April Showers and May Flowers

Growing up spring always meant a trip to the nursery or garden shop to pick out flowers for the raised beds in my parent’s backyard.  My little sister and I would wander through the rows, navigating bags of mulch or potting soil and make suggestions to my mom about what we thought looked nice. My suggestions were often refuted as I almost always failed to pay attention to the sun/shade requirements.  In the end we’d each pick out a couple of pansies or black eyed susans that we particularly liked and then it was back home to plant.

Even as a child I never enjoyed playing in the dirt.  When it came to digging holes and placing our flowers in the raised beds, I always wanted work gloves and a large trowel.  Heaven help us all if I dug up a worm.  Our pansies and mums always looked so small, almost lonely in the large beds- spread apart and dug in.  But of course as the summer went on, they bloomed and spread out in a colorful sea.

I guess that’s why whenever April and May roll around and the stores begin putting out displays of flowers for planting I get a tiny tingle and start to consider.  Maybe this year I’ll put a couple flower pots out on the deck.  Maybe I’ll grow some herbs. Maybe I’ll wake up tomorrow with the skill of Martha Stewart.  The truth is I have a black thumb.  I have exactly one plant in my house, a bamboo that requires little to no care and only an inch of water.  Even that I’ve had some close calls with.  So I’ll continue to leave the planting to my parents who have moved on from flower gardens to vegetable.  I’ll gratefully enjoy the salsa and fresh asparagus when I visit and I’ll admire the flower displays from afar.

Lessons from Monticello...

Dearest Clara, You won’t find a shortage of wisdom coming from our Founding Fathers.  After all, they broke with every tradition of their time to put together one of the greatest homes for the freedoms that we enjoy.  Is it perfect? Not always, but just because something is an ongoing work in progress, doesn’t it make it irrelevant.  It just makes it something you have to do your part to improve.

But I’ll leave the lessons on democracy for the history books.  When we visited Monticello last week, the home of Thomas Jefferson, I first bristled at the fact that one could see the house only as part of a guided tour.  But in the end it turned out to be so valuable because seeing his home while hearing about who he was as an individual person brought forth its own lessons:

• Time spent in Paris is time well spent: Jefferson went as an Ambassador (well, as a “Minister”) and had some of his most formative ideas when in Paris — whether it was the structure of his house or his meals, he was inspired in so many ways.  Time in Paris isn’t always easy but it is nearly always formative in some way.
• A home is a place of learning too:  The house at Monticello is full of books and portraits and ideas that Jefferson didn’t necessarily agree with but the presence of those items invited discussions and opportunities to teach, especially as the house was full of visitors and children.  Having these items wasn’t about endorsement but about discussion, and about teaching individual different ideas so that they could formulate their own.
• “Meat is a condiment …to the vegetables that constitute my principal diet”: Good health comes from eating good vegetables.  You can eat meat or other indulgences, but when you count the balance of your day, make sure that vegetables and fruits constitute the bulk of what you consume.
• We will always live at the mercy of water:  Many people find themselves at water’s mercy because they live too close.  Jefferson found himself at water’s mercy because he was too far from a natural source for his farm.  So there were years of drought and years of difficulty, and the farm always had concern about water front and center.  I say this, not because you will likely be a farmer (though one never knows), but more to remind you to mindful of the power and importance of water.  It should be respected, and also taken care of – one of life’s luxuries is constant access to clean and reliable water.  People's lives will always depend on it.
• If you don’t invent it, adapt it: Thomas Jefferson wasn’t necessarily a noted inventor — but he was a master of taking things he saw used once and adapting for his own needs.  For example, Jefferson had tweaked the polygraph machine (the original copier) which was designed to enlarge or scale drawings, to produce copies of his letters, so that he always have one for himself.  It’s okay if you didn’t come up with the original idea, the real question is always how will you use what you have to make it your own?
• “Avoid taverns, drinkers, smokers, and idlers and dissipated persons generally… and you will find your path more easy and tranquil.": Jefferson gave this advice to his nephew, as he pursued studies in Philadelphia and it couldn’t be more true today.  Avoid those who attract and promote trouble, especially as you figure out your own path.  The tranquility of mind you’ll gain, you’ll use as you navigate your own way.

All my love,

Mom

shaking things up.

I'm a creature of habit. I like to set up structures for myself and work within them. I’ve never had much trouble shifting my routines when things begin to feel stale, but having at least some kind of repetition from day to day helps me to feel productive and centered.

In the mornings I walk. Sometimes my walks are long and meandering and sometimes they are quick, a way to get somewhere. After my walk, I write. I sip tea and punch out sentences and edit photographs along the way. In the afternoons, if there are errands to run for work, I do those. The precise details of my days vary, but mostly they include traces of something familiar.

Traveling to find flower blossoms in the middle of the week is not part of my usual rhythm.

Last week, on Thursday, I boarded a train to go deeper into Brooklyn. Habits are hard to break and so I rode an accidental stop in the direction of Manhattan before circling back around. I got off at Grand Army Plaza and padded down Flatbush Avenue in search of cherry blossoms. 

Inside the gates of Brooklyn Botanic Garden the trees were at their peak. Festooned in giant puffs of pink, they looked like creatures out of Jim Henson’s studio. I half expected them to break into song.

Below them, whole packs of tiny humans were shaking up their daily routine. 

Teachers and chaperones made attempts at order.

“Line up; you're still in school, you know.”

But under the cherry blossoms on a mid-week morning at the end of April, there's no such thing as the regular routine.

"It smells like heaven here, " said one little girl. And of course I believed her.

A New Perspective

Once, I called my Dad from New York.  It was the middle of December, and I’d been living in the city for three months. “Dad,” I said.  “I woke up this morning feeling so bummed, and I don’t know why.”

“Mmm,” he said.  “SAD.”

“I know.” I nodded into the phone, and stuck my lower lip out further, as if he could see it.  “It is sad.  And I felt stupid cuz it was for no reason, but I thought I could call you because you’re my dad, so you have to care.”

“Well,” my dad said.  “That’s debatable, but I was talking about SAD.  Seasonal Affective Disorder.”

It was my first winter outside of California or Arizona; that is, it was my first winter.  I spent awhile half listening to my father explain Seasonal Affective Disorder, and then awhile Googling it.  Like most ailments I look up online, I had most of the symptoms:  oversleeping?  I never woke up before my alarm.  Social withdrawal?  Who in their right mind would brave the gusting wind and snow to meet up with friends?  Weight gain? Well, wasn’t that just my body’s way of trying to stay warm for winter?

Because it made me feel better to say that I had something, I bought a blue light lamp that sat on my desk.  Supposedly, this was supposed to mimic sun, making my poor, confused brain think I wasn’t spending much of my year in a climate mostly uninhabitable to humans, breathing in the breath of a thousand coworkers, only going outside during the pitch dark mornings and evenings during my commute.  Did my brain think I was on a sunny beach in the Caribbean?  I’m not sure.  Did having the bright blue light shining in my eyes make me feel like I was doing something to help myself?  Let’s go with yes, although not enough for me to forget it at the office when, that summer, I left the company.

Fast forward to the next winter.  This time, I was in London, at a latitude---God forbid---even further north than New York.  In London, I’d peek out my window and find that night had fallen at 3 pm.  In London, the snow was pretty the first day and freezing and slippery for the following forty-eight.  When people asked me if I was enjoying London, I would tell them that the grey cloud layer that lay over the city like a reverse blanket was making it awfully hard to go out and explore. I’m sure I’d like London, I’d say, if I felt like I could see it.

