"So when did you lose your connection with your Self?"

Denise inspired this post with her very kind comments on my last.

I've been mining an incident that's kind of related to "I don't do that anymore".  It's a surprise that I'd be able to find so much in what amounted to a simple awkward conversation.   I suppose there are all kinds of ways someone can give up themSelves in order to accommodate somebody else.

"I don't do that anymore" came back to haunt me in a different guise.

The incident was this:  bookreading group night.  Sitting in conversation with Marybeth who asks how things are going with the separation, the switching off of house to apartment, and the job.  It's brief filler talk, meant to last until dinner is served.  Marybeth wanted to know if I'd set the boys up with chores for helping out.

For me this is kind of like being asked if I breast or bottle-feed my baby.  Or if I let them play videogames, or how many hours they play.  There's already a right answer, and often I'm on the wrong side of it.

This question had the feel of that.  I could feel the air around me bend into the gravity of a world where children should have chores, where any answer but yes carries some kind of whiff of apology.  The world becomes tipped that way and anything said feels like justification of a deficiency.

I took a deep breath and said, "Well, no.  I just ask them for help when I feel like I need it, and it seems to work out."

The truth is that I've made half-hearted attempts to get job charts and codify chore assignment.  And the fact is that my heart hasn't been in it.  I don't have a problem with the status quo, where 'help' is fluid and ad hoc.  I don't feel over-burdened.

But Marybeth went on:  "When I lived in India the women were fascinated with the freedom of American women.  And they'd bemoan the lack of freedom in their lives.  And I'd say, 'The place to start is your sons.  Raise your sons so they'll assume equal responsibility.'  Indian women spoil their sons", she went on.  "And spoiled sons grow up with a sense of entitlement that perpetuates the problem on to the next generation."

Who the hell can argue with that?

So I was in turmoil.  She's just said something that in principle I agree with, yet I'm not really practicing in my home.  Furthermore, the vibe I'm getting from her feels as if she's attempting to persuade me.  I'm feeling something that says she wants agreement.  At least it feels like something is expected of me.  And I don't feel honest with a specific endorsement and I can't bring myself to even nod.  It was a mini-dilemma, with a woman I don't see but once a month, but consider a friend.  I split the difference and in essence crossed my fingers behind my back.  I gave her the agreement she was looking for to discharge the unease, but in my mind I was agreeing only with the principle:  "women shouldn't spoil their sons".

But I'm feeling a thickening in the air between us.  The hallmarks of a meaningful conversation are missing.   I absolutely can't think of anything to say.  I'm a deer in headlights.  I sense it, and I wonder if she's sensing it too.  After all, if the animation that makes a conversation a conversation drains, isn't that noticeable?  Could she sense that I wasn't in entire agreement?  Because she pressed her point a little further.

Then we were called to dinner.

That's it.  I've been thinking about it ever since when I have some time to muse.  Each time I think about it I see another facet.

At first I focused on the sense I'd had that agreement was sought, and disagreement carried a penalty--of a hint of shame, of apology.  As I considered it, it occurred to me that if I felt like there wasn't a conversation, in a way it was because there wasn't.  She had her own agenda, which was to convince me that the boys should have chores.  She was presenting reasons why I should be doing it, and in a sense was trespassing.  I'd sensed a power struggle and I handled it by letting her think she'd 'won'.  Yet I felt strange and awkward after that.

So, I reasoned, some of what was going on was I was feeling trespassed upon and didn't assert my boundaries.  And I was feeling unauthentic in that I was having these feelings and not telling her.  In other words, I was representing myself as other than what I am.

But the conversation didn't seem to leave room for anything but a kind of shame-facedness in disagreeing, because again, who can argue with what she was saying?  And, while it might be possible to have a conversation that included my quasi-diagreement without having to wear a cone of shame, it would take some time to get there, which we didn't have.

So in a sense I was putting "blame" on Marybeth with a narrative that she wasn't seeing me at all in the conversation, but was seeking something.

That's certainly plausible.  That's what's in common, I think, with many unsolicited advice givers.  An implication of a kind of superiority:  I'm doing something that you're not and you should be like me.  This superiority requires agreement to be maintained in the giver's psyche--it depends on validation.

When I talked about it with my counselor, she suggested that Marybeth could have just been operating under the assumption that I was in total agreement already, vs trying to convince me of something.

Which opened up another can of worms.  A very old one, which is probably what kept me in a bad marriage.  If I'm feeling something from someone that's negative, since it's being processed by me and filtered through me, how do I know it's not merely a projection?  (And if I'm 'projecting', what is it I'm projecting?  Am I projecting self-disapproval onto them directed toward me?  Am I really kicking myself for not having the boys do regular chores, but making the Other the vehicle?)  And if I can't know that it's not a projection, then how can I trust myself at all?  I've spent a lifetime exploring this very question.  It kept me from being able to objectively evaluate the nature of many of the conflicts I had with Gary.  Sharon had spent nearly 5 years helping me lean into listening to this voice, and now I've got to question it again?

Looking again at what was present in that moment:  A sense of being 'accused' of spoiling my kids and contributing to gender inequity in the world.  I think there was a realization that while I agree with the principle of raising boys to be responsible men, the way I'm doing it probably doesn't clear the bar she seemed to be setting.  And that was a conflict, because to get to anywhere except acknowledging my 'lack' and getting more evangelization would take a while and we didn't have it.  But here I am with this circle that's begging to be closed with my agreement.  And my brain was blank when it came to other areas of engagement that might circumvent this dilemma.  I think another thing present was that I like Marybeth.  And I sense that she gives me a kind of credit for intimacy and closeness of friendship that hasn't yet been backed up with a bulk of intimate conversations and shared experience.  I sensed that she was offering me an opportunity for connection to back up that credit, and I was going to have to let it go by.  And just today I realized that a hidden element that was also present in that moment was that I sensed I was accusing her.  I was accusing her of giving unsolicited advice, for misreading me as a person who 'needs' help, of having an agenda that she was pressing at the expense of seeing me in the conversation.  I was accusing a well-meaning friend of encroachment.

As someone who has felt accused much of her life, it takes a lot to get me to accuse others.  I'm allergic to it and would rather accuse myself by default than accuse someone else.  Especially a friend.

No wonder I was a deer in headlights.

I guess the takeaway is that I became good at sensing what people want from me.  And implicit was a condition that this "something" was required to satisfy their own self-esteem needs.  To withhold was to hurt.  Case in point:  another conversation about the boys doing chores.  A kitchen table of a friend.  After a long list of things I should do to which I responded with silence, one of the women asked.  I replied that while their good intentions are appreciated, I'm someone who needs to find my own way, organically, from inside of me.  And anything I've said about various difficulties in my life at that time should not be construed as a call for help.  I said it in a factual tone with no intent of anger behind it.  She actually began to cry.

So there are many faces to the conditions where one can lose herself.  The pernicious ones are more obvious.  The well-meaning ones, well, those are more deeply rooted.

One year on, six months on

One year ago I had just begun a new job, working outside of the home for the first time in 11 years.  My first day was May 26, so this time last year I was still aquiver with the abrupt shift in lives.  I got the job so six months ago I could get the apartment where I sit right now.

Six months ago I began the culmination, the logical consequence as it were, to years of exhaustive examination of my marriage, my self.  I was sifting through every single detail to find a way to stay in that life, and not be here in this.  I suppose all of that searching distilled to a single question:  "Is it my fault it's not working, and if it is, can I change myself so it will?"

I didn't have very stable ground from which to be objective because I've always felt confused about whether or not something is my fault.  I've certainly been afraid that "things" are my fault, in the deer-in-headlights sense.

So, were things not working because I was too selfish?  If I became angry because Gary was unreasonable, was I too sensitive?  Too quick-on-the-trigger to react?  An angry, mean person at core?  Someone who felt inherently inferior and so when Gary was scornful when I didn't read his mind accurately it confirmed my own sense of worthlessness and that's why I'd get angry?  Did I just not have a sense of humor?  Was I 'just' a chronically unhappy person who brought everyone around her down too?  Someone no one could make happy?

