Saying goodbye

It's been a wonderful visit. It seems so impossible that tomorrow morning I leave San Francisco and make my way cross country. I have wonderful kids. I must have done something right for them both to give me so much 'naches'. I am so blessed.

Tomorrow I see my brother. In a few days I'll be back in London and life goes back to normal.
Now I am going to finish packing an incredibly over-stuffed suitcase. I imagine I'll not be back on line for a day or two.

Wishing me a Bon voyage.

On the tourist trail

I spent a lovely day today with my very grown up son and his girlfriend. What a surprise it is to see my 'little boy' caring for me and his girlfriend. He pointed out to me that I seem to always think of him as six years old. Now my six year old has beard!
Tomorrow is my last full day here in San Francisco with my kids. I don't need to go touring. I know the city and I came to spend time with my children. I am amazed that they are both so willing to spend whole days with me. It's not all perfect - I do find myself being careful in what I say or do, but no more careful than I should be with anyone I respect.

I can remeber when my mother would arrive in London for one of her annual visits. I would clean and clear endlessly because I was so afraid of her judgements. She always said that she was allowed to criticise me and be generally negative because I was her daughter and therefore she didn't have to watch her words, as she put it. Now that I find myself as the visiting mum I try and remember how disrespectful I found all those judgements and hopefully I'm not doing the same to my kids.

I'm looking forward to the cooler weather on the East Coast. Today we did play tourist and went to Fishermans Wharf. Eating crab, watching the sea lions and enjoying the sun and my son, was lovely. Tomorrow I'll spend the day with my daughter. I am very happy and if Ralph were with it would be even better.

Technological panic

I have a new camera.  I should be excited and on some level, I am, but I am also a little bit afraid.  I bought the camera yesterday and brought it back to my kids' apartment, unwrapped it and figured I could just point and shoot.  Wrong!  There is an entire CD with instructions on how to use the damned thing.  There are knobs and buttons and settings and all sorts of fancy things I could do with this new piece of equipment if I wasn't so nervous of it.  I'm sure I'll get the hang of it eventually.


Shame really because San Francisco is filled with the most bizarre assortment of people I have even seen collected in one place.  Old, young, gay, straight, crack-addled, transvestite, you name it,  I have seen them all on the bus.  Yesterday I saw some homeless people sleeping on the street with their wheelchairs securely fastened at their sides.  I have never seen that before.


The weather is beautiful, hot and sunny, but it feels so odd to me since in my mind summer is already over.  The city is sweet.  Small and manageable.  I like being here and feel very relaxed and easy about getting about on my own.


I have also been cooking while I've been here.  it's awfully hard for me to just be on holiday.  i have to keep busy and cooking for an appreciative audience is part of my way of relaxing.  In a few days I'll be in Connecticut and see my dad.  That still is part of my holiday time and I have to remind myself of that.  My brother tells me that my father is not really very aware of anyone anymore and has reverted to speaking Yiddish.  At least I will understand him.  the people in the home he lives in don't, but it doesn't really matter since he doesn't make much sense anymore.


I am really looking forward to seeing my brother and then going hone and seeing Ralph.

San Francisco days

I finally fulfilled the fantasy of hot summery days in SF.  The temperature here was in the 90's and it was bloody hot.  spent a wonderful morning at the Farmers Market, tasting all these California fruits and treats.  Then walked to a sublimely California tea lounge where for inflated prices you got to drink weak tea combined with faux philosophy - wonderful.


The visit with my children is great.  They are kind and caring and very capable.  I love seeing the way they run their home (much better than I do my own).  Everything is pristine and they actually clean and clear all the time.  We invited some cousins for dinner last night and it felt 'heimlich' and warm to be entertaining in my kids' home. Makes me proud to be their mum and I don't know if they are like this because of something I've done right, or in spite of what I've done!


I do wonder if my son will every return to the UK.  It makes me so sad to think that both my kids will be settled so far away.  I think my son would consider coming back, but the economy mitigates against, not to mention his girlfriend!  It makes me angry that whole generations of kids are stuck in places they didn't really choose because of work.  The economic mess that the world is in is having an effect on all of us, I'm just grateful that my son has a job at all.


It feels really strange and also normal to be here.  I want to cook and take care of these 'children' who are no longer children.  They don't need me to do this, so it's actually fun to cook a meal, or make some soup.  I do wish they didn't feel they had to accompany me everywhere.  I like being on my own and shopping and pottering around, so tomorrow I'll try and escape from the well-meaningness of family!

Spelled badly on my tiny iPod

Lying in bed in a strange apartment, totally jet lagged at 4am. I've officially run out of middle of the night things to do. So far I've planned our dinner menu, made the shopping list, tried on my new shoes, dyed my hair, shaved my legs and showered. Jet lag is a drag, but productive.

I am reduced to turning on the TV and let me tell you if you want to know the real heart and soul of a nation, have a look at broadcasting in the early hours of the morning. So far we have fat aids,mattresses, incontinence stuff, protect your identity and the religious evangelists. I may keep channel surfing for a while. I'm bound to come up against a rerun of Friends!

My visit with my kids is so sweet. The are both very caring of me and just want me to take care of myself - pretty much as I often treat them. The tough part is how much more I miss them while I'm here. That sounds nuts but I can feel that we would all love to be living closer. I am trying to let go of that sadness so I don't miss the time we have together.

Tomorrow down to the Bay to the Farmers Market and some time in the glorous sun. I really am in California.

Jet lag on day 2

At 6am I discovered that there is a universal dustmen language. This involves a delicate conflagration of dustbins which consists of banging, rolling,clnging and clattering the bins together so as to wake up the residents of an entire building. So there goes my second night attempt to manage this insane jet lag. Sleeping pills are no match for the US sanitation engineer.

