“I have made death a messenger of joy to thee. Wherefore dost thou grieve?”
These words of Bahá'u'lláh have been a challenge and a mystery to me for over 40 years, since I first learned committed myself to the Bahá'í Faith. There was no joy in death as it was understood in my childhood home and early religious education. Death was a punishment, or an injustice, or just simply an end. Judaism, as I was taught it, did not include a view of life continuing beyond earthly bounds.
And I was just plain scared of death. Felt trapped, unfairly given a life that was destined to be snatched away and completely erased, more completely than the pencil marks in my sketches when I rubbed out wayward lines to replace them with more exacting ones. Those lines at least left a faint trace of themselves on the paper. My life would simply disappear, as if it had never happened.
But my contact with the Bahá'í Faith gave me a new understanding of death as a transition from the training wheels phase of life to a continuing, progressing, eternal existence. Eternal. That was the sticking point. My dread, my outright panic at times, transferred itself from fear of endings to fear of forever.
And I still felt trapped, by a fate over which I had no control, no choice.
But I believe that Bahá'u'lláh’s words are true, that they are directly channeled to us by a loving Creator, so my challenge was rely on prayer and meditation to accept death as a “messenger of joy,” and actually become joyful about it.
It’s been a long journey. I’m much farther along the way. There have been moments when I have felt almost there, and the peacefulness of those moments call for more.
It’s not surprising that my period of greatest serenity about death came during the time, starting three years ago this month, that I was dealing with cancer diagnosis and treatment, and with the uncertainty of outcome. Most people tried to be helpful by talking about cancer as if it were a sports event. I was counseled to beat it, fight it, was assured that I would win, with winning was defined as staying alive.
Did that mean that if I died, if the cancer “won,” I would “lose”? Did it mean that death was synonymous with defeat? Such a view didn’t gibe well with the image of death as “a messenger of joy.”
I thought a lot about the fact that death is not an “if”, it’s a “when.” I will die, someday, that was a given. Did it matter that much whether it was now or later? Logically I couldn’t see that it did.
So I could not then and cannot now accept the idea that if I, or anyone, dies from cancer or any other disease, they have lost a battle. Serenity during that time of living in cancer-world came from accepting that, while of course I would do whatever was necessary to get healthy and stay healthy, any result, any outcome, would be OK. More than OK. It would be a positive good.
It’s been a greater challenge to hang on to that serenity about death since I’ve been able to get off the sofa and have an active life again. But in a few days I have an appointment with my oncologist, a routine three-month check-up, and every time one of these appointments nears, I wonder if this will be the one where I learn the cancer has returned. And every time I have to remember the lessons cancer has taught me.
This week, with my upcoming appointment plus all the news about the devastation in Haiti and the trial initiated against the seven Bahá'ís in Iran who are accused of non-sensical and vague capital crimes, I am more aware than ever that death is inevitable, and that it will come on its own schedule, with or without warning.
And that my job – everyone’s job, regardless of their specific beliefs about death – is to be ready for it at every moment of life. Not in a morbid way. Just accepting it. And accepting the “when” of it. Because, as the well-known Alcoholics Anonymous prayer tells us, serenity comes from knowing what we can control and what we cannot control, and from putting our energies into the former rather than the latter.
It seems to me that in today’s world, the manner and timing of our deaths are more and more out of our control. I hear the rumblings of what is coming as the world collapses in upon itself, as the spiritually bankrupt structure of society as a whole implodes from lack of solid support.
It’s not the earthquake that is the disaster in Haiti, it’s the racism and materialism that created a poverty which failed to provide buildings that could stand during an earthquake.
It wasn’t Hurricane Katrina that washed out New Orleans, it was the racism and materialism that created its poor capacity to withstand a major hurricane.
And far too many people die not from disease but from the treatment of disease, treatments and drugs and procedures that often exist to serve stockholders as much, sometimes more, than patients.
Everywhere in the world I see disunity and injustice stemming from racism and materialism, from a lack of real and active faith in God, a lack demonstrated by the self-serving practices of business and government and in the everyday lives of everyday people. I see how we have created a modern Tower of Babel: too high, too weak, too poorly constructed and managed to stand
Bahá'u'lláh talked about the twin processes of destruction and construction that would lead us to a world based on justice and love. Many of us will be caught, often without warning, in the first process, even many individuals who are committed to groups and projects and goals that serve the second.
Since I don’t know what will happen to me or my family, to my friends, to my community; since my limited vision can’t see whether specific events are “good” or “bad” in the overall scheme, both personal and universal; since the only things I can control are my actions and my attitude, I choose joy. Acceptance. Serenity.
And hopefully, whenever it comes, death.
-30-
Monday, January 18, 2010
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Health food homicide
One by one they have all gone and now she is alone. The phones don’t ring. No footsteps can be heard in the hallway. Nary a door opens or closes in nearby offices.
The world inside feels as muffled and quiet as the world outside, where several inches of snow are threatening to shut down the city. As the only staff member who took the bus and didn’t have to worry about driving safely home, she has stayed, unconcerned as she answers emails and processes documents. Ho hum, snow again, what’s everyone so excited about? This is winter in Illinois. This is what happens here.
Then she remembers.
She had planned to go to the health food store that evening. She needs to buy kale. And not just any kale. Organic kale. She has tried the other stuff and found it limp and short-lived compared to the locally grown fluffy green bunches that particular store offers. And she absolutely must make sure she never runs out because kale is the secret ingredient in her morning nutrition shakes. Kale is Supervegetable. One sip of that amazing concoction and she can leap tall buildings at a single bound.
But she has only enough kale in her refrigerator for one more shake.
One. Just one. If the weather worsens as much the next day as forecasters are predicting, she might not be able to get to the store to get new kale. The store might even be closed. She shudders to think such a horrible thought.
But wait. There’s more! What if the store is not open tonight? Everything else is closing early, according to the radio, so why not the little store. Gasp! Horrors! What to do?
OK, she tells herself. Don’t panic. Let’s get the facts, then you can panic. And sure enough, when she calls the store she learns it is going to close at 6:00 p.m.
Time to panic!
By the time she leaves work at 5:00 and trundles to a bus stop and waits for a bus and is slowly chauffeured home and shovels enough snow to make a path to get her car out of the driveway … by then it will almost certain be too late.
Too late to replenish her kale supply. Too late to insure that she will have what she needs to make those miraculous morning shakes throughout a possibly shut-in weekend.
Too late! More gasp! More horrors! What oh what to do?
Maybe she could take a bus straight to the store and another bus home from there, just skip the shoveling-snow-to-move-the-car situation altogether. Great idea! Except to take the bus that goes by the store, first she would have to connect with it at the main transit point, and the bus schedule tells her that bus #2 is scheduled to leave that point just minutes before bus #1 is scheduled to arrive. Not such a great idea.
Suddenly the light bulb above her head bursts into brightness with the obvious solution: leave work early. It’s about 20 minutes till 5:00. If she goes now, she’ll have a fighting chance of getting an earlier bus and arriving home with enough time to rescue her car and make it to the store before 6:00.
Off with the computer. On with boots and coat and hat and scarf. Grab book and lunch bag and purse. Turn off all the lights. Lock the doors. Hurry hurry hurry.
It’s hard to hurry, though, when inconvenient mounds of thick snow are piled all over sidewalks and crosswalks, and the parking lot that is the shortest path to the bus stop is an icy obstacle course. But as luck would have it -- and luck does have it sometimes – here is her bus pulling up to the corner just as she arrives. Blessed bus, wonderful bus, opening its welcoming doors to allow her to clamber in.
Huddled in a seat in the dark as the bus rumbles cautiously down the street, she silently urges the driver to do whatever is necessary to keep this vehicle moving with all possible speed – or rather, in this weather, with the least possible delay.
