One of those days...

GET A GRIP! These three words have been running through my head all day today.  I am STILL ironing and I recognise this has nothing whatsoever to do with wrinkled clothes and a lot to do with my unquiet mind. Imagine the scene: my clothes are everywhere, and I am not exaggerating, they are everywhere.  The kitchen has a sink full of dishes, the dining room table is covered in magazines, newspapers and unopened post.  The bottom of the stairs is stacked with clothing waiting to go upstairs.  The small room I call my own is scattered with make-up, books, papers, shoes and spare bedding.  Ralph's office, well, for those who know him, is Ralph's office and I AM GOING DOOLALLY. (The origin of this wonderful word is Indian Urdu,  apparently a hill station in India where British soldiers were sent for rest cures for mental problems was a name that sounded like 'doolally' and soldiers going mad were said to be going to doolally.)

I genuinely want to start packing.  My flight leaves tomorrow midday and it is getting close, but I cannot bring myself to decide exactly what I want to take.  How many pairs of shoes, what sandals? Will I be walking much?  Do I need a jacket? Should I bring my camera charger?  Why did I eat that whole tub of Haagen Das ice cream?  All of these unanswerable questions are running in an endless loop in my head.  When I think of one more thing to take and even write it down, there is an immediate other thing screaming for attention.

I am not sure I can do this.  I have, in the past, been a bit nuts about travelling and flying,but this seems far worse.  Maybe it's the rushed quality of the whole trip?  Too many places in too short a time.  Maybe it's the prospect of seeing my family, though there aren't so many of them and we can drink ourselves into a pleasant oblivion if it becomes too much. Maybe it's also to do with seeing my father though I saw him in March and it was OK. 

I begin to think that I am in a space in my life where I cannot deal with any sort of upset.  Any wavering from routine and I start to get anxious.  I spotted this in myself quite a while ago and have tried to work with the tools I already have to deal with this.  Being mindful and not catastrophising, breathing, chanting, and acknowledging all the things I have done successfully.  This is all well and good. I'm sure these techniques all help, after all, I still haven't pulled my hair out or exploded like poor old Rumpelstilskin, but I do feel a bit like I did when I was in labour with my daughter almost 40 years ago - when I got to the transition stage of labour, the stage when massive amounts of adrenaline pump through your body to prepare it for childbirth, I was instructed by my natural childbirth teacher to memorise a rhyme or sing a song to take my attention away from the outrageous pain.  I still remember moaning in pain and Ralph advising me to sing.  "Sing!!!???" I said, "you lie here and go through this pain and you fucking sing!!!" It all seemed such a good idea in theory but in reality it didn't go so well.  This is what seems to happen to me with all these relaxation and stress-reducing techniques.

I am happy that time to prepare is running out.  Soon I will have to stop ironing and fussing.  Soon I will lay all my clothes out on the bed, see that there are at  least ten different things that I won't wear and I'll jettison them and begin to actually pack.  At that stage, the whole process takes about thirty minutes and then I'll be done.  I'll probably have too much nervous time on my hands this evening and early tomorrow morning so I will use the extra time to nag my long suffering husband.  In the morning I become what he calls 'the speaking clock' announcing the time every few minutes as a way of telling him to hurry up.  I appreciate that from his side this is infuriating and I still do it.  It's as if my teeth can't stop  the words from falling out.

Maybe this time will be different.  Maybe this time I have used up all the doolally energy in the past few days and by tomorrow I will be cool, calm and collected.  Maybe I will sail through the morning in a state of bliss. You never know, miracles happen.

My week away...

Should I take a break? This is the question playing on my mind at the moment.  I have been busy all week being busy with going away.  I have ironed a hundred different pieces of clothing, tried on at least as many and rejected almost as much.  Funny how summer clothes seem to shrink during the winter and when you take them out of storage they all seem much tighter than last year. It happens in the winter too. My cupboards have these magical powers to shrink my clothes!

Anyway, to get back to the question playing on my mind, should I take an official blog break? I am going to the States on Friday and for sure I won't be writing on my travel day since when I arrive I have dinner planned with friends and then I figure jet lag will kick in and I'll need to sleep.  The next day I travel again to Ohio where I meet up with my kids, the rest of my family and all these wedding guests staying in my hotel.  The hotel does not have free Wi-Fi and I don't think I'll even bring my computer.  I took it on holiday last time and though I love having it with me, I found it a real pain to have to shlep the heavy computer, the wires, adaptors, chargers, etc. and don't see me doing it again.  So, unless some kind benefactor wants to buy me an iPad for my birthday, this is going to make it difficult to keep up-to-date with my writing.

On Sunday is the wedding I'm attending in Ohio. This looks like an entire day and evening business and my intention is to drink as much champagne as is being served.  Nice thing about Jewish weddings is that there's always plenty of drink since so few people drink at all.  There is never a chance of running out and often champagne is served freely. When I was a teenager I often made friends with bartenders at weddings, bar mitzvahs and big parties.  This ensured that no one questioned my under age status and that I got served super strong drinks.  At least I don't have to bat my eyelashes at bartenders anymore.  There's absolutely no chance that I will be mistaken for an underage drinker!

So, so far I won't be writing on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday I am traveling again - this time from Ohio to Connecticut.  I won't be arriving back at my brother's house until late and though he has a computer I can use, I don't see it happening.  This means that I might, and I say might, write on Tuesday or Wednesday, though on Wednesday I am driving to New York in the evening after visiting my dad all day, so no computer access there. Thursday is a day of sightseeing in Manhattan with Ralph.  I see this as the first of our genuine holiday days and then on Friday we are flying back to London.

It begins to look as if I won't have time to sit and write any blog entries for a full week.  Having made an undertaking to write every day I don't feel so easy with this. I am not great at regular commitments.  I usually start with great positive intention (hence the name of my blog) and keep to agreements for a while and slowly things start to slip. This has been a pattern throughout my life.  I am very good at starting projects. I have half-knitted sweaters, unfinished paintings, partly read books and numerous other projects that I have begun with fantastic intentions and have then put down and failed to pick up again. I saw this happening when my internetservice was down.  I had gaps in my writing and began to fear that I wouldn't take it up again.  What kept me writing was the therapeutic quality it has for me and the fact that I think there are a few people regularly reading these random thoughts.

Speaking of which, I get very little, if any, feedback on my writing.  I occasionally get some comment from someone that lets me know I am not scattering these words into the air, but mostly I have no idea if anyone's listening, or cares.  Is this important?  I'm not sure.  When a friend refers to something that was in my blog I'm not sure whether to be flattered, embarrassed or nonchalant about the whole thing.  I do feel I reveal a lot of me in this writing and it's as if I'm standing naked in a shop window with one way glass.  You can see me, but I can't see you and unless you bang on the glass I can pretend no one's there.  Maybe pretending that there's no one there means I can be pretty honest with myself and express myself more openly.  I guess I love writing without self-consciousness, but I also love attention.  Maybe this is a win-win situation for me.  I write as if I am talking to myself and I get to do this in silence, so no one really knows how crazy I am.

I guess this is advance notice to me to take some pressure off.  If I manage to write an entry or two while I'm away, that's great, if not, that's also fine. I will try and write.  I will certainly take lots of photos and store up family moments for future appraisal, but mostly I want to enjoy the days away. 

Part of the purpose of this trip is to see my dad. Seeing him fills me with trepidation.  He's been very ill and is quite frail now.  I think I'm prepared for the fact that he won't know me, but I'm not really, not in my heart. I still find this symptom of his illness hard to deal with. At least I can sit with him and hold his hand.  I still need to do that.

It's so very good to have this blog as an outlet for my feelings.  It has been so good for me to be able to see myself in this new way.  I might take a few days off writing, but I do so enjoy this part of my day and I will try and make time and space to carry on.  Though if I don't, it's also OK.

