beings at their worst. I remember going to the AMC movie theatre pre-Covid and noticing that every single movie of the 16 showing except two were horror films. The remaining two were animated family films. 

And while visual media has taken tension up a notch or ten, scenes getting faster and often more graphic, my tolerance for some tension and watching plots of inhumanity has steadily decreased. 

Part of this intolerance happened with motherhood. I was already having waking nightmares all the time, imagining the worst possible things happening to my small, innocent children. I didn’t want to see them on screen too! Talk about heightened anxiety! 

But I’ve always been sensitive to this stuff. My imagination is such that if I see some horrible scene of someone being victimized or a scary, sociopathic villain acting enacting cruelties, that scene will stay in my brain, like an iPhoto moving snapshot, and I will see it over and over and over for weeks, months or years. When I saw Jaws at age eleven, I was scared every time I went swimming for years afterwards, even in swimming pools. Even though it was illogical, the swimming triggered that film footage in my imagination and the emotional response of seeing it. 

Some months ago, I was trying to create a list of movies I’d like to see. My husband loves to watch movies and will watch ANYTHING (I encourage him to go see all the horror films he wants—without me!), and he missed watching movies with me since I’m picky about what I subject myself to. I Googled love stories and feel goods, and in doing so, ran across several websites with recommendations of movies for empaths. I liked almost all the movies recommended on those sites. Though I don’t go in for labels, I am highly empathetic. It’s one of my superpowers. And at times in the past, it seemed like my kryptonite too. That was because I hadn’t accepted and embraced that aspect of my character. 

In general, I don’t watch a lot of TV because I watched a whole lot in my youth, alone mostly. I watched old movies on Sunday mornings: Shirley Temple and Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, Laurel and Hardy, movies like Casablanca. I watched WAY too much TV and feel, looking back, that I wasted so much time. 

I have to stop this essay abruptly, before reaching conclusions—maybe I’ll add them later. It’s VERY late and I can’t keep my eyes open. But I HAVE to post! So there you go. 

I choose kindness, wit and compassion. I choose Ted Lasso! Season three, please! 

100 Day Challenge #57: It's NOT a Midlife CRISIS!

I don’t like the term “Midlife Crisis.” It gives a negative connation to a phase in life that couldn’t be more natural. 

When people hit mid-life—late forties to early sixties generally—they often come to the realization that half of their life is over. Time is finite in which to accomplish goals, live dreams, experience the world. There is a realer sense of one’s mortality. It ain’t going to last forever! This often leads to change, sometimes big changes. 

The stereotype of the Midlife Crisis is, of course, buying an expensive sportscar or having a younger lover, either while married or after a sudden divorce. But these things aren’t always negative. It depends on the context and how the change is enacted. Change is often challenging. Change is also the most natural and reliable ongoing occurrence in a human life and in our world. Life is continual change.

So why call this phase “Midlife Crisis?”

Canadian psychotherapist Elliot Jacques coined the term. But he actually never viewed it as negative. For him it was a critical phase of human development and transition.

The problem is that the word “crisis” implies negativity, an unstable and dangerous situation, the lack of coping, a threatening change. A crisis in nature might be a volcanic eruption or tsunami.

And this phase can look worse when studies try to quantify it. In a study by psychologist and writer Oliver Robinson, he only found the experience to be positive in half the people. He defined Midlife Crisis as a period characterized by unstable mental and emotional health, altering the course of lives and affecting the person for a year or longer. He cites the influence of other life events: the death of parents, other family or friends, a decline in physical strength and vitality, andropause or menopause, and work stoppage (Yeah, that menopause-transition has been a doozy for me!). A worldwide study found that during one’s youth and senior years feeling satisfied and happy tend to peak and then dip during the middle years of life. But I don’t think it has to be that way.

Doesn’t every decade bring its own challenges?

And what a valuable stage of life is midlife if we view it as such! 

So, I’m going to call it Midlife Reflection. 

I suppose Midlife Reflection can reach “crisis” when the examination produces near-panic about what is left to do or depression at the state of things so far. It could also become a crisis to others that are left behind in the wake. Ultimately, however, it is judgment that deems it a “crisis.”

Midlife can be a time of meaningful reflection, an examination of who we are, where we’ve been and where we are going, of our morals, values, behavior and habits. Mid-lifers might inspect their health, work life, love life, relationships, material possessions, their bucket list. They might ask questions like: “If I were to die tomorrow, did I do enough? Am I content with my life? Do I like who I am? If something is missing in my life, what is it and what do I do about it? Can I achieve the missing pieces and how? What has been called a “Midlife Crisis” can be a search for personal truth and meaning. 

In evaluating your life, you might look at how you spend your time, maybe decide not to spend time doing things you really don’t want to do or with people that don’t add value to your life. You might stop worrying about what others think as much. That can be refreshing!

I suppose if someone is unused to reflection, yeah, this can be difficult. Many young people tend to live life with action more than reflection. I’ve always had a very active internal life myself—for better or worse (Oops! That looks a little like personal judgment!). Most young people—as long as they have the fortune of good health—don’t think about their own mortality and certainly not death as something imminent.

Because death will come. That is something we cannot control. And if we can accept this, then a midlife reflection can just help us make the most out of our lives from that point on. It’s still potentially a lot of years.

My Midlife Reflection—still in progress—centers on my own autonomy and the courage to follow my convictions, to disagree, to say no, to share my feelings, thoughts, ideas, and creativity and love with “the world”—thus this 100 Day Challenge. It involves both making more money so I don’t have to experience the kind of financial anxiety that I have known for much of my adulthood, and transitioning my career—even if slowly—to focus more on my own creations. Or maybe my creative endeavors don’t have to be tied to earnings. I don’t know yet. I just know I need it to be a larger part of my life.

I love helping people in the last decades of their lives write and save their stories in accessible, readable and beautiful books, but I would like to publish more of my own fiction and non-fiction. If I’m honest, I’d love to write plays and screenplays, having a background in theatre and often being character and dialogue-driven in my work, always curious and examining of humanity and all its complexities. I loved acting and did quite a lot of it on stage—once upon a time—and I wouldn’t mind auditioning and taking on some juicy midlife female roles. I may have to write some since there tends to be a dearth of such roles, although that has been changing. I’ve always wanted to do voice-over work. But then again, maybe I just try these things once and go, um, no, I changed my mind. The thing I’m trying to do most is make that option my prerogative. Permission to go for it!

I love to sing and would love to take the time to write more songs for my band to play. I’d love to perform music in a wider variety of genres. And with different musicians. I think. 

I’m also trying to create better habits, stay healthy, keep my weight down and be kinder to myself, so I have less internal struggle.

More than any of the experiential or achievement-oriented goals, I just want to feel my own love and kindness a bit more every day. Though I always have them for my children—I sure adore them—I don’t always give them to myself.

Thus, my midlife desires are a combination: things I’ve always wanted to do that I hope make a positive impact on the world, in my own authentic way; and to be on better terms with my own ups and downs of life, my feelings, actions and inactions whatever they be. 

I don’t want to be drawn to the bright grass greener on the other side of the fence. My life is good. I just sometimes feel—and have felt for a while—that I’m on a path just south of my true path. Pretty close though. I mean, if I were to stay on this path and live out my life, it would be a life well-lived. But what if I veered off just a little on to a new path to explore a bit? And then another and then another? That sounds awfully exciting and rewarding. I just have to be brave enough to do it! With the finite time I have left. 

I guess I have dual tasks: to figure out what more I want and go for it, perhaps one goal or new adventure at a time—or three at once which, again for better or worse, is often how I do things—and to feel, truly feel, that THIS is enough, I’m enough. At any given time, any given place along my path.

What is your Midlife Reflection? 

Photo by Luke Leung on Unsplash

100 Day Challenge #56 (continued from #40): Please Don’t Bring Me Flowers!

Flora paced for an hour, thinking, coaching herself out loud to be brave, doubting herself, then working up courage all over again. Then she made a list and got to work. She opened the medicine cabinet filled with liquid and pill bottles, eye droppers, nasal sprays, inhalers, skin creams and epi-pens and took a picture of its contents. She spent the next hour researching online. She Googled: how to cure allergies naturally, fast with drugs, without drugs. She visited sites for the mayo clinic, WebMD, homeopathy-practices, blogs by other allergy-sufferers, psychology pages, and one called “allergies and the hypnotic response.” She copied and pasted into an open Word document. 

On Amazon, using her mother’s account, she bought nasal filters and a new box of N95 masks in black. 

On her HMO’s site, she emailed her doctor, pretending she was her mother. “My daughter Flora is determined to spend more time outside. It’s very important to her. What haven’t we tried?” She consulted her notes. “Shots? Leukotriene inhibitors? Sublingual immunotherapy? Biological medications? Please get back to me as soon as possible. Thank you, Rose.” 

After sending it, she saw an automated message, “We’ll get back to you in 24 hours.”

“Well, shit,” said Flora.

Just then the front door slammed downstairs. “Hi Flora! It’s me. You ready?”

“Ready for what?” Flora yelled to her mother without leaving the computer. 

“To go to your dad’s.”

“What?”

“This is his weekend, remember?”

Flora buried her head in her hands and growled. 

“What are you doing?” her mother appeared in the doorway.

“I forgot. Do I have to go?”

“Yes.” Flora’s mother came into the room and sat on the bed. “I thought you were looking forward to this. It’s been a while. Your dad’s been seriously de-fuming the house in anticipation of your arrival, spent a mint on air purifiers, he told me.”

“It’s just…”

“What?”

Flora realized she wasn’t ready to tell her mother the truth. That she had plans, plans that involved being outside, that involved a boy. He won’t go away in a weekend, she told herself. But still it felt like a dream when you first wake up in the morning. If you don’t write it down first thing, you know that dream will just fade into oblivion.