There isn’t a moment to lose.
Ah, at last, she sees her corner. She pulls the cord, the bus slows down, she stumbles to the door, it opens, she’s outa there. Slogging through the white stuff to reach her door. Home at last. Fumble for the key, miss the keyhole in her haste, finally get the door open, drop the book and lunch bag, grab the shovel, push her way to the car, struggle to get that door open, start the car, commence to shoveling.
Shovel.
Shovel.
Shovel.
The minutes tick by as she labors to dislodge heaps of snow from behind the car and create enough path to give her a fighting chance of backing out to the street without getting stuck. Finally she’s done about as much as she can manage, shoveling not being one of her better skills, and she heads back to the car, ready to roll.
Except the car is covered trunk to hood with snow.
Somewhere inside this automobile there is a watchamacallit, she just bought it a couple days ago, it must be here. Yesssss! Here it is, hiding under the passenger seat. Frantically she brushes off the windshield, the side windows, the back window. Finally she’s in the driver’s seat and the car is moving, ponderously grinding its way backwards to the street. She’s at the stop light. She’s only a few blocks from the store. She’s in the parking lot with minutes to spare. She’s racing down the aisle to the produce section, where she sees one lone bunch of kale sitting in its bed of ice water. She reaches for it --
And a hand swoops down and grabs it, leaving her own hand dangling over the now empty bin.
She stares in shocked disbelief at a tall man striding away, pushing his cart in front of him, her kale inside it. This just can’t be happening. There must be more kale here, hidden away in the dark recesses of the store where customers never go. She rushes to the checkout counter and pleads with the clerk to go back there and look. He goes. She waits.
And waits.
And waits.
This is taking so long, is it a good sign or a bad one? Finally she goes back to the produce section to see if the clerk has come out into the light. After a couple minutes, he finally reappears with a cart full of boxes. “Sorry it took so long,” he says, this customer wanted a couple things, too.
“This customer” is the same man who has stolen her kale right from under her nose.
But no matter, there’s more where that came from. Two more bunches, which the clerk is placing on the shelf. But as she reaches down immediately to take them, they disappear right before her eyes. That man has done it again. He has beat her to the punch. He has stolen HER kale.
How can the clerk let this happen? Why doesn’t he do something? But he is walking to a different part of the store to place the contents of other boxes in other places. Obviously he is not interested in seeing that justice is done.
Meanwhile, back at the produce section, that man, that despicable kale thief, is examining a box of avocados, pretending to be totally oblivious to her distress. But he can’t hide the tiniest of smirks. He knows what he’s done. And he doesn’t care.
He does not deserve kale. Kale is too good for the likes of this monster. He is evil personified.
She is stunned, shocked, incapable of rational thought. She has only one idea in her mind. Get that kale. Any way. Any how. Just get it.
She grabs the spiked sign that reads “Organic kale, $2.79,” jumps between the man and the avocados and plunges the sign into her nemesis’ heart. She laughs maniacally as he falls to the floor in a pool of blood, clutching his chest, wheezing, staring unbelieving at her while she reaches into his cart and takes all three bunches of kale, then runs victoriously out the door.
She is in her car, maneuvering snow-packed roads to get home and put away her prize, when she suddenly remembers that she never paid for her groceries. The car clock says it is 6:02, too late to go back. She will have to pay next time she goes to the store.
After all, she’s not a criminal. She just needs her kale.
(Except for the homicide and a few other minor details, this is a true story. Really!)
-30-
The world inside feels as muffled and quiet as the world outside, where several inches of snow are threatening to shut down the city. As the only staff member who took the bus and didn’t have to worry about driving safely home, she has stayed, unconcerned as she answers emails and processes documents. Ho hum, snow again, what’s everyone so excited about? This is winter in Illinois. This is what happens here.
Then she remembers.
She had planned to go to the health food store that evening. She needs to buy kale. And not just any kale. Organic kale. She has tried the other stuff and found it limp and short-lived compared to the locally grown fluffy green bunches that particular store offers. And she absolutely must make sure she never runs out because kale is the secret ingredient in her morning nutrition shakes. Kale is Supervegetable. One sip of that amazing concoction and she can leap tall buildings at a single bound.
But she has only enough kale in her refrigerator for one more shake.
One. Just one. If the weather worsens as much the next day as forecasters are predicting, she might not be able to get to the store to get new kale. The store might even be closed. She shudders to think such a horrible thought.
But wait. There’s more! What if the store is not open tonight? Everything else is closing early, according to the radio, so why not the little store. Gasp! Horrors! What to do?
OK, she tells herself. Don’t panic. Let’s get the facts, then you can panic. And sure enough, when she calls the store she learns it is going to close at 6:00 p.m.
Time to panic!
By the time she leaves work at 5:00 and trundles to a bus stop and waits for a bus and is slowly chauffeured home and shovels enough snow to make a path to get her car out of the driveway … by then it will almost certain be too late.
Too late to replenish her kale supply. Too late to insure that she will have what she needs to make those miraculous morning shakes throughout a possibly shut-in weekend.
Too late! More gasp! More horrors! What oh what to do?
Maybe she could take a bus straight to the store and another bus home from there, just skip the shoveling-snow-to-move-the-car situation altogether. Great idea! Except to take the bus that goes by the store, first she would have to connect with it at the main transit point, and the bus schedule tells her that bus #2 is scheduled to leave that point just minutes before bus #1 is scheduled to arrive. Not such a great idea.
Suddenly the light bulb above her head bursts into brightness with the obvious solution: leave work early. It’s about 20 minutes till 5:00. If she goes now, she’ll have a fighting chance of getting an earlier bus and arriving home with enough time to rescue her car and make it to the store before 6:00.
Off with the computer. On with boots and coat and hat and scarf. Grab book and lunch bag and purse. Turn off all the lights. Lock the doors. Hurry hurry hurry.
It’s hard to hurry, though, when inconvenient mounds of thick snow are piled all over sidewalks and crosswalks, and the parking lot that is the shortest path to the bus stop is an icy obstacle course. But as luck would have it -- and luck does have it sometimes – here is her bus pulling up to the corner just as she arrives. Blessed bus, wonderful bus, opening its welcoming doors to allow her to clamber in.
Huddled in a seat in the dark as the bus rumbles cautiously down the street, she silently urges the driver to do whatever is necessary to keep this vehicle moving with all possible speed – or rather, in this weather, with the least possible delay.
There isn’t a moment to lose.
Ah, at last, she sees her corner. She pulls the cord, the bus slows down, she stumbles to the door, it opens, she’s outa there. Slogging through the white stuff to reach her door. Home at last. Fumble for the key, miss the keyhole in her haste, finally get the door open, drop the book and lunch bag, grab the shovel, push her way to the car, struggle to get that door open, start the car, commence to shoveling.
Shovel.
Shovel.
Shovel.
The minutes tick by as she labors to dislodge heaps of snow from behind the car and create enough path to give her a fighting chance of backing out to the street without getting stuck. Finally she’s done about as much as she can manage, shoveling not being one of her better skills, and she heads back to the car, ready to roll.
Except the car is covered trunk to hood with snow.
Somewhere inside this automobile there is a watchamacallit, she just bought it a couple days ago, it must be here. Yesssss! Here it is, hiding under the passenger seat. Frantically she brushes off the windshield, the side windows, the back window. Finally she’s in the driver’s seat and the car is moving, ponderously grinding its way backwards to the street. She’s at the stop light. She’s only a few blocks from the store. She’s in the parking lot with minutes to spare. She’s racing down the aisle to the produce section, where she sees one lone bunch of kale sitting in its bed of ice water. She reaches for it --
And a hand swoops down and grabs it, leaving her own hand dangling over the now empty bin.