Very nice to be here and see my kids. Their apartment is great and their lives are pretty sorted. I just wish it were easier for my daughter and I to make peace and understand each other - misunderstandings get in the way of so much love.. I love her to bits and yet we seem to talk at cross purposes a lot. Maybe this can get easier too.

I feel very welcomed and cared for and I love being with them. It's leaving that always feels odd. The sun is shining, so today we can walk a bit more.

I really miss Ralph and can see how lonely I feel without him.

Anxiety sort of building...

California here I come.  Tomorrow morning I'm off to the land ofplenty where the sun sometimes shines and the palm trees are huge.  San Franciscobeckons.

I've noticed that I've checked six or seven different weather forecasts for the next week.   I realise that what I do is keep checking until  I find the one that gives me the forecast I like the best.  Do other people do this?

I intend to enjoy my days away and see my dad and hug himand never mind that he doesn't know me, I know him.  He is still my dad.

I need to pack so I'm off now. I will take a short blog break over the next travel days.  The nextentry willbe from SF.

Bon voyage!

Press the repeat button...again

Tomorrow I am off to San Francisco and then seven days later to Connecticut.  Four days after that I return home. During the last six months I have flown to Berlin, Hamburg, Milan, Bordeaux, Amsterdam, Amsterdam again, Cincinnatti, New York, Hartford and now here I go again.  I am tired of all this travel and yet I have to do it in order to see family, visit friends and funnily enough, relax. I wish there was an easier way.

Sometimes I worry about my enormous elephantine carbon footprint so I recycle another egg carton, but I still fly everywhere.  I am getting so used to packing and unpacking that it seems to get easier each time. The toiletries stay in the same bag.  The passport is easily found and the ironing is endless.  Anyone watching my behaviour from outside would think I love all this jet-setting, but I don't. This time I thought that seeing my kids first would make seeing my father easier.  We'll see.

The problem is also that I am a large woman.  I cannot afford to fly business class so I have to take all these trips in economy class. The airline I choose to squeeze myself into on Wednesday for 11 hours has a seat width of 17 inches.  I am hoping that I sleep for a great deal of the flight and that the person next to me is tolerant!

Before all of this happens on Wednesday, I can report that yesterday was a funny, sweet and delightful day.  I have noticed lately that when I lose my temper (often) my long-suffering husband is more and more able to see the funny side, or at least ignore the tantrum until it's died down.  I am starting to do the same thing and I also see that the snappiness we have with each other is lessening.  For me there is no secret to this, we just love each other and what lands on top of that love needs to sometimes be scraped, shoveled or moved away so we can get to the love again and remember why we are in this madness called marriage. It is always worth the trouble and that felt particularly nice yesterday.

Ralph and I have always had similar interests and one of the greatest joys is our love of art and all things related to that.  We both draw and paint and can spend time together sketching - some of which we tried to do in Bordeaux. Yesterday, We went to see Sistine Chapel tapestries by Raphael in the V&A museum. Quite splendid and just about the best thing about the old bigoted Pope's visit.  The Vatican lent the tapestries to the Brits in honour of the visit and it almost makes it worthwhile that it has cost me, a British taxpayer, over £20 million in security arrangement fees to protect the Pope. In the name of religion there have been some horrific acts, but also some truly inspirational art.  I guess I can dismiss the religion and appreciate and delight in the art. I actually have no choice in this anyway.

So, that was yesterday, a quick time out from packing, washing, ironing and playing Stepford Wife.  The freezer has a week's worth of homemade food, the bread is baking, the shirts are ironed.  I almost don't feel guilty about leaving, but I'm not there yet.

Here we go again...

Doppelgangers and imposters

My son has asked me to bring him English sweets when I go to California this week.  Tomorrow I will go shopping for said sweets knowing that the exact ones he's looking for are as as rare as hen's teeth.  It will be easy to find sweets that look like the ones he wants, but the ones he remembers, the Proustian madeleines, are not there anymore.

We live in a world of strange substitutes.  The candy shrimps and bananas  he wants are now too vivid a pink and too garish a yellow.  They have a memory of the taste I remember, but only because I remember the taste and add it to the present days sweets.  My memory gives the imposter a veracity it would not have on its own.  My friend asked me the other day what the role of memory was.  Maybe it is this - to give us solace when the world is full of ersatz.  But still I will get the artificially enhanced sweets and I'm sure my son will say they don't taste quite the way he remembered and he'll be right.

My son also paid me one of the highest Jewish mother compliments yesterday.  In the land of  Jewishprincessville (see yesterday's blog entry) he awarded me the equivalent of an MBE.  He said my chicken soup was miles better than that which he had at a relative's house last week.  He mentioned words like tastier, more flavour and richness and that the soup he had eaten had not been skimmed enough.  I knew I had brought him up right.

I then had a conversation with Ralph about my outstanding chicken soup (and I am not even a little embarrassed to own this one).  I think there are two secrets to my soup and I willingly give them up here to the chicken soup making public. First is CHICKEN - lots and lots of it.  More chicken than you would think.  I often use two whole chickens plus giblets for one large pot of soup and I'm sure that helps.  The Marx Brothers once had a routine about making chicken soup in which they poured water through a chicken and I'm still haunted by the image of a  pot of chicken-flavoured water.  There is no chance of this if you use enough chicken.  Also the kind of chicken makes a difference.  I drive across town to get a boiling chicken from the closest kosher butcher.  This is best for soup.  A young, tasty free-range organic roasting chicken is fine at a pinch, but in this case you want a chicken like me - old, experienced, not good for regular roasting, but holding years of great flavour in its bones. Oh, and by the way, unless you like the taste of flavour-sapped old boiling fowl, be prepared  to chuck out all the chicken, the flavour is in the soup! Generosity is the rule here.