“Can you give me fifteen minutes to throw a bag together.”

Her mother glanced at the clock. 

“Yeah, I have time. I just have to be back at the nursery by three. Big landscape purchase, some company replanting their campus, shopping local. It’s great. One of the silver linings of the pandemic. Besides other people wearing masks so my daughter is not the only one.”

Flora rolled her eyes.

“You said it,” her mother said defensively.

Flora got out a duffle bag from her closet and started filling it with clothes. 

“Yeah, but it’s my silver lining, not yours.”

“Capeesh.”

And then Flora, in double N95s was sitting in her mother’s car, the AC recycling filtered air on her way to her dad’s house with its ever circulating parade of nutty relatives.

100 Day Challenge #55: An Incredible She-Hulk Moment…Grrrr!

Can I just talk about anger for a minute? Anger as a woman? At least this woman. 

Okay, so here’s the deal. I was brought up in this old-fashioned gender-biased way, taught to be subservient, agreeable, cheerful, a “good girl” above all else. Doesn’t that make you sick? Oh, it sure turns my stomach these days. For years, I wore an uncomfortable smile like a mask. I didn’t know how to say no (I was taught to go along with the program or be disapproved of—which equals not being loved to a child). That got me into a shitload of trouble. Especially with men who I really didn’t want to be with. I saw myself floating with the current down a river, unable to swim into an eddy or change the direction of my life. I had to go where the water took me. 

So, as Italian film director Frederico Fellini once said (in a 1966 Playboy essay—of all the publications!), I had to “uneducate” myself. This process has included well over a decade of therapy. Thank God for therapy! If you haven’t tried it, go out and get yourself a good therapist. By “good,” I mean, someone who challenges you, asks you questions, and someone whom you trust and helps you learn to articulate your “unexamined belief systems.” Most of us have them. You’ll know after a few sessions if the therapist is right for you, at least for the part of the process you’re in. And even those sessions with therapists you’re trying out probably won’t be a waste of time (or money). There will still be some self-examination started. At least, that’s how it was for me. But it’s important to find someone you can do the hard work with. And believe me, if you really want to unravel the onion, stir the muck at the bottom of the pond, fire the committee in your head, make some significant changes in your life, understand yourself better, forgive yourself and let go of shame, it takes WORK. And it’s one thousand percent worth it! The work, the time and the cost. Therapy should just be a part of everyone’s health and wellness program, if you ask me, like getting your teeth cleaned, your annual physical, your mammograms, your prostate checked. For children to older adults.

So, as I like to say, I went through my adolescence with menopause instead of acne, finding my true autonomy at nearly 50 years old. For a while, I was ashamed of this late blooming. But the hell with that! I got there. And I continue grow and learn and challenge the belief system that I developed as a child, the default self-judgments. These days, this involves recognizing the cues and practicing new responses. Synapsis that fire together wire together. I am reprogramming my brain, being an electrician to the complicated neurological system that runs my life. Holy shit! I wish there was a YouTube tutorial for that one!

Anyway, one of the interesting new experiences of late is feeling anger, I mean real, burning, swear-fest, heart-racing ANGER. In the context of my life so far, allowing myself to actually feel pissed off at situations and especially at other people is absolutely novel. Thus, it is powerful stuff right now. Logically, I know what I’m feeling is normal. But for me, not used to really feeling fury, it feels like hot-coal, burning beast, shot of testosterone, devil-flame RAGE. 

I was feeling such an emotion last night, conscious of what might seem contradictory sensations: discomfort, being so unused to my own outrage—who is this woman?!—and damn, this feels good, because it’s real, it’s mine and I’m not squelching it or burying or feeling bad about it. It was awesome. Feelings are never wrong; they’re simply feelings. We’re the ones that put judgments on them. The key, I think, is not acting out on that anger. Just feeling it. And understanding where it’s coming from.

Though I didn’t know exactly how it would work, I knew that the only way to let go of my ire, was to feel it first. To really feel it. 

And then it happened. The anger dissipated.

I saw the person I was angry with today. And I was still angry at him, but not in a raging way. More is a “isn’t this interesting” way. I realized that his actions just revealed something about his character that I didn’t know. He’s a friend and will continue to be. But I won’t let him patronize me again. And I won’t stay angry at him. The worse anger would be towards myself for not taking care of myself, for being untrue. I’m a kind person. Not perfect. Certainly not always graceful. I’m sure I could’ve said more, had a heart-to-heart with him, been more direct. But we were with other people. I suspect the opportunity to have such a conversation will arise again. And I’m still figuring out this anger-stuff.

I’m just glad I can feel and identify my feelings these days so I can be the person I want to be, authentic, instead of the good girl with the constant smile on her face.

From Screenrant.com

100 Day Challenge #54: Celebrating Bob Hamilton

For twenty years, I have regularly told people, “I have the best father-in-law in the world.”

I can’t anymore. Bob’s giant heart finally gave out on October 9th while he was packing for a happily-anticipated trip with my husband and several other family members. Barely mobile, it was understood by him and by all that this was to be his last trip. In true character, the first things he had packed were his tuxedo and a roll of two-dollar bills to hand out to anybody he met. He had envelopes of money prepared for his niece to take home to her family and extended family in Texas. I’m sad for him that he didn’t get to take that trip. But I know he looked forward to it for weeks.

Bob with mother Lucille Hamilton

Bob Hamilton was born to an unwed mother and unnamed father in Gary, Indiana, in 1934. But this does not become part of his story until later. He didn’t even seek out his birth-mother until he was in his seventies, not wanting to hurt his “true” mother’s feelings. He was born prematurely, weighing only four pounds and six ounces, at a time when preemies didn’t always survive. But Bob was a survivor, born to live life to the fullest.

He was adopted by Lucille Hamilton and her husband Cecil. Bob’s mom always told him she “picked him off the cherry tree!” Lucille wanted babies more than anything, but due to her own family circumstances, she ended up on the streets at the age of fifteen. She found her way, but while in the hospital for some other kind of procedure, a surgeon performed a hysterectomy on her and didn’t tell her. He judged her as a “wayward young woman.” Such were the God-like prerogatives of doctors in the 1920s, especially over women. It makes me so angry to think about it. Lucille was devastated.

But she was determined to be a mother anyway. Bob was her pride and joy, growing into a healthy, round baby. But life was not easy. Cecil was often drunk, and the family was very poor. Neither of Bob’s parents had a lot of education. Lucille’s ended in eighth grade. She was street smart though.

Bob and his sister Sharon

The Hamiltons found new employment opportunities when they moved to Long Beach, California. There, Lucille adopted a second baby, Sharon, ten years younger than Bob. The Hamiltons lived in a trailer home, and sometimes Bob and Lucille had to go to the local bar to bring Cecil home.

Bob with his bicycle in front of his home in Long Beach

But despite that, Bob felt loved. He loved his family. He had wonderful friends. He had a bicycle. At one point, the family had a dog. And it wasn’t a bad childhood, having nothing to compare it to. 

In his early teens, Bob heard you could make money as a caddy at the local golf course. With his outgoing personality and enthusiasm, he became a very popular caddy. And he learned to play a decent game of golf as well. He gave most of his earnings to his mother, since his father’s contribution to the household budget was unpredictable. His mother did laundry and went into nursing to make ends meet. 

At the club, Bob learned that he could get a caddy scholarship to go to college. His mother encouraged him. And that is how he ended up at UC Berkeley, the first and only person in his family to go to college.

When he was getting ready to drive north, his mother handed him back all the money that he had given to the family while he worked as a caddy over those years. She had saved it all for him for his college expenses. Bob told this story often. 

Bob, UC Berkeley Associated Student Body President, 1955

He thrived at Berkeley, joining a fraternity and getting involved in school activities. He was in the Glee Club. He did a student trip to India that was absolutely eye-opening. He was a member of the California Club and became friends with professors and other high-level students. His grades, perhaps not the best, weren’t bad. He was naturally intelligent, and he loved reading, falling in love with the works of Mark Twain, the poetry of Rumi and many short stories and novels. He was an avid reader all his life of both fiction and non-fiction. 

During his senior year, he became Student Body President at Cal, winning in a landslide. This was a monumental experience. The night before he passed away, he had dinner with all the remaining ASUB presidents from the years before and after him, friends all.

It was at Cal that Bob met Kathy Little, who was also involved in student government at UC Berkeley. The two fell in love and got married after graduation. 

Bob and one of his early partners in commercial real estate, Arnie Cohn, 1963

As ROTC, Bob served his mandatory two years in the Air Force, fortunate and grateful that he was able to do so when it was not wartime. Kathy relocated with him while he served. And that concluded his military career.

Then they settled in the Crocker Highlands of Oakland, California, where Bob began a mostly lucrative career in commercial real estate. He formed a partnership called Hamilton Cohn and Thatcher and practiced commercial real estate up until his death. 

From the Crocker Highlands area, Bob and Kathy, always surrounded by friends, moved his family to Lafayette, California, where his four children went to high school and all graduated from UC Berkeley, like their parents. 

Bob and his children

The marriage went south. Really south, which was hard on all involved. It wasn’t pretty, a sad tornado.

A few years after he and Kathy split up, Bob reacquainted with Alameda City Manager Dona Hoard with whom he had a treasured relationship for over 30 years. He took care of her when she lost much of her movement in one arm after a mugging. He took care of her again when her cancer came back for the third time and wouldn’t let go.

Bob and his family

What Bob will perhaps be remembered for the most was his outgoing, jovial personality and his generosity. He was Santa Claus. In every way.