Within the past few weeks, though, something magical has happened.  Tentatively, the sun began showing its face, finally casting away the clouds to blatantly, brightly hog the bright blue sky.  People began spilling out of their houses to fill park benches; pubs began dragging heavy wooden tables onto sidewalks and streets and roofs and alleyways---anywhere, really, which qualifies as outside.  I went to the grocery store the other day and found it closed when I arrived.  “Sorry,” the manager mouthed, pointing to the sign he’d just hung in the window.  “We close at eight.”  Eight?  I looked at the time on my phone, then up at the perfectly sunny day, then down at my phone again.  Even the sun loves London in the summer, it seems; it refuses to pack it in and call it a night.

A new London began to emerge, and with it, a new me.  I was suddenly energized in the morning.  I was eager to strap on my shoes and wander down canals, discovering the new parks that pop up in every corner of this city.  I sat at outdoor cafes and laughed as my hair became dusted with a snow shower of falling flowers from a nearby cherry tree.  I watched the sun set from the top of Primrose hill, and looked past the green grass to the shining city below me, lit amber as the sun slid beyond the horizon at near nine at night, and I thought: so this is London.

SAD?  I don’t know about that.  But suddenly, I’m finding it much easier to be happy.

Information vs. Overload

If I retained one thing from my high school economics class, it was the concept of diminishing marginal utility. Apparently, the pizza analogy really captured my attention. It went something like this (please forgive this former English major if she is totally botching it): You stop into a pizza shop for lunch and buy yourself a slice. You are really hungry, and that slice is incredible. It is worth way more to you than the three dollars you spent on it. You decide to go for a second slice, which is also pretty satisfying and worth the price. By the time you’ve gone back for a third slice, you are feeling pretty neutral about it going down the hatch. After that point, additional slices equal pain, not pleasure, and they will no longer hold value for you (until lunchtime tomorrow).

Sometimes I wonder if this concept could be applied in some way to the problem of information overload. Imagine that the product is information and the cost is the time spent consuming it. I can’t count the number of times I’ve opened a browser in search of information or inspiration, only to find later that I’ve taken in more than I really needed or wanted, or spent too much valuable time, well, “browsing.” Depending on the question I’m trying to answer or how I’m feeling on a given day, there is a certain point at which the amount of information I’m taking in is no longer worth the time I’m spending consuming it. Unfortunately, it can be such a challenge to acknowledge when I’ve hit that point and release myself from the vortex of the screen.

There’s another challenge, which has to do with the intersection of the quality of the information we encounter, the order in which we encounter it, and our energy levels at various points throughout the day. For example, if I come across an incredibly beautiful and inspiring essay—exactly the sort of essay I had been looking for—at the very end of the day, I am probably too tired to really enjoy and process it. On the other hand, if I have spent the first precious hours of the morning flipping through a near-stranger’s endless collection of vacation photos, perhaps the quality of the information consumed was not equal to the nature and quantity of the time spent on it.

Many services and applications are coming up with welcome possibilities to help us manage the fire hose of information. Increasingly powerful search engines bring us closer to finding what we’re really looking for, and various forms of curation and personalization help bring content that may have more value to our attention first. Still, I often feel as though it really comes down to me, my browser, and my will power. Even a genius search engine and a fabulous curator can’t tell me when enough is enough, those extra slices are just giving me a stomach ache, and one more article is only going to tip the scale of my time in the wrong direction. There is enough incredible information in this world to fill lifetimes; it’s up to me to decide how much of it I can really handle in this one.

Mother-in-law May I

Dear Sibyl,

My husband and I met our senior year of college and got married a few years later. We've now been together for almost a decade and I still feel lucky that we happened to meet and that circumstances allowed us to grow as people and build a life together. Our families, both immediate and extended, are an important part of our lives. We hang out with our siblings often and we're happy that our two-year-old daughter can experience the joys of a close family.

Here's the problem: From the earliest days of our relationship, my husband's mother wasn't warm or welcoming to me. Maybe it's her personality; maybe it's that my husband is the oldest of 5 and she didn't have experience with how to treat potential new members of the family; maybe it's that she and I just didn't click because we're incredibly different people with very different approaches to the world. At this point, I'm obviously part of the family, so I don't think she realizes that my perspective is colored by how she treated me for the first few years of our relationship, basically until we were married.

In many important ways my mother-in-law is a generous person who certainly has the best of intentions. I recognize that and I want to focus on it, especially since my daughter adores her. Unfortunately, when we're together for extended periods of time, like family trips, I find myself getting increasingly annoyed and frustrated. We're always going to do things differently. She's always going to correct me. She's always going to insist that she's right about everything. I can't change that, so I just need to accept her and not let all these little things bother me. Any tips?

Thank you,

Throw Grandma From the Train?

Dear Throw Grandma From the Train,

Recently, I went to a panel discussion of faith leaders who are seeking non-violent resolution of the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank.  The theme that kept coming up was forgiveness.  I rose my hand, and asked my burning question, the one I keep returning to in my life, “How do you love people that are hard to love?”  The answer I got was to try to find the humanity in that person, to separate their actions from who they are, someone worthy of love and in need of care.

I think that is what you've been trying to do with your mother-in-law.  You've been trying to see the bigger picture, be the bigger person, just enlarge everything until it all doesn't bother you anymore.  But it's not the big things that get us, with those people that are hard to love.  It's the little, petty, constant shit that wears on us until we just can't take it anymore.

I actually don’t think the key here is accepting your mother-in-law.  It sounds like some of the things she does to you are simply unacceptable.  It is not okay for her to just decide not to like her daughter-in-law, and to correct everything you’re doing in your home.  It’s okay for you to be really frustrated when she does those things to you.

But you’re right that you need to let go of them, after you feel your feelings around them.  Another thing I heard at this discussion is that holding onto resentment is like eating poison, and expecting the other person to die.

So my advice to you is: stop trying to accept your mother-in-law.  Put all of those acceptance efforts towards yourself.

Accept the way you love your husband.  Accept it so much that it can never be questioned, never be swayed even the tiniest bit by your mother-in-law.  Let it live in the swing of your hips and in your thoughts when the two of you are apart.  Love the shit out of the way you love your husband.

Accept the way you run your household.  Accept your habits, even the ones you secretly think are gross.  Accept your home just as it is.  Accept your choices for food and work and daily routine.  Meditate on your imperfections, embracing all the very things about you that she criticizes.

Accept your parenting.  Celebrate your relationship with your daughter.  Let your acceptance for how you are raising your child ooze out of you to the point that your mother-in-law’s comments about it are deflected, as if your love for your daughter is suit of armor, gleaming and true.

I say all of this as a person who has gone toe-to-toe with her own mother-in-law several times over 13 years.  Early on, I realized this woman was never going to understand me.  But she didn’t have to, because her son did.  I realized this woman was never going to agree with me about most of the choices I made.  But she didn’t have to, because I wasn’t asking her permission or even her opinion.  I brazenly made mistakes, apologized when necessary, kept my distance when I needed to, or called her every week when I felt the desire.  I know for a fact that she doesn’t accept me as I am.  But I am certain that she respects me, and even loves me.  And the reason for that is that she knows I’m not waiting for her approval, and I love her even without it.

So, you have to be your own existential detective.  What are you insecure about?  Is your mother-in-law putting her finger in some open wounds?  Then do more work in those areas, until you can shine out your acceptance of yourself so boldly that she’s blinded by it.