She stares in shocked disbelief at a tall man striding away, pushing his cart in front of him, her kale inside it. This just can’t be happening. There must be more kale here, hidden away in the dark recesses of the store where customers never go. She rushes to the checkout counter and pleads with the clerk to go back there and look. He goes. She waits.
And waits.
And waits.
This is taking so long, is it a good sign or a bad one? Finally she goes back to the produce section to see if the clerk has come out into the light. After a couple minutes, he finally reappears with a cart full of boxes. “Sorry it took so long,” he says, this customer wanted a couple things, too.
“This customer” is the same man who has stolen her kale right from under her nose.
But no matter, there’s more where that came from. Two more bunches, which the clerk is placing on the shelf. But as she reaches down immediately to take them, they disappear right before her eyes. That man has done it again. He has beat her to the punch. He has stolen HER kale.
How can the clerk let this happen? Why doesn’t he do something? But he is walking to a different part of the store to place the contents of other boxes in other places. Obviously he is not interested in seeing that justice is done.
Meanwhile, back at the produce section, that man, that despicable kale thief, is examining a box of avocados, pretending to be totally oblivious to her distress. But he can’t hide the tiniest of smirks. He knows what he’s done. And he doesn’t care.
He does not deserve kale. Kale is too good for the likes of this monster. He is evil personified.
She is stunned, shocked, incapable of rational thought. She has only one idea in her mind. Get that kale. Any way. Any how. Just get it.
She grabs the spiked sign that reads “Organic kale, $2.79,” jumps between the man and the avocados and plunges the sign into her nemesis’ heart. She laughs maniacally as he falls to the floor in a pool of blood, clutching his chest, wheezing, staring unbelieving at her while she reaches into his cart and takes all three bunches of kale, then runs victoriously out the door.
She is in her car, maneuvering snow-packed roads to get home and put away her prize, when she suddenly remembers that she never paid for her groceries. The car clock says it is 6:02, too late to go back. She will have to pay next time she goes to the store.
After all, she’s not a criminal. She just needs her kale.
(Except for the homicide and a few other minor details, this is a true story. Really!)
-30-
Monday, January 4, 2010
A short note for today
Apparently not having a schedule for almost two weeks detracted from my energy level rather than enhancing it. I spent more time doing basically nothing than I thought possible, because the urgency wasn't there. There was always tomorrow.
Until yesterday. I woke up Sunday knowing that the next day I'd be back at work. And voila, my energy came back, full force. A big task related to the incipient children's theatre company suddenly seemed doable, so I actually sat down and did it. Immediately!
The 11-day work break had its moments. I watched “Julie and Julia” twice and spent two delightful days with my older grandson, including sleepovers in my home, and another two days moving furniture and hiding (along with the cats) from the dust and noise of sanding. The payoff to that is that we now have a beautiful, smooth hardwood floor in the living room. It still needs staining and sealing, but since that will require us to leave for a few days, it's a project for a later time.
And I skated a lot, doggedly practicing, or rather attempting to execute, a couple of basic and necessary maneuvers that are the prelude to regaining the jump-spin level of the sport. (Small jumps, slow spins!) I even took grandson and his cousin to the rink. But that wasn't the best thing that happened that day. Devyn gave me permission to tell you the story.
Seems he had found a ring in a box in his house, but no one in his family knew where it came from or claimed it. It was a small ladies ring with diamond and pearl setting, and probably had been left in a box they used for moving in. Devyn urgently wanted to know if the ring was real gold, so I agreed to help him get an assessment.
Before going to the rink, we went to a nearby mall that has a jewelry store. The proprietor was a kindly woman who examined the ring and said it was gold mixed with metal, the diamonds were fake, the pearl was real but a very low grade. She said a jeweler could only buy it to extract the gold, and based on current gold prices and the amount that was in the ring, it would be worth $20.
We left and started walking toward the mall exit while Devyn pondered this information, but then he saw something -- actually, someone -- that halted his steps. "I want to sell it right now," he told me. So back we went to the jeweler, who exchanged the ring for two $10 bills. I'm going to give $10 to the man who walks around here all the time, he explained to the lady.
We both knew who Devyn meant: a bushy bearded, gray haired man known as Bill, who can be seen at that mall every day, winter and summer. I've never seen him beg. And this is important, because we are Bahá'ís, and Bahá'u'lláh very explicitly forbade both begging and giving to beggars. He also said "O ye rich ones on earth! The poor in your midst are My trust; guard ye My trust, and be not intent only on your own ease."
I don't know Bill's situation, whether he really is poor and homeless, but it didn't matter. Supporting Devyn's generous spirit was the higher priority. So I stood quietly by and watched as he walked up to the man and handed over one of the $10 bills, for which he received a gracious and grateful response.
And that left Devyn $10 to add to his savings for something called a Gameboy Advanced, which he was happily able to purchase that evening.
For me that moment in the mall was the best part of my grandson's visit. And as my daughter noted in her own recent blog, being a grandma is a high priority in my life. All of my grandparents died before I was born and I had missed having them in my life, so being a grandparent myself seemed a very important goal. Not one I could reach on my own, of course. It required my daughter's cooperation. And she can tell you what a pest I was about that before she met and married her husband at what I thought was close to a dangerously advanced age for my own chances of attaining grandparenthood.
But that's another story.
-30-
Until yesterday. I woke up Sunday knowing that the next day I'd be back at work. And voila, my energy came back, full force. A big task related to the incipient children's theatre company suddenly seemed doable, so I actually sat down and did it. Immediately!
The 11-day work break had its moments. I watched “Julie and Julia” twice and spent two delightful days with my older grandson, including sleepovers in my home, and another two days moving furniture and hiding (along with the cats) from the dust and noise of sanding. The payoff to that is that we now have a beautiful, smooth hardwood floor in the living room. It still needs staining and sealing, but since that will require us to leave for a few days, it's a project for a later time.
And I skated a lot, doggedly practicing, or rather attempting to execute, a couple of basic and necessary maneuvers that are the prelude to regaining the jump-spin level of the sport. (Small jumps, slow spins!) I even took grandson and his cousin to the rink. But that wasn't the best thing that happened that day. Devyn gave me permission to tell you the story.
Seems he had found a ring in a box in his house, but no one in his family knew where it came from or claimed it. It was a small ladies ring with diamond and pearl setting, and probably had been left in a box they used for moving in. Devyn urgently wanted to know if the ring was real gold, so I agreed to help him get an assessment.
Before going to the rink, we went to a nearby mall that has a jewelry store. The proprietor was a kindly woman who examined the ring and said it was gold mixed with metal, the diamonds were fake, the pearl was real but a very low grade. She said a jeweler could only buy it to extract the gold, and based on current gold prices and the amount that was in the ring, it would be worth $20.
We left and started walking toward the mall exit while Devyn pondered this information, but then he saw something -- actually, someone -- that halted his steps. "I want to sell it right now," he told me. So back we went to the jeweler, who exchanged the ring for two $10 bills. I'm going to give $10 to the man who walks around here all the time, he explained to the lady.
We both knew who Devyn meant: a bushy bearded, gray haired man known as Bill, who can be seen at that mall every day, winter and summer. I've never seen him beg. And this is important, because we are Bahá'ís, and Bahá'u'lláh very explicitly forbade both begging and giving to beggars. He also said "O ye rich ones on earth! The poor in your midst are My trust; guard ye My trust, and be not intent only on your own ease."
I don't know Bill's situation, whether he really is poor and homeless, but it didn't matter. Supporting Devyn's generous spirit was the higher priority. So I stood quietly by and watched as he walked up to the man and handed over one of the $10 bills, for which he received a gracious and grateful response.