My second absolutely necessary ingredient is the one that is most often substituted and in most cases, absolutely incorrectly.  This is petrushka or parsley root.  Petrushka is the white root that our Polish mothers always added to soup.  It looks very similar to parsnip and this is where the mistake happens.  So many young Jewish women remember the white root their mums used and since it's not something you find on the shelves of  Pathmark or Safeway, they substitute parsnip, an altogether different tasting root that gives an odd sweetness to the soup. It looks remarkably similar but beware, it is a doppelganger, an evil imposter waiting to add an unwelcome taste to your soup.  If you cannot get the right one, the root of the parsley, also called Hamburg parsley, then please use celeriac, the root of celery.

So, I started out bemoaning the disappearance of things I remember and end up giving away chicken soup secrets. For the rest of my recipe just get in touch and once I give you honorary Jewishprincessville citizenship, I might give you my exact recipe, though it's never the same twice.

Some substitutions work, recycled rubbish bin liners are fine instead of new platic bags.  Some don't - saccharine will never be sugar, decaf will never taste like the real thing, those damned new low energy light bulbs stink, but memory helps add the missing ingredient, except in the case of chicken soup.  Then only the real thing will do, and you can never substitute how much love goes into a pot of soup.  I am sure of this.

A Day of Atonement...

Synagogue in Pune, India

I am not by nature terribly religious.  I have written about his before and I am clearer than ever that for me the religious aspect of my life is much more to do with a kind of holistic spirituality and inter-connectedness all beings share.  Today, though is also one of the holiest days of  the Jewish calendar.  It is Yom Kippur. 

Though I do not go to synagague or, as is traditional today, fast for 24 hours so as to leave the mind and body clear for prayer, I do spend some time in meditative thought about my actions during the past year.  Yom Kippur marks the end of a ten day period in which we are meant to contemplate our deeds, thoughts and actions.  This seems like a good idea to me.  Often our deeds are what we are judged on and our thoughts are not something we scrutinise or remember.

Sometimes I know I can be unkind and more often thoughtless or tactless.  I am never as good as I would like to be and I believe that I judge myself more harshly than any real or more likely, imagined,  god might. I gossip and use sarcasm and harsh words when kindness and patience might achieve more.  I have a strong need to be right and therefore make others wrong.  To use the expression that Ralph coined last night I often live in 'Jewishprincessville'.

Jewishprincessville is a land never very faraway that many of my friends and I inhabit, especially when we are being lazy and inactive.  In Jewishprincessville, the women usually rule, but I have myself known some very able male citizens of this land.  The qualities of the citizens of Jewishprincessville are a tremendous attitude of entitlement and an unswerving, unshakeable sense of our rightness and the wrongness of others.  Few people are born with these qualities, but have to work on developing them.

So, today, I am declaring my home a Jewishprincessville free environment.  Equality of entitlement willbe the rule of today and I will give up the need to be right.  I am endeavouring to do this more and more.  it does not serve others for me to think I'm always right.  it makes me seem arrogant and pushy and I am not always that. I see it  doesn't serve me at all.

As it is Yom Kippur today I am trying to make amends to those I have wittingly, consciously or unwittingly and unconsciously wronged or offended.  I am keeping an open, compassionate heart today.  It is a beginning...

Old fears...

My old dentist's office in New York

Letting go of things is incredibly easy.  You just loosen your grip and let it slip away. No problem.  But of course, life is not so simple.  Letting go of fish in water is simple, they just slip through your fingers and letting go of the hand of a child who is now grown up and is straining and pulling away is also not too difficult, if at first it may appear so.

Today I took note of an old, old fear that simply fell away.  How, when, where, I don't know, I just know that it's gone.  Today I went to the dentist for a two hour complex root canal thing.  Very intense, lots of numbing injections and sitting with my mouth uncomfortably open for most of the two hours.  My dentist is also a friend and I have complete trust in him.  As he was drilling and digging and suctioning away I started to think about my forthcoming trip to San Francisco and then to see my father.  I imagined myself a week from now, walking through Golden Gatge Park or sitting in a nice little cafe or even better still, exploring vintage and second hand shops downtown.  Suddenly, and with quite a moment of surprise, I realised I had fallen asleep!  Asleep, in the dentist's chair, with two people hanging out in my mouth, with tools and metal stuff and all the dental paraphernalia, I fell asleep!

My dentist stopped for a moment and let me have a short stretch break.  During this time he asked me how I'd overcome my dental phobia.  When I first started seeing him I would cancel every other appointment until I built up the courage to go back for more treatment.  I would have to be sedated in some way in order to have any treatment - even for teeth cleaning and now, I find myself able to relax to the point that I can sleep.  How did this fear disappear?  What did I do? or more importantly, not do? 

The same thing seemed to happen in Italy this summer.  My previously cherished terror of windy, mountain roads was not there.  I kept expecting it, like the uninvited guest at a wedding, but it never arrived.  Maybe this is the answer, previously I always invited the fear.  I expected it, I anticipated it and I waited for it.  When there was the briefest hint that it was there I threwmyself into its arms and embraced it.

Today I noticed that I didn't do that anymore.  I haven't done it with the dentist, or any other dentist for quite some time.  I noticed that I was relaxed and I was looking forward to having space to allow my mind to go somewhere else, to travel in space. This felt like a luxury to me.

It's good to see these old, old fears go.  They were not my friends, just feelings I allowed to stay with me for much longer than necessary.  I am pleased also that I am noticing these disappearances.  I can pat myself on the back and invite courage instead.

Now, if only the post-dentist toothache would go, I'd be all set.

Nostalgia, sentimentality and work...

I went back to work today after two months of wonderful summertime break.  I felt anxious and uncertain about going back and running the course that I designed and have delivered for five years and know inside out and backwards and forwards.  Why do I still put myself, needlessly as it turns out, through these periods of hesitation and low confidence?  Surely I know my worth by now and yet I still feel unsure. In a way it's like an actor's stage fright, it spurs me on to do things better.