And for the rest, for the hurts she’s inflicted on you in the past, and the ones that she’s sure to incur in the future, forgiveness is the only sane option.  Not just acceptance, but deep, life-altering forgiveness, that does indeed bring your mother-in-law’s humanity to the fore so her actions lose their sting.

The way to love people that are hard to love, like so many mother-in-laws, might just be to love yourself harder.

Love,

Sibyl

Submit your own quandary to Sibyl here.

Finding My Story Again

By Shelley Abreu Last year, as my daughter’s official recovery period from a bone marrow transplant drew to a close, I stopped writing. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my creative withdrawal happened during the same month she stopped all of her medication.

For the previous two years, we followed a treatment protocol designed to cure her of cancer. This medical plan of attack was my armor. Even when things went wrong there was always a back-up plan. In fact, when the worst happened and her cancer relapsed during treatment, the doctors simply drafted a new protocol. Of course, it wasn’t really simple. She would need a risky stem cell transplant. It was done with a lot of deliberation, care and thought. But I felt like a warrior. No matter what the test, I had marching orders.

Whenever I felt like I was slipping into a worm hole of grief, I merely had to focus on what was next---what action would move us one step closer to her cure. I knew it was dangerous. Her protocol didn’t guarantee us anything. Still, I felt protected by the task of executing each phase of her plan. There was always something on the horizon to focus on. And with my writing, there was always something positive to report. Yes, I could write about my fear and worries, but there was always tangible hope.

This past October, after ten months of post-transplant isolation, my daughter took her last dose of cancer related medicine. It was a day of celebration. I hung a banner, and we made a special dinner. I felt elated.

Then there was nothing left to do. Suddenly, the worm hole widened its mouth---jaw chomping like a wild beast. What now, it taunted?

When I sat to write, I found myself reflecting on the past or contemplating the future. But I couldn’t bear either. I was done reliving everything we had endured. And the future carried the burden of “what-if.” All we could do was wait and see and pray that the cancer didn’t return. The battle part of the story was over. And all our friends and family were declaring victory.

“You must feel so happy,” or “you must be so relieved it’s over,” people would say. It felt like they wanted me to write the final chapter. Of course, I felt those things in part. But I’m not ready to wave the flag. I keep asking myself when will that happen? When will I feel like we’ve won? Cancer will snarl at me for the rest of my life. Sometimes I feel like I’m crouching behind a rock in a flat open field waiting for the enemy to return.

What was the point of writing anymore? Why did the story still matter if I couldn’t sum it up with positive inspiration? How many ways could I write about the endless tunnel of fear that loomed around each corner of my mind. I guess the act of not writing was my new protection, my new armor, my way of not facing the unknown.

The next few months, I began to feel depressed. Disconnected from life. Strangely, even though my daughter was doing better than ever, I felt half alive. I see now by denying by fear, and my story, I was holing up in my own emotional bunker.

Last month, our family took a spur of the moment trip to the Caribbean. It was our first vacation that required a plane ride in three years. The night before our departure, I nervously threw flip-flops and bathing suits into our luggage. I was excited but also scared. It felt perilous. We had spent the last year living safely in our home, tucked away from people and their potentially life-threatening germs. Now we were free.

When we made it to our destination, I watched my kids splash around in the pool, my daughter full of life and energy. I felt the worm hole contracting just a little bit. The warm wind hushed the snarling sound in my mind. I realized it wasn’t time to just wait and see. It was time to start living again.

When we returned home, and the kids were back in school, I opened my laptop and started to write. Why? Because I realize my story does matter.

I might not always have a happy feel-good chapter to write. But who does, really? Life isn’t about outcomes. It’s about the experience of it: the beautiful, the absurd, and the horrific. Stories teach us about living, and therefore the act of writing does too. Writing helps us shed our protective armor. It makes us vulnerable. And it leads us back to ourselves---when we are lost, we find in our words the story that connects us to the fullness of our life.

Recalibrating

I am completely fascinated by the relationships I’ve witnessed between drivers and their GPS systems. I used to assume that a GPS was simply a disembodied robo-voice that warns you when it’s time to make a turn. Apparently for some, however, a GPS is more like a bossy friend—someone you talk to, argue with, and refer to by name in casual conversation. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve interrupted a discussion to ask, “Who’s Karen?” only to have everyone present refer me to the contraption on the dashboard. Go figure. In case you haven’t guessed, I am a relatively new driver and do not yet own one of these curious devices, so my methods for finding my way from Point A to Point B tend to be rather unconventional. For instance, it would not be out of the ordinary for me to call up my sister in Pennsylvania and ask her where I am as I repeatedly circle the same block somewhere in metro Atlanta. Although I’m sure you might consider this method to be entirely ineffective, it happens to be very calming. After a few minutes on the phone with a familiar voice, I have regained my hope and confidence and am much better equipped to face the task of figuring out where I am in relation to where I want to be. It works (almost) every time.

Earlier this week, I had to make a drive of about fifty miles to a place I’d never been. I was determined to complete this journey without A) phoning a friend, or B) taking ten hours to do it. I decided to bolster my chances of success by setting up two foolproof navigational systems.

By this, I mean that I taped a series of Post-It notes to the dashboard with instructions for both legs of the journey. I also set up the Google Maps app on my phone with its rather unpredictable voice guidance. I am proud to say that I made it to my destination without a hitch. The return trip, however, was another story altogether.

Only a few minutes in, I noticed my surroundings had nothing to do with anything on any of my Post-It notes. As soon as I realized I was lost, I silenced the Beyoncé album that had been keeping me company and pulled into a deserted church parking lot. I took a few deep breaths and considered my options. I could try to retrace my path and start over, in hopes of getting back on track with my notes. Or, I could start from where I was already and try to find a different route altogether.

Before I knew it, an ironic voice with an Australian accent popped into my head and sighed, “Recalibrating...”

I chose the latter option, and in the end, discovered a simpler route home than I’d originally planned.

When I finished graduate school and moved here nearly a year ago, I kept wishing I had a compass for my life. If only I knew which direction I was headed, I thought, it would be much easier to plan my course. Lately, though, I’ve been wishing more for a work/life GPS (and a real one too, for that matter). Rather than a fixed point on the horizon that I’m working toward, I wish for a guiding voice to argue with about my journey, a system that recalibrates for wrong turns, and even the option to change my destination altogether.

It seems, as I discovered on my recent journey, that my internal GPS is already built in, complete with a colorful Australian accent. All I have to do is turn down the radio, from time to time, and listen.

XXXV. Provence

Bridget’s host family has one of those beautiful provençal country houses that you see on the covers of Peter Mayle books. From Agnès’ apartment, it's a 45-minute uphill walk to get to it, which is one of the reasons I love to visit. On the way I pass Cézanne’s old painting studio, and once I crest the final hill, I am rewarded with a view of the Mont Sainte-Victoire over the olive groves. It’s not something I see every day.

Élodie, Bridget’s host mother, is stick-thin, blond, and tan. She knows that Agnès and I don't get along, so she frequently invites me over to their house for Sunday lunches. She smokes constantly, comme un pompier. Like a firefighter. My memories of Élodie are of sweet smoke wafting out of the kitchen, her whisking away at something that she probably won’t each much of, an apron tied tightly around her small waist.