And that left Devyn $10 to add to his savings for something called a Gameboy Advanced, which he was happily able to purchase that evening.
For me that moment in the mall was the best part of my grandson's visit. And as my daughter noted in her own recent blog, being a grandma is a high priority in my life. All of my grandparents died before I was born and I had missed having them in my life, so being a grandparent myself seemed a very important goal. Not one I could reach on my own, of course. It required my daughter's cooperation. And she can tell you what a pest I was about that before she met and married her husband at what I thought was close to a dangerously advanced age for my own chances of attaining grandparenthood.
But that's another story.
-30-
Monday, December 28, 2009
Listmakers Anonymous, here I come!
I live by lists. Can’t help it. Must have one – at least one – every day. Even if all it says on a given day is:
Pet the cat
Check Facebook
Of course, most of my daily lists include reminders to be here or there at a certain time, to make a payment for something or other, to do this or that task as secretary of the local Bahá'í Assembly, to call my daughter about a question related to the children’s theatre company we are starting or about a family matter, to return items to the library, to remind my husband about … (there’s always something), to stop at one or more stores for supplies referenced on a separate shopping list, the one that has a permanent home on the refrigerator. Etc., etc., etc. And here’s the puzzlement.
I love these pesky sounding lists. I really do. And I especially love crossing tasks off as they are completed. My favorite lists are the ones that are unreadable by the end of the day because all the items have been obliterated by heavy lines.
Aaaaaah, what a wonderful feeling of accomplishment!
Or is it actually a symptom of questionable mental health? Is obsessive listmaking a practical tool or a “cunning, baffling and powerful” addiction? (Any of you who have been regular participants in just about any kind of 12-step meeting will recognize that phrase.)
I know what you’re thinking. Come on, Helen, quit exaggerating. And stop trivializing addictions. Listmaking is just good organizational practice. What’s the big deal?
OK, maybe you’re right. After all, I do get a lot done with the help of these long tedious lists, providing I don’t forget where I put them. And there’s my job, which basically requires me to be a Mother Hen listmaker. In order to coordinate both admissions for prospective graduate students in an education department and also the various steps and phases and paperwork necessary for students to properly record and complete all their requirements and eventually graduate, I spend a lot of time organizing, collating, transmitting and filing pieces of paper. Often the job also involves offering a sympathetic ear and an encouraging nudge, whichever is appropriate, to help students keep on track toward their Ph.D.
In other words, a Mother Hen listmaker. And most days, that feels like a perfect fit.
Still, there are indications that maybe I take this listmaking propensity a tad too far. Like the time, many years ago, when we were in the process of buying a house for the first time. I found that moving into a newly purchased house was more complicated than any other moving I had previously done, and seemed to involve more lists. One morning, a few days before the closing, we went out for breakfast and I brought along clean paper and a pen and all my notes and spread them out on the table to try to get them organized. My husband watched me for a few minutes (in wonder or in horror, I don’t know which), and than asked, incredulity dripping from every word, “Are you making a list of your lists?”
I was. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but that’s exactly what I was doing.
Now here’s the reason this topic is on my mind today. Because my love of lists, or whatever it is that makes lists such an essential part of my life, also makes it very hard to enjoy 11 unscheduled days off work. 11 days off, no traveling planned. Just 11 days at home.
That’s what’s happening right now. Our office, basically the whole university, closed at end of day on December 23 and won’t re-open until the morning of January 4. Today is day 5. It’s a Monday morning. Most Monday mornings I have finished writing my blog – with its self-imposed, publicly announced weekly publishing deadline -- the day before, or sometimes even the day before that. This week, despite having had almost nothing pressing to do for days 1 through 4 of this break, here I am on day 5. Monday morning. Just getting started.
Why? Because for an addicted listmaker, sustained freedom from lists is not a pretty sight.
All during December, which is the major crunch time in my job, I dreamed about this break. As I slogged through 113 applications to our doctoral program -- most of them arriving right at deadline time and thus creating an avalanche of paperwork to process -- as I answered phone calls and emails and arranged and labeled files and scanned or saved documents into online folders, hopefully getting all of them into the correct places, and tried to get everything cataloged and communicated and coordinated before December 23 so our faculty could access the information and begin reviewing applicants online while the office is closed ….
Gads, that was a long sentence!
Anyway, you get the idea. I was very busy. And the thought of a beautiful 11-day break with no trips planned, no major events happening, lots of time to lie on the sofa reading books and watching movies, seemed like heaven on earth.
Sure, there were things to be done during that time. The incipient children’s theatre company urgently needed attention, a small home renovation project is in process, many hours of ice time would be available for skating practice, a couple of Bahá'í meetings were scheduled, there would be ordinary household tasks to manage and grandkids to play with, and of course, two blog deadlines. But ordinarily all of that and more must be accomplished around a full-time work schedule. Without having to go to work, the rest would be a snap. Right?
Maybe.
I left my office last Wednesday feeling pretty pleased with myself. Everything was done and I was able to walk out the door with a peaceful mind. After work I went to the library and stocked up on books and movies. And of course, made a list of everything that I needed to do, at some point or other, during the break. Not a schedule, mind you. Just a list. Just a whenever-I-could-fit-it-in-around-sofa-time list.
After a bit of shopping early in the day on Thursday when stores were still open and some food preparation for the duration, I spent virtually the rest of that day and all of the next doing … absolutely … nothing.
Or at least, what feels like nothing to me.
I didn’t write anything. I didn’t organize anything. I didn’t read anything except novels and email. I didn’t cross anything off on a list. And it felt pretty good, for a while. Until about mid-day Friday, when a strange lassitude set in. By then I’d had plenty of rest and could easily have, if not dived, at least tiptoed into a couple of the tasks that would have to be addressed at some point during the break. And I’d had enough rest to start feeling a bit bored. And I could have put on real clothes and gone out for some recreational grandparenting. AND all of these options sounded very appealing to my thoroughly relaxed brain.
But did I do any of that?
Nope.
I just burrowed deeper into the sofa. It seemed my body had forgotten how to move.
Maybe I was having listmaker withdrawal symptoms. You know, crashing. At any rate, when Saturday morning came and the world around me came back to life, so did I. Hooray, there were places to go, things to do, people to see (what song lyrics am I channeling here???), and I was energized once again as I charged out the door, tightly clutching a list for that day, ready to conquer the universe by crossing off items, one by one.
Now it's today. And just a few minutes ago, after writing most of the above text, I walked into the kitchen, unashamedly picked up my current list, rummaged in the drawer for a yellow highlighter, and swiped it across every item that needs to be done today. And didn’t think a thing about it until after I came back to my computer and re-read what I’d written up to this point.
So here’s the deal: if any of you can relate to this, and are willing to admit it, I propose we start a new 12-step group, Listmakers Anonymous. I’ve been involved in starting other recovery groups so I know just what to do. First, we make a list …
-30-
Pet the cat
Check Facebook
Of course, most of my daily lists include reminders to be here or there at a certain time, to make a payment for something or other, to do this or that task as secretary of the local Bahá'í Assembly, to call my daughter about a question related to the children’s theatre company we are starting or about a family matter, to return items to the library, to remind my husband about … (there’s always something), to stop at one or more stores for supplies referenced on a separate shopping list, the one that has a permanent home on the refrigerator. Etc., etc., etc. And here’s the puzzlement.
I love these pesky sounding lists. I really do. And I especially love crossing tasks off as they are completed. My favorite lists are the ones that are unreadable by the end of the day because all the items have been obliterated by heavy lines.
Aaaaaah, what a wonderful feeling of accomplishment!