An abundance of choice

As I was staring at the ever growing pile of ironing this morning, I stopped for a moment and thought about all the choices I have to make every day.  I often iron in stages - in between ironing I sit down, do a little internet surfing, TV watching, breakfast eating and today, contemplated the abundance of choice I have in my life.

I live a fairly privileged existence.  At times it doesn't  seem like that to me.  At times I feel constrained and limited by my life, but when I stop and examine my life with a more objective eye, I have to admit that I live pretty well.  I get to go on small, but frequent holidays; I don't hesitate to buy myself a coffee in my local coffee bar; I go to concerts, the theatre and generally say no to myself far less than many people.  I don't have a great deal of money, but then it never was one of my driving ambitions.  I lovingly drive my 14 year old car and  I am still delighted to have a little car of my own.

Yet I still complain and obsess about having too many choices in my life.  I feel overwhelmed by choice.  Today I went to my local small supermarket and wanted to  buy some hot  sauce.  There were 18 (!) different kinds of hot sauce.  How can anyone need 18 varieties of hot sauce?  I stood in front of all these sauces, each of which promised different levels of burn your insides out and decided that I wasn't at all sure of how hot each one was and whether I wanted to make a decision about this, so I did what I often do when presented with so many choices, I walked away and bought nothing.

This happens quite regularly.  I recently went shopping intending to buy bed sheets.  I always buy simple white cotton sheets.  No choice to be made as to colour or size or even fabric, so this one should have been easy.  I got to the shop, found the bedding section and there was an entire display section of white bedding.  Some were cotton percale,  some Egyptian cotton, some had a 200, 300, 400, 500 thread count and some were self-striped and some plain.  I stood there for ages, looking from  one shelf to another and came to the conclusion that I didn't really need sheets and went home empty-handed.

In my work, I talk to people about choice and power.  There are always discussions about how people who have no choices in their lives - where they live, what work they can do,  no money - have a sense of powerlessness, a sense of having no control over their lives.  A lack of choice means little power and therefore it stands to reason that the more choices we have the more powerful we feel.  If you can choose your life circumstances you feel empowered and are able to be stronger and have a greater impact  on the world.

The problem for me is when the choices we have become so numerous and pointless that they lead to just the opposite effect. The amount of choice we are faced with every day just makes decision-making an ordeal and inertia and powerlessness are often the only response. Is this a function of aging?  Am I the only person paralysed into indecision by the number of things I have to choose from.  Even buying an ice cream means I have to choose from about 40 flavours, not to mention cup or cone, toppings, sugar-free or not.  It used to be so easy - strawberry, chocolate or vanilla - finished.

So as I iron I realise I have to iron at least five times the amount of clothing I need for my holiday.  This is because I can't decide what to take with me.  This, plus the amount of time I have to decide, is making choosing my holidaqy wardrobe extra difficult.  By tomorrow I will have less time and so will be forced to make choices.  Usually I hate time pressure, but this time it makes my life a bit easier.

A lunchtime assignation

 Today I met a man for a lunch date.  it's been a long time since I did this, but I was out shopping and suddenly had to see him, so I phoned and though he was very busy and couldn't talk in front of the people he was with, he agreed to snatch a quick break and meet me.  We met in my car and quickly drove away from his place of work so his colleagues wouldn't intrude on our short time together.  We drove down the hill, bought some drinks and sandwiches and walked to a local park to have a picnic lunch.  The sun was again shining and the trees in full bloom created a wonderful dappled shade paradise under the trees.  We spent about an hour together talking, laughing, flirting outrageously and enjoying this rare lunchtime meeting.  He considered taking the rest of the afternoon off, but had to get back to work.  I drove him back, dropped him off and came home.  What a delightful date.

These hot May days are such an unexpected bonus for us. London summers are usually such a disappointment.  I still hear people reminiscing with nostalgia and longing over the hot summer of 1976.  Indeed, 1976 was a relentlessly hot summer. My parents came here and we rented a flat in Brighton on the South Coast for a week.  I remember waking to sunshine and heat in the morning and spending most of our days at the beach.  The unusual weather quirk that summer was not just the heat, but the reliability of it.  In the States you can be guaranteed sunshine in the summer, in Tuscany and Provence you can bank on it. In the UK it's really hit or miss and mostly miss.

I'm always pleased when we have a week of sunshine in the height of summer, so to have four or five days of heat in May is unusual.  I think it brings out an animalistic feel in London.  Tempers are shorter, hemlines are shorter and clothing becomes more and more bizarre. Because we have few days of really hot sun (or have had up until now) most people have a standard 'summer wardrobe'.  This usually consists of a pair of shorts, a few summer tops, a flowery skirt for women and flip flops or sandals for some. The same set of hot weather clothing gets put away every autumn and remerges wrinkled and seemingly ready to wear at a moment's notice, such as this weekend.  Men seem to like to walk about shirtless and the variety of protruding beer bellies and hairy, spotty backs is astounding. Women are suddenly exposing vast amounts of flesh that is rapidly turning a bright shade of sunburn pink. Today I saw far too many men wearing shoes with dark socks and shorts.  I even saw a man with sandals, socks, shorts and a suit jacket over a tee shirt. Charming!  Never mind the damp, pale,squishy toes that haven't seen daylight for ten months.

Ralph and my son used to share shorts.  They had two pairs of shorts and since they were the same size they would wash and wear them alternately and this worked pretty well for a few years. The weather was never consistently warm enough for them to need shorts daily. Then my son moved to California and the arrangement to share shorts had to come to an end.  Ralph got custody of the shorts.  After all, the chances of needing shorts in California are much greater so my son wanted to buy some newer models.

I just watched the weather forecast and I am happy to announce that those rarely worn shorts can be re-packed until the next sunny day.  The temperature is due to drop by 10-15 degrees by the end of the week and the British populace can return to their drab colours and miserable expressions.  We can stop smiling at each other, snapping at each other in traffic and asking if it's hot enough for you yet? We can return to normal behaviour and that usually means we can carry on complaining about the weather. What a relief!

Pre-wedding jitters

Yesterday was a delightful day and today the pendulum swings and my moods follow.  It's still hot and sunny and I still have a thousand things to do before I go away on Friday. I don't want to do any of them.

Today I feel like a recalcitrant child and would like to stamp my feet, hold my breath, scream and cry and simply say NO very loudly to everything.  What a rapid change from the way I felt yesterday.  I still carry the residual feeling of the nice day I had, but I also feel annoyed and irritated with pretty much everything right now.  It's good to write this stuff down.  When I see this on paper in front of me it does seem very childish and ridiculous. Writing down the swing of my moods makes them change faster since I can hardly bare to read the reality of these speed bumps in my life.

Just like the speed bumps all over the roads of London that are meant to slow drivers down to a crawling pace, I have spent today at that same pace.  The weather contributes to this.  I melt in hot weather.  I've always been so envious of fair--skinned English rose types - you know the ones - no matter how hot or humid it is, their make-up looks perfect, their hair is silky and their clothes look wrinkle-free and fresh.  With me, at the first hint of heat and humidity  I look like I've dipped my face into a pan of hot chip fat, my make-up slides off and my hair loses all of style or shape, while my wrinkled clothes look like I've slept in them for a week.

Today I also tried on the outfit I intend to wear to my nephew's wedding and I don't particularly like it. Oh, it looks fine, it's inoffensive and suitable, but I have this fantasy of looking dramatic and outrageous and the clothes I intend to wear have none of that. I weigh more than I would like so I feel a little bit limited in clothes.  I also don't wear low cut tops since my cancer scars are not great, so the cleavage route is ruled out and the tight bias cut dresses that look so effortless summery, make me look like a salami tied in the middle. 

Family weddings, bar mitzvahs and parties are amazingly fraught for me.  When I look back at photos of myself I see a woman who never weighs the same two years running and certainly has an eclectic style.  My clothes for 14 years were all shades of orange or red, since I followed a guru whose followers all wore the colours that Eastern disciples traditionally wear.  For one particular wedding this meant that I wore a glamorous orange gown, probably the only time I wore something that flamboyant.  Mostly I wear something low key and safe.  Mostly I wear black.

