Baby Steps

Baby steps.

Little by little I may reenter society.

The problem when you feel despair – a “dark night of the soul” – is that you can still interact with people, but when you do, you pull out some ebullience, some pep, because otherwise you’re just a black hole. A Debbie Downer. But then you feel like a fake (not to mention that you can get a little manic in the overcompensation and that’s a whole other alarm). And if you want to be authentic in your interactions with friends, then you’re not presenting properly. You’re presenting positive energy, and that’s not what you have. Other people see a person, but you are just a shattered pile of pieces.

So you just stop.

And because there’s Zoom, you can still appear to be interacting and not missing out on book club or theater group, but that’s because the machine protects you. Maybe people are not doing Gallery View and so they don’t see you. You can always Stop Video.

I wear contact lenses. When I was younger, I noticed that when I wore glasses, I felt like no one could see me. A barrier had gone up around my eyes that shielded me. When I wear a mask, the same thing happens. I get to walk around like the Invisible Woman.

And when the adult daughter spent December with us, my world just moved into our living room. When the temperatures hung out well below zero, I didn’t go out.

So this perfect storm of fakery-avoidance and machines and barriers and home and below zero just allowed me to isolate. And isolate. Even now, I’m not sure how to stop it. It makes many things much easier: less planning, less arranging, less energy required.

I do two things: I read a lot, and I do jigsaw puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles are disorder assembled into order. That is all they have to do, and I cannot say enough good things about jigsaw puzzles.

How did all this start? No, my “dark night of the soul” is not about Covid.

2021 traumatized me. No, it traumatized me. No, more accurately, it traumatized me. It started with January 6 and watching our legislators have to run and cower for their lives. And it continued with watching some of those same legislators later deny the severity of what happened, watching an entire Republican Party cower to the megalomania of a demagogue.

Then I watched our Supreme Court decide they could control women’s bodies. More recently, they decided it was discrimination to try and reverse discrimination. In Anchorage, I saw our mayor dismantle homeless shelters, close Covid testing sites, even mess with our library. My library! My most prized institution in the world!

Oh, I’ve organized Zoom calls with my senators, email and phone my legislators repeatedly, prepare testimony, teach English to refugees and immigrants, donate to worthy causes; but our democracy is in danger, and all I am is some ineffectual Paul Revere shouting in the wilderness.

The only communication possible became a rant. Or despair. Both socially unacceptable.

I told Tim I was trapped in this world, that if I were an animal I would try to chew off my arm to escape.

So he took me to Mexico, to daylight and warmth and water and beaches. It has saved my psyche every year, and it did again. I have a dopey, leaky yellow plastic raft that can barely stay afloat. And unlike a boogie board, the limp, leaky raft doesn’t keep you on top of the wave. It lets the wave pummel you, flip you up from down, smash you into the sand. You emerge with a scalp full of sand, a bathing suit full of sand, and a shriek of being alive. I laughed out loud. That sound actually came from me. I heard it.

But what really saved me in Mexico was respect. In the restaurant, people would enter with a mask, hang it on the little hook by their table while they ate, and put it back on when they got up. I felt like they cared about the health of their community, about each other. They passed laws to protect themselves and others.

So now I’m back home, and Putin is on the border of Ukraine and I had a dream that nuclear war happened and Sophie cried that she’d thought she’d have her whole life ahead of her and my heart just broke, and this is how my head is working and I just don’t know how to walk around like this in front of other people.

So now you know.

Every now and then, a warm and funny thing happens, and I want to write about it. I imagine the structure it will take – the beginning, the middle, and the end – and it’s a good story. Maybe I will write about it tomorrow.

Notched Up and Flammable

Back in June, I read an article in my Head Butler newsletter from Jesse Kornbluth. He described a book, Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine. The passages he quotes highlight the ordinary insults/belittling/denigration African Americans face living in our society. But he said the book was like poetry, so I put it on hold at my library.

I started and finished it yesterday. It's short.

Part I of the book is bits of what white people will actually say to black people. Horrible things. But all very believable.

Who said that? She said what? What did he just do? Did she really just say that? He said what? What did she do? Did I hear what I think I heard?

Part II of the book is about Serena Williams and what she has had to put up with as a strong, black woman in the white world of tennis. Rankine describes the bad calls against Serena by tennis umpires – five of them in the 2004 U.S. Open alone.

By now, I’m enraged. I like and admire Serena Williams, but I don’t follow tennis, so I didn’t know any of the bad calls, public ridicule, etc etc. This is all new to me, and I’m in a lather. How dare they treat her like that! How dare they think her anger is uncalled for!

I am sputtering with fury, fueled with rage, so I go online to Goodreads to register that I’m “currently reading” the book.

Huh? Goodreads shows that I’ve already marked the book as “read” back in 2017. And it only has three stars.

My First Reaction
Somebody has hacked my Goodreads account! Someone is adding books to my “read” list that I haven’t read. How have they gotten my password? And they’re throwing in fake star reviews, too; this book is clearly four stars. This is terrible!

Tim, witnessing both my Serena rage and the uproar over my hacked book list, mutters something about how it wasn’t, after all, my bank account.

But this is my book list! So I inspect other books recorded for 2017: Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer, A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. Yes, I read those. How deep has the hacking gone?

Ah, but back in 2017, I also kept a separate, non-Internet list of books I’d read. I can check against that. And there it is: I read Citizen: An American Lyric in May of 2017.