I find that as the years go by I am more and more unsure of my place in the world.  I actually don't think this is a bad thing.  I am less arrogant and self-important than I was as a snotty teenager and more assured about who I am.  I am also much, much more nostalgic and emotional.  I am often to be found crying at home makeover shows, reality TV and old movies.  I find myself more compassionate and less impatient.  These are qualities I value in myself.  I believe they are qualities that have come to me through the aging process. I wasn't at all ready to receive these qualities in my younger years.

I love and hate getting old.  I mourn for the beautiful, lithe, thin woman I was. Oh, wait a minute, that was never me.  I was always the slightly hairy, dark, dumpy Jewish one, but I also miss her.  As I've matured I feel like an old cheese - to be savoured and enjoyed but occasionally a bit too strong for some.  Watching hair grow in new places and not grow in places I want is a new sensation and I appreciate the advice of a good friend, who said that the best gift you can give an older woman is a strong magnifying mirror and a good pair of tweezers.

I love the mushy qualities that I seem to have developed.  Through chanting and singing I have discovered a sentimentally spiritual part of myself. I cry easily and feel overwhelmed at times with deep, deep feelings of 'rightness'. Hard to explain this one, but I know it when I feel it. The 'rightness' of my relationships, my teachers and my life generally, the 'rightness'of friendships and the cherishing of the special moments of my life.

It's hardto explain these feelings.  They sometimes seem teenage in their intensity, but also feel very, very old and filled with a timeless wisdom.  I felt it today at work.  I saw, heard and felt the struggle that some of the people on my course went through in order to improve their working lives, all the time having to deal with fear of getting it wrong.  I have a lot more time for these feelings in my course participants.  I allow more and understand more. 

The day went pretty well.

Morning ranting

Today I am beginning my morning completely, absolutely, totally furious.  What kind of country do I live in?  Have the UK National Health authorities taken leave of their senses?  How can any of their cost-cutting initiatives be justified?  I am literally incandescent with rage.

The story so far - I am 61 years old and have a family history of cancer.  I had breast cancer when I was 42, my mother died of colon cancer.  As a result of this a few years ago I insisted that I have a colonoscopy.  For those who haven't had this delight, this is a test where a camera is shoved up inside you and the internal lining of the colon is examined for any irregularities.  The test is not pleasant and the prep for the test is even less pleasant, but hey, this is not something you actively want to happen, but needs to happen.  So far I have had two of these delightful procedures done once every 30months of so.

In the US this test is done every year on people over 50.  In the UK, where health is a hit or miss affair, it has previously been done on people over 50 every three years unless there is a family history of cancer.  I have, obviously,  qualified for this procedure to be done slightly more frequently.  I was just telephoned by my GP who informed me that the protocol has changed and the National Health Service recommendation is now once every five (!!!!) years!

Five years between examinations is an incredibly long time.  In five years any developing cancer can decimate the body. Maybe this is the motivation behind the arbitrary nature of the NHS decision, to wipe out the elderly by not diagnosing illnesses at an early stage. I expressed this to my doctor, who listened without comment.

I guess I will have to becomea medical tourist.  The colon procedure costs about £800- £1,000 to have done privately in the UK. In India it costs £132.  I could actually have a holiday, bask in Indian sunshine, see friends and relax and have this test done, not to mention the mammography they only think is necessary  for UK women every five years too.

So, enough anger over things I cannot change.  I will, as always find a way round this and take care of my health in my own way.  I am healthy and in pretty good  shape for a woman of a certain age.  I have every intention of staying that way even if I have to become more creative as to how. 

I am still angry, but willing to let it go right now because all it does is frustrate me.

Back to my routine...

This morning I finally feel the end of summer has arrived and I've landed back on planet Cynthia.  Every year I leave this planet for a while and try and soak up sun and relaxation in such abundant amounts that it can last for the rest of the year.  As I've said before I always come back in early September and often have landed with a considerable bang.

For some inexplicable reason this year I've arrived back in my home and into my self with a more grounded and sober attitude.  I feel better  than I have in some time (except for an odd foot  problem with a great name - plantar fascitis) and am filled with positive inspiration and resolution. Many of my summer experiences have sparked a little creative flame and I have many embryonic projects in mind to begin over the next months.

I also came to a much belated realisation recently regarding my children. Both my kids live on the other side of the world.  They are adults and they've both managed (without my help) to create happy, successful lives.  This may seem obvious to most people and maybe it is even obvious to me, but I had one of those light bulb moments recently where I stopped in my tracks and thought 'hey, it makes no difference what I think about the way my kids are running their lives, they don't have to ask permission anymore and I don't have the power over them that parents have over little children.  They're adults and pretty fantastic ones at that'.  So this has made me feel easier and freer with them and maybe even more respectful.  It's only taken me years to learn this. Better late...

For the rest, today is an average good day.  There are more and more of these lately.  I am no longer surprised that life is good.  I am a little bit superstitious and I do find it hard to say these things in print or out loud, but I am into tempting fate.  Actually I am much more into  fate.  I am firmly in charge at the moment.  I am even on another diet!

Passing 200 and going strong...

I think it was a few days ago that I passed my 200th blog entry.  This is an achievement, a major, mind-blowing, extraordinary feat of endurance and dedication that I never imagined would happen.  When I started this process all those days ago in December I was in the middle of a full-blown winter doldrum (can that ever be singular? Can you have one doldrum?).  I started writing as a way of turning myself inside-out in order to cast light on the dark corners.  The question is, has it worked? The second question is - should I be looking elsewhere, rather than the dark corners?

On the whole, writing has proved to be a boost to my confidence and my ability to pass through moods faster and with less collateral damage.  I am able to look back at earlier entries and observe myself through a distant lens and surprisingly this distance has brought some focus.  Sometimes I have been delighted to find the person in that lens is beautiful and worthy and very precious, other times I have seen a darker side.  Whatever I have discovered through the lens of my own camera has been of enormous benefit to me.  I believe I am more balanced than I was at this time last year and more able to assess what is real and what is imagined or exaggerated.

