Like Mother, Like Son

10.27.06



So this is how we eat grapes and pick our noses in Los Angeles. Contributes to major growth spurts, severe embarassment to younger sibling and the wonderful sensation of ice-cubes in your ears. These new behaviours often occur as we near Daylight Savings and contemplate the long winter ahead. Laughter is a must, fresh perspectives and a large dollop of irreverance chased down with a good chardonnay. Thus we watch the sun set on one season and welcome another, while the lonely-hearted harmonica plays.

Pizzicato

10.24.06

Today Hanah instructs me in the proper manner of pizzicato, which I have been playing for a while but she is now learning as she picks up her new instrument. I am enchanted, of course, at her choice and already imagining us playing duets. She loves to teach, has perfect posture and will soon out do me on this melifluous instrument, as well she will in life generally. This is a human being, born three weeks early, short-changed of a kidney at birth (which she proudly tells everyone in excusing her inability to do soccer and kick boxing) yet enriched with pure oxygen in the ICU, for 2 weeks as they managed her blood pressure and figured out why it was 180/120. I like to joke that the extra O2 fed her brain and her early entry into the world pressaged this dynamo attitude toward life she has. Her mind never stops, her desire to inform and entertain knows no bounds and I tremble/smile at the growing alpha-girl she is becoming.

When children receive the nuturing and positive regard, safety and love of a stable home, anything is possible. I hear stories at work that break one's heart of sexual, emotional and physical abuse to my clients who now carry 100's of pounds of pain numbing fat. I see these faces, so round and chubby, younger looking always than their years and I want to whup upside the head the parents, step parents, foster parents, foster freezes and social forces that creatved world that needs me, a health educator, and bariatric surgery to stem the constant influx of food into these empty holes.

My clients often have no other ways to soothe themselves and I am so grateful for my hobbies, passions, relationships that fill my life in a way food never could. Having suffered my own food obsessions, I can relate and now try to remember what helped me get over them. Was it my mother's death which ended a difficult relationship or my marriage shortly following? Years of therapy? Middle age? Has it really ended when occaisionally I substitute gum, coffee and cigarettes? I was told today that I look too thin and frail. Have I lost my own body image as I try to help these outsized souls? As I peel away the superfluous in life and try to find my own self?

Music, the first voice we hear in the womb, followed by teh sing-song lull of our mothers' voices. The cooing as we learn language, the rhythms around us from construction sites and street crossings and kitchens cooking and books shuffling, all form melodic backdrops in our lives. What happens when we step back to listen to the true silence of solitude? Do we find ourselves and who are we? One of my clients when invited to do a vizualization of a safe, relaxing place (like teh beach or mountains as others reported) went back to being 10 and having his stepfather pour hot sauce in his mouth while he slept. My heart broke to hear this tale. Could he find no other safe place in his mind? Is that why he fills up on food and drink because that painful place is better buried under burritos? Has he no Bouree's to fill that space?

My daughter plucks her strings and corrects my form. She is bold and self confident in a way I never was, sitting tall and putting on her stage face. She has been a role model, of the girl I might have been, the girl I now discover within, coming out to play more and more. Through her I am re-learning the joy of discovery, of laughter of rolling on the floor in glee and making faces and squealing in delight and the deliciousness of burnt Easy Bake oven cookies. She plucks and soon will bow and I will watch and play with her as long as I can and when the time comes I will step back and watch her take center stage, see her bask in her spotlight and I then will step aside, grateful for the re-birth she has allowed in me.

Light

10.23.06

By Marianne Williamson

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Out deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Detritus

7.15.06

Fall leaves land on sad dark earth

where summer's fruits once lay

and children's feet danced the dirt.

Cool air parts the tree limbs

loosens from their branches

the old used filters

purveyors of CO2

and drops them where it will.

In Halloween hues

piles of fibrous petals

carpet grounds and whip through the sky.

A season's work is done

a harvest shall be reaped

and doors which close

leave tears behind

while others open

greeting the sun

with the tiny shoot

of a fern's new tendril.

Drip by Drip

10.09.06

Henry David Thoreau said: "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

Four 8 year old girls scamper over the wet sand to the water's edge, squealing in delight at the endless possiblities before them. The ocean, the sky, the air swirling around their luscious, young skin as they immediately begin digging, scratching at the earth's salty, crumbly surface, as if to reach for treasures in their pockets. The late afternoon sun gleams overhead as the waves creep back and forth towards them, tempting a toe touch, prompting screams of delight as they protect their project. They're not really building anything, just digging, creating some fantasy world that is real to them and believing that everything they do is the most important thing they will ever do in this moment.