Maybe I'll go out shopping again tomorrow; maybe I'll find something I like more than the clothes I already have.  I was just reminded that I go through the same pre-wedding anxieties every time.  It is a tad boring by now and the reality is that I usually look fine.  I also just found out that it's going to be really hot in Ohio at this coming wedding.  Great, I can't wait.

Lazy sunny days in London.

The sun is blazing here today and all of London has slowed right down.  It's wonderful to walk through a London park and see the world gently relaxing. Londoners have no resistance to heat, we wilt and lose all desire to be exert ourselves in any way.  All we can do is dress in silly summery clothes and act like kids again.

Today I spent the day in town with Ralph.  It felt like a day from our own pasts - a day of wandering aimlessly through London back streets and just enjoying being together in the sunshine. It started with us going out early and getting on a double decker bus to go to my garage to pick up my recently repaired car.  We got on the bus (for free with our old age free travel passes!) and immediately went to the top deck and bagged the very front seats.  Sitting in those seats with the huge expanse of glass round us watching London from a different perspective is just such a lot of fun and immediately made us both feel like excited little kids.

Going to see my mechanics is a bit like going to see family.  These guys have been repairing our cars for about 18 years and they've shared our histories and family events and we've done the same with them - births, deaths, marriages, job woes, even depression - we've shared them all.  Once a year they even clear out their garage, clean the place, set up a giant Greek-style barbecue and invite all their regular customers and families to party.  So, seeing them today, aside from costing me a small fortune, was a nice start to our day.

We walked to the local tube station and went into the centre of London (again using our free travel passes!) for Ralph to have his eyes checked and buy new glasses.  Again, we've known the optician for over 27 years and we talked about families and buying vintage glasses on eBay; the eye test was certainly a secondary part of our long conversation.  Ralph took over an hour choosing just the right glasses.  Usually I get completely impatient watching him put on every pair of glasses in the shop, from the most absurd Mr. Magoo styles to the cliched designer frames, until he finally chose frames remarkably similar to the ones he already wears. No surprises there then. And yet, today I felt we had all the time in the world.

We went to a new Japanese food shop, bought some great take away food and made our way to St. James Park to eat our lunch al fresco.  The park was really crowded though luck was with us and we found a rare empty bench and sat down and had a yummy lunch.  It was while I was walking through the park after lunch that I noticed how diverse the people in London are.  This is something I really appreciate about this city.  I'm sure that most of the amblers enjoying the newborn goslings in the lake and the swans and geese were not Londoners, indeed, they probably weren't even British, but somehow, the sunshine, the green, green flowering of spring and the general bonhomie in the air, made all of us feel content together.

Walking across Horseguards Parade Ground near Whitehall, I felt as if I was in some foreign European city and I was on holiday with Ralph, just enjoying the lack of urgency in the way our day unfolded. We almost met with a demonstration in Trafalgar Square, but this sounded really aggressive and we kept our distance.  Traveling home on the tube (again, for free!) was easy and even pleasant and we came home and had a lazy, late afternoon nap.

I had a really satisfying day.  I loved being with Ralph and today we laughed and hugged and remembered how much we love each other. This August it will be 42 years since we met.  This afternoon sitting in the park, I looked at him and I swear, he hadn't changed a bit.

Writing in the ozone..

I never had a fantasy of being a writer.  It seemed to me that while I read voraciously as a child, I would leave the writing to all those wonderful people who were inspired to put pen to paper and compose fantastic tales for my enlightenment and continuing amusement.  I could never see myself amongst the Kurt Vonneguts or the John Irvings of the world, never mind the Tolstoys and Brontes.  I never had the power to sustain a story for long enough to create what I identified as a book. This was never a source of regret for me, anymore than not becoming a concert pianist or a bricklayer would have been.  There were people in the world who naturally fell into those roles and I was never one of them.

Can you remember the stories you wrote in school?  I can't.  I've been wracking my brain today to try and remember any of the short stories or poems I had to write when I was in elementary school.  I certainly had to write them. Those assignments were on everyone's curriculum and haven't really changed for the past 100 years.  I remember both my kids writing stories about their home life, the holidays, special occasions, local history and a variety of other trivial topics, but I don't remember any of my own writing.  I am pretty certain that the reason I remember what my children wrote was because I saved most of their work.  I have portfolios full of their early drawings and paintings and files filled with their writing and homework assignments.

My mum never saved anything.  As a matter of fact she never had any extra 'stuff'' round the house at all.  I can easily picture the tiny apartment I grew up in.  It was a one bedroom apartment in the Bronx in a pre-war block of flats.  My brother and I shared the one bedroom. It was painted every two years and the shared bedroom was always painted pale blue so my brother wouldn't feel weird about being in a shared room.  I think if I had had my way I would have painted it in multicoloured stripes, but no one asked me.  Anyway, to get back to things not being saved, I can actually remember the few ornaments we had around the house, since there were so few.  I can't believe that this was because we had so little money; I think it's because my mother didn't want extra things to dust. As soon as I brought home a picture, a story, a cardboard basket of cotton wool and a pipe-cleaner chick (for Easter), it would be looked at, I would hope commented on, and then thrown away.  No sentimentality there!

So my memories of writing are really vague.  I remember keeping a diary in my teens and recently, much to my embarrassment, I found one of these and it was full of teenage angst and self-doubt, sort of like my blog, but 45 years earlier.  I was always an artist, always drawing and painting and making things.  I never sat down and wrote for pleasure, but I was a great reader.  I loved my books and they were always my refuge from a chaotic and at times, frightening world.  It's too bad no one encouraged me to write as well as read, but I had my designated talent - art - and my teachers didn't seem to look much further than that.  The idea of being multi-talented never occurred to anyone.  It certainly never entered my head that I might be able to do more than one thing. People always told me how lucky I was to have this one thing that I could do so well.

I think that in some way I had the same idea with my kids.  My daughter was always a fine artist.  She had a fierce and wonderful talent that showed itself at a very early age and since both Ralph and I are artists, we encouraged and applauded this early ability.  She moved through school doing well in other subjects, but seemed to know that the art world was where she was destined to be.  Now, as an adult, she is still an artist, but in recent years she has started writing and is extremely fluid and talented in this, too.  Why didn't we ever notice this?  When my son was six he asked to play the violin and I think we were so shocked at this talent tangent that it took us at least another year to follow it up and then only when he asked and asked again.  We gave him paints and crayons and taught him to use surgical scissors so he could cut paper skillfully, but the idea that he might move into another creative area never crossed our minds.  He did go on to study graphic design, as did his sister, but they are both more creative and able than we imagined.

I am so very happy that I write and that I manage to do this almost every day.  It clears my head and allows me to trawl through my past for both the pleasant memories and the less pleasant ones that are still part of my history.  Writing gives me a different focus on life.  I get to sit back and reflect more and it's become a necessary part of my day.  On the occasional days when I don't manage to write something I feel a bit edgy and unfinished. I still would never call myself a 'writer', but I am someone who writes.  The expression that 'everyone has one good book in them' may not really be true, but maybe I have some reasonably good blogging in me, and heaven knows, I really and truly love doing this.

I feel like the crazy lady I sometimes see in the park sitting on a bench, muttering to herself.  She scatters all these breadcrumbs on the ground and usually leaves before she even knows whether any birds will come and eat.  She must take some satisfaction from the fact that when she returns the next day to scatter more crumbs, the ones from the previous day are gone.  I never know who, if anyone, reads my scattered thoughts, but when I come back the next day, the writing from yesterday seems to have disappeared.

On the road again...