He loved to send letters, articles of interest, notes of love and appreciation, Xeroxed photos and cut-out heads from photos taped to the front of envelopes, and gifts through the mail. Once we received Easter Peeps smashed in an envelope, another time a breakfast croissant to say he missed his son at a breakfast function. For many years the trunk of his car was full of unusual and fun treasures that he could give away to people if the opportunity to give presented itself. In Bob’s life, that opportunity arose every day. He was famous for handing out those two-dollar bills and always had some in his wallet for the purpose. He paid it forward every day. 

The big yellow coat

The Bob Hamilton big funny hat tradition!

A full-belly laugh

When we announced that his first grandchild was going to be a boy, we found a pile of traditional “boy-oriented” toys on our front porch, including a giant stuffed snake, a football, and a GI Joe (We gave the GI Joe to Good Will). We have many traditions invented or influenced by Bob: the birthday string, the December elf drawers, the funny hats for every occasion, the spinning wheel he gave us one time, the full-length yellow fur coat my husband wears to the Big Game and now our sons have worn for school spirit days. Most of my husband Doug’s friends still have the aluminum ingots Bob brought en masse to give to everyone at Doug’s bachelor party. There was the Christmas he gave us all biker black leather jackets, found at a pawn shop. And the Thanksgiving when he gave everyone attending, some 25 people, light-up shoes. Bob was the king of finding and giving to you random, weird cool things. He made events extra special.

He made a lasting impression on everyone he met with his big guffaw laugh, distinctive deep, gravelly voice, and eyes that twinkled, even when he couldn’t see out of one anymore. His sense of humor about life was contagious. He had the ability to make you feel special at the same time as making himself memorable. He was present. Conversation with him was real and substantive. He was damn smart really, but came off understated in that vein. He was a proud Atheist. He LOVED his family and friends. He was there for us in so many ways and at so many times over the years. He was our benefactor when we most needed him. He almost always said yes to dinner or brunch or going to watch us or the kids perform music or any invitation really. He kept up with everyone in his life that he loved on a regular basis. It was remarkable.

With Bob at Burning Man 2003

Bob Hamilton was a participator. He was a longtime member of The Rotary Club of Oakland (and Rossmoor these last few years), the Lake Merritt Breakfast Club, the Cal Alumni Association, and the Mark Twain Society, just to name a few. When he moved from the Montclair area of Oakland to Rossmoor, he became a regular at many clubs within the community. He loved to wear his Scottish kilt with the Hamilton tartan to functions of the Caledonian Society of Rossmoor, accompanied by his lady-friend Cynthia. And he loved any excuse to wear his tuxedo!

He enjoyed new experiences in his participatory-spirit. He traveled with us to Burning Man three times, all in his seventies. He loved it!

Bob in his Hamilton tartan

Typical Bob! Big hat plus gifts to give away. This act made him so happy! He made others feel special while making himself unforgettable. It was a win-win!

This is not to say he was rosy all the time. He could get grumpy. And even a little mean when angry. He could be stubborn. Alcohol in him was not flattering, and it was a relief to see him drink less and less as he grew older. It was hard to buy him gifts, because sometimes he’d give them away to others. His wealth was up and down at times. At the end, when his faculties were fading, he didn’t take care of business as well and had pledged to the American Heart Society three times. He made mistakes. He was human. And we loved all that about him too. He didn’t try to mask his flaws or misjudgments. For the most part, he owned them.

I had the pleasure to write his life story. He was my first client when my business Stories to Last was brand new in 2006. As a matter of fact, we were talking at Sunday morning coffee—which we’ve had together almost every Sunday for one hour for over fifteen years—and I was telling him about this new business idea I had for helping people write their personal histories. “But I need to create a model for people to see, my first book, preferably paid,” I fretted.

A few days later, I found a check in the mailbox from Bob with a note that said, “When do we get started?” 

A perfect birthday gift for Bob from Dona: a lawn full of pink flamingoes

What an amazing way to get to know my father-in-law in a deeper way, as a full human being (Oh and the story goes that Bob’s birth mother worked in a bank. The bank manager was the father. We don’t know if the conception was consensual, but we do know that the woman never married, was a loving aunt but never a mother to any others. When Bob finally got the information, she had recently passed away, but he got in touch with other family members and sent them his book. “We didn’t know about you!” they said.)

Bob introduced me to the Oakland Rotary Club, where I made friends, did service and found many new, wonderful clients, including the Club itself (their centennial book). 

Our Pops!

It’s still sinking in. That I’ll never hear his laughter again. That there will be no more Sunday morning coffees. No letters mailed to me telling me what a great mother I am to our two boys. No Papa bringing cash-treats to his grandsons in slightly greasy McDonald’s bags. No Bob smiling in the center of it all at Thanksgiving.

It’s still true. It will always be true. But I hate to put it in the past tense: I had the best father-in-law ever!

The light-up shoes…AND his tuxedo. We will always love you, be grateful for you and miss you, Bob Hamilton!

100 Day Challenge #53: How Catsup (or Ketchup) Came to Be

Catsup Vs. Ketchup

Okay, so which is the correct spelling for this popular tomato sauce: catsup or ketchup? 

Photo by Fernando Andrade on Unsplash

The answer: Both, but ketchup is closer to the original name of the sauce. In the 1600s, the Chinese made a table sauce of pickled fish and spices and called it kôe-chiap or kê-chiap (brine of pickled fish or shellfish). A little different than our tomato sauce of today! In fact, it was a long time before tomatoes were added.

And how did ketchup become one of the most popular condiments in America? It took a journey over centuries!

Most historians believe that in the early 1700s, European explorers visiting what is now Malaysia and Singapore had their first taste of the fish sauce and brought it home with them. The Indonesian-Malay word for it was kecap (pronounced "kay-chap"). 

In Great Britain, kecap went through a transformation. The British prepared it with mushroom as the primary ingredient instead of seafood. They gave this spiced mushroom sauce its modern spelling of ketchup. British settlers took ketchup with them when they sailed to a new life in the American colonies.

 It wasn’t until the early 1800s in the United States that the tomato-based version of ketchup appeared. Cookbooks of the day began including recipes for tomato ketchup. One of them was written by a cousin of President Thomas Jefferson! This is also when sweetness was added to the sauce. 

Photo by Tamara Gak on Unsplash

There was a good reason why ketchup took so long to become a tomato sauce. For some 200 years, people were afraid to eat raw tomatoes. The story got around that several wealthy people had eaten a raw tomato and died. The fruit was nicknamed “poison apple.” But the truth was that these unfortunate tomato-eating souls ate it on a pewter plate high in lead content. Lead is poisonous, and the acid in the tomato leached or picked up the lead. What they really died of was lead poisoning. 

Tomato ketchup became very popular in the U.S. right away because of this. It was deemed safer to eat the fruit cooked. In 1837, ketchup was bottled and sold nationally for the first time. In 1876, the Heinz brothers launched their famous tomato ketchup. 

And what about the alternative spelling? In the 1690 Dictionary of the Canting Crew, the first English dictionary of slang words, there is an entry for “catchup.” However, most people believe the spelling of “catsup” originated from the author Jonathan Swift (who wrote Gulliver’s Travels). He was quoted in 1730, saying, “And, for our home-bred British cheer, Botargo (fish relish), catsup, and caveer (caviar).” For many decades, catsup was the more common spelling in the U.S., but most bottles these days use the ketchup spelling.

So, please pass the ketchup!

Photo by Dennis Klein on Unsplash

100 Day Challenge Day #52: Unmasked

         “Oh, you’re okay! Just smile, Honey,” her mother had interrupted. 

Morgan, stirring soggy circles of cereal in a bowl of milk, had just revealed to her mother that since waking she had felt tremendously sad and didn’t know why. 

“Better get a move on. It’s getting late. Your lunch is by the door,” her mother sang.

Now, shuffling past the line of hodgepodge houses on her street, watching her breath hover in little clouds and wisp away, her sadness turned to anger. Her shuffle became a march.

         “Just smile, Honey,” she mocked aloud, adjusting the heavy backpack that dug into her shoulders through her jacket. Smile. Morgan had days when her cheeks were sore from smiling so much. Recently, in a selfie with friends, she saw herself smiling so widely, the top of her nose wrinkled like a Sharpei, and her eyes were nothing but cartoon half-moon lines. It looked unnatural, and she had deleted it from her phone. 

         “How would I know you’re mad? You’re smiling,” Christy had told her Friday, startling her. They were fighting about Christy’s choice to date Torrin, who Morgan had a huge crush on. 

         “Well, I’m not that mad,” Morgan had shrugged, running her hand along the side of her open locker, “I mean, he wants to date you. And like, what can I do. You know, I’m just disappointed, that’s all. I’m happy for you though, honestly.” 

         “Well, thanks. I totally get it. I’d feel the same way. I’ll try not to like shove it in your face. Gucci?” 

         Christy had squeezed Morgan’s shoulder, “And dude, I love your smile.” 

         They had hugged and parted for their next classes as friends, but Christy’s words, “How would I know you’re mad? You’re smiling” kept repeating in her head like a sample in a rap song.

At the crosswalk on Mountain Boulevard, Morgan waited to cross. The distracted commuters in SUVs and Priuses pretended not to see her. Finally, stepping off the curb, she waved to a black van. It slowed down. The dyed-blonde woman at the wheel sipped a silver travel mug, either resigned or annoyed. This cued a white pick-up truck coming the other way. Three men were crammed inside. A lawn mower, rakes and brooms branched out from the truck bed like a bad bouquet. Morgan crossed and continued on the opposite sidewalk towards the village center and the school bus stop, which was in front of the only liquor store in town.

A young mother clutching the hand of a little girl in a fire engine raincoat and pink tutu passed her, and Morgan nodded and smiled. 