I still struggle with self-compassion and I still see that I put more weight and importance on negative rather than positive feelings, but hey, I'm a work in progress and this one is quite the masterpiece.  I feel well and empowered and able to contemplate being exactly who I am and finally, finally, relaxing with that.  I make my life much harder than it needs to be.  I see, by looking back over 199 blog entries that I am certainly my harshest critic, that no one in my life picks me apart the way I do, and I am also not too forgiving of my own eccentricities and quirks and this does not serve me at all.  Indeed, it makes me an unnecessarily harsh judge of others,too.

The past months have brought so many moments of pure joy.  The value of writing them down is that it's harder to deny the pleasurable times in my life.  I am a great nay-sayer and will forget the good times at the drop of a hat,  but here it is in print and it feels good to be able to read through the past entries and see that I have been able to acknowledge the ups as well as downs.  I need to do this more.

The past week has been filled with wonderful days.  Last week my New Year dinner was very lovely and had a great deal of meaning for me.  I made much effort to ensure that the food was good, the table was beautiful and the whole evening turned into a very special time that we shared with friends.  As I lit candles and read blessings I felt we all shared the moment and wished each other happiness and sweetness for the coming year.  The next days I spent with a very old and dear friend in Amsterdam.  How lucky I am to live within an hour of Holland and that I am able to see friends from all over the world.  On Saturday we shared a great meal with more Dutch and German friends and again, it was so dear to be able to relax amongst so many old friendships.

I have chosen the life I have well.  Even though I think my life is heavy and sometimes dark, it actually isn't any more.  Maybe I am just relating to history and not my life in its present form.  Let's see what the next 100 days bring. I can hardly wait.

Hurry, hurry, rush, rush...

Erev Rosh Hashanah - a big, scruffy, non-religious woman is up at 7am making challah and potato kugel.  The choices to be made at the early hour are endless - to grate the potatoes by hand or to use the food processor, to make only a kugel or to add another carb dish, to add more eggs to the challah or not.  Such are the earth-shattering problems facing me this morning.

My cousins,Masha, Alter and their daughter, Sylvia.

When I potter around my kitchen in the early hours with no disturbance I feel a bit like Mickey Mouse in the Sorcerer's Apprentice.  One little drop of food that dirties the counter top turns into showers of disarray that seem to grow and grow.  I had to stop for a short breathing break before I tackle the food  preparation tornado that seems to have inhabited my kitchen.

I am ridiculously happy doing this.  As I chop and fold and mix, I sing and am in a real place of meditation.  I wonder if there is a cooking medition.  I think I will name it the Balaboosta mediation.

'Balaboosta (n.)(bah-lah-b00-sta) A Yiddish term meaning the perfect housewife, homemaker, wonderful mother, cook, and gracious hostess. She does it all and does it well.'

This new meditation can be done by men or women, but it does involve whizzing round the kitchen, chopping here, tasting there, stirring as needed, watching that nothing burns, all while setting a table,vacuuming, doing laundry and importantly, singing.

I don't think today is much of a day for writing - more of  cooking and cleaning and meditating.  I love that my mum is watching and I know she's happy.  If only I could get my matzo balls as good as hers, my meditation might be complete and I might even get enlightened.

I'll let you know! 

 

Revelations...

Some days I struggle with what to write about.  I read an interesting article in The Times yesterday about Elizabeth Gilbert, author of 'Eat,  Pray, Love', an interesting book about her personal journey to finding herself.  She was asked how she could open up her most intimate feelings, thoughts and experiences to  be read by millions of strangers.  Her reply was 'learn how  to reveal yourself'.

'Learn how to reveal yourself.' 

This is what I am trying to do by writing every day. Revealing myself here in print helps me to reveal myself to me. The fewer hidden dusty corners there are in my life, the easier it is for me to be fully present to myself.  It's not that I have a thick-skin. I am incredibly sensitive, indeed some would say, oversensitive, to perceived or actual criticism.  I get defensive and even aggressive when given feedback that I judge to be harsh (and I often judge genuine constructive comment as harsh). Even with my overly sensitive nature I value my ability to be reasonably open with my feelings.

I haven't always been this way.  When I was a teenager I was so secretive and shut down that I didn't express any feeling at all, except maybe anger.  I remember being a sullen, angry child, though I was told that I was high-spirited, bright,funny and had a great spark of mischievousness that everyone both feared and loved and admired.  Mostly I remember feeling wrong.  Wrong in my size, wrong in my ungainliness, wrong in my tailor-made clothes made by my immigrant father, wrong in my home, my parents,my Eastern European food and just generally wrong in my skin.  I also see that with hindsight I was not alone in feeling these things- many kids have trouble seeing themselves and their families as normal or as good  as others.

As I've aged I still sometimes feel 'wrong', though never to the extent I did when I was a pre-teen.  I know that there are times when I chatter too much,too loudly or inappropriately, but so what.  I wouldn't be human if I didn't get it wrong every so often.  The difference between me now and me then, is that now I know that everyone feels this self-doubt sometimes.  Everyone approaches new situations with slight trepidation - it'sjust that as adults we learn to mask those feelings or at least I've learned to minimise them.  No one actually notices and that's a big revelation to me and it makes me feel far more relaxed.

My increasing girth is still an issue for me.  I don't like what I see in the mirror though I do like the way my body feels. I am healthy and strong now and after so many years of illness I feel pretty embarrassed to be hung up about weight. It feels so trivial.  I vow to eat less and do for a while, but the world is so full of good stuff that I lose my resolve fairly easily. Unfortunately I live in a society that values women according to their looks.  Maybe at my age, it's time to give up the battle to be skinny (never gonna happen) and just become more of what I am,  a really ravishing, stylish large woman.