One week from tomorrow I get on another plane and fly to America.  It seems only yesterday that I came back from the States.  Indeed in the past 8 weeks I have been to Florida, Connecticut, New York, Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam (twice) and now in the space of seven days I will be in Ohio, Connecticut, New York and back to London. Anyone would think I enjoyed spending time at airports and on planes.

I am going to Ohio to attend my nephew's wedding.  This promises to be a real family affair.  My kids are coming from California, my cousins from New York and all of my brother's family, too.  Just a small gathering of 250+ people in Cincinnatti for the weekend.

Meanwhile I am trying to catch up on my life.  It seems to be running away from me much too quickly.  Funny how things change.  Last week I was wishing my life away and wallowing in a bath of self-pity and this week I want more life, more time, more everything.  This roller coaster needs to even out for a while and smoothly land here at home.  I am still doing laundry from last week's trip to Holland, how can I get my head round the idea of traveling again?

Over the past 40 years have learned some small tips to help make traveling easier.
1. Take half the clothing you think you need - lay everything out, look at it all critically, will you actually wear that wonderful ruffled skirt that needs special shoes to go with it? Speaking of shoes - take only two pair, no matter what the temptation is to take more.  You always buy shoes, wherever you go.
2. Take only three colours - ok, maybe four. I mostly take black, grey and some accent colour, but it all coordinates and can be worn together. So what if I spend every holiday looking like a Greek widow, at least I match.
3. If going to a developed country, or a city, don't bother with more than the first day's shampoo and conditioner.  You can always buy more when you arrive and also, leave it when you return so your case is lighter.
4. Take the minimum amount of make-up, especially when going to the States.  You know you will buy more when you're there. All those huge drug stores and those vibrating mascaras are too tempting to resist.
5. Carry on  as little as possible - a book, an iPod, passport, tickets, camera and valuables are more than enough.  If you're delayed at the airport there is nothing more annoying than having to wheel along some heavy carry-on luggage in airport restaurants.
6. Check in your luggage.  I hate carrying suitcases around the airport and I have far more time to wait at the airport before take-off than it takes at the other end of the flight to wait for my bag.  This is my personal preference.  My time is valuable, but the state of my back is even more valuable and to shop unencumbered is nice.
7. Register for the IRIS scanning thingy - it means that when there are crowds at Immigration you get to sail through simply by batting your eyes at a machine.
8.Take public transport to the airport.  It's usually very reliable and you can check the journey timings in advance.  It makes me pretty nuts to sit in traffic on a crowded road wondering if I'll be at the airport on time.
9.Take a reliable suitcase.  I learned last week from bitter experience what a pain it is to try and travel with a broken suitcase.

This last point means I will be spending one day of my precious weekend shopping for a suitcase.  Now I have more decisions to make - four wheels or two.  Four wheels seem to move easier, but tend to run away when you turn your back.  Expensive or cheap - cheap wears out quickly but if it's damaged in transit, who cares. So much to think about and so little time.

Really, nothing makes travel bearable.  Arriving is great, but until I can afford first or business class travel, it's all pretty stressful.  So think of me next week, scrunched into my economy seat, with one of those cheap inflatable cushions wedged in around my neck, staring at a 6" movie screen set into the back of a seat, while some long-legged passenger shoves their knees into my back and my wide hips and very large bottom are wedged into a narrow seat for 8 hours.  Think of me climbing over people to use a chemical toilet after having eaten cardboard tasting food from a cardboard tray with plastic cutlery and then trying to close my eyes and sleep covered with the thinnest, scratchiest excuse for a blanket I have ever seen. 

I can't wait.

Looking at old photos

This morning I worked.  I wrote and thought and designed and printed and now I am finally at a point where I feel I am ready to deliver some really good training sessions tomorrow.  As I was collating papers and looking through old course materials I designed years ago, I realised that I have probably forgotten more than most people in my field know.  I can't really believe that my brain holds so much information.  It truly is remarkable that I have so much trivia and so many facts and figures stored in my permanently stressed mind.

I see that I still prefer to see things in visual form on paper in front of me.  I am certainly visual and kinesthetic in the way I learn and communicate.  I need to see and feel things in order for me to get to grips with information and communications. I can look at endless documents on my computer and cut and paste to create new documents, but until I have the printed page in my hands, I can't really decide whether it's right.

I have the same feeling about old photos.  This afternoon, when I'd had enough of writing and reading for work I got out a bag of old photos that I hadn't really looked at for quite some years.  The old black and white photos of my mom and dad were the ones that really grabbed me.  The dog-eared ragged edges of the photos and the immediate post-war life they depict are the stuff of history and dreams for me. I try to imagine my mother in Feldafing, the displaced persons' camp in Germany where she lived  for a time between the war's end and her traveling from Bremen to New York by sea. The photos are of a very young woman, often smiling, but looking pale and puffy.  How different she became soon after arriving in New York.  Suddenly in photos she looked quite beautiful and carefree.  In the year in which she waited for my father to arrive she also seemed to have a number of mysterious suitors.  She and my father didn't marry till he arrived in America. When I was a little girl I remember finding these photos and asking who the men with my mum were.  My mother got terribly embarrassed and tore up some of the photos.  I'm glad she didn't destroy all of them.

I was particularly touched by some old photos that my father used to carry in his wallet.  They are old and faded from living in his back pocket for years.  There were baby pictures of me and my brother, ones of my brother at his bar mitzvah, me at my high school graduation, a wonderful old photo of my mum from 1947 and a picture of my father's brother, the only one of his family to survive the war. I found it so sweet that he carried these photos around for years.

In certain cultures it is believed that photographing someone steals their soul.  I don't believe that at all, but I do believe that the old photos I have contain some essence of my past.  They are a tangible link to the younger selves that once were my parents, their friends and me.  I love having these reminders of our past.  It is especially important to me now there is no one to tell the stories anymore.  My father is the last of his generation.  His memory is gone and all we have are photos and the garbled stories we carry in us and should be passing on to our children.

Who can we ask when there's no one left to ask? I still have so much I want to know.

Cheesecake day!

Last night I was just too tired to think straight.  I contemplated writing an entry for the day and realised that I had nothing to say.  Quite a new experience for me, having nothing to say.  Usually I spout any old rubbish rather than say nothing, but the combination of lack of content with total exhaustion left me speechless.

Now, the next morning, I am filled with things to say and the desire to write again.  I am almost certain that this is because I have my final outline for tomorrow's training workshops to complete.  Since I am a bit uncertain about how these sessions will look, the idea of writing my blog instead looks increasingly attractive.  I figure I can delay the inevitable course design for at least another hour.

Today is Shavuot.  This is a Jewish holiday that marks when Moses was given the ten commandments of the Torah on Mount Sinai.  I know this with some certainty because Wikipedia told me so and it is also the festival when we eat, wait for it, CHEESECAKE! This is for sure my favourite festival of the Jewish year.  Any holiday when the recommended foods are cheescake and blintzes is one I will observe.  My cheesecakes are pretty good and have recently had an internationally appreciative audience.  My love of cheesecake is legendary - full fat, cream cheese-based, rich, wonderful cheesecake.  Thus speaks a complete failure at dieting.

The Greek-Cypriot brothers who run my local corner shop offered to sell my cheesecakes.  They actually offered to get me the ingriedients at cost price and then we could split the profits on any sales.  This might tempt me if I could get my head round the idea that I couldn't eat what I baked.  At the moment it is a flattering proposition and at my age, the only proposition I am likely to get, so I am loathe to dismiss it without more consideration.

Shavuot also has a sadder meaning for me.  My son, Ben, died on the night of Shavuot.  I am not a big marker of sad  anniversaries.  I barely remember birthdays, but the fact that Ben's death coincided with a Jewish holiday makes it difficult to forget.  I remember the days of Shavuot going by very slowly since we had to wait till the holiday was over until we could have his funeral. The two days dragged by in a strange limbo state while we all waited.  In the Jewish religion you can't have a funeral on the Sabbath or on festival days so all we could do was wait.  I remember it like it was yesterday and yet it was 26 years ago.  What I remember clearly is cleaning and more cleaning, the floors, the bathroom, polishing taps, vacuuming - anything not to feel what I was feeling.  So this time of year also holds this long ago pain for me and I would like to not remember this today.