A family beyond builds drip sand castles in a lazy fashion, dropping the sandy soup onto the shoreline in drips and drops, creating another fantasy world. A woman saunters along, talking on her cell phone, connecting through unseen airwaves. A couple walks hand in hand. Someone dives into the water. A sailboat catches the wind. A sand plover pokes beneath the surface looking for lunch and tiny sand crabs fight back. A woman suns her back, bikini hiked up between her cheeks to reveal as much as she dare, buttocks glistening for all to admire as she reads her book. What world is she dreaming of?

The beach seems this magical place, where we undress and stretch, relax and play in a much different way than in the mountains or at a park. The push and pull of this oceanic force perhaps reminds us of that primary bath we swam in before being forced out into the light. Our feet can grab the earth more fully in the sand and leave long trails of footsteps to remind us of where we've been. Our skin craves the sunlight, even as our eyes squint out the glare. Our hair lifts and curls with the humid breeze and our skin, to lick it, offers a salty tang.

Sandcastles as images of dreams and hopes. So easily built and just as easily swept away by an unexpected wave, or a bully's stomp, the winds of time. We build them in the stories we tell, the dreams we share, the plans we make, the fantasies we entertain, the things we buy. Some are impossibly ornate with shells and beach treasures, multi-leveled parapets, moats and passageways. Some a simple cone fashioned from an over turned beach bucket. Others the layers of slow drips built on ever smaller bases. These castles we build seem instinctually driven; it's a rare beach without one, a rarer child who doesn't want to build one. Ever mutable, fragile yet magnificent, they embody our need to create and recreate, to imagine our power to stop time yet also our ability to accept loss and then, drip by drip, to start over again.

Real Love?

10.07.06

Someone once wrote, or said, a true friend is one who sings to you the song in your heart when you've forgotten the words.

I read more and more in preparation for teaching my first class and came across this passage from the wonderful childrens' story, "The Velveteen Rabbit" by Mergery Williams.

"What is real?" asked the Rabbit one day... "Real isn't how you are made. It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you. Then you become real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse for he was always thruthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, adn you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things doen't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who doen't understand."

I sat in the back yard, on a sunny, wonderful fall day, with the California Pepper tree swaying her long green haired limbs over me and read these words and then put down the book. And thought. Why is this passage so relevant to obese patients? Why does it resonate with me, the opposite of obese? How does such a wonderfully simple children's story tell us what years of therapy might attempt?

We are born these perfectly "real" human beings, with all of our needs and desires programmed and our skills honed for fulfillment. Many of us are lucky to continue on that path of self-actualization along a fairly painless, not too destructive path. We meet people along the way who we can nurture and who nuture in return. We give and take from this world and leave it a better place, or at least a place not to harmed by our footsteps. We propagate and pass on our skills and talents and fears and loves, weaving carpets of social nets and networking along the way.

But when we dont' feel real, when we can't find those friends who sing back the song in our hearts, where do we go for integrity? Some say it used to be teh church, community, our social institutions that helped support and define us. The breakdown of the family, the commute, the internet, Madison Avenue, ADHD all have been blamed for our fraying personalities. Others say we must find in ourselves our own strength and authenticity, independent of others, through our work, our hobbies, our spirituality, our creativity. We are advised not to need others too much but at the same time we are supposed to be loyal, til death to us part, through thick and thin, come hell and high water, with the people we love and who supposedly love us; our friends, siblings, mates, family. Our social, community and familial ties are supposed to provide those validating mirrors that let us know we're doing okay in this world.

Yet, what happens when we grow out of a friendship, a kinship, a love, a job when we no longer feel real? And in order to find ourselves, we create waves that douse a fragile bond, that crash against tall walls and undermine crumbling foundation?
Do we then toss out the old favorite toy, our precious Velveteen Rabbit because it's lost its sheen? Do we try to mend it and make it look pretty and new? Do we put it on a shelf with the old toys, make busy with the new and then discover the old favorite after years of dust and mites have weakened its fabric and then acknowledge, that it is the memory, rather than the reality that we now hold dear? Or do we look at it and see its value and our own inability to treasure it at the time?

If we don't feel real, do we start looking for others who validate that new person we feel we truly are, say after losing 150 lbs or discovering one's inner belly dancer or deciding to become a a chef after years of litigating for the car industry? This little story seems to say that it's only when you are truly loved that you feel truly real. This is wonderfully romantic, yet brings up the question of guilt. If someone you love doesn't self-actualize is it then your fault that you didn't love them truly, completely, reallyl enough? If you don't feel truly yourself is it because your loved ones don't recognize you or can't love you realistically due to their own limits and edges? Or if you don't feel real is it really because you've been lying to yourself and need to take a good look in the mirror and start loving yourself better? I think what the author is saying, is absolutely relevant to those formative years when a parent's love is the most important determinant of self-hood, of a baby-infant-toddler-child's reality. But as we get older, we need to find balance between accepting and loving ourselves and finding those whom we can truly love and be loved truly by in return.