My Second Reaction
Dementia has set in, and I am one step away from assisted living. How could I have read a book, had such a strong reaction, and have absolutely no memory of it?

I tell people I have never read Kafka, that it’s a hole in my literary history. And then, many years ago, while cleaning out my mother’s attic, I came across a paper I wrote comparing the writings of Nietzsche and Kafka. I was thorough: the bibliography was comprehensive. Yes, I know my Nietzsche well, but I have never, ever read any Kafka.

Wherever Kafka is, so is Citizen: An American Lyric.

I read the rest of the book, hoping I’ll come across an aha! moment of recognition. It doesn’t happen. What does happen is Part III and Part IV and Part V and Part VI of regular and consistent humiliations and deaths of unarmed black men and mistreatment and the squashing of anger because to be black and “Yes, and this is how you are a citizen. Come on. Let it go. Move on.” But all expressed … lyrically … so it hurts to see ugliness described beautifully.

My Third Reaction
It’s 2021 today, and 2017 must have been a long, long time ago. 2019 was a long time ago.

Like the rest of America, I’m notched up. Claudia Rankine says it herself, that these moments accumulate in the body: “I wanted the book, as much as the book could do this, to communicate that feeling. The feeling of saturation. Of being full up.”

Her book does that, but in 2021, I am already saturated. I am a tinderbox and just one more story of social injustice, of people wronged or ignored, of rights lost, and I ignite. I am just a spark away from outrage.

So is the rest of America.

My Fourth Reaction
I’m coordinating meetings with my senators in support of the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. (Email me if you’re interested.)

There, that sounds reasonable and calm and restrained, right? Like I can conduct myself properly. You wouldn’t know the desperation I feel about things not getting better. I’m not running crazy through the streets, shouting on street corners, tearing my hair out. At least, not on the outside. (Trust me, I still am on the inside.)

My hope? That we all reach our own Fourth Reactions, whatever shape they take. We just need to do something.

The Dark Side of Organizing

The very first post I wrote for this blog outlined the issues my Third Third had raised. The second post was about de-cluttering, and included eight thoughts on de-cluttering. Here I am years later, and all those are still big issues.

In the first blog, I asked, “Why is this Third Third such a big deal?” I gave ten answers, but the first one began, “It’s colored by mortality.” So now, get ready for a pandemic-influenced, dark-outside, morbid blog.

This is how my Third Third began: with organizing! I loved organizing/de-cluttering! It meant things that were strewn all over the place found their preferred location in my now-orderly universe. That new place was more attractive, aesthetically pleasing, neat, accessible, tidy. So, for instance, my hundreds of Anchorage Daily News columns found their way into my handmade books. Books were donated and only favorites held prime spots on the bookshelves. Videos became DVDs.

Organizing made my present and future more pleasant, cleansed of clutter.

It’s not that organizing itself was always smooth and pleasant. Every project suffered from setbacks and lost momentum, but when they were finished, it was terrific!

But lately, some other feeling appeared. After finishing the glorious collection of family recipes in my exquisite, artful, photo recipe book, friends called it a “legacy.”

How lovely! In that first blog, the fifth point in “Why is this Third Third such a big deal” was “What legacy do I leave behind?” Wow, now I had a legacy!

One I’d leave behind. After I was dead. (Cue the dark and the pandemic.)

Then I tackled the photo albatross: I culled, I tossed, I labeled, I mounted in a photo album for easy viewing. I actually finished it! Victory! … Not really. It seems I went from De-cluttering Reason #1 (“You have to toss some of your old life to make room for a new life.”) to #8 (Your kids don’t want your shit.) In other words, my organizing stopped feeling like I was making a new life, but rather packing up my old life for posterity.

My sister says, “Yeah, but as you went through the photos, you were reminded of each fun time and enjoyed them all over again.” Yes, all those fun times in the past.

Here’s another example: Tim and I have been meeting with a financial counselor, as we have every now and then over the years. Previous visits were like: Is this the best way to save? What can we do now so we can REALLY do something big next year or in two years? And how big can it be? Now, our financial plan has this big word in it: Estate. We’re not just looking at bank accounts or mutual funds; we’re looking at our estate.

Estates are for dead people.

Oh, I am getting very morbid. Instead of feeling like every paper I put in its proper file is clearing my desk, I feel like it’s making it easier for my survivors to find.

My siblings, who have no children, have different reactions. My sisters worry about where it will go; my brother happily says, “In the trash.” “But who will sort through it? Who will handle it?” the sisters ask. “No sorting. Whoever gets the house just throws it all out.” And he sweeps his hand across the Zoom screen.

Just today, my friend Chris asked, “What if all your photos, all your saved stuff, just vaporized? Isn’t it just … stuff?” She’s right. My files of community projects, places we’ve visited, high school yearbooks, appliance warranties – those can all vaporize.

But I have a different feeling about my writing. My mother used to write stories – she called her collection “Chicken Every Friday.” I read them once as a teenager, and they were really good. But they’re gone. Just gone. I would have liked to sit with her innermost thoughts. I would have liked to remember her that way.

So every time I encounter another piece of my writing, I don’t think happy organizing, clear-the-clutter, how-clean-how-tidy thoughts. I think of being remembered. Isn’t that what we’d all like, to be remembered well? Isn’t that a part of our Third Thirds experience?