I certainly was afraid I was those things. In trying to confront those accusations I was sort of cut off at the knees by my awareness that people often rationalize their bad behavior, and why should I be so special that I wasn't?  How would I know if I wasn't 'just' rationalizing?

So it took years to work my way through what a different kind of person may have cleared up in a few minutes.  Self-doubt had been a strategy a long time ago that I developed to help me tolerate situations I was powerless to change.  Then my own strategy hamstrung me so that I was powerless to change.

Years ago I saw "A Clockwork Orange".  A brilliantly horrifying movie, but what reached into my psyche and totally disturbed me was the aversion "therapy" our psychopathic subject  underwent once he was caught and brought to justice.  Any of you who know the story know that he was a totally repugnant and violent hooligan;  that he was 'cured' by being forced to watch images of violence and sex while being fed a drug that would make him violently ill.  Eventually nausea was so tightly associated with aggression that the slightest hint of aggression rendered him helpless.  The scene at the end where he himself is jumped and is unable to defend himself--in fact, his own natural defenses now wrapped him up and delivered him like a package to his attackers--haunted me for days.  I'd seen violent images in movies before but this one really got to me, at my core.  I see why now.  It was an extreme representation of my own dilemma, which was my own strategy for being with people whose behavior I couldn't understand, which often seemed capricious, arbitrary, and unfair.  (Yeah, I guess I'm talking about my parents, but not in the "blame" sense.  They were products of their own culture, time, and upbringing.  I can say that there were things I needed to do to adapt to the implicit demands of my culture, as expressed through the people who raised and love me that have not served me well.  I can say this while knowing deeply that I love my parents.)

I got pretty good at it, and so was well-groomed for the marriage I chose.  Once I was able to clear up the baggage about whether or not I was a flawed individual and that's why I was seeing things the way I saw them, it really became very simple.  What does the marriage need to succeed? Are we willing to do what it takes?

To feel satisfied in a marriage, I need to be with a partner who is willing to negotiate disagreement and build bridges after rifts.  This means being with someone who is timely in airing grievances (rather than storing them up and then leaking resentful feelings like a cracked gas tank).  In short, I need someone who has the tools to partner with me to bring a marriage back into emotional equilibrium when something has disrupted it.  I believe I have the tools in my own personal skillset, but I see that I can no more do it for both of us then I could fly if I was a bird with one wing.  And he needs a partner who is either thick-skinned, impervious to passive aggression, totally devoted, or willing to absorb and hold whatever he dishes out without a need to hold him accountable or otherwise bother him with it.  He is unwilling or unable to be the partner I need, and after 5 years of examining this marriage from every angle to see if I could be the partner he needs I see that I cannot.  Or, I could, but I'd have to undercut myself with self-doubt in order to tolerate it.

I don't do that any more.

I take full credit. If you live in the Pacific NW you owe me a thank you

We've had a wet, and cold spring.  Hell, it's the first of May and our leaves aren't even out.

I'm not someone whose moods brighten or darken with the sunlight.  I don't mind cloudy, wet days.  To me they're permission to get cozy and write and think.  So I've not suffered this extended winter, but I have noted that we had yet to have two days of sunlight in a row.  And nights have been dipping down into the 30's temp-wise.

A year and a half ago we got a new furnace.  Our home was built to heat radiantly, with the source being a gas-fired boiler.  So we were committed to boilers.  This one was 30 years old, and bound to fail (it did), but we'd kept it alive for awhile with patch jobs.  One of those patches was a circulating pump, installed a mere 4 years ago to the tune of about $600.  When we replaced the furnace the pump was only 2 1/2 years old, so we kept it on.

Gary left on a retreat last week.  That night I noted the house felt cold and checked the thermostat.  Holy cow, it was 59 degrees, despite the thermostat's setting of 66.  WTF?

I went downstairs to look at the boiler.  Since it was so new, and had only been serviced a month ago,  I just knew it had to be something stupid--someone had accidentally pushed a switch or pulled something.  I called the number on the sticker on the unit to be told that no, she was a dispatcher, not a technician and so we could not try to do a phone trouble-shoot (to avoid a $99 service call).  She wanted to know if I wanted to schedule.  Half thinking the thing would fix itself by morning I said no; I'd just try to call next day and see if there was someone who could talk me through ruling some stuff out before scheduling.

Next morning it was 57 degrees in the house, and I was having trouble getting the boys out of bed.  I sighed and called the heating company to schedule our service call.  I had to work that day, so made arrangements to leave the furnace door open for the technician.  After the Scott pick-up I found a message on my cell.  There was a problem in the circulating pump blowing fuses that protect the circuit between the main boiler and the circulating pump.  When the big unit would tell the circulator to fire, it would draw so much power that the fuses would pop.  If it was only a matter of some new fuses and a little clean-up, the cost would be only $200-ish.  He hoped that was the case; there was a chance it was more serious and would require a new circulating pump.  WTF!  $1K.  WTF!

That night it got down to 53 degrees in the house, because of course it wasn't a matter of replacing fuses and the new unit wouldn't arrive until the next morning (of course they didn't have one in their supplies already and had to order one).  (It was a difficult decision, knowing that the weather has to warm up soon, but not wanting to suffer through any more cold nights and a weekend coming up.  I could have just taken the unit to a shop that repairs motors, but then we wouldn't have heat until this week.)

So now a credit card company is earning interest on the use of their card, and the house is nice and warm--without the heat even being on, because it's SUNNY AND WARM OUTSIDE--for the...second day in a row!!!  Supposed to get up into the 70's this week for the first time this year.

Bitter?  Well, it'll be good to have next winter, and that's kind of a long time to wait.

Lookin' out my back door

When the hurricane stops

I'm fascinated by my view from my window in the apartment.  I love to sit where I can lift my eyes periodically and take it in.  If you look hard at the 'Yesterday' shot, left of the bridge the arc isn't a cloud, but Mt. St. Helens with some cloud shadows obscuring the base.

Yesterday

A clearer picture of Mt. St. Helens

We're finishing up month the fourth of our marital separation.  It was such a slow grind getting here and I'm not even sure how we managed to accomplish it.  Next month will mark the first anniversary of ending my eleven years as an at-home mom and returning to my profession.

I was talking about the particulars of this with a friend; what it's like to finally be doing it.  He'd had a major rough patch in his marriage himself during a time of extended unemployment.  Things were said.  Things were done.  He is employed now and things seemingly back to normal.

I wondered at some of the things that were done.  Had this been my marriage the fissures revealed would  be cause for some major questions, because they seemed to go to some issues that were beyond the strain of prolonged unemployment.  They seemed to reveal some cracks in core foundational assumptions.

I figured once the crisis was past he would do his best to forget those things.  He'd tell himself to 'forgive and forget' and set his intentions on forgetting.  He would resolve to start over with a blank slate.  From what I knew of him, this seemed like a safe prediction.

So he was asking me about my marriage, more specifically about the separation from my marriage.  I was doing my best to answer him in the face of not really knowing.  Four months really isn't that long, and I think it's still too new to draw any conclusions.  The data isn't in, and the questions are open (am I doing the right thing?  Am I harming our sons?  Does separation from me for a week at a time harm them more than being free of the toxic atmosphere Gary and I create benefits them?  Will I find this was merely a lateral move--miserable there, miserable here?)

He surprised me.  He said on a television program a main character, when asked if she was happy said, "Am I happy?  Or is it just relief that the hurricane has stopped?"  In my life I've experienced something like this, where a chance phrase I read or hear somewhere suddenly sheds light and understanding on a question I didn't know I had.  It's like reading a passage online and suddenly a link is highlighted.  I was delighted that he had experiences like that too.  Furthermore, we weren't talking about my marriage any more.  We were talking about his.  

He said that things seemed better with him and his wife.  He said it was great to have a steady income again, with insurance benefits for him and his family.  He hesitated a moment, and said that he wasn't sure if he was really happy, or if he was just in the relief of the hurricane being over.  He said that right now, he doesn't want to disturb his relief by probing, rocking the boat.  He's unsure if he ever will.  He's poised between further evaluation or resolutely determining that bygones will be bygones.