Every time I arrive at their house, out of breath and slightly sweaty but beaming, Élodie and Isabelle, her equally blond and beautiful daughter, seem just as baffled as the last time I walked through the front door. You walked all the way here? Uphill? We can come pick you up!

No, thank you, I say, feeling like I’m repeating my lines in a scene. I’d rather walk. I like being outside. They shake their heads and laugh at how American I am.

Before lunch starts, Isabelle sneaks away to smoke cigarettes out of Élodie’s sight. She is only 15 years old and thin like her mother, but obsessed with losing kilos. The Sainte-Victoire winks at her where she is hiding behind the chimney, but she pays it no attention. Flicking ash onto the rosemary bushes growing around her, Isabelle checks her phone, stubs out her cigarette, and heads back inside to push food around her plate. 

Do My Friends Even Like Me?

Dear Sibyl,

I seem to have a penchant for attracting friends who are very ambivalent about me.  Or friendship.  I am not sure, but they are so difficult to be friends with, because they pursue me mightily, but then reschedule our date several times, and say any number of passive aggressive things to me when we finally do get together.  

In between hangouts, I get a lot of "I miss you so much, I really want to invest in our friendship more, you are so amazing" from them.  It's really confusing, and if this were a love relationship, I would obviously just break up with them.  Since it is a friendship, I am so uncomfortable telling them the truth—which is that they are sending me wildly mixed messages and at this point the friendship is not worth all the work it requires.  How do I deal with this friendly mind-fuck?

With Thanks,

Baffled Buddy

Dear BB,

Ambivalence is one of the hardest emotions to hold for another person.  When folks are straight up angry, sad, or in love, even when it's difficult to relate, you can just let them express themselves and move on.  But ambivalence, especially when it is directed at you, leaves a confusing sheen on every interaction, which can linger throughout a relationship.  It is easier when the person knows they are ambivalent, but awareness is rare.  Instead, you get something akin to manipulation, as the person is trying to get you to help them sort through their ambivalence with your reaction.

My advice is to get out of there.  Since it sounds like many of your friends are acting this way, that may leave you a little lonely, but being alone is better than being beset by conflicting emotions that belong to other people.  And here's the thing about ambivalence—whoever is feeling it absolutely has to work it out on their own.  No one can take them by the hand and solve their problem.  So it's best to just leave them to it.

You also seem to be wondering, "Why does this keep happening to me?"  Well, consider the fact that you could be a polarizing person, someone who provokes strong reactions in people.  If that is the case, if you are a bold figure who people either love or love to hate, then folks with ambivalence issues are naturally drawn to you, because they intuit you will help them work through their conflicting feelings just by being yourself.  In fact, by confronting them, drawing their consciousness to their own ambivalence, you would be affixing a target right to your chest for all of their wavering arrows.

Don't fall for it.  Not only is it pretty much impossible for you to solve this problem for them, but your self-worth could get all tied up in confusing relationships.  So, put up kind but firm boundaries with these friends, and don't let flattery sway you.  If they are colleagues, simply see them at work, and enjoy the time you have with them there, but politely rebuff their invitations.  Tell them you are busy, and it is true—you are busy being fabulous, trying to attract new friendships, ones in which you can truly be yourself, rather than some kind of magnet they can attach to or repel themselves from.

Love,

Sibyl

Submit your own quandary to Sibyl here.

Things Remembered Over Ragu Sauce

By Eliza Deacon I’m cooking dinner on the stove, a 3 hr slow-cook lamb ragu with a bottle of good Chilean Merlot thrown in to help it along. The kitchen is dimly lit, soft sounds on the radio, I have a glass of wine on the surface next to me. The house is surprisingly quiet; my nephews asleep, tucked up in the room that was once mine, its eaves still painted with clouds.

I’m in my father’s house in England, the house I grew up in. A house that still carries, in its very fibres, all the memories both good and bad: a happy childhood, sunlit days like old 70s images, a little faded around the edges now but still remembered, and the loss that shaped all of our lives.

I flit through memories as I stand here barefoot on the wooden floor. As I stir the pot, I can see my mother sitting at the kitchen table in front of a stand-up mirror. She deftly applies her make-up, her “modeling face”, before she leaves to catch the train to London. I watch her transform, big eyelashes that make her eyes appear huge, a perfect mouth that kisses me before she goes, her scent---Rain Flower---lingers on after she has left.

She comes home and cooks us crispy pancakes for supper, the ones with the cheese filling which we love. Kate and I are both bad eaters, fidgety and easily distracted, so Mum leaves out what she calls our “bird table”. We come and go, furtively for whatever reasons at the time; she pretends not to watch as slowly the plate empties.

She and Dad gently coaxed us through our childhood. Soft, sweet memories: a handsome father, a beautiful mother, both slightly unusual in their own ways, a little different from other people’s parents and I will always wish I had appreciated it more at the time. Dad with his wealth of stories and personas: depending on his mood he could either be a ballet dancer to rival Nureyev, a brain surgeon, a Great White Hunter in Africa (he still tells people he ‘taught me everything I know’), a Russian count, an Arabian sheikh, a BBC language advisor, hired to help radio announcers properly pronounce world leader’s names such as Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Ndabaningi Sithole. Funny, I still remember all that as clear as day. He loved that people would often believe him, but Kate and I were wise, we would have him hold his left-hand little finger up in the air if he was telling the truth; needless to say we were never really that sure.

When Kate and I were new babies, and we lived next to London’s Regent Park, he used to take us there every day in the big old-fashioned double pram. “Meet my sons Tom and Jerry” he would say, or sometimes we were “Knightsbridge and Kensington”, Knight and Ken for short. Mum would just shake her head and raise her eyebrows with good humour.

I remember the parties they gave where my sister and I would sit at the top of the stairs listening to the strains of Lester Lanin at the Tiffany Ball whilst the guests mingled below us. Trips to the sea where we ate hot sausage sandwiches and walked for hours through “elephants graveyards”, the rock pools exposed when the tide went out. I remember we were always wrapped up in many layers of clothing, or perhaps we never went there in the summer, although I’m not sure that would have made any difference knowing the vagaries of British weather.

As children we were given a free rein, far more than is considered common sense now. But this was the 70s when playing in the woods near our house never raised even a thought of the horrors that it does now. As a teenager I used to cycle for an hour each morning, leaving the house pre-dawn to go and ride my horse, a flighty thoroughbred, bareback through the fields; no hat, no saddle, no cares in the world.

All this I remember clearly, like I’ve only just walked backwards a few steps to find it. This house that is the caretaker of all our memories and carries them physically and soulfully: pictures on the walls, Mum’s modelling finery in the closet, cloudscapes on the wall. In this evening light, it all blurs, then slides into sharp focus then blurs again. Beautiful, soothing, healing. I know I’m home.

This piece was originally published here and is being republished with the author's permission.

New Habits

I’m not very good at forming new habits.  Certainly not good ones.  I talk game and make plans: Eating Better, Waking up Earlier, Writing More, etc. But then I hit snooze, let the spinach go bad, and my notebooks lay empty. That last step of summoning up will power and pushing myself to do the thing, create the habit, that’s where I fall flat. I figured I was just bad at it.  I lack will power.  Some people can pick up languages with ease, some can see patterns in chaos, some people have will power, and some of us don’t.  But then I started a new book.  Maybe you’ve heard of it: The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.  Within in 50 pages I was reconsidering my assumptions.  Perhaps I could learn to create habits and perhaps I just needed to start with one.  Just one habit.