So instead I will make a cheesecake to honour the memory of my beautiful little son and the Jewish festival of cheesecake. I will also phone my brother since today is also my baby brother's birthday. My 58 year old, grandad, baby brother.  Much better to remember these life-affirming things today. Happy Birthday, Steve!

Enough procrastinating.  I have to finish my course design.  The sun is shining.  it's warm and spring-like outside, so the sooner I finish my work, the sooner I can go out and enjoy the sunshine.

Senior moments...

Picture the scene - I am standing in my crowded bank waiting to cash a cheque.  There is a long queue and I'm passing the time by reading all the advertising posters informing me of interest rates and insurance policies that I would be a fool not to take advantage of.  I am pretty oblivious to the people around me and becoming a tad impatient. The queue moves very slowly.  Suddenly the woman in front of me turns to me and says, "Please stop humming in my ear!" What??? Humming??? Me??? I turned fifty shades of red in embarrassment.

I have taken to singing to myself and not just in the privacy of the shower or my car. Unconsciously singing, humming and hopefully not talking, though I have caught myself doing this too, with no awareness, and now I find out that I do it even when others are around.  My brother recently told me that my mother used to sing and hum all the time.  This is not a comfort to me, not a bit of it. She did not do this when I (and she) was young. To me, the mutterings and singing I indulge in are a sign of increasing decrepitude.  I am getting old.  Not old old, if you know what I mean, but older than I would like to see myself.

My friend has let her grey hair grow in.  No more tyranny of hair dye, no more root re-growth, no more odd shades of brown every other month.  She looks wonderfully silvery and regal. Am I ready for this as the next step - not yet.  My hairdresser assures me that it is too soon, not enough grey, he says (bless him). I now wear glasses all the time.  How weird.  As a child I was envious of the kids who wore glasses.  They always looked so smart.  Now I am envious of those who can see without them, though the circles I move in seem to consist of a mostly be-spectacled crowd.  It used to be that my arms were just not long enough for me to read, now I could be an orangutan and I still couldn't see without my glasses.

Every week now I get special offers for discounted insurance for the over 60's.  I don't mind this and mostly throw them straight in the bin, but the mailshots offering me waterproof mattress covers and sit down bathtubs with side doors are too much of a reminder of the future I am not ready to face. And I am certain that jar lids are tighter than they used to be and most packaging is designed not to be opened, until I hand it to my son!

Discounts on the cinema, travel, museum entry, all these are very welcome, but comments from my doctor about 'not getting any younger' and 'at your age' are not.  My memory is still pretty good though events from 20 or 30 years ago begin to seem like yesterday.  Hearing the Beatles on the radio in a local shop feels completely normal.  It is, after all, contemporary music. I have taken to walking out of cafes and restaurants with loud music and welcome a bit of peace and quiet.  Other people's children drive me nuts and my own children are reaching the age where they contemplate botox and worry about receding hairlines.

I phoned a friend the other night - older than me - at 9.30pm, and the first question I asked was 'did I wake you?' If the phone rings after 10 pm in my house the first question is  'what's wrong?'  Luckily my kids live thousands of miles away and the time difference means they have to phone late so I am used to the phone ringing at midnight though I usually don't hear it.  Dinner times have shifted too.  I used to think nothing of going out to eat at 9 pm.  Now my digestion complains when I eat late.  I remember a few years ago laughing at an older friend who wanted to come for dinner at 6.30 -7 pm.  Now that seems a great idea. So hard to digest food eaten late.

When did I start to feel that going downtown into the West End of London was so much trouble? I go to the hairdresser and sometimes a gallery or museum, but the idea of getting on a train and just wandering around the crowded shops has lost all its appeal and since when did we all need so much choice? Local shops are just fine now and our little weekend walks are getting slower and we certainly carry less home from the shops.

All these things add up to the passing of the years.  Normal, I know and actually kind of funny, but also the physical limitations and the way the world feels too big now are a drag. Someone told me that one of the ways you know you're old is that your back goes out more than you do.  Well, at least my back is fine and my mind is clear, I think.  If I start to forget things and act even more strangely than usual I expect that my friends will let me know,or at least the ones that can still remember how we used to be.

The Power of Song

I spent all of today singing. I come away from today feeling that singing and chanting is pretty strong medicine. One hundred people in a huge hall chanting together create quite some beautiful harmony. 

I loved my day.  I had booked a day of chanting with Deva Premal, Miten and Manose some months ago and it could not have come at a better time.  I see that it is not difficult to stay with what's happening in the moment as you chant.  I get caught up with sound and mantras and forget that I am not so happy.  By the end of the day this was completely irrelevant.  Happy, sad, depressed, anxious - all of these feelings disappeared today as I got caught up in repeating mantras and singing with others. 

The most remarkable moments today were during a long chant of a Tibetan mantra when the entire room full of people disappeared and all there was was a crystalline purity and a 'white mind'.  This was such a peaceful and beautiful all-encompassing feeling, place and being that I lost everything around me and was simply anchored to sound.  What a wonderful gift to myself these moments today were.

I feel now that this past week of such heavy depression was a bit of a volcanic ash cloud that descended on me.  I am so thankful it has finally moved and I can breathe easier again.  I have also seen that I hide myself at these times and even my closest friends do not really know how frightening I find these depression episodes.  I think that's what unnerves me so much.  I am terrified of this low space and scared that the depression and the irrational feelings that accompany the mood will overtake my sense of love and responsibility to those around me.  So far this has not happened and I am grateful to my strong mind for not allowing this to happen.

Right now I feel very fragile, a little vulnerable and small, but good.  I will keep up the singing since it is so healing for me.  I even got a gift today.  My friend, Manose, who plays the bansuri and flute with Premal and Miten, gave me a gift of his latest CD - beautiful music from a very sweet and beautiful Nepalese man.  Today was filled with gifts.  Thank you.

Winning the war against lethargy...

Life is absurd.  Today I saw a dog sitting in the driving seat of a car parked outside my house.  The dog looked calm, relaxed and seemed to be patiently waiting for his passenger.  It was a boxer in a Mini. Of course.

I woke up and realised that I had effortlessly moved from depression and hopeless despair to irritation without pausing to take a breath. Is this progress?  I attacked the mounting pile  of laundry, went for a walk with Ralph, after having rowed over absolutely nothing, and then came home and cleaned the kitchen.  The laundry attack and kitchen cleaning are completely out of character.  The irritation with everyone, everything and the state of the world is all too familiar.  I am going to try and increase the unusual behaviours and decrease the irritation.  This is almost as monumental an ask as letting go of depression, but it is possible.

Cleaning has always been a source of distress.  I am not good at it, though I know of no university of cleaning I could attend to get better at it, and physically I find it sometimes completely exhausting.  I know there are my friends out there yelling 'Get a cleaner' but cleaners do not hang up all your clothes, or sort through your knitting wool collection for you or decide what shoes you should get rid of, and this is where my problem is right now.  The stress of tidying is greater than the stress of not having a cleaner.  I am perfectly able to polish my own taps and vacuum my own floors with my handy dandy Dyson.  it is the collecting mania that defeats me, especially on the days when I am already defeated. What defeats me is that deep, deep down I am a nest builder.  I like having things around me, preferably within reach, but the more things I collect, the more the walls close in, so this has to change and slowly, it is.

I have decided to make cleaning a default delaying activity.  I have done this with ironing.  when I don't feel like designing a new course or sorting through my piles of correspondence,  I can always iron.  The gliding of the hot steamy iron through wrinkled clothes and achieving this pile of perfectly crisp shirts in a very short time feels like a major accomplishment.  So what if the report isn't done or the tax forms not filled in.  I have a room full of ironed clothes.  Wow! My intention is to do something similar with cleaning.  Rather than build it up into this monumental task, I will use it as a way of avoiding other things I don't feel like doing.  May sound nuts, but it just might work.