Can we become our own best friend by finding the words to our song, tucked away in some forgotten corner, and sing it to ourselves when no one else can? Does that work for us social animals who seem to crave mirrors, validation, acceptance? We are driven to mate, to congregate, fornicate and obligate. We no longer live in caves, yet many of us create portable ones to escape to when life gets a little too "brutish, nasty and short." The Skin Horse, who was always truthful, reminds us that becoming real is painful; we must bump up against the brittle, sharp edges in life. We must dare to get shabby, loose in the joints and have our eyes fall out. Those who are too careful, who break easily risk never becoming real. Perhaps, that is their own truth, though, to hold on tight, to sing their song to themselve rather than risk harmonizing with another, making dischords, missed cues, cacaphony. Perhaps there are Rabbits in this world, soft and flexible, and the tough Tin Soldiers, all sharp and pointy and neither is right or wrong; both find themselves in the toy box hoping the Child chooses them to play with. Both are loveable in their own way, their own time and their own place.

Phantasmagoria

10.05.06

Picked up Joan Didion's The White Album from the Y book exchange today and was struck by her first paragraph:

" We tell ourselves stories in order to live. The princess is caged in teh consulate. The man with the candy will lead the children into the sea. The naked woman on the ledge outside the window on the sixteenth floor is a victim of accidie, or the naked woman is an exhibitionisht, and it would be 'interesting' to know which. We tell ourselves that it makes some difference whether the naked woman is about to commit a mortal sin or is about to register a political protest or is about to be, the Aristophanic view, snatched back to the human conidtion by the fireman in priest's clothing just visible in the window behind her, the one smiling at the telephoto lens. We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select teh most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience."

She later talks about being a screenwriter and working with editors who can tell different stories with the same pictures, just putting them together differently. I can't wait to finish the book.

As I look at the world around me and the world I create for myself, the realities I choose to entertain and those I wish to reject, I am reminded of another book by Irvin Yalom, When Nietzche Wept. There's a passage in it about Freud, fictionalized but entirely believeable, in which he looks at his wife, Martha, and experiences a sudden shift in perspective. Rather than seeing the dull, help mate, mother of his children who inspires no passion, he is able in this particular moment to see the woman he feel in love with and can suddenly see her world through her eyes and empathize. This shift saves his marriage in that he no longer feels compelled to act out his sensual desires with a young patient. Martha had not changed into a siren of some sort, nor had Freud quelled his lust; he just switched lenses through which to see his wife. And their relationship became more of what he was looking for.

So much of what i read about achieving mental health includes this ability to take a different look at one's life and entertain a different story line. Rather than see oneself as, say, a victim of one's cruel boss, one could look at same and see an insecure person with a need to dominate and control because of some abuse he/she had received at one point. By looking at the boss as a whole person and oneself as complicit in being "bossed around" one could shift in one's approach to work, the supervisor and in so doing, change the dynamic. I was amazed myself the day in which I looked at my ex-director and sympathized with her problems (which were of no interest to me) and stopped approaching her as the enemy. Suddenly she knew my name and came to me for advice (most of which she never followed but at least she listened) and the reast of my employment time was spent working with, rather than against her. My change in perspective brought about a new relatsionship.

We writers, story tellers, therapists, preachers are all concerned wtih getting to people's inner truths and once they have been laid out on the sand for inspection, devising the editing tools with which to perhaps re-contstruct our stories in a more genuine way. As I listen to the stories of my work clients and get to know them, learn more about why they have doubled, tripled in size, I see so much pain and fear and anger that has been stuffed down by food. It occured to me in a class ht eother day that when we cry, laugh, yell or let OUT emotions, it's very hard to put something IN to your mouth. Storytelling, sharing one's history gets these things out, and supposedly, if we do it enough, if we dump all this emoional, psychological and spiritual trash with enough regularity we can get to the bones of who we are. We can find our frame of reference, our skeletal truth and perhaps then, drape it in raiments worthy of the kings and queens we all yearn to be. Nadine Goldsmith's book "Writing Down the Bones" is next on my reading list. Suddenly the skeletons in the closet don't seem so frightening anymore.

Cultivating Our Gardens

10.01.06

The monstrosity across the street is almost complete and we spent the night listening to its plaintive, yet pitifully puny, alarm system, activated perhaps by some stray animal or loose wire. The property was purchased for $700,000, a tear down, the contractor will have put in 300,000 and hopes to sell it for $1.9 million. This in a neigbhorhood which 13 years ago, when we bought our own home, boasted houses for $250,000. Not only is the house oversized but has been designed in this hideous faux Mediterranean style that looks like a cross between a suburban New England pre-fab and some Victorian era chapel. We can only hope that the occupants who move in are quiet, God fearing folk who enjoy inviting their neighbors over for pool parties.