It seems like a simple idea, obvious even, to choose one habit. But as we all know, sometimes it’s the most obvious ideas that elude us. I couldn’t think of a habit I wanted to form without thinking of five. The five would lead to five more and so on until I was overwhelmed and threw the whole metaphorical list out of the metaphorical window.

This time, I’m doing things differently.  Instead of looking at a laundry list of new habits I should create, I decided to choose one thing; one action I wanted to make into a habit.  I ran through my options and put off the decision until a co-worker told me about Mindful in May.

I’ve been toying with meditation sporadically for about six months.  I believe strongly that moving from occasional to daily meditations will have profound positive effects for me---physically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, etc. But as with the rest of my list, I had yet to make the jump from ‘want to’ to ‘done’.  By participating in Mindful in May I will not only (hopefully) develop a habit I’m keen to lock down, but I can also (hopefully) begin to train my psyche to form new positive habits.  Just like an athlete has to practice to throw a ball just right, I will exercise my brain and try to create new muscle memories and patterns of behavior.  At least that’s the plan.

The Reconstructionists

We're thrilled today to share an interview with Lisa Congdon about her project The Reconstructionists. To say we're big fans would be an understatement. Her work is consistently gorgeous, and this project is no exception.  Every Monday, The Reconstructionists showcases a woman who made history or helped shape our world (Maria Popova does the writing, and Lisa does the illustrations). The illustrations, along with the short piece of writing, bring the featured woman's work, life, and passions to light, and leave us considering how we might impact our world. You can find more of Lisa's work here, and read about her life, inspiration, and side projects on her blog.

Hi Lisa! Can you tell us a bit about how and why this project came to be? 

I’ve had this idea for a couple of years that I wanted to do some kind of project or book that celebrated women who I admire or who have been influential in my life. Maria and I had met about a year ago, and I began reading her blog. I came to quickly learn that she and I were drawn to similar female artists, designers, scientists, writers and thinkers. Last year, as if by kismet, Maria asked me to hand letter some of Anais Nin’s quotes to feature on Brain Pickings. That initial project brought us together for the first time as collaborators. I love Maria’s writing style and her commitment to generating interesting, thought-provoking content. So this past summer I approached her about collaborating on this larger project together.

So far, you've profiled a wide range of women. How do you and Maria choose your subjects? 

Maria and I have been compiling a list since August. We add the names of women who have or given us hope or whose contributions have left us in awe. That makes it subjective. We don’t intend for this to be inclusive of all noteworthy women or even the “Top 52.” That would be virtually impossible to choose! The women we are featuring are women who are special to us, who have influenced our touched us. So in that way it’s a very personal project for Maria and me. We won’t even be able to include all the women we’d like to include, but we will get to celebrate many of them this year through the project. And maybe expose people to women they might not have known about otherwise.

People are notoriously hard to capture on paper. Is there a point in your illustrative process when you feel like you've "gotten" your subject? Is it in the eyes? The posture? Something else? 

Yes, and let me tell you, the more alive (or recently alive) and well known the person is (at least by their face), the harder it is to capture them perfectly! I really struggled with both Maya Angelou and Gloria Steinem for that reason. It is in the eyes and the mouth---and I always ask my partner: "who is this?" And if it's someone she should know and doesn't recognize, I worry! Sometimes I am not even sure I got it right, but at some point you just have to say "good enough" and be done.

Have there been any memorable responses to this project? 

The day we launched, Chelsea Clinton tweeted about it! So that was cool.

The Reconstructionists comes about at a time when feminism and womanhood are hot topics. How do you think your project fits in to the larger discussion of women's rights and place within society?

I don't know that we are necessarily attempting in any intentional way to be part of that larger discussion. Except that all of the people we are featuring are women, which I suppose is a statement in and of itself. As Maria wrote in her introduction to the project on Brain Pickings, we want to celebrate women we admire without pigeonholing the project into a stereotypical feminist corner and/or only engaging people who are already interested in women's history or women's issues or politics. It is true that we may be contributing to the conversation through highlighting the contributions of the women we feature. Most of the women we feature have contributed enormously to art or culture or science despite hardship of some kind. In some cases that hardship was sexism, and other cases it was poverty or homophobia or racism or disability, or a combination.

How do you think these passion projects affect your creativity in your other pursuits? 

I could not work as an illustrator (wherein I mostly illustrate other people's ideas, stories, etc) without personal projects. I do at least one personal project every year and have for several years. Don't get me wrong. I love what I do as an illustrator and pattern designer. I love my clients and the fact that I can draw and paint for other people for a living. But I get all my creative energy from personal work and pursuing personal passions through my art. That is what gets me out of bed in the morning. The Recontructionists is something I really look forward to working on every week.

What's next? 

There is a lot of interest in the world about making The Reconstructionist into a book. We want to make sure if we do that we are thoughtful about how we do it and with whom we partner. We know that if a print version is meant to be, just the right partnership will come our way. For  now we are just enjoying the online experience and response.

Meet the Local: Lisbon, Portugal

Meet the Local is a series designed to uncover the differences (and similarities) in how we think and live in different parts of the world.  Over the upcoming months, I’ll ask locals from places all over the world the same set of getting-to-know-you questions.  This week, we meet Jose, a former teacher who is making a new living in tourism after being laid off during the economic crisis.  

What do you like about the place you live?

I don’t really know how to explain…I just feel like it’s here, where I belong.  I lived in Spain for a few months, I lived in Romania for a few months, but I always feel the need to come back home.  I feel I have my family here, and I have everything here.  I really feel at home here.

What don’t you like so much?

The politicians.  Because they do all of this to our country.  The economic situation of Portugal, I think it’s their fault.  Because we work, we do all of the things we have to do, and they ruin everything.  I think this is very common in Europe, the politics are each time less credible, so the people don’t really trust anymore in politicians.  In Portugal, 40% of people don’t vote.  So the people who do vote don’t really represent anything, and the politicians can do whatever they want, because the people don’t care.

What do you normally eat for breakfast?

Three slices of bread with butter and chorizo.  Coffee with milk.

What do you do for a living?  How important is your job to your sense of self?

I was a teacher, teaching sports.  I really like to work with children.  It was nice, I was doing something different than other people, because I used to work in summer camps too so I was taking the way of teaching in summer camps inside the school.  So I was not teaching sports, I was teaching games, and I was trying to teach values with those games.  First I would read the story, then I would do a game, and then I would relate the game with the story and real life.  I went to a small village to teach, but I was not from there, so when the crisis started, the people who don’t have friends are the first to leave.  So they asked me to leave.  Now, I do tourism, I run a walking tour company.  I really like it, because I can stay in Lisbon where I like to live.  I meet a lot of people, so even though my friends are leaving to get jobs in other countries, I can make new friends.  Of course, it’s not the same thing, but it’s okay.

What do you do for fun?

I go out at night, I go to the cinema.  I like to climb, but I don’t climb anymore, since I started the tours.  Because most of my friends that climb, they do normal jobs so we don’t have the same schedule.  I also like to run with my father, my father and I run together.  And travel.

How often do you see your family?  Tell me what you did the last time you saw them.

I live with my father.  I see my mother one or two times a week, just to talk with her.  I see my sister when I see my mother – they don’t live together, but she’s always there.  My grandmother also lives with us.

What’s your biggest dream for your life?