I think someone making the decision to rock a boat creates a ripple effect.  It sets precedent, and nudges awake decisions once thought settled and asleep.

Today

One Quarter In

view from 16th floor

On sunny days (we can't seem to muster two in a row yet this spring) there's a view of Mt. St. Helens, Mt Rainier (I think that's what the wild double-peak is I see behind Mt. St. Helen's right shoulder) (when it's clear) and Mt. Adams .

We're three months into implementation of Major Life Change.  I spent an extraordinarily long time getting to this point.  I spent several years blogging my decision (please forgive any repetitiveness; my life's changes have meant distance from the blogging world, and I may have already said this stuff and forgotten).  Sometime in 2009 I decided, then got a job in 2010 (May 26 to be exact.  It's not even been a year since I left my 11 year gig as an at-home mother).  Notice--I decided in 2009; I got a job in 2010, and not until 2011 did we do the roll-out.  Am I a deliberate decider or what.  You can't accuse me of being impulsive.

So now I blog the experience of a separated woman, working in the professional world and raising two young sons.  I blog the experience of living in two places: the house in a rural part of the city; the apartment, which is about as urban as you can get.  I blog the attempt to partner in separation/divorce with a man I couldn't partner with in marriage, in order to keep home as stable as possible for the boys.  To that end he and I do the moving back and forth from one domicile to the other, taking turns at either the house, or the apartment.  I'm at the apartment now, til Monday after I pick up Scott from school.

Gary has his office at the house, so we see each other daily.  Even on my days at the apartment I continue to transport Scott, though it's a little suspenseful; I have to have finished my final patient and then be at his school by 3:00.  Sometimes I have a needy patient who needs extra time.  Sometimes I've made bad guesses and I'm running late.  Sometimes I'm caught in traffic.  My job is with a small home health agency that I suspect gets the dregs of patients discharged from hospitals.  That is, the uncomplicated close-in patients I think are sucked up by the large organizations, leaving marginal patients on the margins of the city.  In other words, I'm often driving major mileage.

Anyway, we're only 3 months into this new way of living.  On the 18th we'll have been married 19 years, and we were together nearly 3 years before we got married.  So, though there's been a big shift and pivot, I am nowhere near out from under the penumbra of the momentum of 22 years of life.

I honestly have to say I don't really feel much of anything.  I guess the description is "flat".  It's not really sorrow, more a kind of dutifulness.  

It's way too early to say whether or not this was a good move.  No... I wouldn't put it that way.  I think it's more accurate to say that it's way too early to expect my emotional affect to reflect that this was a good move.  (It has to be a good move, because it's preferable to how I was living.  I can't imagine going back, not without some major changes that I've accepted aren't likely to happen.)  It's odd how in so many ways I've already moved on to a point where I don't realize that when people ask how I am, they're meaning the separation, not just the general pleasantry.  When I took the boys to visit my parents over President's Day, the subject didn't even come up.  Later my brother was concerned that I'd thought it was because they didn't care.  Which surprised me.  As far as I was concerned it hadn't come up in the way that the subject of our marriage wouldn't have come up years ago.  It's a done deal and not any more a topic of conversation than the air that we breathe.  Apparently I've moved on...they haven't.  I appreciate that they're being respectful of my privacy, but it's really the last thing on my mind.  Someone I hadn't seen for a while asked me how the boys were getting along, and it was only later that I realized that he meant with the separation.  I thought he was asking how they were getting along with each other.  So I went into a long story about how they treat each other.  Funny.

So really, I'm just living with each day of this New Life, and putting one foot in front of the other, with no idea what the future holds.  If I were an ant on a jigsaw puzzle right now, I'd be on one of those maddening transitional pieces, where a shadow is giving way to something else, where the shades of difference are subtle.  I've got to give this at least a year.

P.S.

In another interview with Steven Galloway, he was asked:

It's a very morally engaged book, if that's not too cliched a way to put it. Do you think a writer is obliged to take a moral position? Is that moral aspect important to you as a writer?

It is to me, currently. I don't know if it's important for all writers to do it. It's been an interesting process for me, becoming a writer, in the eight-to-ten years since my first book was published: first you want to become a writer because you think you can, and because it would be neat or something, but slowly over time a lot of the things that you thought would be rewarding about being a writer evaporate. Book tours aren't much fun or glamorous. The attention is self-defeating in a way. There are two valuable things that are left then, at least to me as a writer: first, you get to spend most of your working time in a room by yourself living in an imaginary world - something that appeals to me greatly, and a second thing is that you get to be involved in that larger world conversation about what we can do while we're on this earth. You don't get that in many professions. If you're an orthodontist you perform a great an noble service, but you don't get to participate in the same way in that conversation. What keeps me in that little room by myself is that conversation - so it's important to me.

I italicized that section at the end above.

It's so important to me, too.  I miss, miss so much regular participation in that conversation.  Sipping from the pools of others through their blogs, and contributing to my own.

A True Day Off

Well, maybe not entirely 'true' because I'm not entirely free of obligation.  The Stupid Dog is on my lap, shuddering, or licking my hands as I try to type.  So now he's needy.  The cat stirs, and like an explosion he's up to go harass her.  Thanks, Sheila.

I've taken him out a jillion times and he refuses to eliminate.  He also only does one function at a time, so pooping and peeing require separate trips.  The trouble is, his cues are so muddled, that whining can mean, "I'm bored" "I'm hungry" "I'm lonely" or, "I need to go potty."  I've logged thousands of miles already in trips out the back door to his toilet.  I just get tired of taking him out to have nothing happen.  But my carpet is held hostage; though to anyone looking at it, it's no longer worth protecting.  The hostage is already dead.

Fridays are my days off from my job as a home health physical therapist.  So far it's been rare that it's been a true day off.  Between the phone calls it takes to hold everything together, coordinate care, communicate with team members, request orders from doctors, and wend my way through the maze of the computer program and still come up with a note that summarizes and convinces Medicare that my home visit was skilled and necessary, I usually have hours of work left to do on a Friday.  Even if I get up really early, and even if I was up really late the night before.  And, even on the Fridays when I'm not the one living with the boys, I pick up Scott from school which is only half-days on Fridays.

This date things lined up well for a Day Off.  It's spring break, so no school pick-up, and Gary took the boys on a spring trip.  I've ruefully noted that it's too bad I have to waste that time with working, and it's very true that my evenings have been consumed with work.  But I made a big push last night and didn't even have to work that long, before managing to finish most of those responsibilities and be able to feel that today really is a Day Off.

(I hope Gary and the boys don't come home early and spoil it)

The dog is making very ominous gastric noises and spasms like hiccups.  I don't even want to think about what that might mean, especially since he's on my lap and on my bed.

I let my Day Off agenda choose me.  My bookreading group is reading "The Cellist of Sarajevo" by Steven Galloway for our discussion book this April.  I actually nominated this book the cycle before this last 18 months ago and it wasn't chosen.  I had the book and so decided to read it anyway, 18 months ago.  So I wasn't in that big a hurry to get it from the library when this month rolled around.  Until I realized that I'm the facilitator for the month of April.  So I got it again and started reading.

I shouldn't be surprised anymore by the enriching a second reading can give.  I read it through quickly a year and a half ago, because it does read pretty easily.  This time,  I've been able to pause and notice some of the questions the author poses, and the ways his characters mull them over.  They're questions we consider even under the best of circumstances, so it's not just a book about life under siege.

The author grounds the story/stories firmly within the setting of the city, naming streets and landmarks, neighborhoods as his characters walk through them.  Oftentimes I breeze past place references, but for whatever reason I went searching for street maps of Sarajevo.  Now I could locate his people, and walk the streets with them.