In the dark of Covid winter, some thoughts are too bleak to entertain. But in the dark of Covid winter, some thoughts just sit and sit. That’s why this post has been so long in coming. I gave you a warning sign!

(I have heard that opening the door at midnight is supposed to help put 2020 to bed. And for extra insurance, I’ve Googled how to make a hot toddy to toast the arrival of 2021.)

The Covid Choke

You’re going along, doing the grocery store pickups, seeing friends six feet separated, Zoom-ing. You might even say to yourself, I have a rhythm, I’ve worked this out, I’ve drawn on inner resources. But then – all of a sudden – it hits: the deep Doom feeling, the big Dread. It’s a Covid Choke. Do you have a better word?

My latest one came in a dream. In the dream, I was living the “old” life: I was facing … complexity. Things were happening, a lot was simply …  occurring. I was faced with decisions about paths to take, things to decide and take responsibility for, things to figure out. Things to go and do and experience. Choices to make.

It was such a rich life, a full life. There was theater and movies and travel and potlucks and lunches out and visits. It was just so FULL. Not busy and fast and rushed, but FULL.

So then I woke up, Covid-Choked by Doom and Dread. Would this go on FOREVER?!?  Would we always have to trade our rich lives for this sort of minimal life?

[Okay, we’d watched The Old Guard on Netflix, so part of the nightmare involved that horrendous iron cage the woman was put in for ETERNITY.] 

Let me repeat again because it bears endless repeating: my Covid is on a secure boat in a relatively undisturbed sea. I am not facing financial ruin, educating a child at home, dealing with death or serious illness. I am LUCKY! My heart and donations go out to the seriously challenged members of our world and the Food Bank of Alaska.

But I still choke. Occasionally. Still feel the punch to the gut, the horror of never-agains, the catastrophe of what ifs. The darkness that descends, scares the shit out of me, and then … dissipates. Because life goes on and this is what we have.

Yes, I’ve been artistically inspired and discovered new things. Yes, I’m navigating new technologies. Yes, I’ve learned to manage a household with inconsistent resources. Yes, I’ve learned how to visit with friends in physically-distant ways. Yes, the library reopened so I can consume books again. Yes, I actually liked Hamilton on TV better than Hamilton on Broadway (I could tell all the guys apart.) I haven’t gone blank or morose or bitter.

But it’s all taking place on the same stage. I’m watching every play being conducted with the same set, the same lighting, the same direction. I get outside, I explore in Nature. She’s still here, but – heresy! – she’s still trees and mountains and trails and creeks, and while those might be astounding, they can’t cover up the holes in the human-made, cultural universe. Everything has to fall within the same guidelines so no wonder everything feels sort of same-same, bland, no surprises. As one friend put it, it’s missing … dimension.

Maybe that full, rich, vivid dream came because the adult daughter is with us for a month. She can work remotely, so she was able to stay beyond the quarantine period to achieve “normalcy.” She faced airline travel, three Covid tests, and isolation and masking in our house to get to spend quality time with us. So as we approached “normal,” I guess I was left to dream of what the Real Normal used to be like. The rich, complex, full, tangled Real Normal with things HAPPENING. In person.

So of course I’d wake up to a Covid Choke.

And then, when I went out, I put on my mask. Choking doesn’t mean anyone gets to throw a tantrum.

Crazy is scary

This is not a funny blog post. There are no pictures. It’s about mental illness. Most of the time, I’m only 40% mentally ill.

That’s not right; it’s not illness when it’s only 40%. At 40%, it might be called creative or unorthodox or imaginative or intuitive. Or fun or uninhibited or outspoken. Maybe even probing and problem-solving.

But even that 40% comes with a struggle to maintain. I have to watch that I don’t tip over. I don’t touch, taste, or take anything that would mess my mind. I stopped reading Hermann Hesse novels in college. I exercise, I try to straighten out messed-up sleep patterns, I try to expend creative energy. I am a high-functioning crazy person.

But every now and then – rarely – I become 85% of whatever it is. And then, it’s just crazy.

Crazy is scary.

Nothing looks the same when I’m 85%. Reality leaks. The fronts peel off and sadness leaks out. If I look too long at it, it un-reals itself. Or maybe none of that happens outside of me, but inside of me, I know it’s lurking. It’s just waiting to leak. I have to be vigilant.

And then I succumb. I examine it, stare at it, poke it and prod it. I want to get inside this other-ness. It is so complex and compelling, but whether it’s sad or not, it consumes. I can either get to the alive-ness in the world (up) or the sadness in the world (down) …  if I just probe deeper. And deeper. I’m not sure if I’m seeking to understand or if I’m beyond understanding and just merging with unreality. Things “appear” that may or may not really be there.

Have I lost you yet? I’m pretty sure the rest of the world is not 85-percenters. The problem is, you still only know my regular-old 60% which is now down to 15%, and so I’m not even me (to you). So if the me you know is not even present, then I am isolated. There is the world of people … and there is me, without connection.

85% is lost in a mental world, so 85% can’t write or talk or draw. 85% is not creative or productive. 85% can only hide. 85% faked being normal.

The little 15% keeps trying to push on. It always makes sure to wash my hair. With dirty hair, I might be a full-on 100%, and then I am lost. But if 15% pushes too hard, enters a practical world, there’s the possibility of failure. “No, I cannot buy stamps. I will have to talk to the post office lady.” And maybe I can do it, or maybe I have to leave with the crushing realization that I’m probably down to 10%.