Right now, I don’t have many dreams.  I just want to make sure the situation doesn’t get worse, or at least the tours keep running as they are now so I can at least have a stable life.  Some of my friends, they are really bad in their lives.  They were married and have children but are living back at home with their parents, or they have moved to other countries and don’t really like their jobs or the conditions that they live in and I don’t want that to happen to me.   So I don’t have a dream, I just don’t want to have a nightmare. But if I had a dream, I would want a small house with a small garden where I could sit in the plants.

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?  Why?

Here.  When I was younger I always wanted a house with wheels---a mobile home---so I could travel, but I think if I had that now, I would always come here.

What are you most proud of?

Now, it’s the tours.  When I came on and my friend was running them, they were almost dead.  Nobody would trust them---if you asked someone about our tours, people would say, “don’t go!  It’s terrible!”  And now we’re the sixth most popular thing to do in Lisbon on TripAdvisor, and I’m really proud of that.

How happy would you say you are?  Why?

From 0 – 10, I would be a 6.  I think everything is going well in my life, but I would like to have more friends, and a girlfriend.  My friends left---but the girlfriend, well, I’m a bit shy.

Check out previous answers from a local in Sarajevo, and a local in London.  Want to participate in Meet the Local or know someone who does?  Email liz@thingsthatmakeus.com for more details.

Healing: A Sense of Community

A new sense of community emerged this week in Boston. Last Monday we watched in fear as tragedy marred one of the most beautiful, treasured days of the year in our city. We held on through an anxiety-ridden week, hugging our friends a bit tighter and smiling warmly at strangers. Friday night closed with the end of a day-long manhunt and city-wide lock down. The city breathed a collective sigh as the suspect was caught. People ventured out into their neighborhoods, finally turning off the news.

This week, signs of strength are everywhere. Café signs show love for the city scribbled in chalk hearts, restaurants offered free meals to law enforcement personnel, and Syrians sent a message love through a painted sign---that was shared thousands and thousands of times on Facebook. The spirit of this city is still here, yet the questions of mourning and healing are only beginning to emerge:

As a community, how do we grieve? How do we heal?

Acts of violence, so close to our home affect us. The effect may be new or it may trigger old emotions. In the past week, I have watched those around me struggle with emotions spanning from indifference to shock to deep sadness. I urged my immediate community to be compassionate with the experience and allow yourself to be affected:

It is okay if you feel off this week. It is okay that you can’t concentrate or don’t want to sit in the library, even though you have so much to do. It is okay if you feel grief, or emotions you can’t identify, even though you don’t know anyone who was physically hurt or weren’t even at the event. It is also okay if you don’t feel anything. It is okay if this tragedy reminds you of other losses in your life. It is okay to miss people or moments that have nothing [on the surface] to do with what happened on Monday.

In consideration of healing, I return to stories. The world of grief and healing is full of stories. Stories that make our hearts ache and bring tears to our eyes. Stories that touch us deeply, resonating with our experiences, bring our losses closer to the surface, and in their own way, heal us. My own story of the Boston Marathon encapsulates one of my best memories: the spring, the sheer accomplishment of running 26.2 miles, and, which I did not know at the time, my last day with my father. In honor of that experience and the events of the week, this past Tuesday, I put on my running shoes and Red Sox shirt, and headed out the door into the spring air. What I needed to do was run, remember that joyful day, and spend time feeling through the grief that bubbled up out of the surface in the face of new tragedy.

Feeling, hurting, and all the other associated emotions are signs of life, signs of caring for one’s community. Be compassionate with yourself in this process. Do what feels right for you. Heal through allowing yourself to engage with the process. This is our first step as individuals that make up a truly wonderful community. As a community, we can soak in the love pouring from all corners of the world. And, within our responsibility to love these “corners” back, as individuals did by holding up a sign sending love back to Syria in Davis Square, we can reflect this sense of healing and hope.

The city I envision heals fear through love and community.

Fifty Shades of Yay

Dear Sibyl,

I have a wonderful husband of 10 years and we have a good sex life.  Often, I need a little help to get me in the mood, my choice is romance novels.  Is this normal?  Should my husband take offense?  He's never complained, but I just hope I'm not hurting his feelings.

Thank You,

Romance Reader

Dear Romance Reader,

You're in good company.  The Romance novel is the bestselling fiction genre, ever.  According to Romance Writers of America's 2011 Romance Book Consumer survey, slightly more than half of survey respondents live with a spouse or significant other.  Some studies say that women who read romance novels have sex twice as often as those who don't.  Others say that a high level of romance reading is correlated with happy monogamous relationships.  So, to answer your initial question, your penchant for a little erotica fantasy reading is not only normal, it may be even helping your marriage.

The fact that you are worried about your reading habits, despite the fact that you are one of the ladies having hot married sex after reading a chapter of your romance novel of choice, makes me think you have some shame around this predilection.  Well, head on over to smartbitchestrashybooks.com, where Sarah Wendell and Carly Tan, authors of Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels, facilitate a thriving online community of fellow romance readers.  They’ll help you realize you’re not alone, and give you some great suggestions for new reads.

As for your second question, I have no idea if your husband’s feelings are hurt by your romance reading.  For that, you’ll have to ask him!  And I highly suggest that you do.  A conversation about how he feels about the paperbacks stacked on your nightstand could lead to a juicy discussion of the fantasies that most intrigue you.  You may find yourself living out a few of them, with your very own leading man!

My hope is that he does not feel threatened by your fantasies, and the fact that they are spurred by stories in romance novels, as it belies your thriving intellect and playful libido.  He should feel glad to have a partner that is inventive in her interest in all things sexual.

However, if he is threatened by it, it’s best the two of you are honest about those feelings, in order to work through them.  Perhaps you could spend a night reading him some of your favorite passages?  Next thing you know, he may be swapping books with you!  A whole world could open up for the two of you.  I hope it is one with lots of lace and fur-lined handcuffs.

Love,

Sibyl

Submit your own quandary to Sibyl here.

A Family Affair

Everybody has a different concept of family.  I was reminded of this after a recent trip to California where virtually our entire brood gathered to spend a long weekend.  As it turns out, the weekend was certainly longer for some of us than for others.  Even within the same core family unit, you will find members with vastly wide-ranging notions of connectedness as well as varying levels of tolerance for intimacy.  For my part, I find myself growing wistful for a time gone by, when we flew from all parts to be together for significant occasions with greater regularity.  In my admittedly rose-hued memories, we all managed to get to the beach for sunset and evenings ended congregated around the fire. What I find increasingly fascinating about being a part of a multi-generational family is how the gears are constantly shifting.  There are historical alliances that change in response to marriages and babies.  There also seem to be dynamics that are established so early and become so entrenched that no amount of maturity, softening of the years or costly therapy can deconstruct them.  There is great universality in the fact that we essentially become our adolescent selves in the presence of our parents and siblings.

The inner teenager is not always the most flattering version of yourself…mine engages in a confusing combination of acting out (often comically) and subverting feelings.  Still and all, my default position tends to be mediator and salve.   I just want everyone to get along and everything to be OK and everyone to love each other.  LIKE RIGHT NOW.  My official roles, then (according to the therapeutic community), fall into two categories: “Caretaker”, one who feels great responsibility for the emotional life of the family, and “Mascot”,one who uses comedy to distract from uncomfortable or dysfunctional situations.

There are times when these formative roles serve me well.  I have a highly attuned sense of empathy and I am occasionally entertaining at a party.  On the flip side, I can have poor boundaries and deny very real wounds.  Clinically speaking, the Caretaker is identified as being at higher risk for depression than other family members (it can be tough trying to make everyone happy) while the Mascot is often the person with the most healthy coping.  So, you see, it could really go either way for me.