Yesterday I took steps to bring this latest depressive episode to an abrupt end.  I got last minute tickets to Premal and Miten's concert in London.  The kirtan and singing is always an uplift for me and was much needed.  It took place in a beautiful church, the Union Chapel, in Islington, filled with arts and crafts details and fantastic wood carving and stained glass.  Since it was a church the seating was in wooden church pews.  Oy, how do Christians do this. Sitting on these hard wooden pews for a couple of hours was agony and I come with lots of built in padding.  Repeating mantras 108 times is really tough when all you can think is 'my ass hurts, my ass hurts,my ass hurts'.  Next time I bring a cushion. Synagogues always have  padded seats.  if it hurt to pray, Jews would never do it, also we need food and drink afterwards, but that's another story. The concert was very beautiful and did change my mood. As I said I have now moved on to irritation.

Tomorrow I spend an entire day with Premal, Miten and Manose in a smaller venue and I can sing for the whole day.  By then the irritation should have passed.  Maybe it will give way to anxiety, or maybe I'll even feel fine.  What surprises my life seems to hold for me right now. 

Meanwhile, tonight I am meeting with an old girlfriend of mine from my summer camp days.  She and her husband are in London for a couple of days.  How strange to meet someone after so long.  Shall I adopt a different persona?  I could be anyone.  She commented that my Facebook photo looks like I haven't changed a bit.  How nice to be able to project whatever image you choose on Facebook.  Kind of like those dating services where you describe yourself as young, slim and blonde, when really you're short, fat and brunette.  I guess I'll have to own up to the latter now.  I could always say I'm a multi-millionaire with a string of successful businesses all over the world, but we're meeting in a tiny Indian vegetarian restaurant not usually frequented by millionaires so I guess I'll just go as myself.  Today that seems a lot easier than yesterday!

Getting into the same old groove

Spring comes...the grass grows by itself...

Like Alice in Wonderland I find myself spiralling down the eternal rabbit hole. Again and again and again to the point where I can recognise all the milestones and identify all the points of interest along the way.  Going down into this particular rabbit hole requires no sat nav or mapbook.  I could draw the map from memory, complete with little turns, small detours and unexpected pitfalls. I could be the ultimate tour guide of the descent into depression.

Yesterday I spoke to Ralph about feeling so low.  The inertia this time has been more total (is that a good thing?  Am I becoming more total in everything, or just in misery?) and more all-encompassing.  Lots of tears, lots of exhaustion, and it all hit like a big giant truck rolling over me. It seems to feel especially tough because I wasn't expecting it.  In winter I know that these feelings are around every corner and I know which corners to avoid, but now it's Spring, the sun is shining, the cherry blossoms blooming and it is not supposed to be here. And yet, here it is, in all it's monochromatic, melodramatic glory.

Why? This is the question I was asked?  Why?  Why?  What a frustrating question because I don't have any answers. Maybe because it is easy, but it sure doesn't feel easy.  Maybe because I know the way here, but I also know the way to other, more positive emotional states.  It seems, though I can hardly believe this, that I have no control over the fog of drabness that has descended.  It makes me anti-social and uncaring, except for crying and self-pity.  For sure I do not like myself in this state and I know that one of the roads out is to begin to like myself again. It all seems like such an effort.

Again, I am reminded of the Greek story of Sisyphus, whom the gods condemned to spend his life rolling a huge, heavy rock up a mountain.  Of course, when he finally got to the top, the rock would roll down again and the entire labour would begin again. Am I eternally condemned to rolling this metaphorical rock again and again?  Sometimes I even forget to get out of the way and get crushed by the weight of this rock as it rolls down again.  The answer surely, is to stop rolling the damned rock.  Who cares if it gets to the top? Where is the top, anyway?

I think that when I get this depressed I become very stupid and forget how to get out of this morass of misery.  I have lots of tools, lots of love and so many strategies to halt this endless spiral.  Right now it just seems such an effort.

I'll wait, after all - Spring comes...the grass grows by itself....guaranteed. 

Hiding in full view

Today I did not move.  Seriously, I did not move, except to make drinks and pee.   I stayed in bed all day and slept for a good part of it. I cancelled a day's work, am now much poorer and am feeling embarrassed and ashamed to have given in to so much negativity.

STOP IT! PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER! ATTENTION SEEKER! All of these are things I hear myself saying  to myself and yet today I just couldn't do it anymore. Usually I can pull the public Cynthia together enough to work, but not today. I woke at 4am and tried hard to visualise myself in front of my group and I could only see me crying.  I went back to bed and stayed there.

I do not know why.  I know that it's tied up to realising how deeply attractive opting out of everything feels right now, so I am going back to bed.

Reasons I am still here:

Ralph
My kids
My brother
My friends
Inertia.

No more to say today...it always gets better, so far.

Bringing compassion home to me.

I spent all morning designing a couple of new training courses.  Not exactly enjoyable, but fine to do and a reminder of how much I have learned (and forgotten) over the past 30 years. I find this brain work tiring and I approach it with a large amount of impatience, wanting it to be finished almost before I start.  What this means is that I don't really enjoy the process and I don't think I give it my best.

Working with the mind is not something I value very much.  Good at it - yes, Valuable - no.  it gives me little in the way of feeding the part of me that is hungry.  This is the heartful or compassionate core of myself. This is the core that loves chanting, raising my voice with others and singing, hearing music and poetry and prayer.  I realised that very strongly this morning.  As I was getting tired and edgy after hours of writing course material I opened an e-mail from the organisers of concerts for Krishna Das.  The mail contained a clip of Krishna Das with Bernie Glassman, a Buddhist Roshi.  They talked together and Krishna Das sang and I felt myself totally lifted away from the irritations and distractions of the morning.

Glassman spoke of the Bodhi mind - the action of all of us as sentient beings to attain 'right' action, which essentially is no action.  Does that make sense?  I am beginning to understand the sense of this for me.  It is somehow connected to putting your heart in place of another, whether poor, needy, homeless or hurting.  When we can do that with full compassion, then there is no 'action' needed, just doing what is, in the moment and it will be 'right'. 

Bringing compassion to my life is one thing that I know, deeply and completely know, will transform me - transform the doubt, the suffer trips that I send myself on and the disharmony that I experience so often.  The sense of unsettling disquiet makes me restless and unhappy would heal if I brought that compassion to myself, but I don't. I recognise that this state of judgement and negativity is still more familiar than the effortless harmonious one.  Compassion is an answer, not just for me, but for everything.  Knowing and being are not the same, unfortunately.

Having just spent time in the Humaniversity in Holland I also see that there is a difference between being busy, being useful, being capable and being happy.  Part of me is very happy there.  I am able to work to my strengths and I certainly enjoy this.  I love being useful and lap up appreciation, but I still feel this internal disquiet.  This sense of never feeding the part of me that is dissatisfied and depressed is just bubbling below the surface and only needs me to stop running for a moment and BANG - there it is again. No wonder I return home so very tired. it's hard to keep ahead of me.

Maybe this state is chemical.  No, even I don't believe that.  It could be genetic and inherited.  I spent my life with a mother who was not very happy.  I know how to do this.  I am a Master at this behaviour.  I could teach others this skill, but ask me to relax and be, just be, in a state of kindness and gratitude and I fall to pieces.  Well, not actually pieces, I am still intact, but I certainly am not content.  I am loved - this I know.  I am able to love others - of this I am sure, but it still isn't IT.  I think that's why I gain weight so much; I keep trying to feed this tiny part of me that is not OK.  Bringing compassion to myself is an answer.  But how? and finally, when?