Smile. Smile. She knew there was nothing wrong with a smile. A well-placed one could make someone’s day. A well-timed one opened doors. Still, smiling for her at least, had somehow become a bad habit.

Then she had a lightbulb moment, just like in old cartoons, an ah-ha moment. She loved it when that happened. Epiphanies, that was what they were called. Much more satisfying than the slow “burn and learn” it took to solve algebraic equations or get better at doing the Madonna in soccer. Epiphanies rushed in. Boom!

And this lightbulb idea was this: that smiling had been forced upon her.

Distorted scenes played in her head, like video clips on a cracked smart phone screen: 

She was four years old, crying on Santa’s lap who smelled of day-old cologne, peanut butter, and tired old man after hours at the mall, “Smile for the camera, Honey!” 

         She was jumping up and down at seven, telling her mother how she figured out exactly what she wanted for her birthday, an ice-skating party. “Oh Honey, I’ve planned all kinds of games at home that you’ll love. Come on, let me see that smile.”

         She was ten, clutching her backpack to her chest in the doorway. It was the morning after old Maggie, their Australian shepherd had to be put down, and grief still streaked her face, “Just smile through your day, Morgan. It’s okay.”

         Enough was enough.

         A couple of the regulars, two guys she knew from elementary school, now gangly and with fuzz on their lips, were already at the bus stop. They sat on the far ends of the two benches, against the face of a local real estate agent and some graffiti, hunched crab-like over their cell phones. 

When each looked up, Morgan did not smile at them. She didn’t feel like it. She simply nodded. Both boys returned to their video games, their thumbs moving rapidly. It amazed her, the amount of control it took not to smile. What was worse was the immediate guilt, which didn’t make any sense at all. But, she thought, as she sat on the other end of one of the benches and watched the CO2 clouds of the passing cars dissipate into the air, she refused to wear that mask anymore.

Photo by Ahmed Zayan on Unsplash

100 Day Challenge Day #51: Princess Recovery Group. Tonight's Speaker: Snow White

Hi. My name is Snow White and I’m an alcoholic. Thanks for having me as a speaker today. I’ve been sober for three years and five months now. I was sober for four year before my relapse. But that’s how it goes, sometimes. I’m just glad to be back on track, and I’m really glad to be here tonight. 

Let’s just get it out in the open. I know my name is weird. My mother thought it was a celebration of my “alabaster skin.” I mean, if you think about it, it just means like “white white or cold white white.” I got teased about my name when I was a kid and even more so as an adult out in the world. Snow-Blower, Blizzard, Sleet Slut, Cold Bitch—I’ve been called it all. You can call me Snowy.

My mother died giving birth to me, so I never knew her, and that totally sucked. Then my dad, the king, basically rebounded and got married again within the year. I guess I can understand. He had this big castle to run and though he knew horses and politics, he knew shit about running a household. So, he married the most beautiful royal pain-in-the-ass he could find, my step-mother. Yeah, he wasn’t the best judge of character. 

I know I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but she really was a total witch. I realize now she was probably mentally ill. She absolutely suffered from extreme narcissism and obsessive-compulsive disorder, but of course was never diagnosed. But even knowing that, it’s still really hard to forgive her most days since she tried to kill me, like four times. It wasn’t the rosiest childhood. But through a hell of a lot of therapy, I do realize it wasn’t my fault. Some days though, I still feel like it is. You know what I mean.

Anyway, my story. So, what happened is my step-mom had this magic mirror and because of her affliction, she spent a lot of time in front of it, we’re talking a lot. She was obsessed with the idea of being THE most beautiful woman in the kingdom. So, she’d ask the mirror every single freaking day, “Who’s the fairest one of all?” And the stupid mirror always replied she was. I guess it didn’t measure inner beauty. Well, this continued until I turned seven years old. Up until then, things weren’t bad actually. I mean it wasn’t great. I was basically ignored by my dad and step-mother, but I had sweet Nanny to take care of me and tutor me, and I got to run around and climb trees in the garden and ride ponies. And though I got teased, I spent more time alone.

Then on my seventh birthday, that stupid-ass mirror says, “Snow White is the fairest of them all.”

I was a just a kid. I had no control over how I looked. You all know the Serenity Prayer. So, she’s absolutely pissed off, my step-mother, and for a few months, she just made my life miserable. But after the mirror kept repeating Snow White, Snow White, Snow White, she decided to do away with me. My dad just wasn’t paying attention. It’s hard to forgive him some days too. Anyway, she basically tried to hire our head huntsman to take me out somewhere and kill me. What she didn’t know is that he was a sweet old guy, even though he could wield a mean knife. AND he was married to Nanny. They were all just servants to her.

So, he gets me out of there and sneaks me way up into the mountains to my cousin’s house. My cousin Happy is a dwarf. Dwarfism runs in some members of my family. My dad once said it was because of royal inbreeding, but it’s just genetic. Happy lived in a group home with a whole bunch of other Little People. I’d never actually met him and he wasn’t there when I arrived, but the huntsman had to go kill some innocent animal and bring the heart to my evil step-mother and claim it was mine, so he had to go. 

It was getting late, so I found some food and went to bed. It was quite a surprise for those guys when they got back, I can tell you! 

Well, it turned out that Happy was—really happy, by nature. He was a super nice guy. His buddies all had these ridiculous nicknames—although I’m not one to talk. But they totally suited them. There was Sneezy who honestly had every allergy in the book. He had no business working in the forest, except he wanted to be with the others; they were all like one big family. Sleepy loved to nap, swear to god, he might’ve been narcoleptic. Doc was totally helpful and kind of looked out for everybody. Bashful was adorable, really shy, didn’t talk much on account of his stutter. They all put up with Grumpy. He was a real curmudgeon but he had this great cynical sense of humor. And there was Dopey. He wasn’t quite right in the head but was so gentle, like a little kid really. He played with me a lot.  

They took me in. They became my family. Everybody in the house had to work. That was the rule. Because I was a “girl,” I was assigned housework. Not my favorite task. I had never cooked before in my life and burnt the first few meals, but the guys were really forgiving, and I learned. It was actually a really good ten years. The dwarves got me patterns and gorgeous materials and I learned to sew my own clothes. I learned to do all kinds of things. Flower arrangements and repairs. I could fix the goddamn toilet. I became capable. And I was loved. I was expected to be cheerful all the time, and that was damaging. But I know they didn’t mean any harm. We ate together, sang together, laughed. I also fell in love with the forest, especially the animals. I learned how be still so they wouldn’t be afraid of me. I could take care of them when they were injured. Doc taught me. I love animals. They’re a lot more reliable than people. I see some of you nodding.

And then came murder attempt number two. 

I don’t know what caused the mirror to change its tune after ten years. Maybe my father’s realm expanded to include our part of the forest, whatever, I don’t know. But all of a sudden, after ten years of not mentioning me at all, that idiotic mirror declares “Snow White is the fairest in the land, and she lives with the dwarves.” Great.

This time, scary step-mother decided to do the deed herself. She disguised herself as an old peddler and came knocking on our door. We had peddlers come by from time-to-time. That wasn’t unusual. Anyway, she had these gorgeous silky laced bodices. I mean these things were sexy. I was seventeen. I was discovering my sexuality. I was dreaming about handsome princes. And I lived isolated in the forest with short old dudes. And, I was really, really naïve. So my witchy step-mother, a.k.a the old peddler, offers to help me put one on so I can see what it looks like. She laced it up so tightly, I fainted. She left me for dead, barely breathing. Luckily, the guys got home right after and Doc revived me.

A week later, an old woman selling hair combs comes by the cottage. You guessed it. Witchy-woman disguised again. I was a little wary. But I thought, what harm could there be in a comb? They were really pretty, and I didn’t know what to do with my hair. It was really thick and dark. I like it now, but you know how self-critical us women can be, right? Especially when we’re young. Yeah, if we knew then what we know now, right? The comb was poisoned. The poison ran down into my scalp and out I went. Again the guys got back just in time, took the damn thing out of my hair and nursed me back to health. It wasn’t pretty.

You’d think I’d learn, right? Well, two weeks later, a farmer’s wife comes by the cottage with the shiniest, juiciest red apples you’ve ever seen. They reminded me of the ones in the trees I climbed as a kid. The farmer’s wife seemed really sweet, and I wanted one of those apples, bad. I thought, ah hah! I’m smarter now. I told her I would buy an apple if she split it with me. She cut it in half and started eating. Okay! Cool, I thought. It’s safe. Well, I didn’t notice she was only eating the white bit. I bit right into the red skin. I fell into a freaking coma. She thought I was dead and left. 

Happy and the others couldn’t revive me that time. They thought I was dead too. But they always said I was beautiful, and, you know, that was great. They helped me to believe I really was, to see myself that way. Because of my beauty, they made a casket out of glass, so they could see me for as long as they could. I heard later that even Grumpy was crying. They made this gorgeous shrine for me in the garden beside the cottage, with colorful flowers all around me. They wanted my animal friends to be able to mourn with them.

That’s when Prince Charming came by. This is where the story becomes unclear. I’ve heard two versions, that the Prince, having his men move my casket to take it back to his castle to admire my dead-ass beauty there, dropped one side and dislodged the apple skin that I had eaten—along with the lid of the casket—and I awoke. But Charmer claimed he kissed me awake. All I know is that I woke up and saw this gorgeous guy kneeling over me, looking at me all lovey-dovey, and I thought wow, he’s really tall. Mind you, I’d been living with Little People for ten years. He looked strong. He had the best clothes. He looked like he could take care of me.

He asked me to marry him. I said yes. We moved into his castle together, had our wedding night. It hurt but I guess it was okay. I didn’t know much about sex. And then we were supposed to live happily ever after. He punished my step-mother, by the way, and she died. I didn’t even know about it until later. You’d think he’d tell me. It still feels weird.