I went out to lunch. I think I blathered, or else I froze up. I fell to 10%.

I could talk to my friend Laurie, and she would understand; but Laurie jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge, so I can’t. My friend Jennifer told me once that she had no one to talk to about it, and I said (because I was at 60% and feeling good), “Jennifer, you just need more crazy friends.” I was her crazy friend, but Jennifer died, too.

I think I need more crazy people in my life. Crazy people can sniff out other crazy people, but I must have stopped sniffing. How did I get so normal?

Ha ha. That is a funny line.

I am married to a reality anchor. Thank God. He looks at me, utterly clueless. Maybe he’s not clueless, maybe that’s just me being trapped in my head and positive no one’s head can ever be in the same place. He suggested a walk in the woods. No, no, no! Too much seeping reality and free roam brain! He suggested orienteering, and once we got past the registration table, it was just us and clues. My brain had to work on clues and could escape all its other workings.

Afterwards, I washed my hair.

When our daughter was very little, we stuck glow-in-the-dark stars on her bedroom ceiling. She screamed at us to turn the light back on. We thought we’d have to pull them down, but she ran to get her fairy wings, climbed up on her dresser, and told us to turn the lights back off. Then she flapped her arms and flew amongst the stars.

I cried. She was my daughter. She was flying, but maybe she’d crash. Maybe she’d just be “troubled.” Maybe she’d inherited my 40%. I told my doctor, and she said, “Maybe you just have to teach her to land.” I hope I have.

For myself, I’m always trying, always landing (so far). Today, I’m back up to 40%. I thought you might be interested in the craziness among you, about where I go when I’m gone.

That’s all.

Survey Time

I’m a sucker for surveys. Just today, I filled out the survey for my shopping trip to Fred Meyer, sent in a Recycle It Right Tip for Alaska Recycles Day, and told my credit union what I think about them. Okay, I admit, there’s a fine line between filling out a survey and entering a contest.

I won’t do Facebook surveys or quizzes. I don’t care what my stripper stage name might be or which children’s book character I am. Well, actually, I do care, but the shame of caring outweighs the impetus to actually find out. I like my surveys to come from universities. I like to be part of Research.

Years ago, I discovered the University of Pennsylvania’s “Authentic Happiness” Questionnaire Center while conducting workshops to help younger people clarify their direction, but how can anyone resist a Survey of Character Strengths with 240 questions? Especially when they conclude your character strengths are love of learning, curiosity, and creativity?

Then I took the Grit Survey (also at the Authentic Happiness Questionnaire Center), developed by Angela Duckworth, who defines grit as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals.” Since I equate “long-term” with “interminable” and the quest for New Things as a prime directive, I didn’t expect to excel. Turns out I have less grit than my age group but more grit than my occupation group (which, at that time, was “artist”).

I’ve also tested myself for hidden, unconscious bias with “Project Implicit” (for Implicit Association Tests). And yes, I have compelled my husband to do “The 36 Questions That Lead to Love” from the New York Times.

I’ve mentioned here that I was researching Time-with-a-capital-T. That took me to the book Time Warped: Unlocking the Mysteries of Time Perception by Claudia Hammond. She has an entire chapter called “Why Time Speeds Up As You Get Older,” right up my Third Third alley.

It’s not just that one year is only 1/65th of my life but was once 1/25th or 1/30th of it, and that 1/65th seems to fly a whole lot faster than 1/25th. It’s that the bulk of our lifetime memories take place between the ages of 15 and 25; psychologists call this the “reminiscence bump,” and “the key to the reminiscence bump is novelty.” With all the novel experiences of young adulthood, our memories are chock full, and all that fullness had to take time. With less novelty as we grow older, the blank spots in our memories don’t take up much time. All the more reason to explore New Things!

Also lurking within Time Warped was Prof. Philip Zimbardo’s Time Perspective Inventory. I like him; I’ve quoted him before. And now he’s identified Time Perspective Types, depending on how much we’re oriented to the future or the past. The Present-Oriented Person is “focused on what is rather than what might be or used to be,” but you can be Present-Hedonistic or Present-Fatalistic. Then there’s the Future-Oriented Person and the Past-Oriented Person.

Apparently, “the greatest chance of happiness … comes from a combination of past-positive and future perspectives, with just the right amount of present-hedonistic, living-in-the-moment thrown in.” Uh, oh. Turns out I’d better add a lot more hedonism to my days and a lot more perseverance to my future. (Personally, I just think his idea of having a fun day is different from my idea of a fun time, but then there is my grit problem….)

Now for the big question that Hammond poses as the essential difference in how we view time. Answer the question before reading on! 

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If you think “the meeting is on Monday, then it is time that is moving, like a constant conveyor belt where the future comes toward you [time-moving metaphor]. If you believe the meeting to be on Friday, then you have a sense that you are actively moving along a time-line towards the future – the ego-moving metaphor.”

So are we fast approaching Thanksgiving, or is Thanksgiving coming up fast?

To Begin

I think I’m getting better.

One day, I woke up and physically felt my depression LIFT. Yes, grand pianos came up, off my shoulders, and floated away. I was going to write about my cure.

But that was an illusion.

Facebook kept telling me “People haven’t heard from Our Third Thirds in a while. Add a post.” Only today did I look at the blog and realize I’ve been “gone” for months.