With the intent of blocking the view of this new building blight, the kids brought home a tree for the Million Trees LA project that delivered lithe little forest wannabees to their school. In an effort to provide more shade to people's homes, and thereby driving down AC use, the city has been giving away long leafed trunks for a long time. This of course in a city that has long been a desert and sucks water from aueducts and water sources hundreds of miles away, so it's a bit ironic that we need to completely change our natural landscape to afford people the shade and cool they want even though they've chosen to live in this arid, sunny climate. We do seem to want things both, or all, ways. The heat but not the humidity, the sun but not the scorch, the view but not the quiet, the beach without the damp.

We humans are so incredibly complex and conflicted. This Republican member of Congress charged with some committee to protect children from lechers like himself, it turns out. Obsession with thin to the point that we use images of emaciated celebrities to, at the same time, sell magazines while excoriating the very culture that promotes impossible ideals. Bush's insistance that the world is a safer place for all his anti-terrorism policies while more and more attacks are visited around the world. Cognitive dissidence, denial, yin-yang, he-said, she-said, Freud's death/life wish. Whatever we want to call it, we do really screw things up with our split personalities.

So when I see something as simple as a fledgling tree being planted I can relax. I join the family as we dig and hoe and weed and provide a safe place for this seedling to reach out its roots and make a home in front of ours. This makes complete sense; there's no need for analysis about the deep satisfaction one gets from getting your hands in the dirt, pulling out the nasty dandelions and creating a warm, moist, fertilized pile of dirt into which seeds of shade and hope can be sown. I think back to the time (not that I was around then) when hunter-gatherers lived hand to mouth from the fruits of our labors and life was so simply oriented. Cities are now beginning to look at their built environments and recoginize how unhealthy they are with no central gathering spots, no sidewalks, few open green spaces and the virtual disappearance of the front porch. We have to give away trees to get people to remember how related we are to mother earth, how plants feed and shelter us, how we rest under a branched canopy, how we breathe our vital breathes from cholorophyl enriched air.

Gardening is not something that comes naturally to me, although my mother maintained a tiny verdant square behind our brownstone raising us in Greenwich Village. I do remember the excitement at spring time when she would order a colony of lady bugs each spring to fend off some other insects that would chew up our ivy. The box would arrive in the mail and I couldn't understand how you send live creatures through the postal system; how did they breathe, eat, poo and pee? But arrive they would, safe and sound, and we would liberate them by gently tapping the small cardboard box onto the concrete container where our simple greenery was bedded. Our ivy grew strong and vibrantly up the exterior walls that encased our garden and a rhododendron or two graced the shady corners. This little retreat from city life hosted many a barbecue and cocktail party and a miniture winter wonderland in the winters when snow filled our imaginations and the planting boxes out back. Spring witnessed daffodils and summer's lush foliage ended with autumn's carpet of leaves from the tall oak that somehow had taken root and grown to second story height by my teen years.

We plant our tiny seedling and imagine a curtain of leaves to shield us from our view across the street. The crepe myrtles stand tall and bushy nearby, finally flourishing each April in a rush of pink buds. Two neighbors' magnolias rise tall as sentinels on either side of us and dwarf our tender efforts. I look down our street at all the parkways, most of which boast a tree or planting of some sort and I smile at their incongruous origins, oak and palm trees side by side. Flocks of green parrots often visit the tallest palm and black birds caw from the mags. We have a sense of nature in this vast concrete jungle of a city, LA, even if we must import water and mulch and loam and potting soil to ammend the natural clay that would allow only Joshua Trees or scrub to flourish. We planted thousands of acres of orange groves at one point, faith in the valley's fertile plain. Now Hollywood studios produce fruits of many other sorts and we pay landscapers to put in xeriscaped, water saving plants, trying to emulate the original fauna of the area.

Despite how far we get from our roots, we seem to however remember to come back to them in some way, whether it be the Bonsai plant on one's office desk or, the roses delievered at Valntine's Day or the 1st grader's welcome guest, the Venus Fly trap. A passing babushka once stole some of our flowers from our front garden and I reprimanded her in a language she could not understand. Not only was the English foreign to her, but perhaps as well, the idea that I feigned to own these gifts of nature, that in her mind, she had every right to harvest as her own. I waved her on that day, without asking for them back, but now think, who am I to take away a moment, a scent, a memory from a soul in need? I can always plant more. And I did.