So, I was living in this castle, having really mediocre sex with this husband that I realized I didn’t really know. At all! He didn’t want me cooking or sewing or feeding the horses, because he had servants to do all that. I was bored out of my gourd. I didn’t even get to really run the household. He had his father’s old house manager and butler and they pretty much owned the place. I felt useless and depressed. And then, it turns out Charming is totally surface and vapid, like he had no internal life, no opinion about anything. He barely read. He was afraid of animals. And, he didn’t like music. I mean, who doesn’t like music?! We had nothing in common. Nothing. I realized I didn’t love the guy. I didn’t even like him. And he didn’t take care of me, not emotionally or mentally. I mean, yeah, the food was good, the clothes, all that crap. but he used those material things to hold me hostage, control me, while he did whatever the hell he wanted to do. It became crystal clear: I was a trophy wife.

I had to get away. I snuck out and rode into the mountains to visit Happy and the gang. 

They liked to drink now and then. I had never touched the stuff, because I’d been underage. They didn’t let me. But now, I was a married woman, so sure! They said, have some whiskey with us. It burnt my throat the first time. But I liked how it felt. I liked that it numbed the pain, numbed the feeling of being captive, of feeling stupid, of regret. Of shame. It all went away. And I was a fun drunk. We sang and laughed. I was up on the table doing a jig while Happy played his mandolin and Dopey banged on the drums and Bashful blew on a piccolo. I started going to the cottage often, sometimes getting so drunk, I blacked out, had to spend the night. The guys said I was getting out of hand, that I should take it easy. 

And then Charming found out and forbade me going into the forest. The bastard threatened to hurt my cousins. So, I found alcohol around the castle, developed clever hiding places. Drank alone.

Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash

I spent ten f***ing years like that. Drunk and miserable and lonely and self-loathing. Charming had started sleeping around with all kinds of freaks, surface chicks that he had a lot more in common with. And because he was the man, it was totally acceptable by his advisors. Everybody looked the other way. 

I mean, maybe if I had kids it would’ve been better, you know with someone to look after and love. But Charming and I stopped having sex. I hated it with him anyway. It felt completely obligatory, for his pleasure, not mine. I had read a book or two by then from foreign lands and knew women could get pleasure from sex. Also, I had stopped trusting myself. With all the drinking, I was pretty sure I’d be a shitty mother. I was poisoning myself slowly. I didn’t even need my evil step-mother around to do it for me anymore. 

I probably would’ve ODed if Happy didn’t come along. He came to see me, because he had bad news. Grumpy had died. From too much booze, he said. As a result, they had all decided to give up the drink. Happy said it had been really, really hard, but they were all much more content now. Happy didn’t smile quite as much, and he said that felt good. Real. Even Sneezy, who had lost a bunch of weight, evidently, wasn’t sneezing as much.

He asked about me. I just burst into tears. I told him everything. That sweet cousin of mine. He saw that I had to get out of there. “You need to live your life,” he said, “the one you want. Be Snow White.” 

We walked the grounds together and came up with a plan. The one person who didn’t know about my husband’s wild infidelity was his mother. And he was a total Mam'a’s boy. When he took over the castle, he built her an adjacent mansion where she played cards with her old crones and hosted chamber concerts and lived a carefree retirement, free of her husband who had croaked. She was one of the most content women I knew. She had a companion named Winifred. I’m pretty sure they were getting it on. Good for her. She was pissed at me though. No grandchildren. And she still told Charming how to dress and eat on occasion.

Happy went home and wished me luck, and I went to see my husband. Extortion seemed my only option. I had a list of all the women he was sleeping with. I told him I would show it to his mother breaking the illusion of her “perfect son” and explaining why she didn’t have any grandkids if he didn’t let me go with a sizable settlement so I could get on my feet again. He could tell others that I had to go to nurse my dear, elderly aunt in her last years of life. That would save my honor and his. He agreed. 

I packed my things and took two horses, my favorite steed and a packhorse to carry my things. I had a sack of gold and jewels, and I left. 

Happy took me in for a while, but the guys didn’t want me cooking and cleaning for them anymore. They wanted me to live my life. They were in semi-retirement by then, enjoying puttering around the cottage half-naked. They loved me, but they didn’t want me living there. 

I wandered for a while. Started drinking again. Those couple of years are a whole other story! Some ugliness. But then I found you, my friends, my fellow princesses, rehab and this Princess Recovery Group. I’m so grateful. I have learned so much from all of you and your stories, Rapunzel, Sleepy-P, Cinder-Baby. You guys are the best. And I hope my story helps others. Belle, Tiana, Ariel, welcome. It’s a pleasure to get to know you. You have my support.

I’ve been in therapy now for seven years. I love my therapist. I realized that my relapse came because I was still thinking “Happily Ever After” was somewhere else than inside me. But I did the entire 12 Steps again. And now I realize it’s not human to be happy every second of the day. I feel better. As they say in program, I feel EVERYTHING better.

And I like who I am now. I didn’t completely drink away my settlement with my ex, luckily, so, as you know, I built myself The Gardens Bed and Breakfast. I’ve had you all there. I make a good living and have a great staff that I manage. I have a menagerie of pets and nurse hurt animals and return them to the wild. I’m working on a recipe book. Everything has apple in it.

Happy passed away. I miss him terribly, but I’ve been taking mandolin lessons with his old mandolin, and I’m learning. It’s fun and hard and frustrating sometimes. But I’m sticking with it. I love singing in the local choir. I’ve even started dating again. There’s this farmer’s son turned land-owner. He seems to get me. He likes that I’m independent. But we’re going slow. I’m not sure I ever want to get married again. But it’s nice to have a companion for events. And he’s great in bed! We even read the Kama Sutra together. It was really exciting. 

I may still have a child. I’m not sure. But right now, I’m happy to learn more about myself, to truly take care of myself, be the mother and step-mother to myself I wish I had, you know? I’m creating the new habit of loving myself. Every day. As best I can. And I’m working the program. And taking it one day at a time.

So, thanks for listening guys. 

100 Day Challenge #50: Big, Little Lie

A sort of Flash Fiction piece…

Big, Little Lie

Some mornings she hugged him with true affection. Some mornings while kissing his scratchy face, she pictured the house without him, clean and organized with fresh flowers on the mantel and all repairs done and the couch that the cats destroyed reupholstered. And she was smiling, drinking coffee, content. 

Of course, she knew in reality it was more likely she’d be scrambling into a business suit with wet hair while finishing making the kids’ breakfasts and lunches and trying not to bark at them. Then she’d head off to some nebulous 8-to-5 job that allowed them to stay in the slowly decomposing house. 

In response to his “I love you,” she still told him “I love you too,” and most days, some days it felt genuine. On others, it felt like a little lie. When he hugged her in the kitchen, while she held a carton of milk mid-transport to the table, it was cute. Some days she giggled. She was not so cold to ignore her own need for affection, nor take it for granted. But when he cupped her breasts while she cut orange slices at the counter, she sometimes felt panic rise. He might want to make love. Not that they had time. Not on a weekday morning. On confident days she could turn around, find his hardness, and squeeze it, feigning playfulness. Other days, despite her best efforts, she jerked away and hoped she didn’t hurt his feelings. 

It had become a daily roulette spin. Perhaps, she thought, this is just part of a long-term relationship of adults with children, this period of questioning, a phase of pretending, of maintaining. It wasn’t like there was anyone else. Besides, she saw the effect of divorce on her kids’ friends, on her girlfriend Sam who was in recovery as an adult. It was never easy for children. 

One morning, while loading the dishwasher after he left, before starting her own work, she inflated with a sudden inspiration. A date night would help them reconnect. Some of their friends had regular date nights. She texted him with the news, before opening her laptop to look at the calendar.

But that week, he was going out with his buddy Jasper on Monday, she had a PTA meeting on Tuesday night, Thursday night Sophie would be squeaking on her clarinet in the elementary school band concert, and Saturday night was the Auction Night fundraiser. She would be wearing that silly long apron with the dozen pockets full of cheap plastic prizes selling raffle tickets while her husband tended bar, guffawing with the guys in the Dads Club.

On Saturday morning, she decided, I will make love with my husband. He often complained that they didn’t have enough sex. Whenever he did, she felt like she was in some bad romance comedy movie or 90s sitcom. But she understood. Or tried to. Sometimes she thought she wanted more love-making too. But mostly she was tired and made grocery lists in her head and worried that the kids might hear her moans or run into the bedroom the moment she managed to relax into the sensations. Still, she should make an effort. 

On Saturday morning, Bryan vomited all over his SpongeBob pajamas and the bathroom floor at five in the morning, some kind of stomach bug.

So, she kept living her little lie, which some days wasn’t a lie. 

Until that surreal Sunday night after the kids had gone to bed, when he asked if he could talk to her, a business smile on his face, the kind you offer a stranger as you shake their hand at a party. He led her to the kitchen table, which was still littered with crumpled cloth napkins and unused forks from dinner. Wringing his hands and taking a lot of deep breaths, he told her he had met someone else, that he was in love with this woman, that he wanted to separate and divorce but that he wanted what was best for the children, given the situation, so he would work with her to make the transition the best it could be. 

That night, because this woman was evidently out of town and he had nowhere else to go and of course, neither did she, they slept in the same queen-sized bed, each on the far end, or she tried to sleep while he snored. She lay on her side, her back to him, numb, her feet cold, listening to his sounds as if they were some stranger’s, trying not to think about tomorrow, somehow cognizant that emotions would come, a whole lot of them. She could feel herself on a precipice of blame, of herself, of him. It was pointless really. Suddenly she found herself laughing, an involuntary, silent, maniacal-type of laughter wet with tears. 