During that time, I’ve struggled through Ginger Bugs and conquered them. I now have ginger beer! That is a victory. I have planted a garden. That is a victory. Tim and I took a trip, saw Shakespeare, redwoods, and the daughter. That was a victory. Nevertheless, I watch Tim as he industriously builds and plasters and sands and paints and rakes topsoil and seeds and waters and mows. I occasionally do a really good job cleaning the bathroom. That is a victory.

I re-read Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half, trying to remember her cure for depression. She discovered a kernel of corn under the refrigerator, found it hilarious, and her depression broke.

I haven’t found my kernel of corn.

A couple of days ago, I went for a run (despite the knee that isn’t supposed to run any more). I only went two miles, but I could feel my body moving through air. I’m not fast, and it was raining, but I was moving through air. That was a little piece of corn.

I got involved in the World Cup. I remembered players’ names, rooted for underdogs, marveled at physical prowess. To watch the last games at Beartooth Theatre, I had to get up at 5 a.m. That night, I had Ideas. I had to write them down. So many Ideas, I never went to sleep. I was so groggy, I ran into the guy delivering coffee to the audience and spilled coffee all over myself.

Ideas, Ideas, Ideas! Having them is one thing; putting them down on paper and drawing pictures is another. It seems that was the insurmountable hurdle. And yet, and yet….

Here I am! I could do it. Something happened. I could physically pick up a pencil and my sketchbook and … begin. I can make no predictions, draw no conclusions, guarantee no results; at most it’s a cure-ish. But I began. I’m here.

Direction Unclear

I lack direction.

Well, in addition to that, I mean I lack a sense of direction. I have been known to make four right turns and be utterly mystified that I came back to where I was. So negotiating a new place takes practice.

In New York, this is how I leave a subway or a building: I walk outside and strain to see the next street sign over. If I’m at 15th Street, and I can see 16th, I know that way is uptown. I am oriented! If I’m looking for an avenue, that’s harder because they’re longer and you can’t see the next one. So you look for the next street, aim yourself uptown, and then you know the avenues on your right and left. Unless you’re at Broadway, which runs diagonally. Or the avenues which suddenly give up numbers and become Madison, Park, and Lexington. Or Lexington, Madison, then Park? I scramble them every single time.

Invariably, I end up walking the wrong way and asking a stranger which way is Fifth.

Ah, but on the subway, I know my connections! I see a map in my head. That’s ON the subway. IN the subway station is a whole other story. Getting out of a station or transferring to another subway line within a station is a true challenge. Yes, after a while, you get the routine movements down, but a new station is always a new puzzle.

I couldn’t get from the F train to the 6 train until I found a man at an elevator with a little sign on it that said “To 6 platform.” When I got to the platform, other people were arriving, but I have no idea how they got there. I’ve looked and looked, but as far as I know, the elevator is the only way. But that can’t be true.

Some station arrows make it easy. Go up the stairs to the left or right.

But there are arrows that make it confusing. Does this mean you should turn around for the elevator? Or straight ahead and turn right? (Or jump up and down?)

Arrows combined with environmental cues (like stairs) are easier.

I think this one means “go around the big elevator box in the middle of the platform.” But that may explain why I could never find the 6 without the elevator.

Arrows without environmental cues are confusing. This next is the Big One, the source of much subway misdirection: Does this arrow mean up or straight ahead?

I have come across tourists looking for the stairs up where there are none. I have missed going up because I was aiming for straight ahead. The problem is the “up” and “straight ahead” arrows are identical. I propose a solution:

The longer ones mean “Go far ahead, into the distance.” They could even be grayed out as they stretch further ahead. What do you think? Will this work?

No Leg to Stand On

This is a Second Third story, but I’m going to tell it here because you need it for my next post, the Third Third version. Sometimes it’s a hilarious story that I tell when I’m in stand-up comic mode, and sometimes it’s a lesson-learned story that I need to re-tell myself. Feel free to take it either way, but it does sort of occupy an epic place in my life experience.

Thirty years ago, Tim invited me on one of our first dates. We were going to cross-country ski with his friends in the back country. His circle of friends skied better than I, a fact I discovered right away when I blinked at the trailhead and they disappeared. So I shuffled along by myself – muttering all the while this would be the last date with That Guy.

It was the kind of ski outing where you catch up with everyone else as they’re finishing lunch, and they stand up and say, “Okay, time to get going.” But there’s a mountain, and then they’re all laughing and falling, falling and laughing, which seems do-able to me. I could certainly laugh and fall. Except that my fall was accompanied by a very clear twang as something in my knee gave way.

So Tim and the rest raced back to the car to plan my rescue, and eventually I ended up at the emergency room in a temporary cast. The next day, I was fired.

I know, that seems out-of-the-blue and maybe even un-related. It was. A new mayor had been elected and, since I served “at the pleasure of the mayor” managing the transit system, I was fired. It’s political. I get that.

The day after, I went to an orthopedist. In his office, the receptionist had some forms for me to sign. As she slid the window to hand me the forms; in a freak accident, the window, the frame, and the molding fell out of the wall, landed on my good foot, and fractured it.

You read that right. I went into the doctor’s office with one broken leg and left with two. Or, as the doctor put it, the knee meant I couldn’t stand on that leg and now the fractured foot meant I couldn’t stand on that leg.

“But can I still swim?” I asked, panicking.