Which makes the effect more shocking and ominous.  It forces me to consider how thin the veneer of civilization is.  If it could happen in Sarajevo, host of the 1984 Olympics, it could happen in any city.  The objects of civilization around us seem to carry their own inherent stability and sense of permanence.  I think unconsciously my whole life I've been comforted by this illusion, as if the roads, buildings, museums keep chaos from happening here.  Their underlying message seems to whisper "It can't happen here."  But as Galloway said in an interview, "These things are able to exist through an agreement human beings make as to how we treat each other."  It's a little breathtaking to realize the implications of this.  Things that appear so solid are built on the underlying quaking earth of an agreement.  In Sarajevo that agreement was broken and not only were over 10,000 of their residents killed (many, many of them children) and many maimed, and orphaned, but their museums and National Library, which contained irreplaceable, priceless texts were destroyed.  (The besiegers shot at the firefighters who came).

It's horrifying to me to think of making that leap between the kind of normal we in the West are accustomed to and don't even notice, to the kind of normal which is running across intersections and bridges for fear of being shot, shells exploding just because you've queued up for bread or water, walking past husks of buildings that used to be the university, or the National Library.

One of the questions that is ongoing for his female character Arrow is that of hatred.  The author visits and revisits the evolution of her thoughts, as she considers her role as a counter-sniper and her motivations.  Periodically she reassesses what it is that distinguishes her from them, "the men on the hills."  At first she tells herself that they shoot and shell civilians, while she only kills soldiers.  Later she tells herself that the men she is killing could have killed many people in her city.  Later she acknowledges in her heart that she is killing them because she hates them.  BUT, what's interesting and novel about this to me, is she goes further and considers why she hates them.  And her answer is that she hates them because they made her hate.  Them.  Furthermore, she realizes that the men on the hills told her she hated them by giving her reason, and in that sense have dictated what she feels and what she does.  She notices that she didn't fight this very hard.  Later in the book the theme is returned to:  That what is happening is a result of the men on the hills needing the people of the city to hate them.

The author writes:  “Do the men on the hills hate her?  Or do they hate the idea of her, because she’s different from them, and that in this difference there might be some sort of inferiority or superiority that is hers or theirs, that in the end threatens the potential happiness of everyone?”
  Years ago, when my children were barely out of toddlerhood, I noticed something.  I'd take them to the park, or library where there were other children.  Sometimes when walking past another mother and child I'd see the children look at each other.  And I could feel something exchange between them--oftentimes a sort of spontaneous mutual hostility.  They'd never seen each other before, but their emotional landscape was already tipped toward dislike.

It makes me wonder if that's the "agreement" upon which our justification for the wholesale murder of war rests.  It occurs to me that war is kind of like civilization, in that it rests upon an agreement of how we treat each other, and it too has an illusion of permanence and stability.  Maybe the word "inevitability" is what I mean.  God knows there are enough resources devoted to it; so much so that it's become an industry of its own.  Run by people whose own self-interest depends upon it.

What really amazes me is that people aren't sickened enough by the result of just one wounding to shudder away in revulsion and resolve to never do that again.  And yet we do.

From the diary of an overwhelmed working mother...

I guess what I’m saying is, this is probably not the best time to test the theory of happy new life.  I’ve had to let drop so many things I enjoyed when I was an at-home mom.  My blog is moribund.  I haven’t read any of the other blogs I liked so well.  If a news segment caught my ear and I didn’t catch it at the time I could always go back to my computer later and read a transcript.  Now I’m helplessly hearing stuff that interests me and I want to know more about slide right on by.  I feel ignorant.  I feel really weighted down by this job.  I feel anchored to it like it’s a ball and chain.  I’m faster on the documentation, but the real slow-down is the phone calling.  Call a dr, call a patient back, call another staff member to coordinate something and try to remember everything I want to tell them so I don’t have to call them a second time.  I really do wish people used email, because I could communicate much more efficiently.  I’m burning through my phone minutes but there’s no way I can not use it on the job.  I have to call back assistants to tell them a plan of care for patients, and I then have to be thinking about that pt, remembering who they are, any special things about them.  Yesterday I saw 6 patients, drove 80 miles, and I’ve only worked my way down to the third one I saw in documenting, and I’m not yet done with that.  I went from downtown (where I had to scrounge for change for parking because I’d forgotten my wallet at home).  I guess I’m just trying to describe the pieces that add up to overwhelemed, and also me coming home from working, doing documentation, taking a break to fix dinner, or go to an appointment, or a teacher conference at Connor’s school, and that puts me behind the whole next day.  Even if I get up at 5.   Even if I go to bed at 11 and then get up at 5.  Which I’ve been doing for a while, and I suppose that’s another nail in the coffin of morose.  The dog has been particularly wearing, whining pitifully this sound that is like nails on a blackboard.  Take him outside and he doesn’t want to go because it’s cold.   I don’t want to take him out because I have to stand there while he sniffs aimlessly and I’m cold. It seems like all we’re doing is stopping our activities and taking him outside to poop or pee.  And that’s not counting the ‘accidents’ in the house.   The house is a mess, and this is really distressing for me.  When it’s in such disorder…counters unwiped, sticky on the floor, crumbs, food left out…I just start to feel like it’s one more Other demanding my attention.  The work demands seem implacable—patients need orders for service, and they deserve to have them done quickly and seamlessly.  However, this agency is not seamless.  All of this, and I don’t think I’m even meeting productivity.  And with the pressure to pass patients on to assistants, where I do an evaluation and then don’t see the patient again until I discharge, yet I have to keep track of what the goals are for that person, and the increments toward that goal, and is the assistant doing it.  And then have to really think about the ‘skill’ part of my visit (and assessments don’t count)—just dissect what I’m doing to present on a documentation template that tends to give a cookie-cutter ambiance to the session anyway.  My head is spinning, and I just don’t feel like I’m keeping track the way I should, and there’s always something more to do.  And there’s calling patients beforehand the night before to arrange visit schedules, as well as having to bring up the computer and look up each one and figure out a system  of sequence that makes sense, only to have it derailed if that doesn’t work for the patient.  So yesterday morning I also had to take the next door neighbors kids to school, and I hadn’t yet written down a schematic of a patient list and directions to each, and telephone numbers (because it’s hell to try to find that on the computer while driving—take off sunglasses, locate bifocals, open computer, turn to avoid glare—oh, the car ahead is moving now—and the stupid cursor is taking forever to appear, and I can’t see the list of patients to select the one I want and then I have to drive some more, select the ‘basic’ box to call up name/address/phone.  Squint because it’s difficult to find the number and read it because the font is so small.  Scott is like trying to push jello through a straw and the two boys begin fighting viciously with Scott yelling so loud it hurts my head and then Connor trying to yell over him to the point that I tell them I don’t want to risk this kind of behavior in a motel room, or a restaurant; I haven’t washed my hair and it doesn’t look like there’s going to be time to; there are dishes in the sink, then we have to wait for several minutes for the kids next door to come out of their house and I’m fretting because I need to be downtown before 9:00 to see this guy.  Which reminds me of another phone call I should make—to his orthotist to be sure that he’s following the stump changes.  Then  I’m getting calls from people asking me about other people.