Hers had been just a little lie. His was a big, little lie.

100 Day Challenge #49: Don't Go

Don’t Go

She knew she wasn’t supposed to see him packing. That’s why he was doing it in the early morning, before the sun erased the stars in the sky outside her bedroom window and lit the zoo animals on her curtains, long before anyone usually got up. Of course, there was no “usually” anymore. 

Fitful, she had woken to the soft closing of drawers downstairs and went to investigate. Over the years she had become quite a good spy, able to curl up in the shadows unnoticed and observe the smallest details, which she jotted down with time markers in one of her glitter-covered journals.

Through the living room she crept in her pink nightgown with the strawberries on it, lit only by the faraway flood of the street lamp that came in through the big picture window. Still, it was ample light to make her way to her dad’s office without bumping into the coffee table or the ottoman. She could probably have walked it in the pitch dark.

The office door was open a crack, emitting a slit of light like the beacon of a lone ship at sea, she thought. Breath-held, she pushed it open just a tad more. It did not squeak. Thank goodness for WD-40, she thought, a phrase her dad had used once on a Repair-Saturday. Around the doorjamb she first saw three open, empty drawers, then her father pulling books three at a time off of a shelf and placing them into a box. She backed away to lean against the living room wall and opened her journal trying to breath out the tightness in her belly.

5:35am Satturday June 14 – Dad in his office, piling books into apple cardbord boxes, from grocery store, obviusly. Looks sad. Shulders hunched. Lots of size sighs. Droors drawrsdrawers empty of his work papers and supplies. This sucks.

Her father grunted. She heard things shift in a box and knew he had picked one up. She ran on tip-toes crawled behind the couch, burrowing into the window curtains. It was her best spy hiding place in the living room. If nothing was going on inside the house, she could station herself there to spy on the neighbors like the old Smiths across the street, who had been a particularly boring subject until the day an ambulance arrived and the white-sheet covered body of Mr. Smith had been wheeled out. It was spooky and sad and exciting. That had been a five-star spy day, two whole pages of journal filled with observations and contemplations.

Peeking over the couch, she watched her dad carry two piled boxes and balance them on his knee while he struggled to open the front door. Out in the driveway, he loaded them into his car and drove away.

5:50am – Dad taking boxs to car. Already some in trunk and backseat. Taking them to stupid new apartmint I gess.

She hadn’t seen it yet, his new “home” where she’d have her own bedroom—“It has a swimming pool, and you can decorate your room anyway you’d like!” She’d be sleeping there several nights a week once it was set up. She couldn’t say what days of the week, had stopped listening to her parents’ sing-songy voices telling her it would be okay. It wasn’t and it wouldn’t be.

Upstairs again, she tip-toed past the closed door of what used to be her parents’ bedroom and was now just her mother’s. She heard her snoring softly in inside.

5:52a.m. – Mom snores. Dose she know? How can she sleep thru this? Why dosen’t she stop him? Why didn’t Mom try harder?!

In the hallway, she stopped in front of the framed photographs on the wall, the colors grayed in the dim light. The first was last year’s holiday photo, the three of them smiling in front of a Christmas tree, Angela in the red velvet fairy tale dress she had begged her mom for. It was too small now, a little snug when they bought it. She wondered if they knew then, behind those camera smiles.

In the next photo the three of them were on a gold spray-painted sleigh all cross-eyed and grinning. She used to love this photo. She had been really angry at them for something, though she couldn’t remember what it was now, and had crossed her eyes and kept them crossed, even when her eyes began to tear. The photographer coaxed. Her parents pleaded. They took turns speaking sternly, tried sweet talk, threatened to take away her iPad, and finally even her Gund Spunky Dog. But once committed, she felt like she couldn’t stop, not knowing why. It wasn’t something she decided to do. It just happened. But she remembered thinking, “So this is power,” wondering how long it would last. Her dad had finally sighed, like he did this morning and said, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” When she turned to see their faces mirroring hers with strained crossed eyes, her control was gone, but she felt happy.

It was like touring a museum, stepping in front of each frame that followed. Angela became progressively younger in each picture until she no longer existed and her parents stood pressed together, a single beaming unit in a wedding cake-white gown and black tuxedo, younger versions of the people she knew, thought she knew. I do. Forever. ‘Til Death do us part. They always got on her not to lie. Who were the liars now?

5:57 AM – In headquarters with sidekick Spunky. Why IS THIS HAPPENING???!! Maybe if I had been easier to deal with? Maybe I should’nt have crossed my eyes. Did my homework.

6:10 – Spies are’nt suppose to cry!…did I say this sucks?!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It took a while to quiet her sobs into her pillow. In the silence that followed, she heard the soft opening of the front door. She leapt up, letting Spunky tumble onto her bed and grabbed her journal and pen, wiping her eyes to make out the numbers on her beloved Guess brand watch, gold with rhinestones glittering around the face, a gift from her dad on her last birthday, four months ago. She had worn it every day since.

“A designer watch, really?” her mother had said to her dad that night. “For a 10-year old? That’s too much.” That night, Angela had been hiding in the dark corner beside the sideboard in the dining room, another prime spy location, too excited from the party and festivities and cake to sleep. 

11:09 PM – Mom and dad cleaning up from party. Mom dosen’t like I got watch??! What?!

“I just wanted to give her something special. Father to daughter.” 

“I know what you’re doing.”

“Showing I care?”

“How about buying her love and forgiveness.”

“When did you get like this?”

“It takes two to tango.” 

Angela felt confused, her heart twisting inside. 

Mom at dishwasher. Dad at tabel. Forth argument this week…that I know of. What the heck? Pressures at work maybe.

“I gave her the watch because I thought she’d like it, because I think she’s old enough to take care of it.” 

“Right.”

11:10pm – They stopped talking. Just cleaning. Slamming drawers. What did Mom mean about buying my forgivness? 4 what? What did Dad mean about tangoing? It was a great party. Maybe thery’re just tired. ??? I LOVE my watch. Won’t ruin good day by thinking about it! Thanks a lot Mom and Dad!!!!

That was four months ago. And then came last night. 

“Angela, can we talk to you?” Her Mom stepped in front of the TV and switched off Angela’s show, about kids used real magic. Her dad stood off to the side, staring at a spot on the carpet. What? Her mother sat on the sofa not right next to Angela, but an arm’s length away. Her dad took one of the chairs that only guests sat in usually. He tried to smile. It was obvious it was bad, whatever they planned to say. 

Divorce. Her mother made the pronouncement. Her dad stammered out something about an apartment. This was really happening. To her, not to a kid at school or in a book or movie, but to her. 

After their speech, Angela couldn’t seem to move her arms as each parent took turns hugging her. She just excused herself and went to her room, feeling like part of her had just been erased. 

And now it was morning and her dad was moving out. She wrote quickly, breathing back more tears.

6:20AM – Dad’s back. 

Question: Did he know on my birthday? Is the watch some sort of gilt guilt gift like Mom sez? Why R they doing this???????!!!

She had written this question several times now, never with an answer. Passing her mother’s room again, the door was open, the bed empty.

“No, you can’t take that,” came her mother’s loud whisper from the kitchen. Angela snuck down the stairs, the carpet silencing her steps.

“Okay. What can I take? We have three peelers. Can I take one?” 

“Yes, but not this one.”

“Fine. I only paid for most of this stuff.” 

“That’s not fair. It was what we agreed to.”

“Only for the first few years. Then you were going to bring in an income too.”

“It didn’t work like that. Not with motherhood. I didn’t know. We talked about this.”

“When?”

“Forget it.”

Angela took her spy spot in the dining room, between the wall and the sideboard. 

“I’m taking the Vitamix,” her dad sighed, “I use it every day. You hardly do.”

“Fine. I’ll get a new blender for when Angela wants a milkshake.”

“Since when has she ever had a milkshake at home?”

“That’s not the point.”

More sighs. 

“Listen. Maybe it’s better if I come back to finish while you and Angela are out during the day.”

“I’ll pack kitchen stuff for you because you won’t know what to take and what not to.”

“Fine.” 

Again, there was the sound of box flaps closing, and the time for spying was over. Angela stomping into the kitchen, sliding all the dimmer switches on the wall up so that light flooded the room. 

“You don’t know what you’re doing. You have to stop this.”

“Angela,” her dad started.

“No. I mean, have you guys even tried counseling? Michelle’s parents go. You…you can ask them for the name of their counselor.”

“Angela,” her mom muttered.

“I’ll…I won’t talk in class anymore. I’ll eat Chinese food. You guys used to love that, right? Eat it all the time before you had me.”

“How do you know that?” her dad asked with surprise.

“You said it. Here.” She flipped back, hands shaking, through the pages of her journal. “Um…I’ll find it. Yes. January 19. 9:30pm. Watching House of Cards. Beer Commercial ‘I miss Chinese food,’ says Mom. ‘Me too,’ says Dad. Used to eat it all the time before Angela. They know I hate it. Slimy.”

“You were spying on us?” 

“Well, yeah. I… it’s something I do. For fun. Detective work. You always said I was observant.”

“Listen, Angela,” said her dad softly, “this has nothing to do with you.”

“Is that a joke?” She stared back and forth at the two of them, who both seemed thinner than she remembered, her dad graying at the temples, her mom with bags under her eyes.

“What your dad means is that this is no fault of yours at all. It’s just that your dad and I have grown apart. We’re moving in different directions and want different things…”

“Except when it comes to you, Honey,” her dad interjected, taking a step towards her. Angela took a step back. It was impulsive, but she immediately regreted it when she saw the pained expression on his face. 