Or is it actually a symptom of questionable mental health? Is obsessive listmaking a practical tool or a “cunning, baffling and powerful” addiction? (Any of you who have been regular participants in just about any kind of 12-step meeting will recognize that phrase.)
I know what you’re thinking. Come on, Helen, quit exaggerating. And stop trivializing addictions. Listmaking is just good organizational practice. What’s the big deal?
OK, maybe you’re right. After all, I do get a lot done with the help of these long tedious lists, providing I don’t forget where I put them. And there’s my job, which basically requires me to be a Mother Hen listmaker. In order to coordinate both admissions for prospective graduate students in an education department and also the various steps and phases and paperwork necessary for students to properly record and complete all their requirements and eventually graduate, I spend a lot of time organizing, collating, transmitting and filing pieces of paper. Often the job also involves offering a sympathetic ear and an encouraging nudge, whichever is appropriate, to help students keep on track toward their Ph.D.
In other words, a Mother Hen listmaker. And most days, that feels like a perfect fit.
Still, there are indications that maybe I take this listmaking propensity a tad too far. Like the time, many years ago, when we were in the process of buying a house for the first time. I found that moving into a newly purchased house was more complicated than any other moving I had previously done, and seemed to involve more lists. One morning, a few days before the closing, we went out for breakfast and I brought along clean paper and a pen and all my notes and spread them out on the table to try to get them organized. My husband watched me for a few minutes (in wonder or in horror, I don’t know which), and than asked, incredulity dripping from every word, “Are you making a list of your lists?”
I was. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but that’s exactly what I was doing.
Now here’s the reason this topic is on my mind today. Because my love of lists, or whatever it is that makes lists such an essential part of my life, also makes it very hard to enjoy 11 unscheduled days off work. 11 days off, no traveling planned. Just 11 days at home.
That’s what’s happening right now. Our office, basically the whole university, closed at end of day on December 23 and won’t re-open until the morning of January 4. Today is day 5. It’s a Monday morning. Most Monday mornings I have finished writing my blog – with its self-imposed, publicly announced weekly publishing deadline -- the day before, or sometimes even the day before that. This week, despite having had almost nothing pressing to do for days 1 through 4 of this break, here I am on day 5. Monday morning. Just getting started.
Why? Because for an addicted listmaker, sustained freedom from lists is not a pretty sight.
All during December, which is the major crunch time in my job, I dreamed about this break. As I slogged through 113 applications to our doctoral program -- most of them arriving right at deadline time and thus creating an avalanche of paperwork to process -- as I answered phone calls and emails and arranged and labeled files and scanned or saved documents into online folders, hopefully getting all of them into the correct places, and tried to get everything cataloged and communicated and coordinated before December 23 so our faculty could access the information and begin reviewing applicants online while the office is closed ….
Gads, that was a long sentence!
Anyway, you get the idea. I was very busy. And the thought of a beautiful 11-day break with no trips planned, no major events happening, lots of time to lie on the sofa reading books and watching movies, seemed like heaven on earth.
Sure, there were things to be done during that time. The incipient children’s theatre company urgently needed attention, a small home renovation project is in process, many hours of ice time would be available for skating practice, a couple of Bahá'í meetings were scheduled, there would be ordinary household tasks to manage and grandkids to play with, and of course, two blog deadlines. But ordinarily all of that and more must be accomplished around a full-time work schedule. Without having to go to work, the rest would be a snap. Right?
Maybe.
I left my office last Wednesday feeling pretty pleased with myself. Everything was done and I was able to walk out the door with a peaceful mind. After work I went to the library and stocked up on books and movies. And of course, made a list of everything that I needed to do, at some point or other, during the break. Not a schedule, mind you. Just a list. Just a whenever-I-could-fit-it-in-around-sofa-time list.
After a bit of shopping early in the day on Thursday when stores were still open and some food preparation for the duration, I spent virtually the rest of that day and all of the next doing … absolutely … nothing.
Or at least, what feels like nothing to me.
I didn’t write anything. I didn’t organize anything. I didn’t read anything except novels and email. I didn’t cross anything off on a list. And it felt pretty good, for a while. Until about mid-day Friday, when a strange lassitude set in. By then I’d had plenty of rest and could easily have, if not dived, at least tiptoed into a couple of the tasks that would have to be addressed at some point during the break. And I’d had enough rest to start feeling a bit bored. And I could have put on real clothes and gone out for some recreational grandparenting. AND all of these options sounded very appealing to my thoroughly relaxed brain.
But did I do any of that?
Nope.
I just burrowed deeper into the sofa. It seemed my body had forgotten how to move.
Maybe I was having listmaker withdrawal symptoms. You know, crashing. At any rate, when Saturday morning came and the world around me came back to life, so did I. Hooray, there were places to go, things to do, people to see (what song lyrics am I channeling here???), and I was energized once again as I charged out the door, tightly clutching a list for that day, ready to conquer the universe by crossing off items, one by one.
Now it's today. And just a few minutes ago, after writing most of the above text, I walked into the kitchen, unashamedly picked up my current list, rummaged in the drawer for a yellow highlighter, and swiped it across every item that needs to be done today. And didn’t think a thing about it until after I came back to my computer and re-read what I’d written up to this point.
So here’s the deal: if any of you can relate to this, and are willing to admit it, I propose we start a new 12-step group, Listmakers Anonymous. I’ve been involved in starting other recovery groups so I know just what to do. First, we make a list …
-30-
Sunday, December 20, 2009
My Christmas Tree
One morning when I was six years old I woke up and saw a Christmas tree standing at the foot of my bed. Not a big tree, not a little tree, a medium-sized tree, very green, very full. Its only decorations were shiny colored balls – red and yellow, blue and green – and silver tinsel draping it from top to bottom. It stood bright and beautiful against a backdrop of complete darkness.
My tree.
Mom had said no every time I asked, no, I could not have a Christmas tree. We were Jewish, we didn’t celebrate Christmas, except for the stocking she would hang in the living room and fill with nuts and chocolate and oranges for me to find on December 25. Like a lot of Jewish parents, she let a little bit of Christmas into our lives. Stocking, yes. A tree, never.
But a tree was what I wanted, and here it was, an unexpected gift. My tree.
Then I really woke up. No tree. It was only a dream, an especially vivid, amazingly tangible dream.
After that year I decided to accept the fact that I would never have a Christmas tree. As the only Jewish student in my grade school, I liked answering other kids’ questions about Hanukkah. Being different, unique, had its compensations. I could live quite well without Christmas, thank you.
When I was 17 years old and just graduated from high school, I spent a couple hours with a fellow graduate learning about the Bahá'í Faith. Here at last was an explanation for the station of Christ that made sense to me, that seemed logical and likely to be true. This and other aspects of the new religion attracted me, beckoned further study, and several months later, to my parents’ horror, I signed a little card and officially identified myself as a Bahá'í.
Seven years later I married a fellow Bahá'í whose family was Catholic. They had great fun watching me participate in Christmas for the first time. I enjoyed it, too, but after a few years found it was no longer fun. There’s a kind of “have to” frenzy surrounding Christmas that seems normal to people who grow up with it but looked crazy to me watching it from the outside, and felt even crazier after a few years on the inside. I loved my husband’s family but just couldn’t love Christmas. We stopped participating, and since we didn’t celebrate Christmas in our own home, I was done with the whole thing.
I never forgot the tree in my dream, however, the tree I wanted as a child but could not have. The picture of it in my mind remained clear and vibrant. Not a big tree, not a little tree, a medium-sized tree, very green, very full. Its only decorations were shiny colored balls – red and yellow, blue and green – and silver tinsel draping it from top to bottom. It stood bright and beautiful against a backdrop of complete darkness.
I told my husband about the dream. He said he wished he could see my tree, it sounded so special.