In other words, there’s an avalanche of details that each need attention, and triaging them and figuring out which are most important while not losing any of them is really taxing for me.  I’m trying to keep a notebook but that system has its limitations with my scrawled cryptic messages and phone numbers.  And I let a big detail drop through cracks, where a patient that was on my schedule for Mon had not come home from the hosp Sunday and I’m on the phone with his wife Sunday night and she’s wanting a schedule for when I’m coming and we agree on Tues in the afternoon.  Then he was moved to a different day on my schedule, and I honest-to-god don’t know if I did it myself because I’d gotten the impression he wasn’t going home from the hospital til Tuesday—but I also remember feeling surprised to see him on my schedule Wed.  I don’t know if I did it, in an effort to see which configuration of visits would work, and then forgot to switch it back, or if a scheduler may have done it—because sometimes they do move things on my schedule:  I’d forgotten he was a Dr. T  pt with a fairly strict protocol:  nurse and PT go out on the same day.  It was team meeting morning and I’m trying to get out the door because my first patient is in Newberg and my next in West Linn, and I’m seeing the schedule I’d constructed the night before slipping away and I may have to be making more phone calls and if I have to be I want to be doing it from the office because my cell phone bill was over $120 due to phone overages, but then that keeps me from leaving too because I have to look up the pt’s phone numbers and write them down, then take them to another phone in another part of the office because the phone that’s usually in the conference room where my computer is set up is not there, and I don’t really like to take my laptop with me because then I’m unplugging it from its power source and wearing down the battery.  Then I’m called to talk to—whatever the hell position it is that Carol has, warrenting her own (shared) office—because I’d bypassed an important step in a patient’s hospitalization which I hadn’t known about until the wife called me after he was already home, and I’d just gotten orders to continue PT without realizing he was in the hosp, and the wife requests no therapy the rest of that week (it’s Wed night), and I talk to the dr. on Fri, who says she thinks we should wait to continue until pt’s wife feels able, so I call the wife and she asks to take the next week off too, which means more phone calls to keep track of because then I’ll need to call her on the Sunday just prior to that week to see if they are ready for more, and I have to call  the dr’s office  for orders and in the meantime I inadvertantly bypassed this whole other official channel where there is this whole transfer and resume process, re-referral and getting new orders to resume and I’ve skipped all that because I’d been working with the doctor’s office and they’d said to go ahead and that’s what they’re calling me into Carol’s office for.  Further squeezing down the time to get to my first boonies patient and feeling myself getting later and later, and at least, thank god there is a person who offerred to pick up my son at school and take him to her house, so I have longer at the end of the day before having to pick him up—because that’s usually the firm deadline that I have to get everything else to conform to and usually that really compresses and squeezes a day.  So I leave the office to go see my patient and get lost, meaning I’m having to stop and pull out the computer for the map that I'd kept the window of, but it’s not resolving to the detail I need so I have no choice but to completely retrace my steps, and now I’m having to call people and tell them to expect me about an hour later than the times I’d originally scheduled and hoping I won’t have to call and revise again.  So it’s while I’m on my way to my final patient’s that the cell phone sounds as I’m driving so I don’t pick up until I pull over (watching the time drain) and listen to the voice mail and it’s a very clipped voice of the patient’s wife whose agreement with I’d forgotten about seeing them this day—because he’d been moved on my schedule (by me?  By a scheduler?) and so I’ve got to call her and get a really frosty reception when I apologize.  So I’m feeling just unsettled and yucky as I head to my last patient.

And that’s just one day.  I spent a great deal of Wednesday trying to hold together a schedule that kept threatening to collapse—so it was phone call after phone call.  One Adult Foster Home would only render a fax tone so I called the pt’s dtr who gave me the number of the home’s manager, who I called and got the visit scheduled.  One lady is way out in the boonies, and this was to be a final visit and she was one whose daughter had never gotten back to me to schedule a Monday visit and so I drove out blind and stood knocking at a locked door after having gotten lost and wandered in ever-increasing traffic for a while and it’s probably partly my fault because I hadn’t persisted in calling after I didn't get an answer when I called over the weekend but I have so many phone calls to make and I’d thought the number that was hers might be an office number and so I’d have less of a chance of speaking with her than the home number, and I’ve sensed a certain passivity of the daughter in advocating for her mother anyway—have offerred to meet her at the house (at least before turning her over to an assistant, but I’d asked the assistant to see if she could arrange a visit when the daughter would be home, and I guess I never verified that the assistant did this or not), but not been taken up on it—no return call after I left a note on the door that Monday—just a peculiar kind of disconnect when it comes to bridging concern about her mother’s condition with action to address it. 

And this doesn’t touch the times I open the computer and attempt to change a scheduled visit to someone else’s schedule, or schedule someone else’s to mine, only to get an error message saying that will exceed authorized visits and a lot of times it’s because the computer has duplicated the schedule; this doesn’t count the times of calling the office with either a question of my own or to answer a question they had for me, only to get put through to a voice mail.  Calling a dr’s office and wading through all the menu options (with the tantalizing feeling that maybe this is the office that I can bypass all of this by pressing 2, and wondering if I should take a chance and press 2, or wait it out in case pressing 2 will delay me further and the voice message comes to the end and tells me that in the future I can bypass this message by pressing 2, and then the receptionist asks me to hold.)

One more hour, and I really didn’t mean to put this time into work woes, but it actually did help to capture a slice of my day.  It helps me to get a sense that maybe anyone would feel overwhelmed too.  And I forget that Gary’s been gone in Asia which double-duties me as far as kid and animal care, I have phone calls hanging out there that I haven’t returned—personal friend phone calls—or family—and we just moved stuff into a place we’ve barely used.  I just didn’t have it in me to do the scramble required to find some sort of child care for Scott and a ride to the school for Connor on Wednesday night—which was on the day I’d see Sharon.  I wracked my brain for options and eventually gave up and missed the session with Sharon.  Didn’t know if this would be a productive one anyway, given the others I’ve had.  I guess it could be said that there is some sort of ‘message’ in my having forgotten her check the week before, and then missing this session.  This is the first time I’ve missed a session, other than when we’ve been travelling, ever.  The truth is, I think, that I am  in a slack, slack period.  Haven’t moved in to the apartment yet, that is,  gotten serious about establishing the rotation with Gary.  It’s Christmas, which is usually a pretty overwhelming time, but I don’t have to be doing any of it this year, so I’m not that overwhelmed, except with some remorse that I’ve been looking at all these Christmas trees in people’s homes with gifts piled high beneath them and nary a one under ours (in part because I can’t quite trust that Scott will be able to overcome his inquisitiveness and inability to handle the suspense—as well as the possibility that he may shake some packages and possibly damage what’s inside.  So this is the first year in a long time that I’ve not been dogged by Christmas busywork shit, but the slack is all taken up by my job.  So I’m as busy, but just haven’t had the additional Christmas busy on top of it.  For which I’m glad.  But, I wonder if the bare underneath of the tree is a metaphor for the bareness of Christmas enthusiasm within me to share with them.  I know that part of the fun of Christmas is having adults share their enthusiasm, to kind of reflect it and amplify.  So I’m totally lacking in that regard.  And if I was any kind of measuring up to the standard of a good mother, I wouldn’t be here writing, but out buying some gifts to have under the tree for them when they get home.

But this is really the first moment I’ve had to myself since last Friday.  Literally.  If I haven’t been up at 5 I’ve been up at 1 (once, when I woke and couldn’t get back to sleep and decided I may as well work—and did so for about 3 hours)

And in choosing this I’ve also chosen to not go and look at some material that’s been up in tabs on my browser forever, which probably isn’t good for the computer; probably uses up tons of memory.  Some of the stuff I’ve had to ‘cut’ (funny, guess it’s metaphoric for what’s going on everywhere, states cutting their budgets, all these demands that the US cut theirs, other nations cutting back severly) has been pretty hard.  Losing my sense of being informed, that’s a hard one to let go.

I wonder if I can call it a lack of intelligence on my part, that I can’t just absorb the important parts of the news as they’re being presented on the radio.  I zone out without realizing, and then 'come back’ just as something is said that I have a question about and realize they’d answered it ‘just’ before I ‘came back’.  Just trying to get a weather forecast does this.  I listen consciously for it, then when the broadcaster starts talking about program sponsors I zone out only to find that without a break they’ve gone into a forecast and I only get to hear the Eastern Oregon forecast because they did the Portland one first before I ‘woke up.’

My brain is scrambled eggs.

Pressed and Compressed

I had an inspiration about "Worth" and "Worthiness" and the role it plays in Shame, and what humans do to avoid it.

Funny how it seems to be universal, and visceral.

No time to develop that.

We got a dachshund about 6 weeks ago from a rescue service.  I should back up and say we lost our black lab, who had been failing for months.  The boys set up a chorus:  "No more old dogs!"  Connor found the mutt.  Showing far more initiative then he ever gives his schoolwork, he tracked this one down and presented his photo.


Well, he is cute.