So, I come back to where I began - 'learn how to reveal yourself' - and I see that for me this almost inevitably means learn how to reveal all the bad things about yourself.  I am still at the baby steps stage of learning how to reveal the spectacularly unique and wonderful things about myself.  I can at least begin by valuing how good I feel in this moment - tired, weary and just good.  It's a start and a very good way to approach another New Year.

Deja vu... again

Deja vu is a wonderful thing.   It allows me to re-experience real or actually, most of the time, imagined events from my past.  Last night, at my friend's big birthday party I had many such moments.

We came, we drank, we ate and we danced.  Nice. Been a long while since I had a dance though my movements are a bit more restrained, containing the flailing of the arms more and the exuberance with which I used to throw myself on to the dance floor a bit more, as I grow in years and  size.  At some point I looked around and there were friends I hadn't been on a dance floor with for at least 20 years.  How strange to be looking at each other in the same slightly shy, warm way we used to all those many years ago.

I watched a film this weekend in which one of the characters was going to a high school reunion.  Her  friend said she'd recently been to hers. "How was it?'  Everyone looked the same, only swelled", she said. I understood in a flash last night what she meant.  We all looked the same, moved the same only bigger and slower, like dinosaur relatives of our past  selves.  Nevertheless, it was a moment of sweet remembering and a wonderfully close evening.

Remembering is my theme for the next few days. As I approach Jewish New Year 5771, I also approach a period of contemplation and meditation. The ten days between the New Year and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, I always try to spend some time going back over my past year.  How have I been?  What have I done that I wish I could change?  Have I lived in an ethical manner?  Have I dealt with my world and the people I encounter with care and compassion? What will my actions look like for the next year? How have I treated my loved ones,my friends, my colleagues and also, importantly, myself?

I like the fact that even though I am not religious, I am a member of a tribe that does spend time, however cynically or ritually, looking over their own behaviour and vowing to do it better in the coming year. Not in the next life, not in some fairy tale paradise that may never arrive, or if you believe Richard Dawkins, never existed and will never, ever be there, but now, in this life, in this time frame.  This responsibility is one that I could take lightly and to the outside view, it might seem so, but I know, deep in myself, that I do not take this at all lightly.

The work I do, the people I encounter, the things that drive me, are informed by this desire and responsibility to live in a world that I make better by my presence.  I am not deluding myself, but as I said to a young firebrand cousin the other day, one person, one action, one moment at a time.  I do, honestly, believe that I have the power to change my world. I can be better than I imagine by being aware of my actions and always coming from a loving space.  I still have to tackle my absolute love of gossip, this is not one of my finer traits, but for the most part I think I get it right more often than wrong.

Last night, at this party, I was struck again by how big my chosen family is,  how much I value and cherish the ties I have and the history I share with the people on that dance floor. I have to pat myself on the back and shake my head in amazement at how emotionally intelligent I have been in my life.  Even in my stupidest, darkest moments, I have gathered around me a group of wonderful friends whom I share my highs, lows and loving moments with.

When I combine that with the warmth I feel for my biological family, I feel so blessed and this is a wonderful space from which to be entering 5771.

We have to stop meeting like this...

Coming home from a tombstone unveiling this morning I was thinking about the whole concept of cemeteries as places to remember the dead.  The ocassion was to commemorate one of Ralph's cousins, an elderly women of 89 who died last year.  As is the custom, one year or so after death the family erects a tombstone on the grave and family and friends gather to say ritual prayers and to follow this by going back to the home of the living relations and eating smoked salmon bagels and drinking English tea with milk.  What a bizarre way to remember anyone.

The distant cousins we saw this morning are familiar and liked - we gather at least once a year for mostly funerals and go through the same motions and drink the same tea and eat the same catered bagels - this time there was added fresh fruit platters (a clear sop to the weight watchers among us). We didn't once discuss the deceased as the time for that was long over.  We caught up on family events, 'hatches, matches and dispatches', and promised earnestly to get together at other times, funerals and cemeteries being hardly conducive to party time.

I am not having such a ridiculous event following my death.  Of this, I am sure.  I am not certain that the loved ones I leave behind will take my wishes into account but I am certain of this much.  I do not want to be buried in a huge cemetery filled with other Jews lying alongside the M25 motorway.  I do not want some ungainly gravestone made of cold marble or granite engraved with meaningless platitudes or any other words that make certain they don't offend any of the family. (Do we mention the sons-in-laws, will the kids be upset if we don't name the surviving relatives on the headstone, do we use the nickname or real name, do we put the dates of their life or their deaths - you see what I mean here.) I do not want my empty bones taking up space in the earth and calling out to my family to visit me, or worse still, not visit me.  The whole palaver round death is so wrong for me. Dying may be fairly straightforward, but burial is not.

Please dispose of me in some easily, cheaply and reasonably efficient way.  Cremation is fine, ashes on the compost heap, in the bin or down the loo is also fine.  I won't be there anymore so what the hell.  I want songs sung and champagne drunk, toasts made, tears cried, but then - finished, over, kaput.  Remember me anyway you want, but not in these impersonal places of repose.

Now that that rant is out of the way, I can get ready for my friend's big birthday bash.  She is of an age and will, I'm sure throw a great party.  We will make the same sort of small talk we made this morning, but the centre of attention is thankfully still alive.  We will meet old friends we haven't seen since the last birthday celebration and vow to meet up again soon.  Same chatter, different places and people.

Certainly the food should be better.

More on Brand Cynthia...

I am thinking this morning about how difficult it sometimes is to find words to express my true feelings.  I search and search for the right word, the right phrase, the right sentence that will let me express what my inner thoughts are.  I also see that my choice of expression is not just a solitary thing, it is  just important for me.  There are some folks out there in the internet ozone that seem to read this and I am certain that part of the way I write is so that through truly expressing myself, I can also connect with others. This connection is very important to me and is often surprisingly illusive.  The feelings I have are clear and I can experience them both in my head and in my body, but the expression of those feelings in words is frustratingly fragile.