My mother and I had a difficult relationship. She wanted so much to be the perfect mother, because she had never had one of her own, at least not one she could remember. My grandmother had been killed in a robbery when Mom was less than a year old. She was raised by a loving father whom she adored, but she also suffered from the stern influence of her mother’s sister and her much older brothers’ abusive attempts at co-parenting. She was sure her life would have been wonderful if her mother had lived. Without a real mother, or the up-and-down experience of an actual mother-daughter relationship, she envisioned a perfect mother. When she became one herself, she wanted to be perfect, too.
But in order to be a perfect mother one must have a perfect child, a child that proves ones perfection to the world. I didn’t fill that bill. Mine was a strong-willed-ever-questioning-always-fighting-for-independence personality that she described in mostly negative adjectives – stubborn, mean, selfish, cold. I could never be the perfect child who would allow her to be the perfect mother.
She died on December 19, 1990. My sister called a couple days before to tell us Mom had slipped into the expected coma so that we could get to St. Louis before the end. I imagined myself sitting with my mother at her bedside to pray and maybe, finally, find a bond with her. Instead I stood in the doorway to her bedroom and watched as her body struggled to breathe. A coma was a much more active and strenuous event than I had anticipated. Her soul was struggling to let go and move on. It felt wrong to intrude on such a private experience. Or maybe I was just afraid, even then, of being unable to meet my mother’s needs, of being the wrong kind of daughter.
After the funeral, my husband and I stopped by his mother’s place to stay overnight before continuing our drive home. She had been widowed a couple years earlier and had moved into an apartment. The family’s Christmas had migrated to her daughter’s farm house a few miles outside of town, and the tree in that house had become the family tree, decorated with their traditional supply of much handled Santa Clauses and homemade baubles.
There was also a Christmas tree in my mother-in-law’s apartment. She told us that she hadn’t really wanted one, but her daughter had insisted and installed it there. When we arrived I was very tired and hardly noticed it sitting in the picture window in her living room. We visited a bit, then went to bed. The apartment had a guest bedroom, but I told my husband that I wanted to sleep alone in the living room, since it was likely that I would wake up often, probably cry again, maybe pull out my notebook and write to continue processing my mother’s death.
For a couple of hours I slept on the couch, my face pressed against its back, wearily oblivious to the rest of the room. Then I woke up and turned over to face the picture window and looked for the first time at the tree that was standing there.
Not a big tree, not a little tree, a medium-sized tree, very green, very full. Its only decorations were shiny colored balls – red and yellow, blue and green – and silver tinsel draping it from top to bottom. It stood bright and beautiful against a backdrop of complete darkness.
I recognized it immediately. It was my tree. The tree of my dream. The tree I had wanted so much as a child. 39 years later, I was seeing it again. But now it was real.
And I knew that my mother had found the perfect time to give it to me.
-30-
My tree.
Mom had said no every time I asked, no, I could not have a Christmas tree. We were Jewish, we didn’t celebrate Christmas, except for the stocking she would hang in the living room and fill with nuts and chocolate and oranges for me to find on December 25. Like a lot of Jewish parents, she let a little bit of Christmas into our lives. Stocking, yes. A tree, never.
But a tree was what I wanted, and here it was, an unexpected gift. My tree.
Then I really woke up. No tree. It was only a dream, an especially vivid, amazingly tangible dream.
After that year I decided to accept the fact that I would never have a Christmas tree. As the only Jewish student in my grade school, I liked answering other kids’ questions about Hanukkah. Being different, unique, had its compensations. I could live quite well without Christmas, thank you.
When I was 17 years old and just graduated from high school, I spent a couple hours with a fellow graduate learning about the Bahá'í Faith. Here at last was an explanation for the station of Christ that made sense to me, that seemed logical and likely to be true. This and other aspects of the new religion attracted me, beckoned further study, and several months later, to my parents’ horror, I signed a little card and officially identified myself as a Bahá'í.
Seven years later I married a fellow Bahá'í whose family was Catholic. They had great fun watching me participate in Christmas for the first time. I enjoyed it, too, but after a few years found it was no longer fun. There’s a kind of “have to” frenzy surrounding Christmas that seems normal to people who grow up with it but looked crazy to me watching it from the outside, and felt even crazier after a few years on the inside. I loved my husband’s family but just couldn’t love Christmas. We stopped participating, and since we didn’t celebrate Christmas in our own home, I was done with the whole thing.
I never forgot the tree in my dream, however, the tree I wanted as a child but could not have. The picture of it in my mind remained clear and vibrant. Not a big tree, not a little tree, a medium-sized tree, very green, very full. Its only decorations were shiny colored balls – red and yellow, blue and green – and silver tinsel draping it from top to bottom. It stood bright and beautiful against a backdrop of complete darkness.
I told my husband about the dream. He said he wished he could see my tree, it sounded so special.
My mother and I had a difficult relationship. She wanted so much to be the perfect mother, because she had never had one of her own, at least not one she could remember. My grandmother had been killed in a robbery when Mom was less than a year old. She was raised by a loving father whom she adored, but she also suffered from the stern influence of her mother’s sister and her much older brothers’ abusive attempts at co-parenting. She was sure her life would have been wonderful if her mother had lived. Without a real mother, or the up-and-down experience of an actual mother-daughter relationship, she envisioned a perfect mother. When she became one herself, she wanted to be perfect, too.
But in order to be a perfect mother one must have a perfect child, a child that proves ones perfection to the world. I didn’t fill that bill. Mine was a strong-willed-ever-questioning-always-fighting-for-independence personality that she described in mostly negative adjectives – stubborn, mean, selfish, cold. I could never be the perfect child who would allow her to be the perfect mother.
She died on December 19, 1990. My sister called a couple days before to tell us Mom had slipped into the expected coma so that we could get to St. Louis before the end. I imagined myself sitting with my mother at her bedside to pray and maybe, finally, find a bond with her. Instead I stood in the doorway to her bedroom and watched as her body struggled to breathe. A coma was a much more active and strenuous event than I had anticipated. Her soul was struggling to let go and move on. It felt wrong to intrude on such a private experience. Or maybe I was just afraid, even then, of being unable to meet my mother’s needs, of being the wrong kind of daughter.
After the funeral, my husband and I stopped by his mother’s place to stay overnight before continuing our drive home. She had been widowed a couple years earlier and had moved into an apartment. The family’s Christmas had migrated to her daughter’s farm house a few miles outside of town, and the tree in that house had become the family tree, decorated with their traditional supply of much handled Santa Clauses and homemade baubles.
There was also a Christmas tree in my mother-in-law’s apartment. She told us that she hadn’t really wanted one, but her daughter had insisted and installed it there. When we arrived I was very tired and hardly noticed it sitting in the picture window in her living room. We visited a bit, then went to bed. The apartment had a guest bedroom, but I told my husband that I wanted to sleep alone in the living room, since it was likely that I would wake up often, probably cry again, maybe pull out my notebook and write to continue processing my mother’s death.
For a couple of hours I slept on the couch, my face pressed against its back, wearily oblivious to the rest of the room. Then I woke up and turned over to face the picture window and looked for the first time at the tree that was standing there.
Not a big tree, not a little tree, a medium-sized tree, very green, very full. Its only decorations were shiny colored balls – red and yellow, blue and green – and silver tinsel draping it from top to bottom. It stood bright and beautiful against a backdrop of complete darkness.
I recognized it immediately. It was my tree. The tree of my dream. The tree I had wanted so much as a child. 39 years later, I was seeing it again. But now it was real.
And I knew that my mother had found the perfect time to give it to me.
-30-
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Blow out the candles
I wasn’t paying much attention to my birthday last week and then my daughter sent me a greeting on Facebook and blew my cover. Facebook is amazing. A wonderful cascade of birthday wishes came pouring in from friends who saw her post, and my previously heedless brain started churning.