“Uh, you’re not going to be able to sleep in a bed,” he admitted. “You’ll be on the floor for a while.”

All this ended up translating into five months of crutches, braces, and limited mobility. My doctor made a case for conservative, non-surgical treatment so I’d have my knee for the rest of my life. In the meantime, I learned a lot:

• You cannot collect unemployment if you are physically unable to take a job. If, as a healthy 30-something, I had not magically checked the box for “short-term disability” when I took the job; I’d be broke fast. This is how people end up homeless.


• I felt helpless and weak, totally un-strong. I felt ugly, pathetic, and worthless. Eventually, a new definition of strength had to emerge: it had nothing to do with lifting things; it had to do with keeping my spirits up.



• I was part of a community of friends that rose to my aid: doing my shopping, making my house a social center, installing bathroom hardware, driving me to physical therapy, checking in on me. I needed help, and they were there. “There-ness” made all the difference.



• I was totally unproductive. When it takes 40 minutes to get to the bathroom, you quickly run out of time in your day. All I could do was Be. Amazingly, I got very, very happy. I think the universe had been telling me to slow down. When I wasn’t listening, it broke the first leg. When that didn’t work, out went the job. Still focused on too much Doing and not enough Being? There went the second leg.



• I learned what it’s like to be disabled. I suffered through office buildings that had ramps outside yet no elevators inside, people parking illegally in the parking space I needed to get into a building, power doors that opened out and knocked over my crutches. Happily, I lived in a ranch house all on one level.



• I had a good story. No, a great story. People loved hearing this story. Telling it helped me be cheerful rather than pathetic. There were the side stories, too: the one about the taxi driver who got lost and I, thinking he was taking me to some dark alley, extracted the crampons on my crutches and prepared to attack him from the back seat.

• During all this, I was in new-love, and love conquers all.


As I fought my way back to mobility – passing through the stage Tim described as “might be called walking … in a prehistoric kind of way” – I set a goal for myself: I would run the Alaska Women’s Run, 6.2 miles. That would be my sign that this episode was over.

Reflections on Return #1

I’m back – semi-recovered from 10 hours of time zone change and 14 hours of flights – and I’m reflecting. What did this month in London do for me in my Third Third?

First off, it was harder than I’d expected. One friend says, “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone,” and I hovered at my edge for quite a while. Life may begin at the end, but self-awareness comes from the edge.

I learned I’m not a hermit.
Mostly, when you’re a writer or artist, you spend time alone. After a while, you can think you’re not very social, you’re pretty autonomous, you’re a loner. So you think you can spend time in a new city all by yourself and still thrive.

Ha!

My loner life at home includes a husband who comes home every day, friends in the same time zone and on the same phone system I can call whenever. I may work quietly by myself, but it isn’t endless quiet. During my month in Manhattan, I had a mother every weekend, a daughter and sister visiting, cousins and friends sprinkled all over. I may have traveled solo, but I wasn’t living solo.

London was solo. Tim was unreachable on the Grand Canyon, and my only phone was British. The people sitting next to me in theaters and at lectures were British.

I re-learned I’m an Alaskan American with ethnic roots. Very not-British.
Yes, I cringed at the American who kept whining during a lecture, “I can’t understand what he’s saying.” I didn’t learn that I was a rude American or an insensitive one. I’m just an American who talks to strangers …

… and that is not done. This is an ad to sell newspapers:

The connections I made with strangers – the ones that were warm, engaging, sharing, and acknowledging – were made with Indians, Middle Easterners, other Jews, and a guy married to an American. So mostly, I was rebuffed until I learned to just sit there by myself.

I learned self-confidence is not a permanent human characteristic.
Given social isolation, unfamiliar geographic features, a different currency, and inexplicable cultural habits; and the formerly self-confident become scared little rabbits.

I became a scared little rabbit. Worries swam relentlessly in my head, unrelieved by human interaction. Worries compounded till they were just free-floating anxiety. Free-floating anxiety only stopped when it turned into outright panic. I diagnosed myself as a basket case. I worried for my mental health.

I re-learned that I get up.
Little by little, things improved. I learned my way around, connected with my three friends in London, was welcomed at a Passover seder. Tim became Skype-accessible; my sister visited. Going to a play with her meant I had someone to laugh with.

Every time I walked outside, I’d feel the flush of wellbeing as London’s spring drove out my Alaskan winter seasonal affective disorder. My runs got longer. The flowers got more colorful.

I went back to talking to strangers, but I picked them better. Besides, I had friends to spend time with now, to have real conversations with.

When I got hopelessly lost getting both in and out of the Barbican Centre, I only escaped because I saw some funny lines on a map and discovered the skywalks and ended up at the Guildhall. Weeks later, in a conversation with the director of The City Centre, he said, “Everyone gets lost in the Barbican,” there are design issues. Oh, it’s like surviving Kincaid Park here in Anchorage! I am not a total nincompoop; it’s a confusing place!

I’m still processing all this. (It’s what I do.) Learning that I get back up hasn’t overshadowed the surprise to my psyche that I crashed, but there were also so many wonderful things that intrigued and enriched me. Those are the next post.

I got this!

A few days ago, I relaxed. Not relaxed as in spending a day reading or lounging, but relaxing as in “I got this.” My whole psyche relaxed. The you-are-in-a-strange-city feeling that never went away … went away.