I used to think that everyone had a hidden artist somewhere inside them.  This is a bit like all good singers believing everyone can sing and all great writers believing we can all write.  I now believe that, yes, we can all sing and paint and draw and write, but some of us do it very badly indeed and it is this fact which often stops us from pursuing creativity.

I rarely watch performance-related reality TV - you know the stuff - America's Got Talent, X Factor, Search for a Star, but when I do catch a cringe-inducing glimpse of these shows I am struck by how very bad some of the contestants are.  Not just mediocre, but ear-splittingly, embarrassingly, horrifyingly awful.  Do these people not have friends or parents to tell them the truth?  Have we reached such a point in our caring, sharing society that we can no longer tell talentless individuals that the path they're pursuing is perhaps not the one for them? Whose feelings are we really concerned with? 

This is how I sometimes feel about this writing I do daily.  Is there somewhere an English language teacher from my past sitting there with a red pencil and marking me down for split infinitives (?), dangling participles, wrong use of adverbs and other major mistakes?  Am I just a deluded reality contestant hoping to achieve fame with little talent?  As far as writing is concerned, I'm not sure.  I know I can express myself clearly. I can get  my point across and as long as I don't stop listening to the voice in my head, I will come across fairly reasonably.  By the way, for those of you worried about the hereditary aspect of hearing voices or seeing things, the voice in my head is only there sometimes.  I've not yet reached the point where I can live alone and have wonderful cocktail party chat and girly gossip sessions with that voice.  I'll let you know when that happens!

So, back to my Brand Me.  This has been a more serious task than I first mooted.  I thought it would be a jokey little bit of blog that I could just dismiss the next day, but it has turned out otherwise.  Against all my superstitious beliefs I think I will try and carry on lauding my own achievements.  Maybe at the end of this process I will have the basis of a profile of me that feels correct, complete and true.

Today the subject will be lifetime achievements:
I had the best penmanship in my year and then in my entire primary school.
I learned to read Yiddish in summer camp when I was 11.
I was in an accelerated education program for gifted kids as a child and went to university when I was 16.
I designed all the costumes for my university production of Midsummer Night's Dream when I was 18.
I traveled on my own through Israel, Greece and Europe when I was 19.
I was married at 20 and moved from the US to the UK.
I became a mother at 21.
I trained as a group leader in Encounter and other therapeutic techniques  with Denny Yuson from the time I was 23.
I became a sannyassin of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in 1974 and travelled to India to see him in 1978.
I graduated from the University of Westminster with a post-graduate degree in Personnel, Training and Development whilst working for a Local Authority and being a full-time mum.
I became a mother again, and following the death of my son, gave birth again to a second wonderful son.
I established my Training and Development Management Consultancy in 1985 which has been in successful existence ever since.
I was one of only two White training consultants working in a team of 12 trainers on a pilot anti-racism training  project for the Inner London Probation Service.
I designed and developed the Equalities Training programme for the Bedfordshire Probation Service.
I designed and mounted an exhibition to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Southgate District Synagogue.
I delivered the keynote address at the first Holocaust Memorial Day in Southgate Synagogue.
I did a bungee jump of over 120mtrs.
I had breast cancer, a full mastectomy and have now been cancer-free and fine for 18 years.
I was interviewed about my work for both the Times and Ham and High newspapers.
I appeared as a contestant on a TV showcalled 'Ready, Steady, Cook'.
I had 14 hours of major spinal surgery, lived in a brace for six months and fully recovered, better than ever.
I organised and chaired the first conference on Equalities and Valuing Diversity for the London Borough of Barnet.
I created the 'Love Your Hair' project for women undergoing chemotherapy to have free hair treatments and haircuts and enlisted the support and involvement of 28 top London hair salons.
I have organised and given a number of wonderful large celebrations over the past few years.
I bake fantastic cheesecake.
I designed and deliver the Equalities training  for Transport for London, so far having trained over 4000 people.
I have an Honorary Doctorate Degree from the Humaniversity, Holland.
I helped write and had input into the new web site for the Humaniversity.
I have been married for over 40 years and still adore the crazy man I am married to.
I am not depressed!

Whew... that's enough.  I can hardly bear to write this stuff -it feels both important and trivial. I am also a good friend to many and that feels most important.  I've raised wonderful, wonderful kids and that feels important.  I love and respect my brother and love my extended family and that's quite an achievement.  The list is endless and yet, feels unfinished and unsatisfying.  I have yet to create my 'Opus', to write the definitive work or paint the masterpiece and suddenly I feel like I am running out of time.

I have to hurry up - there is still much to do.

Daily ruminating... on Branding ME

Yesterday I had coffee with an old friend. We hadn't seen each other over the summer and had a lot of catching up to do. We discussed holidays, children, diets and generally had a good gossip.  I was struck by the fact that in the midst of all of this chat she disrobed in order to fix a seam on her dress and we also discussed her panicky feelings with regard to selling herself as a 'brand' for work.  A moment of friendship and intimacy that I noted at the time.We are both freelance consultants and this issue of 'branding' and self-promotion arises often.

I had to admit that this has always been a problem for me.  I am self-employed and my work has always depended on 'word of mouth' recommendations.  I also find it horrible to have to push myself forward as a product and have often gone without work because of this hesitation.  I fully understand why actors have agents to sell them.  It's always been one thing for me to be good at what I do.  I am good, very good, and I totally believe that, but it's something else to be able to approach people and push myself forward.