Chanting is good.  I forget all the stories and excuses I surround my life with.  I forget that I can or can't do things.  I can sing.  It doesn't matter how well, it simply matters that I do, but people who sing all the time are usually institutionalised and I still want to live in this world for a while. And right now I am tired again.  At the Humaniversity I seem so well, but I feel so lonely, even when surrounded by people.

Most people do not believe me when I express these feelings.  I am a consummate actress.  Actually that's not true, I am just able to let this part of me sleep while the lively, engaged bit is awake, but the unhappy part of me always wakes up and sometimes takes over.  The reason I write this blog is so I can express this stuff, but even so, it is easier to keep this hidden.  Sometimes all of me demands to come out of hiding. Today is one of those days.

Compassionate mind, compassionate heart....

Skills, Talents, Abilities and choices

One of the facets of my character that is never in real doubt for me is that I am especially multiskilled.  I can pretty much do whatever I put my hand to doing.  From as early as I can remember I was painting and drawing.  I've written about this before and don't need to go into my self-thwarted artist history, but there are also the many things I can do, and do well.

Today I felt like giving myself a boost and listing things I am able to do and proud of doing well.  I need this today.  Yesterday I came back from my Dutch weekend.  I always enjoy the appreciation I get for the things I do there and then come home and life often seems a little flat.  I like being amongst people though today I am pretty tired and used most of the day to just relax and sleep.

One of the things I can and do enjoy doing in Holland is cooking for the Humaniversity staff.  They have be the most appreciative audience I have ever encountered.  They normally have pretty plain, wholesome vegetarian food and I come along with my Jewish mother instinct and just want to feed them. This time I made carrot cake with a very yummy cream cheese icing and it was pounced upon and devoured with glee.  This makes me happy.  If the way to people's hearts is through their stomachs, I like having this direct line.

I did some calligraphy on my friend's certificates.
Wrote some text for their new web site.
Made some corrections to publicity material.
Re-wrote a cumbersome complaints process.
Helped advise in the kitchen.

Apart from the things I did in Holland which I do not count as special, though they were enjoyable and useful, I am also able to sew, knit, crochet, upholster, make beautiful painted bowls, boxes and do Old English manuscript lettering. I cook, bake great bread, cakes cookies, bagels, stollen, etc.  I can repair a broken plug, change a light bulb and take out the garbage.  I have hand-painted floors to look like Persian rugs, stenciled walls and made cushions.  I have mounted exhibitions, designed cards, and publicity materials.  The list goes on and yet...

I recognise as I write this stuff that I don't particularly value these abilities.  They come fairly naturally to me and I guess I can see that the things I value are the things that are difficult.  If it doesn't involve some sort of suffering it's not worth a lot.  Now, as I write this I see that this is disturbingly stupid.  Why do I have the idea that no pain, no gain is the only thing that's real. Who input this cock-eyed idea that if it doesn't hurt, it isn't worth much?  It doesn't actually matter who put this idea into my head, what matters is that I am the only one who can change this.  Maybe the first step is to actually value myself for what I can do, rather than beating myself up for what I can't do.

I spent a wonderful weekend, amongst dear, dear friends.  I had an enormous amount of positive feedback but, despite this, the loudest voice I choose to hear is an insensitive comment from  someone I count as a friend.  It was said, I believe, in a light hearted way that friends have when they feel relaxed and easy together and yet, it is the one thing I take away from this weekend.  It mirrored so closely the criticism I make of myself and thought I had sorted.  I guess not. I guess I choose to hear some things really loudly and I choose to still be hurt by them. I also am clear it has nothing to do with the person who said this. It's me and my choice to take this on. In the words of Bob Newhart - "STOP IT"!

I can also choose to remember all the hugs and all the good times I have with my friends and feel great about this.  I can also choose to come back to my beloved and bask in the delight of being home.

I just need to remember to make the right choices. I am worth more than that to myself and to others,  I have choices about how I see myself and what I take to heart.  Today I am trying to remember my beautiful self.  Not so easy, but very necessary.

Home again and happy.

Being away for a few days is a lovely way to re-awaken appreciation for the things I normally take for granted.  I love my house.  It has lots of room and is warm and comfortable.  I've just come back from a few days in the minimalist environment of the Humaniversity in Holland.  The overwhelmingly prevalent style there is Japanese minimal. I like it and feel very relaxed in the calm, clean feel of the place.

I come home to my place and it's got quite a unique style of it's own - more maximalist and Jewish kitsch than anything else. My home is crowded with object, toys, pictures, vases, paintings, plants, cushions and assorted bizarre collections of things that have accumulated over a lifetime of being magpies. It's wonderful. I find the chaos and collections very inspiring. It's stimulating to be able to rest your eye on handmade objects or paintings, drawings, pottery, or bowls we have made ourselves.  I would not really change it though I still have moments of thinking that the place is cluttered and I should get rid of everything. This feeling rarely lasts.

It's also great to come home to Ralph.  I missed being with him and surprised myself with how much.  We have had 40 years of together and during a meditation about gratitude and saying goodbye to those you love, I clearly saw that 40 years with him is nowhere near enough.  Amazing. It's good to get that back into perspective sometimes.

I'm pretty tired and happy.  I have had a really satisfying few days away.  Days of depth and warmth and above all, friendship.  The ease with which my friends relate, the ease with which we sit down and talk about feelings and emotions, just makes coming home to Ralph so good. I am very blessed to have that ease here, in my own home.  It didn't just arrive by itself. Both Ralph and I spent time and energy to create our relationship as a beautiful safe haven for the other and for ourselves and our children. We had good teachers and friends to help. 

Short entry tonight.  I just got home and I am weary and tired and happy.  Good to be back.

In the early hours of the morning...and the next day

Sitting with friends, laughing, exchanging stories, sitting in meetings, having dinner together - so far this weekend has been just what I needed.  This morning I baked a cake, took a walk, wrote up a complaints procedure in an understandable fashion, went to a graduation that took three hours, listened to what felt like a million speeches and even shed some tears. I don't usually do this much in a day and then I followed that by hanging out some more with my friends and just got in to my room - it's 3 am Dutch time (relevant since I am in Holland) and even though it's been a wonderful day, I can't seem to call an end to it because something is missing.

The something that's missing is not something, it's someone.  I miss my husband.  I have many, many close and loved friends here.  I value their friendship and I believe they value mine.  Yet, at the end of the day, when I turn around, I want to be with my husband. I want to be able to say goodnight, to talk over our day and just be with him.

Well - it's now the next afternoon and somehow last night finally faded into this morning and again we shared, laughed, got serious, consoled each other and celebrated out triumphs together. The sun finally came out over Egmond aan Zee and I finally got to walk into the village.  Seaside towns have a sameness about them - the light and air is the same and even the little shops selling millions of useless things, but I always enjoy the kitsch cuteness of it all and of course, the Dutchness of it.

As our Gathering weekend draws to a close for another year I see that we all go on with our lives and at this point, are almost always able to choose for positivity and joy.  There comes a point in life, or at least my life, where constantly choosing the dark, negative side is just a drag.  If I don't want to be around me in those moments, why would I think it is attractive to others.

This morning my old friend, Veeresh, spoke about gratitude.  I have been busy looking at this since I started writing this blog way back in December and it seems fitting that I once again list some of the things I am grateful for:

1.  I am grateful for the sun shining today
2.  I am grateful for the many friends I have
3.  I am grateful for being able to be here this weekend
4.  I am grateful for my beloved husband
5.  I am grateful for laughter
6.  I am grateful for the ability to laugh and cry
7.  I am grateful for the wonder of writing
8.  I am grateful for my family
9.  I am grateful for my willingness to learn
10.I am grateful for a beautiful, heart-filled weekend

That seems to be enough to be getting on with for now.  Oh, I forgot one thing.  I am truly grateful for my wonderful friend, Pujarin, for encouraging me many years ago to start to write.  I think of you every day, Puj, as I sit down to write this blog.  It is such a gift. Thank you.