I had run through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park, getting lost a little, but never feeling like I couldn’t find myself. Afterwards, I’d walked to Harrod’s (more an event than a shopping trip; I cannot imagine anyone finding anything they would actually buy in Harrod’s) and when I got outside, I noticed a #414 bus sign that said it was going to Putney Bridge, and I got on. I was going to visit my friend Lynel in Putney Common, and my little paper with Journey Planner notes didn’t have me going that way, but I still got on this new bus. And it worked.

Lynel mentioned a wonderful market, the North End Road Market, with very cheap grapes, and I discovered on Journey Planner that it’s a short #28 bus ride from my apartment. I’d never been on the #28 before. When I set out, I realized I’d left my Journey Planner cheat sheet at home, and I didn’t go back to get it. Not only that, I found “my” market for the rest of my stay.

I don’t need cheat sheets anymore. I know to look for the bus stop on the left side of the street, not the right. I know that if the ATM can’t dispense cash, it doesn’t mean I’ll be left destitute; it just means I have to try the machine next to it. I know good rest rooms in several corners of the city so I’m never desperate. They reopened the footpath that takes me right into Kensington Gardens so I don’t have to walk the long way around. I know how to send and receive texts on the iPhone.

Now I’m really enjoying myself!

After my fabulous month in New York City, I expected that I’d arrive in London and revel in excitement and pleasure right off the bat. But it wasn’t that easy here. In New York City, I felt like I’d entered my DNA environment, that I was surrounded by “my people.” I felt at home, a part of the culture and the way of being. I fit in right off the bat.

Before spending a summer in Costa Rica, I knew I’d be speaking Spanish, using a different currency, entering a different culture. I was prepared and ready to give it the time to become comfortable. I wasn’t prepared that way for London.

They may speak English here, but they’re British and I’m not. I haven’t figured out all the manifestations of that – and it’s interesting to reflect on – but I know it’s true. I’m a fish from a different ocean. I understand that, and it’s okay.

Important thing I’ve re-learned about myself in my Third Third:
       I need a certain baseline comfort level before I can appreciate my own adventurousness. Before I could feel relaxed in the apartment, for instance, I had to know where the light switches were, that this window opens more easily than that one, that the converter is more convenient in this outlet than that one. I needed to know that I kept underwear on this shelf, paints on that one. And knowing it automatically without having to re-think it each time. Once I could put 10% of my day into the routine column, I could handle the 90% of newness the rest of the day threw at me.

When I worked at the Anchorage Museum, I remember reading research on the best preparation for school field trips. Kids learned more on field trips when they were given instruction ahead of time not in content, but in where their coats will go, where the restrooms are, etc. It reduced their anxiety.

Now I know that every adventure either begins walking down Kensington Church Street to the High Street or up for Notting Hill Gate; turning left for the bus, right for the Tube. I don’t have to look at a map or plan my route. I just have to walk out the door.

So I do!

Not a scaredy-cat – a worrywart

Recently, the subject of bravery came up, as in “Barbara, you’re so brave to head off to another city for a month alone.” So I started writing about fear, but realized I kept mixing it up with worry. I wrote that “fear and worry riddle my life,” but by the time I finished, I knew that was wrong: fear compels decisions, worry riddles my life.

Sometimes I make choices based on my personal hierarchy of fear: is this less scary than that? So, for example, I’m not going down the Grand Canyon. When I wrote here about Becoming a Wimp in my Third Third, it was a full year-and-a-half out from the planned raft trip. I canceled. Heights and cliffs and rapids – nope. I’m going to London instead. Compared to the Grand Canyon, London didn’t even register on the trauma charts. (Not even today.)

Some things simply don’t scare me. While surveys show that most people fear public speaking more than anything else – more than death – it doesn’t give me pause. Just give me a little preparation, and I’m good to go. I even enjoy it.

People who don’t live in Alaska think much of our normal, daily living is fearful. Moose in backyards, bears in parks, mountains, wilderness, earthquakes – those may send a tiny speck of shiver down Alaskans, but mostly they just arouse caution.

The big list of American fears includes heights, bugs and snakes, claustrophobia – I am all about being scared of those things – but there are SO MANY other things that fuel fear. This is my current big fear: Tim will drown in the Grand Canyon, I will crash on the plane to London, and Sophie will be all alone.

I cannot believe I even wrote that sentence down, as if voicing it unleashes some horrible karma in the universe. Right now, my superstitious self is crawling with anxiety.

And then I worry that all the resultant cortisol pumping through my system is wreaking its own havoc.

Fear cascading upon fear. What ifs generating more and more calamities. Imagination run amok. Is this the process that turns fear into worry?

Gasp. Do other people do this???

In my Third Third, as I reflect, I don’t think I really discovered fear until I had a child. The responsibility for someone so essentially vulnerable is the biggest, scariest thing I’ve ever encountered. Even so, I didn’t want that child to be limited by my fear so I kept our lives open to travel and outdoor adventure. Ziplines, climbing, skiing. Trusting strangers, being independent. Caution, but not fear. Now that she’s older, some of the things she tells me scare the willies out of me, but I keep my mouth shut.

My siblings used to joke about two kinds of people in the world: “emotional cripples” and “kamikazes.” I was the kamikaze of the family because, when faced with decisions, I often leaped. That must have looked like bravery, but it’s really fear of sluggish indecision, of dawdling about in some hesitant limbo land. The reason I do is not because I have no fear of doing but because I have a HUGE fear of stagnation. Of letting my world become small.