And it's a good thing because in the short time we've had him he's proved to be a lusty barker (the rescue person said he'd been raised in a condominium and was a non-barker:  she was "worried" about this) especially when provoked by the cat, proved to not be reliably toilet trained (seems to ask to go out; taken out--requires a leash as our yard has no fence and there are cars in the front and coyotes in back--pees, urged to go some more, indicates he's finished, take him inside, poops on the floor), is interfering as I type right now, received a paralyzing back injury when he jumped from a low surface (which fortunately resolved on its own), and began to vomit, on the sofa, in between the cushions and into the deep seams of the cushions, a foul, poop-smelling substance.  What did I do with my time before we got a dachshund:  number one on the list for dogs most likely to bite?

AND, we secured the apartment.  Spent last weekend doing some shopping for it and moving big stuff in.  It's a 16th floor one-bedroom, which looks north over the river, the west part of downtown, and the peaks.  The boys have embraced it enthusiastically and have had no hesitation in claiming it for their own.

We haven't begun the rotation formally yet.  Gary took the boys over to spend last night and I'm typing this in the space I have before they get home.  What I should be doing?  Answering emails, vacuuming floors, doing laundry, taking the dog out to poop/pee, making a shopping list, prepping my work schedule for Monday, and writing in my diary.

We're finally on the crux of something I've been moving toward since well before starting this blog.  I began blogging with the intent of recording my decision process, and now am reaching the outcome of this path my husband and I have been on for years and years.  This last bit is moving as agonizingly slowly as the last few weeks of a pregnancy.  And then this will be in the rear view mirror.  I've been preoccupied with this for so long, and guided, kicking and screaming to this point, that it's strange to imagine what life will be like on The Other Side.

The Latest

It's late October.

I have 20 minutes before I need to start getting the kids up for school.

Gary and I started looking for places last week doing drive-by's.

The boys are excited about this, stating their preferences of where they want us to look. Connor wants a place he can skate and walk to skateboard shops. Scott's hoping we'll have cable TV.

We found a place on Saturday that's midway between our house and Connor's school. About 3 miles away. It's a daylight basement in a house on 3 acres of spectacularly gardened property. As we spoke with the man who was showing it, I learned his wife is a published author.

She'd be an interesting person to live next to. Or below, I guess.

Though the apartment is quite nice, it's also quite small. I'm not sure I wouldn't feel claustrophobic.

Yesterday I'd put together an itinerary of about 10 properties to look at; we started north and worked our way south. The last one on our list had a sign out that said the leasing office was open so we parked in their lot and went to have a look-see.

There's no denying the location is superb. It's located a block or two from Washington Park, and straddles the Northwest 23rd district and downtown. It's a high-rise with unobstructed views of Portland to the north. She took us to an apartment that approximates the ones that will come available, but are still occupied and couldn't be shown. As we got off the elevator, a man asked us if we were looking at places and said, "It's great living here!" We walked in to the view, and a spectacularly clear rainbow that spanned the city. She took us to the rooftop, 24th floor which is open and appointed with tables, a sink, and barbeque.

Granted, the place she showed us may have given us an unrealistically positive impression, because it was a double studio. To get the accurate feel we had to imagine a wall running through the middle of it and halving the living area we were standing in. It is also on the 21st floor. Maybe the actual flat that's available wouldn't give such a positive impression. Parking in this neighborhood is cheek-by-jowl, though for an extra $100/mo there is outside assigned parking in their lot. For $135 we can park inside the garage.

I can't help but wistfully think about what we could do with our house with a thousand + a month. If nothing else we could be saving a great nest egg for retirement; putting away sufficient money for the boys' college, landscaping our own property...

But I've just spent the past 5 years examining and re-examining the life he and I create together and concluding that it's not acceptable. And it's not going to change.

Separation is the logical outcome of the life we've been living. We haven't been living a life that supports any alternative to separation, that would support us in a partnership of raising our kids, improving our property together, saving for our future. We could still do it, but it would be at odds with the life we're living--a horse's mask on a pig's body. To live true to the life we've been living, we need to follow it's trajectory, which leads to spending over a thousand dollars a month to support a separate residence. That's all there is to it, and I should quit looking back.

Maybe that's what turned Lot's wife into a pillar of salt. Looking back immobilized her.

Fear

In the beginning, there was Accusation.  And Accusation felt so horrific that the Family learned to do whatever it took to avoid It.  Differences in opinion and preference came to resemble Accusation, and were suppressed.  Claiming space for oneself, and setting boundaries are other examples.   A sensitivity developed that created alerts whenever approaching the threshold, even coming near to it.

There were some exceptions.  Adults could feel free to accuse children.

I've written before about people who resented being held accountable for their actions or inaction.  I see this now as the responses of people who felt accused, and lashed out.  I've been surrounded by people like this my entire life, and I've lived my life to appease them.  I've learned to self-censor when I get that tingly anxiety that tells me something I'm about to say will sound accusatory.

There have been times when I'm in conversation and notice that I'm feeling uneasy.  I may be talking about an action I took, or a response to another person.  Suddenly I find myself bent in an orbit where I imagine the other person thinks I handled it 'wrong', or that I'm rationalizing and making excuses for myself.  It's as if suddenly I'm in a glass sphere, where no matter how I move I can't escape the gravity that seems to be bending me into a defensive feeling.

I see now.  I learned to defend myself against accusation by attempting to beat the Other to the punch and accuse myself first.

I realized how it goes:  I was talking with my friend Marti about my son Scott.  I was telling her how he's been disclosing to me details of a summer baseball camp 2 or 3 years ago.  Since these details involve some cruelty they are very difficult to hear and absorb, as is the realization of the courage he showed.  The situation predisposed him to act out aggressively.  He did not.  I was marveling to Marti about his self-control when she said, "He's had problems with anger before, hasn't he?"

I felt very awkward, because suddenly it seemed as if our orientation had shifted, and no matter what I said I'd be confirming something I suddenly wanted to defend against:  that I am a mother who minimizes my son's weaknesses, makes excuses for him...is in denial.  One of those mothers, whose widdle baby can do no wrong.  I didn't even have to say anything.  It's as if this was our context and anything I said would merely confirm it.

I spoke with my counselor about this, because this is by no means an isolated example of suddenly feeling...odd, as if I'm in a universe where I'm in agreement about something that I'm not, really, yet feel anything I say will merely prove that I am.  Sharon said, "Whenever I feel like that, I realize that it's usually because I'm thinking I'm not supposed to be a certain way, or a certain person.  And so I've not given room to that person, or quality inside, and the only way it has to speak is in the voices outside of me, in others."

So who is this person I'm not supposed to be?  Well, I'm not supposed to be a mother who minimizes and denies her son's problems, and makes excuses.  Is it possible I could be that person?  And I realize I could.  Because inside of me there is a person who is afraid for her son, and has great hope for him.  She knows that the qualities he has that set him apart from being 'typical' put him at risk.  The field is tilted toward him becoming a behavior problem, if his needs aren't met.  Something needs to happen to engage him so he can participate meaningfully in activities, like school.  I have such hope that what is going on with him will not tip him into a pattern of how he sees himself and how others see him that will be very difficult to undo.  I have such hope that many of his issues are caused by the pace of the maturation of his nervous system.  I have such hope that he will mature to the point where his nervous system can tolerate some of life's perturbations with resilience.

And I realized:  This is the person that I am accusing.  This hopefulness is what gives a grain of truth to the accusation that I'm in denial.  It was so automatic for me accuse it and fear that it confirmed my worst fears about myself.  And, the grain of truth to the accusation really isn't so awful.  I also can reflect on the fact that I've put in place all of the systems that can support Scott should his issues be beyond what maturity can resolve (or at least protect him while the maturation continues).  So there is evidence that I'm not in denial and making excuses.

So I suppose what I can learn from this is that whenever I feel that odd bending of reality, I should look for the accusation, then look for the grain of truth in the accusation that I have in turn accused.  As a means of defending myself from the accusations of others.

I've had a feeling like a band around my chest for so much of my life.  It makes my breathing shallow, unless I get really conscious of it.  I feel it loosen.  Perhaps this is the knot that's been at my center which finally is beginning to soften, unravel.

Communication breakdown...

From today's diary:

8/24/10

1505

Tuesday

At the dental office with the boys.  Connor being seen; Scott beside me. 