Of course, now that I am a self-possessed adult, I could make different choices.  There are many people close to me who have no desire to endure the morass of feelings involved in dealing with their families.  It is often the subject of debate with dear friends---even with my husband---the ultimate costs and benefits of being an active member of an extended family.  I always land in the camp of “YES,” it is worth it.  What else is there?  What are the other options?  The other options seem to be cut-offs and estrangements.  At this age, with this amount of history, it is a take it all or leave it all kind of proposition.  While some maneuvering is possible within the relatively fixed role each of us occupies within a family, in due course the choice is to participate or not and to do so either kicking and screaming or enjoying the ride.

I have been accused of glossing over elements of the past when it comes to my family.  My ballast is a place where I consider my childhood happy---even the teenage years---and my family close.  I have unique touchstones with each member, and some relationships are based primarily in the past and while others continue to develop over time.  We have borne and inflicted our share of pain, but it generally pales in comparison to the real suffering of families where there is true neglect, abuse or impairment.  We have been largely spared of tragedy and our close calls have functioned to knit us together.  While I support the people I know who have separated from their clan, I feel crushingly and beautifully stuck with mine.  In fact, I am already dreaming up locales for next year’s reunion.  Just don’t tell my husband.

An Adopted Dad

By Cindy WaiteRead the first piece in Cindy's series here. 

I never planned out my wedding. I didn’t imagine the decorations, or the finger foods, or even my dress. I told my family, defiantly, that I’d wear jeans and a sweatshirt on my wedding day because, “Ew, dresses.” I made the sour milk face you’re envisioning. Then I did back flips on my mom’s bed, made mud cakes in the backyard, and fell asleep reading, a flashlight hidden under my covers. I was maybe a strange child.

I always said I wanted a chocolate cake on my wedding day.

“No, honey, that’s what the groom has. The bride’s cake is white,” My mom impatiently told me, again. I made my sour milk face so contorted I might have passed out from disgust.

I can see her now, my Mom, at our scratched wooden kitchen table, the plastic covering pulling over the edge, the kitchen garbage pail at her feet, a Russet potato in one hand and a peeler in the other. She would have looked up at me without missing a beat with the potato.

“Why can’t I have a chocolate cake, too? Who said only boys can have them? I’m going to have a chocolate cake.”

It made all the women around me laugh whenever I said things about my chocolate cake and jeans wedding, so untraditional was I, so my cake grew in brown, sugary divinity each time the conversation arose.

“It’ll be a BIG chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, covered in M&Ms, with chocolate sprinkles on top of that.”

Then I bested myself, “It’ll be a three layer chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, covered in M&Ms and sprinkles on top.”

I didn’t spend my young years daydreaming about my nuptials, but I did spend a lot of time wondering who would walk me down the aisle.

I call Rob, my mom’s best friend, “Adopted Dad.” He spoils me. He got me my first perfume, “Romance” by Ralph Lauren, for my birthday because I smelled it in a magazine and liked it. I liked the name as much as the scent.

I’m moderately more graceful than a baby giraffe, only slightly lighter on my feet than Shrek. I smelled Ralph Lauren’s newest scent when I peeled back the bulky page in Seventeen, and I saw myself transform from my not-quite-or-at-all-grown-into-myself body to a romantic heroine starring in my own meet-cute love story. I’d be sophisticated. I’d be urbane, a word so sophisticated, saying it put me in a new class.

Adopted Dad is divorced. He’ll be happily remarried in a few years, when I’m 17 or 18. He’ll stop being Adopted Dad then, but I’ll hold on to the title for keepsakes. Divorced Dad can be a Dad to me; he has room and time in his life to adopt me into it.

Adopted Dad lets me drive. He’s okay with me behind the wheel, guiding me from the passenger seat. He doesn’t grip the door handle and dashboard until his knuckles turn white---that’s Mom’s job, and she should get a pay raise she’s so excellent at it.

I’m driving out to Six Flags with Adopted Dad and his 10-year-old son, my babysitting charge. Adopted Dad took the day off, and he handed me the keys. I didn’t know my palms could produce sweat so fast, but those keys felt like they were dipped in oil they were so slippery. I drove through Newnan straight on to 85 North, headed for Atlanta.

I’m on the interstate, driving through Spaghetti Junction---six, eight, fifteen lanes twisted like noodles, my heart racing with nerves in the snaking, speeding traffic. This is my opportunity to prove my maturity.

I’m 16, but I swear it’s more like 20-something because that’s what everyone says. I’ve grown up in single parent years---that’s 1.5 for every 1 normal kid year. I sort of get how dogs feel, passing everyone by.

Rob tells me, “It’s okay to speed,” as matter-of-factly as though he’d said, “There are cars on the road right now.” I stare at him out of the corner of my eye, my peripheral vision stretched as I also try to keep both eyes straight ahead, my hands at 10:00 and 2:00 and my heart from fluttering straight out of my chest onto the console.

“If you have the money to pay for a ticket, then you can take your chances exceeding the speed limit,” he continues. “You can choose to break the rules if you know the consequences and accept them.”

I feel immensely loved in this moment.

This is real dad advice. This is a life lesson that seems absurd on the surface---one a Mom would yell about, eyes bulging out of her head, demanding to know what on earth he was thinking telling a 16-year-old something so irresponsible. But Dad would know that he has a smart daughter, one with a head on her shoulders that got it, that gets him, that will be a more responsible driver and person because now she’s empowered with choice and the weight of responsibility.

I’m choking up because he said this and I’m imagining that scene, and a car cuts in front of me, and my reflexes jerk the wheel enough for us all to notice, but Adopted Dad doesn’t critique. And I’m calming down now because I can do this.

Men bonded with Chris mostly, growing up. What’s a boy without a dad? They went fishing and hunting, and he learned to tie knots and change a car tire, all while I played beneath the towering oak tree in the front yard. Men lent me a lap to crawl on when I was little and reassuring, big hugs as I aged. Men taught Chris and comforted me.

But Rob took me on busy Atlanta interstates and taught me to trust my gut. He taught me the tools of the Dad trade---lecturing me on too much time spent online talking to boys and wondering if I’d like to learn how to change a tire, after all.

I still wear Ralph Lauren’s Romance. I still think of Adopted Dad when I spritz it, pushing my shoulders back and my head high and entering the mist as any urbane woman might do.

I put Adopted Dad in the “maybe” column to walk me down the aisle.

Ready to Go

By Rebecca D. Martin "There was a great tree---a huge poplar with vast limbs---visible through my window even as I lay in bed. I loved it, and was anxious about it. It had been savagely mutilated some years before, but had gallantly grown new limbs - though of course not with the unblemished grace of its former natural self; and now a foolish neighbour was agitating to have it felled." ~J.R.R. Tolkien, Collected Letters

The big front yard maple finally came down today. All the branches had been taken off last November. In absence of any friends who could manage the substantial trunk with a mere chain saw, the official tree men returned today and took that away, too.

The baby and I watched through the gable window as the two fellows alternated at the base: chain sawing, axing, tossing wedges of wood aside. Saw, axe, toss. I expected this to go on all around the perimeter of the tree for the next hour, slow but sure. But just as the baby was losing interest in favor of the cord pull on the window blind, the unexpected happened. The entire, enormous ten foot trunk creaked and groaned. The men did some circling and pushing. Then a sharp crack, and 72 years-worth of sprouting, spreading, anchoring, and reaching fell into the road with a shuddering thump that set our dog a-barking.