“Look,” he continued, “I know it’s going to be different than it was, but we both love you. That will never change. We are still your mom and dad. We just will be living apart. You’ll have two homes.”

“That’s right,” her mom nodded, sitting and leaning towards Angela from a kitchen chair, “We love you very much. You are our first priority always, and we’ll do everything we can to help you through this transition.” 

Angela wanted so much to throw herself into their arms. But she didn’t. Instead, gripping her pen and spy journal in a half fist, she undid the strap on her Guess watch, placed it on the table between her parents, and left the room.

She held Spunk dog to her chest. Her journal and pen lay unopened beside her on her bed. There were footfalls downstairs, the front door opening. 

“I’ll call this afternoon, okay?” she heard her dad say, “To talk about Angela.”

“Yeah, okay. ’Bye”

“Bye.”

She closed her bedroom door, wishing it had a lock, since her mother would probably come knocking on her door soon. She opened her journal.

6:33- Yeah, what will they do about Angela?  

Closing it again, she slid it and the pen under her mattress, squeezed Spunky to her chest and pulled her comforter over her head into a dark cocoon, ignoring the knock on her door and the morning sun that lit up everything around her.

Photo by Dmitry Ratushny on Unsplash.jpg

100 Day Challenge #48: The Last Ditch Effort

For this writing prompt, I thought it would interesting to take a literal approach…

A Last Ditch Effort

There has to be a way. She repeated this to herself again as the blue circle of sky above her darkened and a lone star twinkled in the dusk. The packed dirt walls around her, already cold, being so far underground, grew colder. She didn’t want to be trapped here. In the dark. As if buried alive. There has to be a way.

Her ankle throbbed. It was swelling, definitely broken. After the shock of the long fall, she had assessed her condition. The break was the most painful. She had bruised her legs and sides badly, scraped her hands. From trying to climb out, trying to find footholds and handholds in the packed earth, she had made the injuries worse. But what else could she do? 

The sides of the ditch were vertical and just far enough apart that she was unable to spider crawl up, even if the foot wasn’t throbbing. The hole was obviously man-dug, being so perfectly round and tampered on the sides. But it had been abandoned. She theorized that it may have been a hole drilled for water or oil or ore that was not to be found. 

Not to be found. She did her best to keep panic buried, as it were. Action helped. Think. There has to be a way.

There was no service on her cell, ironic as she had taken the hike to “unplug,” orienteering being something she always thought she’d like to try. She had only looked up for seconds to see the osprey squealing overhead when the world disappeared beneath her. Though she told herself not to, she replayed the scene in her head over and over, trying to take a different path, to look down in time, to reach an alternate ending, as if this were just some bad dream, a scene in someone else’s movie.

There has to be a way. Come on, Darby, think. She had yelled for help until her throat was raw, then called out in intervals since then. She had dug rocks out of the packed dirt, her fingernails caked, and thrown them up out of the hole, straining her arm. Some dropped back down on her head in cynical rain. She had listened carefully for human conversation or footfalls. But she was off-trail. Only the muffled rustle of leaves answered her. Periodically, she moved, did knee lifts, circled her hips, wiggled toes and fingers, made circles with the good foot then each arm, a sort of condensed Hokey Pokey. Anything to stay warm, keep moving. Breathe. And think about anything but the walls, the depth, the smallness of the space, the pain, the isolation, the desperation of her situation. No one’s coming. No. There has to be a way.

Now, without water for hours, her tongue was dry and chalky. It felt like her skin might crackle. Even small motions were becoming harder. Her body threatened in its heaviness, its fragile machinery. No. Don’t think about that. Think past the physical self. Think out of this ditch. She turned on her phone and turned the light up to the surface. “Help! Somebody. Help,” she cried, only she could barely generate a voice anymore. 

One step. It had been one step without looking, before falling longer than a person should, bumping from wall to wall on the way down, a ragdoll tossed into a garbage chute.

It only takes an instant for life to change direction completely. She knew this. One small move. But how many times would it happen to her? Her life had already derailed. When Jordan walked off that curb and the Volvo driver, looking at his cell phone, drove through the red light. And through Jordan. One small move. Instead of his huge presence in her life, the wedding, the future they talked about with kids, she was left alone with grief and questions and disbelief and anger, inertia, pity, a void.  

She had learned to stand up straight for the sake of others, his mom and sister, her parents. But you can’t go back to the person you were after a loss like that. No matter how hard you try. Synapses in the brain change. Her eyes saw everything differently, and not as she would have expected. Morning commuters looked gray and robotic. Strangers fake. At the same time, ladybugs were bigger, sunsets brighter. Jordan was everywhere and nowhere. Her HR job—which had been fine—now bored her. Comedians on Netflix were funny as hell one moment and made her cry the next. Lacing up running shoes was laborious, but the run itself, endorphins released, brought feverish gratitude. 

She flashed and waved the light of her phone upwards, lighting the silhouetted pine boughs while doing a weak march in place. Battery was at 40%. Come on. Anybody. 

What was she just thinking? Yes, there has to be a way. Oh, but she was tired. So tired. She admonished herself now for the wasted energy of the panic attack that had finally broken through earlier. When she still had tears. It had taken ages to breathe and sob through it. She couldn’t get that energy back now. Once again, she longed for her backpack, which she had slipped off stupidly and placed on a boulder in order to find a place to pee. In it was water and food and a jacket. So cold. So tired. So thirsty.

Death. Die. No, those words were not allowed. No. But the words invaded her thoughts anyway, viral parasite, invading enemies. Jordan had died. She might die—tonight. Of dehydration, hypothermia. If she perished there, people would probably say she committed suicide because of Jordan, wandered into the woods alone to die. They’d shake their heads. It was a broken heart, they’d say. 

But that wasn’t her. Yeah, her heart still hurt. Every day. But despite his absence, she was starting to feel like she could move on in her new Jordan-less reality. It was her liveliness that he first fell in love with. He told her that. She owed it to him to live her life. She was full of life. And so young. 

They’d say that too. Death. Poor thing, so young. Too soon.

No, no, no. There has to be…Optimism was getting harder to fabricate, resignation so close, it was like her shadow, like a light shirt, like the cold air creeping into her bones. But she didn’t want to die.

It’s just a damn hole! Think. There has to... She stared at the phone, willing it to find service, to sing her the answer. Music. Worth a try. She looked into her music library. Old AC/DC, Highway to Hell. It was the loudest thing she could think of. She turned it on, reaching her arm up with the phone as far as she could, still at least five feet below the surface. Not loud enough. But she had no more ideas. This was it, her last-ditch effort, so to speak. How strange the music sounded, the frenetic drums, the youthful rebellion. It was like a sick joke in that dank, constricting, cold darkness. The song triggered memories. Laughter on a worn couch with a circle of college friends, a party somewhere with pink and green balloons on the floor, the ocean out the window of her car on Highway 1 on that road trip to Anaheim. 35%. The battery power was going fast. Please, please, she whispered to the sky far above her, the world, her world. There has to be a way. Doesn’t there? 

It can’t end like this.

Photo by Niloofar Kanani on Unsplash

100 Day Challenge #47: In a Room Alone

I wrote this in 2018 to a prompt that became the title of this short piece. I think it begs to be a longer piece. It was featured on theLitCamp Creative Caffeine Daily website that released the writing prompts.

In A Room Alone

In a room alone, she breathed, clutching a briefcase she had pulled from the back of a closet that morning. She tugged up on the black tights that she never wore, adjusting the high-waisted skirt she also found in the recesses of a closet, a remnant from the ‘90s. Steady income. Steady income, she chanted in her head. The blue couch she waited on was retro vinyl, sticky. It was, she knew, supposed to be a cheerful contrast to the aqua green polka-dotted pillows and the frames around the abstract prints on the walls in the same sea colors. But instead it reminded her of the color-matching clothesline for girls that existed when she was little, in all the flashy colors of the 1970s. What was it called? Gr-animals? Something to do with zoo creatures. That she couldn’t remember the name and that it was from the ‘70s, for God’s sake, a now-historic age that she lived through both made her feel old. 

I want this, she told herself. This is good for the family. No more anxiety trying to find the next new client. I don’t have to be a salesperson any more. New mantras. Can you have four, she wondered? That didn’t seem effective. Besides, these were really more statements of desperation. She half-buried the thought. No one wants to hire a desperate person.

“Rhonda Mattson?”

“Yes, that’s me.” Rhonda flashed the young woman a trained smile. Social graces were one good thing her parents gave her, despite the cost of being a “Good Girl.” This will pay for more therapy. There’s a mantra.

“Hi, I’m Melissa. I’ll be your agent.” 

Standing to meet the young woman’s outstretched hand, Rhonda’s briefcase slipped to the ground with a thud, causing her sudden, involuntary sweat. She half kneeled, half-leaned to pick it up, then shook the slim fingers, cringing inwardly at her own clammy grip. 

“Nice to meet you.”

“This way.”

Following the agent, Rhonda straightened the skirt again and felt her heel throbbing, her plantar fasciitis aggravated by the walk on pavement in heeled shoes to get to this office building.

In another room with abstract prints, this time sunny orange and yellow, the young woman poured them two cups of water from a dispenser in the corner, while Rhonda pulled from her briefcase the folder containing her resume and writing samples, placing the artifact on the small white café-style table and then sitting up unnaturally straight.

“So, you’re a writer.”

“Yes.”

“What kind of work have you done.” 

Rhonda launched into a retrospective of her career, starting with what she thought the young woman, Melissa, would want to hear, freelance business writing completed twenty years ago, necessary high-paid work to allow the creation of magazine features and fiction workshops. What finally motivated her to call the agency was her recent discovery that these same magazines paid the same amount or less per word than they had two decades ago. The revelation had sunk her.