During the day I’ve been ruminating.

I’ve been pissed off the past few days, at the office of Scott’s nurse practitioner.  This is the second month in a row where I’ve notified them that I needed a new prescription for Scott’s medications and kept notifying them as the supply dwindled; didn’t get a call back, don’t know if my messages are getting through, and finally have to call them on it and express my displeasure—also via message.  Though I don’t like having to be this way, it is appropriate for me to be this way.  It is appropriate to be angry when repeated calls and requests are met with silence.  My requests are reasonable, and they are not doing their part; and the consequence is that Scott will have his last medication tomorrow.  This means that there will probably be a bigger gap because oftentimes the pharmacy doesn’t have the medication in stock and we have to wait a couple days for them to get it.  We have an appointment with her on Friday, so I suppose my messages will be fresh in mind.  They’ll probably be being careful with me.  I’ve not said things before when things like this happen; I’ve given the benefit of the doubt.

Communication seems to be an issue today.  Calling dr. M’s office directly after having received nothing back from her schedulers, where I’ve usually had a live body to talk to in the past.  I’ve spoken either with them or left a message each day for the past 4 business days: from  “please let Dr. M know that I’ve not received the prescription yet; I’ve had a bad experience with the prescription not arriving” (both on machine and to live bodies) to:  “Please call me.  The prescription hasn’t arrived yet and I need to make arrangements to pick it up” to “I’m not receiving the response from you that I need and it’s going to cost me” to “What can I do so that I don’t have to go right up to the very end of my supply and then have to scramble to get some?  This is not working and has to change.”  Just the mechanics of calling has been difficult; her numbers stored in my cell, so scrolling through the screens to find her numbers to dial on our home phone since my cell doesn’t work well at our house, to listening through her nearly 3 minute long greeting and ears pricking up when she said something about a cell and wondering if that’s different from the other mobile # I have and checking my cell contact list and sure enough it is so then I hang up before her message has finished to dial that number, only I’m not sure if it’s the correct number because she’d already said it before I realized it might be a different number from what I have so I dial the one I wrote down and get lots of rings with no answer and so while that’s ringing I try to use my cell to call her office # back in hopes that it can be working its way through the message and back to where she gives her cell phone # again, and finally the ringing phone is interrupted by a recording that says the party is unavailable and my cell phone has no bars showing and so I dial her number on our land line again (office) and wait through her message to get her cell # which is a different number and in the process learn that the pager I’d tried dialing yesterday was no longer being used (which is just as well because the pager had never resulted in my getting a call back anyway when I tried it before, and I never knew for sure if I’d done it right or not because it does nothing after I press in my phone number—that is, acknowledges that my “numeric” message will be sent, and if I follow it with a #, which it didn’t instruct me to do--it didn’t instruct me to do anything--which is part of why I’m left wondering if I’ve done it wrong and no message at all has gotten through:  my “numeric page”.) and so that may explain why yesterday’s page wasn’t answered (or, it may mean I did it wrong, and I keep intending to ask Dr. M what is the right way to use it), and so I hang up again and call the cell phone and leave a stern message about this being really difficult, my voice trembling with emotion because I feel like crying, and I’m partly ashamed to be reduced to this kind of anger and in essence criticizing her communication system.  Then I call back her schedulers to inform them that they did not respond to a direct request, a reasonable request, which I am entitled to have responded to in a timely manner.

Jesus.

A Fever of Expectation

I don't know if I mentioned that I belong to a bookreading group; have for over 25 years.  We're a well-oiled machine by now, with a system for choosing our books, the day each month we meet, who facilitates the discussion, and who hosts our gatherings.

I've read some incredible books with this group, books I'd have never read on my own.  And I've had my experience of any given book greatly enhanced in discussion.

This month we're reading The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones.  She also wrote Lost In Translation.  (By the way, years after the movie garnered the acclaim it did, I finally saw it.  I'm afraid I was rather...underwhelmed.  But I don't hold her responsible for that.)

There's a new twist to our August meeting, however.  Mones is a Portland resident.  And, she will take groups that read her book to a   Chinese restaurant in town, and she will do the ordering, and "facilitate" the meal while we discuss her book.

When the possibility for this option was proposed, I'll admit I was a little resistant.  This was when I wasn't working and I had a feeling it might be pretty expensive.

As I read the book, I slap my forehead and wonder what I was thinking when I hesitated.

I've never read descriptions of food like this.  She's awakened--no, she's inspired--longings I never knew existed for flavors and textures I've only read about.  Cravings have opened like holes that only specific shapes can fill.  I wonder if she's up to the challenge of fulfilling them.  I cannot wait for this meal.

This book explores the theme that food is about far more than eating.  It's almost like tantric sex, a gateway through the senses to enlightenment.  In addition to being a path to the divine, it's also a language in which subtleties such as rank and favor are communicated.  There are literary connections slyly conveyed, and a great chef can be the inspiration for great works of art.

So it piques my interest.  I wonder how many other aspects of ourselves might be engaged in this meal.  Should I look for hidden messages, obscure connections?

But what if I'm not so crazy about the story itself?  Can we really have an honest discussion with the author right there?

Problem for me is...the book has some flaws.  They're small, yet erode the fundamentals of my willingness to believe.  We have Maggie, a recent (one year) widow who is a food writer who has to go to China to address a paternity claim against her deceased husband.  Of course it's a shock to her memory of her beloved husband, and her belief in who they had been as a couple.  To confirm the suit's legitimacy she has to take a DNA kit to the child and obtain a sample.  Her editor asks ("since you're going to be there anyway") if she'll take an assignment of profiling a restaurant that will be opening in Beijing, with a young American-Chinese chef who cooks exclusively in the classical Chinese tradition.  In tandem with the restaurant's opening is the publication of a book written by his grandfather, "The Last Chinese Chef."  When Maggie arrives the funding source for the opening has just dried up; his chef 'uncles' who've taught him all he knows through brutal "tough-love" urge him to enter a cooking contest for the Cultural Olympics as a means toward finding more capital.  Maggie pivots to focus her story on the competition.  The time-frames for verification of her departed husband's culpability and the cooking competition roughly coincide.

I guess my quarrel is it's so predictable that the two will fall in love.  And the story just doesn't have much depth--push against its two-dimensionality and it will fall right down.  I like to lean into a story and have it support me.  This one's too flimsy.  Not a bad read, not a great one.

I can forgive this by rationalizing that the romance really isn't the point.  It's merely an artifice to celebrate Chinese cuisine--its history, language, symbolism, cultural significance.  The food writing truly titillates, and it's clear from her acknowledgments page that this is where she put the bulk of her efforts.  Her research includes Chinese cooking/food books hundreds, and thousands of years old.  There's depth to burn behind all writing concerning food.  No problems with substance there.

So what happens if I'm honest about my experience of her story?  Will she order something 'special' for me?

I think I may just keep my mouth shut...except to eat.

(And I'm going to read Lost In Translation, too, to take a second look at her fiction.)

A strange kind of limbo

This process of coming to a decision to end my marriage has proceeded agonizingly slowly.  For me, anyway, since I spent at least 5 years seriously considering it (and arguably as much as 13 years before that getting to the point of seriously considering it).

Before kids, Gary and I together were part of a vigorous and vibrant outdoor community.  We mainly based our pursuits around ski touring into wilderness areas on heavy gear, to then climb and ski the wild slopes.  It was in the context of this community that I met Gary.

It was a fun life, that of adventurer and animal-woman.  It cost me, though.  I had to do a lot of overriding of my inner signals to maintain this life.  I realize now that though I made a lot of friends and our respect/liking was mutual, my main impetus toward this life was to counter being the-person-that-I'm-not-supposed-to-be (timid, agoraphobic, limited, dull).  It was fear of being This Person that motivated me to be That Person.  I held it together for a lot of years, but when I got pregnant at 40, I was really ready to stop pushing myself so hard.