Last fall, I'd mourned as the tree branches came down: no more green leaves dancing at the upstairs window; that lovely play of sunlight and shadow shifting across the downstairs living room---gone. Not to mention the temperature protection during our unairconditioned summers. The loss felt inordinately tragic, both physically and emotionally. But I thought all my sorrow had gone with the limbs. The stripped-down body left standing in the yard was merely a sad reminder, not to mention an eyesore---a ten foot high one. I was more than ready for it to go.

Imagine my surprise at the tears that sprang up this morning as the tree trunk fell, so suddenly, so heavily, down. It seemed so, so . . . irreverent. It seemed wrong. There lay the tree, bottom-up, all its striated glory exposed for the world to see. Suddenly, the blossoming circles amassed over three quarters of a century, the grey bark running its length in stripes and curves, were a surpassing beauty. The tree men seemed not to notice. They swung their axes and tossed the tree in bits and pieces into the back of their flatbed. They took a break and lit cigarettes. For them, this was any day, any tree, any job.

J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, "I am (obviously) much in love with plants and above all trees, and always have been; and I find human maltreatment of them as hard to bear as some find ill-treatment of animals." This morning, as the tree pitched over, I could hear the clanging and banging of Saruman's machinery, as it was so explicitly interpreted in the movies, and the ground-shaking thud at each felled tree. The neighbor who frowned and made a wide berth around our yard this morning on her daily dog walk seemed to channel Tolkien's disappointment at me. "Those trees were my friends!" Darn that movie.

Still, I knew it was just a tree. I know it is just a tree. And it was dying, after all. These Norway Maples were planted when our three neighborhood streets were first developed, back in the 1940’s, and none of the trees are going to last much longer. Each yard got two maple trees, in fact, and a good third of them have come down already. More than half of the ones left are dying. Windblown and ice-laden limbs fall into the streets where cars park and children on bikes race by. The resident tree expert says that, actually, there's only one healthy maple left, back in a corner lot. He speculates about environmental incompatibility. Others have suggested bugs or disease. Whatever the root cause, our particular tree was sick, and it was time for it to go.

But there's something to be said for putting in a lifetime’s work toward such a strong and quiet beauty. It doesn't seem like something so long-lived should go as easily as this fifteen minutes of sawing and chopping have done. It seems, for a moment, that the tree should get something better than a cigarette break in memorium.

But really, there is nothing that needs be done for the tree, or that could be done, except what we did. Instead, I know what I will do. As I watched this morning, I resolved to plant another. We'll do our research this time. We've been told something called the Black Oak does well in these parts. I also have a particular soft spot for Dogwoods. Yes, we'll start another tree in this one’s place, and make our own contribution to this tiny patch of land and its future, and to the neighborhood it belongs to.

And then we'll get on with our day. With all respect to the dog-walking neighbor, and to Tolkien, and to my own sappy emotions, it was only a tree, after all. And it was ready to go.

A Fatherless Girl

By Cyndi Waite

My mom runs her hand softly along my cheek, like moms do with their babies. Maybe I asked the question, "Who is my dad?" or "Where is my dad?" or maybe she preempts it. She strokes my cheek again and smiles at me.

“My beautiful girl," I imagine her saying it in the wonder-filled way she still says it today. "My beautiful girl, your daddy was a good man, but he is very sick."

This refrain is so palpable and entwined in my childhood, I know the words like a nursery rhyme whose repetition tattooed it on my memory. But there’s not a nursery rhyme for my story.

I was born in Hollywood, a fact that fills me with undue glee. I was a kid who had "a lot of personality," a euphemism for having been histrionic. I wanted to be an actress, a screenwriter, but always, I dreamed of being a Los Angeles Resident.

Because what I leave out is the "Florida" part. I'm from Hollywood, Florida, home of the Cuban and land of the retirees. It’s a far cry from the iconic “Hollywood” sign and yet, it’s true, I’m from Hollywood.

We lived in an apartment building. I can see the outline of it, and I wonder if that's my earliest memory shining through or if I've re-created a memory from pictures. It had a giant, humongous, can't-see-the-end-of-it-can't-touch-the-bottom-of-it pool. We lived there until I was three.

Mom has always been a fish, happiest near the water and stressed, searching for air away from it. Mom's angry? Let's run her a bath. Mom has to get away from work? Let's pack a bag of towels and ham sandwiches and find the nearest lake. Water is Mom's Valium.

Mom's love of the water seeped into Chris and me in the womb; pregnancy didn't keep her from floating weekends away. We came out with our arms failing in freestyle. Outside her belly, we split our time the way she had done while we were in it: between the pool and the beach. I learned to walk in the sand.

***

Mom and Chris hold my hand as we walk to the water, waves lapping my feet and calves and thighs and stomach. I’m pink and round---a perfect Gerber baby, squealing with delight at the touch of the cool south Atlantic waters (that are somehow, someway perfect, while northern Atlantic beaches are drab, the water the color of the gray sand. It’s a mystery I’ve never solved).

Chris, four years older than me, maybe six or seven, swims his way away from Mom and me. He probably travels three feet, but I swear it’s 10 feet---half a football field, even. Mom holds me over her head, and teases me, “I’m going to do it! I’m going to throw you!” and her threats aren’t threats at all but promises. And she tosses me through the air, and I’m soaring what feels like stories above the water shimmering below, and I land, laughing, in my brother’s open arms. They throw me like a football, calling plays, “Go left!” I was a precursor to my brother’s glory days on the football field, a human ball. I wonder if that’s where he learned a perfect spiral.

***

We move from Hollywood that same year, when I’m three. I still suck on a pacifier, a fact that embarrasses and endears me now---a childhood in tact, still so innocent it maybe seemed stalled, in slow motion, behind. Precocious and clever, my brother knows my sun rises and shines with him. Where he goes, I go. What he does, I try to do. Sometimes he uses his powers for good, and sometimes he uses them for evil. The line is always blurry.

We pack up the family Chevy S-10 and move to Georgia.

We say goodbye to our family and friends, and Mom says it’s time for an adventure. She drives stick shift in the small three-seater pickup truck. My legs swing around it; it's hard for her to switch gears sometimes, and I talk nonstop, except when I'm sucking on my pacifier.

She got lost, often, on that long drive. I asked a dozen times if we were lost, and she always said, “We’re not lost, we’re finding a new way," just like she says today. Sometimes I ask her when we're standing still to hear those guiding words.

Hours into the drive, Chris pipes up. “I dare you to throw your pacifier out the window.”

I eye him cautiously; at three, going on four, I’m already stubborn and incapable of turning down a challenge.

“I double-dog dare you. I bet you won’t do it.” The taunts keep coming.

I pull my pacifier out of my mouth, and he rolls down the window, and Mom intervenes.

“If you throw it out the window, I won’t get you another one,” she warns.

Chris smirks. “I triple-dog dare you.”

I can’t take it anymore, and I throw it out, watch the wind whip it, bounce it off the side of the truck and fall onto the hot asphalt. It’s gone. It’s really gone.

I start to cry.

“I love you, but I told you if you threw it out, I wouldn’t get you another one,” Mom reminds me.

Chris looks at me, pride in his eyes. “You’re a big kid now.”

I cry all night, furious and unable to sleep. Mom doesn’t buy me a new pacifier.

The next morning, I’m calm and grown up when we pull into Carl’s driveway.