I am sometimes able to deal with rejection in this area of work since I can tell myself that it's not personal.  The organisations I approach may not be in a position to hire at the moment. Sometimes it is personal - I may be the wrong person for an organisation.  I am certainly not everyone's cup of tea.  But so what!  As  human beings we are pretty resilient and a bit of rejection won't kill us.  I know this, but I also understand the panic  this process is putting my friend into.  I've been there many times and now, at this point in my career, I'm not sure I feel the urgency that it takes to put myself out there.  I still love my work, I still enjoy doing it, but I'm not driven anymore.  When I was younger I so deparately needed success in financial terms to prove to myself that I was good and worthwhile.  Now, I need the money, but for the rest, who cares!

So, I thought again this morning, if I was going to brand myself, what would my USPs be? How would I 'brand' me?

'Cynthia is a confident, well-spoken, funny ex-pat American who brings wisdom, humour and infinite care to her work and her life. She is compassionate and concerned about the world we share together and brings this compassion into her everyday practice.  She is a talented artist and a creative, dynamic woman.  Having raised a family and experienced many difficult and traumatic events in her life, she brings the learning and healing from these experiences  with her into her work and daily life. Sometimes loud, always funny, she is a brash, quick-witted New Yorker with a twist.  Her many years in England have added sarcasm and irony to her amazing repertoire of  behaviours.  Cynthia has amazing energy and willingness to throw herself into situations.  With Cynthia, it seems as if what you see is what you get, but there are deeper, meaningful discussions she is willing to enter into with everyone.  The work she does with people and difference is unique in its positive approach and generosity of spirit.  Her aim is to empower others through showing that all is possible.With Cynthia, you can begin to believe this fact!'

... So this is a beginning.  It took a lot of effort not to write that I am loud, gossipy, negative and pessimistic.  Also.  Over many years I am beginning to be able to see the other side.  Maybe the glass is beginning to be, if not quite half-full, at least to have some liquid in it.  This is a work in progress that I will continue another time.

Mornings...

Every morning I start the day with big plans.  I feel energetic and enthusiastic about all the chores I can do and things I can finally sort out.  I run around like a blue-assed fly and clear things and wash things, putting laundry on, taking the ironing out, making shopping lists and generally planning a busy day.  It doesn't usually take very long for the steam to run out and for me to feel pancake flat.  Why is this?  I have often wondered about this.

Sometimes I see that the tasks I allocate to the day aren't anything that fills me with enthusiasm and other times I just stop for long enough to realise that I am much more tired than I allow myself to feel.  Whatever the cause, if I don't get things done by 3 pm, then I might as well forget it.  The only real things that get accomplished after that are generally food related. I always have energy to prepare dinner (not surprising!).

Many years ago I read an article in some self-help book that said that waking up at  4 am was a sign of depression. As I get older I think it has more to do with having too many drinks late at night, but... What about falling asleep at 3 pm?  Is this a sign of  something sinister?  TAAT  (tired all the time) is one of the medical conditions that doctors seem to see a lot and have little medical help for.  Maybe the answer is to live the life of a lotus eater on some tropical paradise where most days require little more than having a swim, drinking cocktails and walking to the localmarket for a small snack.  I think, though, that I woulds get bored. I have to have some sort of goal or purpose.  The idea of lying on a beach for days on end sounds fine in theory but in reality is not that attractive to me.

Yesterday I painted and decorated a wooden mirror frame.  Just a small thing but it made me very happy to have paints and pens round me and to be doing something slightly creative.  I can really feel that it is time for me to start painting or doing something with my hands again.  It's been a while and I am so happy when doing these things.  I felt it the other day in the V&A museum - so much wonderful art and all of it inspired me to do things again.

For me, the answer to being tired is to just start doing something, anything.  If there is a genuine cause for my tiredness it will soon become apparent.  Sometimes it takes more effort to sit on my own energy, not do, than to do, if that makes any sense.

Alone at last...

Today is the first day that Ralph goes back to work.  It feels so strange to have the house to myself for the first time in six weeks.   I'm not sure I like it.  Oh, I like the solitude well enough, I just don't like Ralph's absence so much.  After so many days together I really relaxed and enjoyed all that together time.  It is something I really cherish and maybe this year we can work in a different way so we're not wiped out at the end of the day and can just keep enjoying our company.

September still feels like the beginning of the year.  It is the beginning of the Jewish New Year and it's the beginning of the academic year but this feeling has been with me since I was in school.  It's a time of re-assessment and looking at all the unfinished business from the summer.  There is still a ton of clearing to be done in the house and there are cupboards bursting at the seams.  The idea has always been that we would carry the momentum of the summer into the autumn.  We'll see.

This year for the Jewish New Year I am having a traditional Ashkenazi Jewish dinner with a group of friends.  I spent yesterday morning planning the menu whilst getting nasty root canal work.  Two hours in the dentist chair was actually well-spent.  I worked out shopping lists, menus, seating plans, table settings and cooking schedules in an attempt  to block out the dentist drill.  It worked a charm and today I am feeling easy and organised.  I love this cooking and preparing almost more than the actual eating.  It is almost like alchemy - taking all these disparate ingredients and making a meal.  This year's menu so far:

Chicken soup with matzo balls
Chopped liver
Morroccan-style lamb
Sesame chicken
Barley with mushrooms and onions (maybe potato kugel)
Carrot tsimmes + other veg
Exotic fruit platter
Honey cake
Cheesecake

And of course, challahs, apples with honey and other traditional Rosh Hashanah delights.

I guess tomorrow can be the beginning of prep time.  I am looking forward to bringing the spirit of my mother into the kitchen with me.  It is at times like this that she feels very close.

I am also trying to get my head round the amount of travel this summer and it's not over yet.  Next week to Amsterdam for three days and then at the end of the month I am off to San Francisco to see my kids and then on to Connecticut to see my father and my brother and his wife.  I am so sad about seeing my father since I feel that each time lately I see him it may be the last.  I understand thast he is on a steady downward decline and I just want his end of days to be peaceful and easy.

Right now I am so weary I can hardly hold my head up. Maybe it's the aftermath of dental trauma.  Whatever it is, I am giving in to it completely and going to sleep.