I realize it’s not all about fear. It’s about interest, curiosity, and preference and how they can offset fear. Something in me dreams about London but worries about the Grand Canyon. So while I might be worried about a long airplane flight, it’s required if I’m going to get to London. (It’s required to live in Alaska, period….) In the hierarchy of fears, it had to get displaced. Maybe the secret is displacing the fears that don’t serve us.

The opposite of fearful might be brave, but the opposite of worried would be … calm? My interior worries – the imagined what ifs, the squirrelly feelings, the worst-case scenarios – are things that scare me from the inside out and have nothing to do with heights or river rapids or cliffs. I’m not a scaredy-cat; I’m a worrywart. You would think by my Third Third I would have dealt with this.

But right now, I’m worried that while I’m writing, sitting is the new smoking, and how many hours a day do I spend sitting?

Next I’m trying meditation. Do we do that sitting down?

Getting Back Up

How does a person in her Third Third handle disappointment? I mean, have we learned things? Are we better at this?

I still repeat a quote I found once: “Heroes are not born, they’re cornered.” Sometimes I think any coping wisdom that arrives in the Third Third is more a factor of having kids (so you can’t be the baby), having a job (so you have to get dressed), knowing how much things cost (so you can’t throw things), or generally having responsibilities. We’re cornered into getting on with it.

But by now, we’ve also learned that “this too shall pass” or that one door closes and another opens.

My friend Linda recently closed her business. She poured years and heart and money into creating a wonderful space for the community in Terra Bella, a space that my women friends and I inhabited every Friday morning. And now it’s closed.

Meanwhile, I knitted and knitted and organized and arranged, and on Friday, the group met earlier so Sunnie and I could leave to go yarn bomb the trees at Westchester Lagoon. It was cold, but the tree sweaters were colorful, the Guerrilla Knitters energetic, and the crowd appreciative. Bicyclists stopped to ask if they could help. By the time we were done, it was a landscape of art. It was a totally happy day. Joyful even. People took photos, everyone smiled giddily.

And the next day, we discovered that vandals had destroyed every piece of knitting, torn them off, thrown them in garbage cans.

In the royal order of things, I can’t even compare my disappointment with Linda’s. But I bet we’re feeling some of the same things. We’re wondering if there’s something we could have done, something that might have created an alternative path. We’re wondering when we’ll be able to plunge into something with unbridled optimism.

We tried to add our little bit of positive to the world, and we got foiled. In my case, there’s a bogeyman. In Linda’s, it was just too much uphill.

When I told my friend Connie how the day had been such a happy one, she said, “You still have that day. That day happened and was happy.” She’s right. They could take away the art, take away the experience from people who didn’t see it, but they can’t subtract those hours of happiness. Instead of being an art exhibit up for three months, it turned out to be a performance piece up for several hours. It was theater; ephemeral but inspiring. Terra Bella lasted a lot longer, but the group of us forged in its space will last even longer.

You can tell I’m getting over disappointment because I can write things like this now. I’m focusing on what doors may open, how maybe people will see that building a positive community takes all of us to have lots of ideas. Some will fizzle, some won’t be your cup of tea, but some will take off. Parks & Recreation wants us to try again, TV news wondered if there will be a groundswell of knitting, and Rue at the newspaper captured the whole mood in this video. My friend Pam said knitters will rise again.

It’s not about knitting. It’s about trying. If I’ve learned anything by my Third Third, it’s that trying doesn’t mean succeeding. It means trying.

It’s about way more than knitting.

I'm with her.

I am so proud of my town I could burst! In a huge snowstorm, with temperatures just emerging from days below zero, with snow sitting two feet deep and roads barely plowed; 2,000 women and men tromped through the snow to march for human rights.

Thank you, Anchorage.

Oh, friends and I had traveled the “What’s the use?” path, the “I hate marches” groan, even the “What if it’s 9° below?” complaint. But ultimately, it was the “Stand up and be counted” refrain that spoke to us all.

So I pulled out the paints, brushes, and butcher paper, my supplies for all the signs and banners I’ve made over the years. Mostly, they’ve been “Congratulations!” or “Happy Birthday,” but this time, I wanted to say everything important. I wanted my sign to speak loudly, to put my heart and mind out there. To make visible all the hopes I’ve had for our world, and how devastated I am at these steps backward.

I didn’t want to be negative. I didn’t want to be trite. I wanted to cover a lot. How could I fit in my fears about climate change? About reproductive rights? Even about public school funding! In the end, I just ended up being boring, but I was colorful!

Do you know what it feels like to be in a crowd of 2,000 people who all wish each other life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness no matter whom they love, what color they are, and where they came from? In this country where we battle discrimination and harassment for all those things – and the likelihood the battle will only get uglier – this was a friendly, welcoming gathering. A warm oasis in two feet of snow.

How do I know I’m in my Third Third?

This one moved me because my daughter was out marching, too. And my sisters and my brother in all their cities around the world. My mother – Another Mother for Peace – would have been proud.

I can’t remember the exact wording of this sign, but it looked just like this and was one of my favorites:

But then I realized this march wasn’t only about fear and anger; it was about camaraderie and support and standing together:

That’s really it. So I’m sending this blog post to my senators and congressman because they have to know we’re here and we’re numerous and we’re motivated. I’m with her and her … and her and her. And we’re not giving up.