As Rhonda spoke, she noticed the smoothness of her interviewer’s dark skin and tried not to look at the plunging neckline of her blouse that made a narrow V between her breasts, pert things absolutely untouched by gravity. Christ, I’m old enough to be your mother, she thought. 

“Awesome. I think we have some possibilities that meet your income requirements and your skills,” said the young woman smiling. Of course, the hourly that Rhonda quoted in her application was way below what she made ghostwriting the memoir for her last client. 

“Let me explain how our agency works,” said Melissa, smiling. “This is a W-2 position. You would actually work for us.”

V was not for victory, Rhonda thought, glancing again at that youthful exposure of skin, at the natural coy posture of a 20-something powered by sexual drive. She’d probably be dancing at a club tonight with her friends. They’d share a Lyft home, buzzed and giggling. She remembered. W-2. A loss of independence. What was she doing? Looking for work that once again skirted around her dreams, work that she didn’t really want. But there was her family, her husband’s income that was not enough and had never gone up as she had expected. There was the debt. The financial anxiety.

Before she left the office, she exercised the actress within her, beaming at her would-be daughter, telling her how delighted she would be to work for her, while feeling the seam of her skirt tear slightly on her backside. Out on Market Street, taking painful steps towards the BART station, she held back tears. No, she thought. There has to be another way. 

Down the stairs into the subterranean gray, she passed men and women, some older than her, most younger, some disheveled some quaffed, some awake some asleep. She didn’t want to be asleep. She was too old to fall asleep now, to settle. Settling now would be into an early grave. She knew better. But what was the alternative? The hall smelled of urine and passing perfume. A saxophone echoed, playing a jazzy-version of I Did It My Way as a train beeped its horn. Hurrying, her hair pushed back by the whishing wind of the slowing train, she gathered with the horde and boarded a car for home.

Photo by Jean-Philippe Delberghe on Unsplash

100 Day Challenge #46: San Quentin Dungeons (continued from Day #34)

Reeling from the personal narratives of the inmates, from the scary and imposing impressions of the Adjustment Center and more positive but equally humbling sights of the hospital, we left the building and followed Sam to the San Quentin “Dungeons.” 

Located almost directly below the prison hospital was a decaying rock and clay-brick structure built by incarcerated people at the prison in 1854. It was used for solitary confinement until the 1940s and preserved as a historic site, “a relic of San Quentin’s punitive and barbaric past.”

Built four years after California became a state, says state historian Kevin Starr in a CrimeReporter.org article, the original San Quentin prison and these dungeons were “the state's first public work, before the Capitol building, the roadways, the public colleges and universities.” A disheartening fact, prisons before schools. Again.

The first prison was built out of local rock and clay brick, the cells sealed with iron doors with a small slit known as a “Judas hole.” The rock was quarried by convicts living aboard a prison ship anchored in the San Francisco Bay. The building was intended to house 45 inmates. More than 150 men were piled into the cells, not unlike the crowding we saw at San Quentin when we were there when it was at 3x the capacity. 

We heard how floggings with a rawhide strap were standard punishment, along with “shower baths,” a precursor of water-boarding.

It was cold and damp inside the dungeons, their walls chipped from age. For one pitch black, isolating and terrifying moment, our guide closed the door behind us. All senses were dulled except fear. If I’m remembering correctly there were bars across the top of a few of the cells from which prisoners could be hung by their hands. There were chains for shackles on the walls. I had only seen such things before in medieval castles in Europe.

It reminded me that life in the past was cheaper than today, but inhumanity is still far too common an occurrence, inside our prisons, on the streets, in oppressed neighborhoods and dysfunctional homes where people experience the damaging factors that lead them to these prisons.

From the dungeons, we followed Sam back into welcoming sunshine towards the main exercise grounds where we would learn even more about prison culture and the system of segregation that exists within.

Photo by Agent J on Unsplash

From Fortelasa de Isabel II, Illes Balears, Spanien — but reminds me of the dungeons at San Quentin. Only, there wasn’t that much light within.

100 Day Challenge #45: In the Eye of the Beholder

Perspective: A particular attitude toward or way of regarding something; a point of view; the interrelation in which a subject or its parts are mentally viewed

Perception: A way of regarding, understanding, or interpreting something; a mental impression; the neurophysiological processes, including memory, by which an organism becomes aware of and interprets external stimuli

I learned about perspective, I mean really learned about it, watching a reel-to-reel movie in a sophomore high school class called Basic Concepts.

I can’t tell you what other “basic concepts” were covered in the class. And I did not like the teacher at all. She used me as a negative example in another class. When I finished a test early, a student beside me was asking me a question, not a test question, something to do with the instructions, I think, and, not wanting to be rude, I tried to reply. The teacher accused me of cheating or helping him cheat, I don’t remember which. I just remember feeling it was grossly unfair. She didn’t give me any chance to explain. And I was a good student, not used to trouble. Then she told the story of what happened to me to another class as a precautionary tale, naming me BY NAME. I heard about it from friends in that class. The teacher seemed a rather miserable person. She wasn’t very old and could’ve been considered pretty with short Dorothy Hammil hair and perk and pointed features. But she was most often distant and disdainful in her manners to students. She suffered from allergies, I believe, her eyes often weepy, dark circles underneath them, a handkerchief in her hand. She blew her nose a lot and rarely smiled.

But despite her and her laissez-faire approach, I learned something incredibly valuable the day she showed that movie. That one class period made the whole semester with her worth it.

The old instructional film was called In the Eye of the Beholder. What I remembered is that it was the story about a woman who enters an apartment building and goes to the studio apartment of a male artist. There is some sort of arguing and then the woman leaves. 

There are other residents in the apartment building: the doorman, the woman herself who entered the building, the male artist, and other witnesses. One by one, the different characters tell their version of what took place. I don’t remember all the versions, but one saw the man as a threat, violent. Another one saw the woman as the issue. I think another one explained how the couple was drunk and always a problem. There were other perspectives too.

Photo by Noom Peerapong on Unsplash

It was an epiphany for me. Sure, I already understood the concept of perspective, but this example brought it home to me how each of us, no matter how similar we are in character, have a different perspective of the world. We can see the same thing and tell a million different stories, sometimes vastly different. We are all limited by our own self-consciousnesses and experiences. We can have empathy and imagine what it might be like to walk in someone else’s shoes and this, I feel, is incredibly important to do as a human being. We need more empathy in this world!

But we can never truly know the full perspective of another person, not completely, even if they explain it to us. Who the person is, their entire family history, their entire social history, their prejudices, the circumstances of their situation, their mood, prior events of the day, who is with them in the space, what’s on their mind, all kinds of influences color a person’ perspectives of what they see. 

Do you see a duck or a rabbit?

The duck-rabbit drawing was first used by American psychologist Joseph Jastrow in 1899 to make the point that perception is not only what one sees but also a mental activity.

I realized watching the movie that this was a central reason for conflict amongst people, conflicts that could never be resolved unless we agree to disagree and understand that everyone is viewing an event from their own unique perspective or perception. An event will have certain hard, objective facts: who says what, etc. But a person’s emotional truth often has nothing to do with the facts but their reaction to what they see and don’t see based on a myriad of personal factors.

We have always heard the expression that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.“ But really, everything is in the eye of the beholder. That’s what any one person‘s reality is.

My writing for this challenge would’ve stopped here, except while writing it I thought I’d sleuth online to see if by any chance I could find that short film. I’ve looked for it many times before to no avail. 

Lo and behold! Someone posted it on YouTube in 2019! It was actually filmed in 1953 and stars Dick Conte and Martha Vickers. I saw it in 1980. What a trip to see it again! What do you think of the film? 

Click on the image to view the old film! I’d love to hear your impression!

100 Day Challenge #44: BANG

BANG

I don’t like that I’m growing accustom to gunshots at night,

Waking from sound sleep to pop pop pop echoing, blunt explosions somewhere in the darkness,

Some in single bursts, one after another, some in rapid succession. 

How far away are they this time? From me and my family? 

I make a guess at the distance, the direction.

I think of my children in their bedrooms, hoping they did not hear, wanting to check on them, even though they are teenagers, young men. I want them safe and free.

I think of war. What it must be like. Bang. Crack. Sharp dark sounds day and night in war-torn cities. In Kabal. In a town in Afghanistan or Syria. To be a parent there. 

Who is firing the shots this time? At whom?

One small piece of metal, smaller than my little finger. Add velocity. Piercing, claiming a life.

The questions, the dark thoughts come now rapid fire.

Is it gang related? Is someone threatened in their home? Is it a robbery turned murder? Domestic violence? Vigilante justice? Will it come here?

So many people have guns now, feel afraid. It’s complicated, the dynamics of our times.

Has a mother just lost her child? 

A spouse lost their love? 

A child lost a father or a mother?

TV violence, crime files.

Scenes flash. 

Sandy Hook. Columbine. A concert in Vegas. Orlando nightclub. Virginia Tech. 

Names. Names—George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Stephon Clark. Botham Jean.

I think about the district newsletter we received at the beginning of the school year featuring bios of students who had died due to gun violence that summer. Seven of them, black, hispanic, Asian, but mostly black. Teenagers with lives ahead of them. Kids. A future. A family’s hope. Lost. 

As on other nights, it will take a lot to get back to sleep. Sleep feels a luxury. Equated with peace. I pace. Switch on the fan to hum out the night, mask the noise. Deep breaths. Repeat the alphabet backwards again. Shut out the waking nightmares, tragic possibilities. More deep breaths. Try for calm. Play a mindless game on my cellphone. And another. Replay a happy movie scene in my head. A blue sky day. Touch the arm of my love beside me.

Photo by Danilo Alvesd on Unsplash

Photo by Valentin Lacoste on Unsplash