The Gathering

Every year, for over the past ten years or so, my closest, dearest friends and I have come together in Holland at the Humaniversity for what started out as a reunion and is now called 'The Gathering'.  I like this name for what is happening this weekend very much. When we first started coming together it was a reunion of old friends, of training colleagues and a reunion of those of us who started here at the Humaniversity in the old days. It was a time of re-connection, reminiscing and general good feelings shared.


The re-naming of the reunion as The Gathering acknowledges that not all of us are 're-uniting' with former training mates, but we are all coming together for a European-wide friendship action that gathers us all into the big Humaniversity family. For three days in May we gather together in love, gratitude and recognition of having made it through another year.


Every May I look around at the Friday evening party so graciously hosted at the same place and the same time in amazement.  What started out a small group of us old warhorses has now grown to include a complete new generation. I watch the mingling of old (!) and young and see the mutual respect for who we are and what we bring to each other with a real sense of  delight. There is at least a 30 year age gap between some and yet it always works. We dance, drink and really laugh together. I could never really imagine many nuclear families working like this.


There used to be a programme on American TV called 'Cheers'.  This was about a group of  characters who met up regularly in a bar in Boston,  The theme tune for the show went like this:


Where everybody knows your name,
and they're always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see,
our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows
Your name. 

And as each of the people here walks through the door of  my friend Shikhara's house on Friday evening, everyone does know their name and who they are. Not just in a superficial way, but in the way of family, with all its quirks and eccentricities, with all its qualities.

I have a wonderful, crazy loving relationship with my husband.  He knows who I am and loves me despite and because of this. Partying with my friends tonight I felt the same overwhelming sense of acceptance with all those around me. I delude myself into thinking that none of us have aged, maybe we've faded a bit round the edges, but we still get up and dance and move.  We laugh more in one evening than I do in a typical month at home and we share the stories of our past year.

We delight in each others achievements and commiserate with our shared griefs.  There truly is no place I feel so 'me' and so seen, even when I try and hide.  Sounds soppy?  Yes, probably, but also true.  The Gathering is a unique event.  It happens once a year.  Every year I leave here exhausted from late nights and social contact, but I also leave with a heart full of love. 

There is an old saying that goes:

'A friend hears the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.' It is a privilege to hear the songs of my family and hear us all singing to each other. 

On the road again...

Packing again.  It seems like I've just finished unpacking, doing laundry and putting things away. Now here I am debating about what clothes to take, what to leave, how much to take, what the weather will be, and all the other things that traveling involves.

Just 10 days I ago I came back from seeing friends and doing some work in Holland.  This afternoon I'm back on a plane to Amsterdam to see the very same friends.  Life is such a merry-go-round.  It is actually very easy.  The flight is under an hour, the tube journey to the airport is about 90 minutes.  We get picked up at the airport (yippee!) and the car journey to the Humaniversity is only 30 minutes or so.  All this adds up to three hours and yet the total travel time adds up to about 7 hours with all the peripherals and airport wait times, security checks, taking shoes off, belts off, emptying pockets and all the other small annoyances that add up to stressful travel.

I've spoken before about airports and how much waiting around there is, but I realised today that the art of packing is a lesson in constant frustration.  I dress pretty well at home.  I look tailored and fairly well put together and yet, in the name of traveling light, I always look a bit of a mess when I'm away.  I never take the shoes I would like. After all, you can't fill up a suitcase with loads of shoes.  I never take the handbags I would like - one's enough and usually that's got to be big enough to store a small army in.  Sweaters and tops are limited and usually have to pass the versatility test - can they be worn in different ways and also are they warm enough.  Do I have enough layers so when the North Sea wind blows in Holland is always a major consideration too.

The ongoing question of 'do I look fat in this?' also limits what I want to pack.  The tops that make me feel thin and elegant are only going to be suitable if the weather is right, there is an occasion when they can be worn and they fit easily in my case.  Usually I wind up trying to follow the instructions in magazines to colour-coordinate my clothes and therefore make packing easier.  This inevitably means that I wind up with a suitcase of all black clothes. My poor husband feels like I'm constantly in mourning.

Well, now it's many hours later and I am sitting in a room in Holland having enjoyed a delightful evening with my many friends.  Too many glasses of wine and whisky later I realise that tonight , attempting to update my blog, is a useless undertaking.  I am going to abandon this day's entry to the joys of alcohol.  I am not much of drinker and a couple of shots of whisky and I'm ready for an early night, so see you tomorrow and with any luck the Dutch sun will shine on the tulip fields and I can have my herring breakfast. 

I will not look at any election results this evening since I do want to sleep without feeling angry and frustrated. I wish all of you and myself some  very pleasant dreams.

I wish I was psychic.

I wish I could read the future. It would make my life so simple if I could just predict the next few years.  I could worry less about my meager pension, my spiraling weight, the pains in my elbow and all sorts of small worries that I could foresee the end of, or at least the future state of. 

Alas I am not psychic.  I believe myself to be fairly intuitive and perceptive when it comes to people and their feelings - right here and now, but ask me to predict the state of the weather, or economy or anything bigger than myself and I usually get it wrong.  Hell, I usually don't concern myself with anything outside of my day-to-day world.  I haven't got the time or energy.  When I was a teenager in New York in the swinging 60's, I remember going to a preview of the play 'Hair'.  A friend of mine was in the chorus and I was given tickets.  It was the Easter weekend and the play was due to open later in the week.  The audience was buzzing - Andy Warhol was in the audience and the excitement was palpable.  I loved the play, came out humming the music and immediately pronounced that it would never be a hit.  I thought it was too 'out there' and would only appeal to a minority audience. 'Hair' went on to play internationally for thousands of performances and continues to be a worldwide success.  See - not even slightly psychic.

When I first moved to England I would sometimes have dreams that something bad had happened to a member of my family.  I could barely wait till morning so I could make an expensive transatlantic phone call to check on the well-being of my family.  Inevitably everything was fine and my panic was greeted with amusement.

All of these musings were prompted by a flyer I was handed this morning from 'Psychic Sabrina'.  You've all seen these slips of paper that are pressed into your hands at tube stations or on high streets everywhere.  Apparently this miraculous Sabrina can cure EVERYTHING and within days.  Wow! This sounds fantastic! Where is she?

Psychic Sabrina has over 30 years of experience and will destroy your problems before they destroy you.  An offer so good I am surprised that Sabrina does not have offices on Harley Street and a full client roster.  As it is she seems to be based at a low rent area near a local tube station. 

I wonder if Psychic Sabrina could have foreseen that the visit of my plumber today to fix my boiler, since it decided to act foolishly yesterday and not work,  was actually the fault of the thermostat.  Could Sabrina have told me that the thermostat only needed new batteries and that I would feel like a complete idiot in front of the plumber, and even more idiotic since, as a woman, I hate to admit that I can't cope with machines or technology. It took the plumber three minutes to open the stat, change the batteries, re-programme the bloody thing and pronounce the boiler fixed. Psychic Sabrina, where were you when I needed you?

On a more serious note, I wish I could see what the future holds for my father.  He has bounced back from his broken hip and is recovering slowly.  His mental state continues to deteriorate but he can now walk a few steps and my brother tells me his demeanor is brighter.  We do have to accept (and I think we have to keep telling ourselves this again and again) that he will never get well, that the future for him is a downhill journey, and that we are slowly losing him.  My baby brother sounded so very sad today when we spoke. I hope my brother's future is filled with joy.  His son is getting married at the end of the month and my whole dysfunctional family gets to celebrate together.  It doesn't take Sabrina to tell me that this will be an interesting occasion.

In case anyone is interested in consulting Psychic Sabrina, she does make house calls, telephone consultations and even does house parties. So, for that special event - weddings, christenings, bar mitzvahs, stag nights or birthdays, this sounds just the ticket.

Results are promised in three days though there is no money back guarantee.  Very tempting!