That had a cost too.  I genuinely like the people who were my companions and took great pleasure in their company--intellectual as well as physical.  Most of the members of our particular group aren't even married, and of the ones who are,  only one couple has children.  (Their children are very close in age to mine, but in a twist of irony, our kids don't really get along.)  I knew it was inevitable that parenthood would become a barrier between us--how could it not?  Many of our gatherings were about decompressing after a trip and laughing at the shared mishaps and adventures.  An avenue of connection would inevitably close, once we weren't sharing those trips.

Connor was born.  Two years later we moved to St. Louis.  Life went on in Portland without us.  When we returned in late 2004 I had Scott, and he was only 3 years old and freaked out by the move.  Things weren't well with Gary and I; and I was traumatized and exhausted by the move (and all that had gone before) as well.  To be able to participate with these people, who had continued their pursuits in our absence, and to not hold them back, or even be a hazard, would have required an effort from me I wasn't capable of giving.  I was seriously depressed, yet it felt normal.  All I knew was that I lacked the motivation to do the things that would get me up to speed with my friends, and be a good parent.  I didn't think I was being a good parent as it was.

The past 5 and a half years haven't seen me rise much above the rock bottom I hit when I got here.  I've simply not had it in me to seek out my old friends, not much anyway, and I haven't really enjoyed it when I did.  When I did it was because I was dutiful, but I had to dig way down deep inside of myself.  About all I had energy to do, once the boys were both in school, was to try to take stock of my life and see if it was my fault that Gary and I sucked so badly together.

Here's where things stand right now.  I'm working for a home health agency and have been doing so since late May.  These 4 or 5 weeks into it I'm struggling to learn a complex computer documentation system to deal with a byzantine process of getting paid through medicare.  While in orientation I've been putting in 10+ hours a day, but I'm hoping to be independently operational by next week.  Then I want to cut my hours back to 6 a day and be home a little more with the boys for the summer.  Since Gary is working out of a home office he's around to provide an adult presence for the boys, and I've needed him for this during this period of training.  It's confused some of the boundaries we've laid though.  Gary hasn't yet gotten himself an alternate place to stay.  I'm staying with my friend Marti.  I'm there for 3 nights and then come back to my house for 3.  In theory that's what Gary's supposed to be doing too.  I'd told him until he found a place he could sleep here the nights I'm on my rotation as long as he is away during the boys' waking hours--that is, not come in while they're still up, and be 'gone' (in his basement office) by time they awaken.  This is complicated by summertime and the freedom to stay up later that the boys enjoy. 

I told him tonight that he needs to get serious about finding a place.

We're in the fourth week of the back and forth "rotation" (since Gary's really not 'rotating'.  Maybe this could be called a 'failure to launch'.).  This is so brand new sometimes I'm shocked by it.  Six weeks ago I was an at-home mom and had been for eleven years.  I commute 20 miles on I-5 through brutal traffic going and coming.  During the day when I'm seeing patients this is my primary means from point A to B.  This is an unfamiliar part of the region and I'm having to learn the fundamentals from scratch.  So I'm frequently lost.  I've been driving up to 60 miles in a day seeing patients, in addition to the 40 mile round trip from home.

Sometimes I can't quite believe what I've done.  Perhaps the way I feel is the way a homeowner does who has demolished a dwelling that's too small for her and is looking at the rubble feeling a long ways away from the new, completed home.

Although we've told our immediate families, and our kids have told some of their friends' kids who have told their parents, we haven't talked much about our change in status with the others circle of adults we know.  This includes our climbing friends.  One of them has a birthday today.  There were many years we spent his birthday with him--in the Goat Rocks, on top of Mt. Shasta, in the Indian Heaven wilderness.  Gary was to join a group of them snow camping on the west side of Mt. Hood yesterday because the weather was supposed to be good.  Instead they got blown off the mountain by relentless winds and Gary returned to the house (so much for the rotation).  This afternoon he said one of the guys had called and we were invited to a barbecue at his house tonight.  Gary said he told him about us splitting.  So the circumstances surrounding our going to a party to celebrate a friends' birthday would be people learning for the first time that we are done.

I just didn't feel up for that.  The group has of course evolved with new people that I've met but certainly am not on intimate terms with.  It's not an appropriate setting or gathering for the two of us to be there together.  I called with my regrets.

There's a good chance that if friendships get divided up like so many possessions in a relationship split that I've just ceded those friendships to Gary.  He's kept in better touch with them since we've returned from St. Louis.  Since his is the first face they'll see following the news, it's likely it's the face that will garner the most sympathy.

I do have an answer should anyone ask a "Why" that I feel like answering with more than, "Not available for discussion."  It's succinct:  "We suck.  We suck together."

I do not regret that I am doing this.  Uncomfortable as much of this is, it's less uncomfortable than staying in a marriage that I suck in. 

Missing child

Please post on your blogs.  You never know what might be the link in the chain that brings this boy home where he belongs.

An old debate

Several years ago my FIL sent us this video.  What was remarkable to me was seeing what really happens.  I had no idea that the water inside the balloon retains the overall shape of the balloon, even as it falls.  It amazed me to see the speed with which the "skin", the latex, contracts, leaving the water naked.  I remembered basic high school science when we talked about "adhesion", and "cohesion."  Adhesion is the quality of one substance adhering to a different substance, like water drops on a wall.  Cohesion is the force that holds like elements together, like the water in that balloon.

So what defines an object?  Its "skin", or the turgor of what presses against the skin?  The skin proves structure and shape, but the interior also shapes the skin in pushing against it.  It reminds me of the argument about form vs substance.  It's also a metaphor for the debate about externals vs internals ("Beauty is only skin deep").

I've mused about this off and on over the years, and sometimes find situations in life that exemplify that conflict:  the container, or what it contains?

I know a woman who I thought I was on the way to a deep friendship with.  After a time though, I found myself more reluctant to pick up the phone to call her.  I noticed a sinking inside when there'd be a message from her obligating me to call her back.

So I tried to track down the source of this resistance.  And I realized that I didn't like a feeling I had when I was with her.  As a mother, one of my relief valves is to air my perplexity at my childrens' behavior.  I love to hear the thoughts of most of the mothers I'm friends with, who often have some insight and enrich my perspective.  I realized with this mother, though, that the quality of conversation was different.  She would advise me, tell me what I "needed" to be doing.

I had not been asking for help.  And I sensed it would be very uncomfortable if I was to say so.  Something in her tone, her body language, seemed to send a message that 'no' was not an option.  This is a feeling I've often sensed from my MIL when she'd give gifts or offer favors.  Essentially she was asking us the favor of allowing her to feel generous by accepting whatever she was offering.  Except it wasn't an offer; the feeling was it was mandatory to "accept", and the consequences of not would be her feelings would be hurt and it would be our fault.

I used to wonder if it was something mean-spirited in me that caused me to feel that initial revulsion when she gave us something she wanted us to have (newspaper articles, magazine articles she'd clipped and written notes on).  How could I feel that way about someone who only wanted to share of herself?

I think the key is in the nature of the threat.  The threat is that she will be 'hurt' if we don't do as she asks.  She has an image of herself, a role, as it were, that she needs supporting actors to reinforce.  Therefore, her actions in character require corresponding actions of people around her.  Particularly the ones she's related to.  Furthermore the role requires not letting on that you know your role is to bolster her sense of self esteem.

There was a similar feeling with my friend.  She wanted to help, but her helping required me to be one-who-needs-to-be-helped.  Maybe it's more accurate to say she wanted to be a helper.  She too, has a role for herself that requires complementary responses on the part of Others.  I think in both of these situations, my MIL, and my former (now distanced) friend, there is a sense that not acting accordingly is an existential threat--their very self-concept is threatened.

I have dear friends who don't require a role from me to support an image of themselves.  These are people I can easily say 'no' to, if necessary.  There isn't a feeling of impending catastrophe if I do.  All that is required of me is that I treat them decently and respectfully, and keep my agreements.

I believe it is the life within me that pushes out against my skin, that gives me substance and solidity.  Press against me, and you feel a response, that of my life responding to yours.  This kind of life force can no longer be constrained into a role that is too small for it, in order to protect someone else.

Form gives shape to substance, and substance gives meaning to form.  The relationship between the two is what is essential.