See, it’s like this: before the Facebook surprise I wasn’t paying much attention to my birthday. Partly because this is an especially busy time at work and that’s taking up a big chunk of my attention, but mostly because I didn’t want to think about my new age.
64.
64 years old? Me? Naaah! Can’t believe it. Don’t feel it. Must be a mistake.
Because it’s going the wrong direction. I’m getting younger, not older.
Lest you think I’m also getting slightly unhinged, let me quickly acknowledge that there are just too many proofs that despite my subjective opinion, it’s indubitably obvious that I really am 64. I can remember having a black dial telephone and a party line, and not knowing what a pizza was, or a television, or a self-service elevator, and learning to type on a manual typewriter before electric ones (let alone computers) had even been invented, and hearing about Kennedy’s assassination while walking to class during my college freshman year … etc. etc. etc.
And of course it’s pretty normal to look in the mirror and see a senior citizen face and wonder who in the heck that old lady is. “Can’t be me, I still don’t feel grown up.” Probably most of us have experienced that kind of dissonance. Whereas I’m talking about something much more specific and particular to my life at this moment.
You know those assessments people get that tell them their physical age and whether it’s different from their chronological age? Sometimes the results say they have the body of a person 15 years older or 20 years younger. I haven’t had such an assessment, but definitely feel like I’m getting physically younger. I even said that in a conversation a couple months ago, a slip-of-the-tongue kind of remark: “I was older then” referring to a time a few years ago.
The guy I was talking with didn’t think I was cracking up, though, because he’d heard similar sentiments from other friends. Friends who, like me, had adopted a plant-based diet.
If you’re really passionate about chicken or steak or cheese and think vegans are actually intergalactic aliens in disguise, you should probably stop reading this blog right now. Because while I’m not about to tell you what to do, I am going to talk about what I did and why and what’s happened because of it. Take it or leave it. This is my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
Recently my daughter published an excellent blog describing the journey she and her family have taken along the nutrition highway, a journey that paved my own way despite my initial resistance to joining them whenever urged. Buy organic? No way, too expensive. Eat hummous? Yech, forget it. Cook meals that require a lot of chopping instead of just opening a box? Who has time for that? The only thing I agreed about was avoiding sugar, because my diabetes demanded that concession. But I certainly wasn’t willing to also forgo artificial sweeteners.
Like a lot of people, I thought I was doing a pretty good job by eating a little bit less of this or tad more of that. The golden mean vs. radical extremism. So why was I gaining weight, topping 200 pounds, despite getting a fair amount of exercise at the gym and biking to work for at least half of each year? And why were most of my blood glucose numbers registering over 100 points higher than the top margin of the safe zone? And why was I feeling so bad so often?
OK, that last question isn’t fair, since the answer wasn’t diet, at least directly, although I’m sure it was a major contributing factor. The answer, as I finally learned almost three years ago, was that I had a gallbladder filled with cancer as well as the more usual gallstones.
The cancer was discovered during routine surgery to remove the offending gallbladder, and it surprised the you-know-what out of my doctor. I’ve since learned that there are less than 10,000 cases of gallbladder cancer in the U.S. every year, compared to close to 200,000 cases of breast cancer. But cancer is cancer, an oddball variety notwithstanding, so for the next six months I lived in oncology world, where the typical fun activities are major surgery, chemo, radiation, and spending most of your life lying on the sofa.
Since my October 12th blog already talked about how this cancer experience led to a major lifestyle change which resulted in a big weight loss, I’m going to skip forward, or rather back, to today’s subject: getting younger while getting older. Because I’m pretty sure that if I took one of those age assessments now, it would tell me that my physical age is closer to 44 than 64.
At least, that’s how I feel.
And the reason for this wonderful and unexpected development has to be my new plant-based diet, because that’s the only thing I changed. As previously noted, I already was getting at least some deliberate exercise. I hadn’t had a cigarette since 1984. And I couldn’t stop drinking alcohol since I’d never started. So I have to give credit where credit is due.
I’ve also learned a few things along the way. I’ve learned that I’d rather pay for organic chemical-free food now than for serious illness and general yucky health later, which I no longer assume is a natural and unavoidable component of aging. I’ve learned that sticking to a plant-based diet has caused unexpected changes in my food preferences; that I like stuff, hummous included, which I used to find unappealing or worse. I’ve learned that natural sweeteners like agave nectar or sucanat not only sweeten but are even beneficial.
I also found that a plant-based diet tends to include very few refined foods, which is a good way to avoid many carcinogens, while at the same time it fills ones body with mostly unrefined foods that require a lot more calories to digest.
So here I am at 64, with more energy and strength and general well being, not to mention a better figure, than I had when I really was 44. Hence my neurotic desire to deny the whole thing and –
Wait a minute. I could do that. Heck, Jack Benny did it. He stopped at 39. Never got a day older. So maybe I could just sort of sneak back to 44 when nobody’s looking and settle there for the duration, however long, or short, that may be.
Except for the indisputable fact that people who really are 44 would not have been born when Jack Benny was a TV star. Might not even know who he was.
Curses. Foiled again!
-30-
See, it’s like this: before the Facebook surprise I wasn’t paying much attention to my birthday. Partly because this is an especially busy time at work and that’s taking up a big chunk of my attention, but mostly because I didn’t want to think about my new age.
64.
64 years old? Me? Naaah! Can’t believe it. Don’t feel it. Must be a mistake.
Because it’s going the wrong direction. I’m getting younger, not older.
Lest you think I’m also getting slightly unhinged, let me quickly acknowledge that there are just too many proofs that despite my subjective opinion, it’s indubitably obvious that I really am 64. I can remember having a black dial telephone and a party line, and not knowing what a pizza was, or a television, or a self-service elevator, and learning to type on a manual typewriter before electric ones (let alone computers) had even been invented, and hearing about Kennedy’s assassination while walking to class during my college freshman year … etc. etc. etc.
And of course it’s pretty normal to look in the mirror and see a senior citizen face and wonder who in the heck that old lady is. “Can’t be me, I still don’t feel grown up.” Probably most of us have experienced that kind of dissonance. Whereas I’m talking about something much more specific and particular to my life at this moment.
You know those assessments people get that tell them their physical age and whether it’s different from their chronological age? Sometimes the results say they have the body of a person 15 years older or 20 years younger. I haven’t had such an assessment, but definitely feel like I’m getting physically younger. I even said that in a conversation a couple months ago, a slip-of-the-tongue kind of remark: “I was older then” referring to a time a few years ago.
The guy I was talking with didn’t think I was cracking up, though, because he’d heard similar sentiments from other friends. Friends who, like me, had adopted a plant-based diet.
If you’re really passionate about chicken or steak or cheese and think vegans are actually intergalactic aliens in disguise, you should probably stop reading this blog right now. Because while I’m not about to tell you what to do, I am going to talk about what I did and why and what’s happened because of it. Take it or leave it. This is my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
Recently my daughter published an excellent blog describing the journey she and her family have taken along the nutrition highway, a journey that paved my own way despite my initial resistance to joining them whenever urged. Buy organic? No way, too expensive. Eat hummous? Yech, forget it. Cook meals that require a lot of chopping instead of just opening a box? Who has time for that? The only thing I agreed about was avoiding sugar, because my diabetes demanded that concession. But I certainly wasn’t willing to also forgo artificial sweeteners.
Like a lot of people, I thought I was doing a pretty good job by eating a little bit less of this or tad more of that. The golden mean vs. radical extremism. So why was I gaining weight, topping 200 pounds, despite getting a fair amount of exercise at the gym and biking to work for at least half of each year? And why were most of my blood glucose numbers registering over 100 points higher than the top margin of the safe zone? And why was I feeling so bad so often?
OK, that last question isn’t fair, since the answer wasn’t diet, at least directly, although I’m sure it was a major contributing factor. The answer, as I finally learned almost three years ago, was that I had a gallbladder filled with cancer as well as the more usual gallstones.
The cancer was discovered during routine surgery to remove the offending gallbladder, and it surprised the you-know-what out of my doctor. I’ve since learned that there are less than 10,000 cases of gallbladder cancer in the U.S. every year, compared to close to 200,000 cases of breast cancer. But cancer is cancer, an oddball variety notwithstanding, so for the next six months I lived in oncology world, where the typical fun activities are major surgery, chemo, radiation, and spending most of your life lying on the sofa.
Since my October 12th blog already talked about how this cancer experience led to a major lifestyle change which resulted in a big weight loss, I’m going to skip forward, or rather back, to today’s subject: getting younger while getting older. Because I’m pretty sure that if I took one of those age assessments now, it would tell me that my physical age is closer to 44 than 64.
At least, that’s how I feel.
And the reason for this wonderful and unexpected development has to be my new plant-based diet, because that’s the only thing I changed. As previously noted, I already was getting at least some deliberate exercise. I hadn’t had a cigarette since 1984. And I couldn’t stop drinking alcohol since I’d never started. So I have to give credit where credit is due.
I’ve also learned a few things along the way. I’ve learned that I’d rather pay for organic chemical-free food now than for serious illness and general yucky health later, which I no longer assume is a natural and unavoidable component of aging. I’ve learned that sticking to a plant-based diet has caused unexpected changes in my food preferences; that I like stuff, hummous included, which I used to find unappealing or worse. I’ve learned that natural sweeteners like agave nectar or sucanat not only sweeten but are even beneficial.
I also found that a plant-based diet tends to include very few refined foods, which is a good way to avoid many carcinogens, while at the same time it fills ones body with mostly unrefined foods that require a lot more calories to digest.
So here I am at 64, with more energy and strength and general well being, not to mention a better figure, than I had when I really was 44. Hence my neurotic desire to deny the whole thing and –
Wait a minute. I could do that. Heck, Jack Benny did it. He stopped at 39. Never got a day older. So maybe I could just sort of sneak back to 44 when nobody’s looking and settle there for the duration, however long, or short, that may be.
Except for the indisputable fact that people who really are 44 would not have been born when Jack Benny was a TV star. Might not even know who he was.
Curses. Foiled again!
-30-
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Pome for a day
OK, boys and girls, I’m going to have to cheat a bit tonight. My creative juices were all used up trying to correctly decipher the installation instructions for a new DVD/VCR combo. And the amazing part is that I did! Decipher, that is. Correctly even. A true miracle, believe me.
Getting a new piece of equipment to install and learn how to operate was the last thing that I wanted – well, maybe not THE last thing, but pretty close. It was necessary, though, because our old VCR has quit recording, and since I can’t live without seeing “So You Think You Can Dance” and won’t be home this Tuesday night to watch it in real time, I was forced – really, that’s the correct verb when obsession is involved – to spend way too many hours this weekend researching and questioning and shopping around to figure out what to do.
My first rather naïve idea was to just buy another VCR, but it appears that the VCR has gone the way of the dinosaur. My exploration finally led me to two choices: a one-time expenditure for an on-sale DVD/VCR combo or an added monthly cable fee for DVR service. Since my husband never wants to record anything and “Dance” is the only show I absolutely must see (and really about the only one I ever purposely sit down to watch), the idea of a new monthly expense wasn’t appealing.
Until I brought the new machine home and looked at the instructions, that is. And was immediately absolutely sure that I’d never be able to follow them. Since that’s what I thought, it almost became true. Knowing with absolute certainty that I was hopelessly out of my league, I called a friend for help. He couldn’t come over but expressed faith that I could figure it out by myself. Somehow that helped me feel a tad more confident, just enough to think maybe he was right and to begin again and believe it would work. Which is probably why it did.
So it seems appropriate to share something I wrote many years ago that expresses a large part of what I had learned from a twelve-step recovery process (which I’ll talk about some other time). I wrote it as a presentation piece when my daughter and I were co-hosting a writer’s open mic (another topic for a future blog). It’s called “I think” and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed performing it. Read it out loud. It almost sounds like a real “pome" that way!
I think, therefore I feel,
Because what I think is what feels real,
Even if it ain’t.
Saint or sinner,
Loser or winner,
Sad and blue or in the pink,
It all depends on what I think.
I think, therefore I feel.
I change my thought, and just like magic
I stop feeling tragic.
Just like that.
In no time, flat.
Sometimes a thought is buried deep,
A thought I keep
Guarded and hidden,
Till it pops up unbidden,
Like a garden weed.
But if I plant a new seed,
A new thought,
Nourish it, prune it, keep it safe from draught,
In time it will bear fruit,
New feelings that replace the old
And let me finally feel kind or calm or strong or bold
Or whatever I could never feel before.
It’s like walking through a door,
From darkness into light,
From bondage into flight.
I think therefore I feel.
And since what I feel follows what I think,
When my thinking changes, in a blink,
So does what I feel.
Such a wonderful deal.
-30-
Getting a new piece of equipment to install and learn how to operate was the last thing that I wanted – well, maybe not THE last thing, but pretty close. It was necessary, though, because our old VCR has quit recording, and since I can’t live without seeing “So You Think You Can Dance” and won’t be home this Tuesday night to watch it in real time, I was forced – really, that’s the correct verb when obsession is involved – to spend way too many hours this weekend researching and questioning and shopping around to figure out what to do.
My first rather naïve idea was to just buy another VCR, but it appears that the VCR has gone the way of the dinosaur. My exploration finally led me to two choices: a one-time expenditure for an on-sale DVD/VCR combo or an added monthly cable fee for DVR service. Since my husband never wants to record anything and “Dance” is the only show I absolutely must see (and really about the only one I ever purposely sit down to watch), the idea of a new monthly expense wasn’t appealing.
Until I brought the new machine home and looked at the instructions, that is. And was immediately absolutely sure that I’d never be able to follow them. Since that’s what I thought, it almost became true. Knowing with absolute certainty that I was hopelessly out of my league, I called a friend for help. He couldn’t come over but expressed faith that I could figure it out by myself. Somehow that helped me feel a tad more confident, just enough to think maybe he was right and to begin again and believe it would work. Which is probably why it did.
So it seems appropriate to share something I wrote many years ago that expresses a large part of what I had learned from a twelve-step recovery process (which I’ll talk about some other time). I wrote it as a presentation piece when my daughter and I were co-hosting a writer’s open mic (another topic for a future blog). It’s called “I think” and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed performing it. Read it out loud. It almost sounds like a real “pome" that way!
I think, therefore I feel,
Because what I think is what feels real,
Even if it ain’t.
Saint or sinner,
Loser or winner,
Sad and blue or in the pink,
It all depends on what I think.
I think, therefore I feel.
I change my thought, and just like magic
I stop feeling tragic.
Just like that.
In no time, flat.
Sometimes a thought is buried deep,
A thought I keep
Guarded and hidden,
Till it pops up unbidden,
Like a garden weed.
But if I plant a new seed,
A new thought,
Nourish it, prune it, keep it safe from draught,
In time it will bear fruit,
New feelings that replace the old
And let me finally feel kind or calm or strong or bold
Or whatever I could never feel before.
It’s like walking through a door,
From darkness into light,
From bondage into flight.
I think therefore I feel.
And since what I feel follows what I think,
When my thinking changes, in a blink,
So does what I feel.
Such a wonderful deal.
-30-
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