Pearl of Wisdom #2

I didn’t even realize this was a Pearl of Wisdom until today. My sister Elizabeth and I were trading memories (or non-memories, which seems to be the case more and more – is there a word for forgottenings?). She’d come across a mention of the play, Bye Bye Birdie, and remembered that I starred in it in sixth grade.

For those of you who may have missed it, Bye Bye Birdie is a take on Elvis Presley going into the Army. Some lucky girl is picked at random to get Conrad/Elvis’s last kiss before he’s inducted. The lucky girl is named Kim, and Ann-Margret became a super star with this role.

In 1963, I was a dork. I had pointy speckled eyeglasses, a flat chest, and scabbed-up knees. I was a member of the Math Club. At my own birthday parties, I hung out in the corners.

I was not Ann-Margret material.

But I had a very active imagination and fantasy life, and the part of Kim became my quest. My totally unrealistic and ripe-for-disappointment quest.

The director of the play was my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Faella, who was truly dedicated and did nothing halfway. She was going to pull off a spectacular production. For the scene where all the teens are talking on the phone in big squares, she’d have us on platforms with ladders and tables. We were going Broadway!

Yes, there was the problem of who was going to be Hugo (Kim’s boyfriend) and who was going to be Conrad Birdie (the kiss). The available pool were the sixth grade boys after all. I’d have to cross that bridge when I came to it.

Besides, I was still a dork.

The day of the audition, all the popular girls lined up. We were reading the part where Kim gets the phone call that she’s been selected as the lucky girl who will get the Last Kiss. Kim has just finished telling her mother that she is no longer going to be treated like a child, that now she will call her mother “Doris,” when the phone rings. She listens and is blown away. She shouts.

One after another, the girls read, “Doris! Mother! Mommy!” Next girl: “Doris! Mother! Mommy!” Next girl: “Doris! Mother! Mommy!” No crescendo, no variation, no increasing volume.

Back in the line, I had a crushing realization: if I read it just like the other girls, I’d just be one in a long line of girls. Plus, I’d still be the dork who thought she could try out for a starring role. I had to do something – ANYTHING – that would distinguish me.

You cannot imagine the crushing realization this sent through me: I had to do something DIFFERENT. I had to separate from the peer group and do something DIFFERENT. Even now – sixty years later! – I can feel the sweat and near-hysteria that gripped me on that line. It was either step out of my comfort zone and risk total and complete sixth grade humiliation or … remain a dork and abandon a fantasy.

My turn came. I read “Doris!” with a whimper, “Mother!” with desperation, and positively WAILED “Mooooommmmmyyyy!”

You could have heard a pin drop. Classmates stared at me. I had broken every rule of sixth grade peer-enforced decorum. But Mrs. Faella said, “Well, there’s no doubt about that. You have the part.”

Bye Bye Birdie was the biggest thing in my life for a long time. I did not become a popular girl; I remained a dork with scabby knees. But the dork was an actress. I had starred on the stage.

So now I’m sitting in my Third Third, musing on sixth grade Barbara. I didn’t know at the time I was learning a lesson, that I had broken through a wall, made something happen by the sheer force of will to appear stupid. I think I’ve revisited this lesson over and over again throughout my life – not just auditions, not just trying for a part – but encountering all sorts of barriers and obstacles and trials.

I’m not sure what the fear is exactly: the fear of losing out or the fear of actually being proven stupid. It seems an impossible effort to break through and risk utter stupidity. It takes practice.

If that 10-year-old Barbara could do it, so could this Third Third one. So can we all.

Resolution Rebellion

I refused to make any New Year’s Resolutions. I don’t know if it’s cynicism or laziness, but I just wouldn’t. In my Third Third, I’ve been through 60+ attempts to codify being a Better Barbara. No, 120+ attempts: I have the Jewish New Year, too. And while there’s something gratifying about envisioning ways to be a Better Barbara, this year’s Barbara just rebelled.

Resolutions are the skirmish in my war of “feel like it” versus discipline, my continuing Third Third battle. At first, when I subtracted shoulds from my life – no more waking up to go to work, no more external demands on my time – I unleashed tremendous energy for my wants. But eventually, that tremendous energy faded and to-dos reasserted themselves.

Three years ago, I wrote here that I was excited about my new brand of resolution: baby steps. I was, for example, going to do just 50 sets of squats in the whole year. And it was also here, that I reaffirmed, “if nothing changes, nothing changes.”

So why haven’t I changed? Have I become a stick-in-the-mud in my Third Third, an old fogy? Am I [horrors!] set in my ways???

I can actually think about doing squats – like right now – and not stand up and do them. It’s not that I hate doing squats; it’s not that they’re painful or uncomfortable or even just unpleasant. It’s just that I don’t feel like doing them.

I’d set a Goodreads goal of reading 75 books in 2019. I ended up reading 102. Wow! Hooray! But that’s because reading is a socially acceptable way to do just what I want and dodge shoulds at the same time.

Another resolution – writing thank you notes – actually worked. I designed pretty note cards out of pressed, dried leaves, and I was actually excited to mail them out. Now why did that one work? It combined creativity (the art for the cards was a New Thing) with feeling kind with being do-able. A big win! I’ve pressed more leaves.

Once, Tim and I made resolutions as if it were a year later and we were looking back on the year. So we’d say things like, “It’s 2021, and we’re glad we took a road trip through the South in 2020.” We didn’t look at the resolution as a plan but as an accomplishment. We didn’t have the stress of a to-do but rather the satisfaction of a done. That actually worked, too.

This is what I would like to look back on 2020 and see: that I tackled a big challenge and did it. Not the little challenges of getting a meal on the table or a mile swum. Not even the challenge of arranging another urban infusion month in a big city, but a Big Challenge. Something tough but not too scary; one Chilkoot Trail is enough.

I have to make sure I outfox my grand pianos, the weights that plague me psychologically, so it has to feel rewarding. It has to touch some deeper chord in me, keep me mentally healthy. It has to be a should wrapped in want clothing.

Stop, stop, STOP! It’s a few weeks later and I just re-read that last line. (I also just re-read the Big Challenge I’d set for myself – and deleted it.) Why do I even have a should that has to be disguised to be palatable? Is there some hierarchy of value that puts shoulds at the top? Am I assigning medicine to myself that I have to force myself to take?

I am not a discipline writer; I am a feel-like-writing writer. I am a feel-like-painting painter. I am a feel-like-skiing skier and a feel-like-swimming swimmer. When those activities feel good, I’m happy. But making a disciplined rule or schedule for them just ices my soul.

Yes, I know that sets the stage for ordinary, for failure to master, for no improvement. Chasing whim sets the stage for “flaky.” I once decided that my goal in cross-country skiing was explicitly to remain mediocre, that after a lifetime of aiming for excellence, I wanted one activity that would just stop at mediocre. A friend called it remaining “happy intermediate.”

I think, in my Third Third, Happy Intermediate is a nice goal for a lot of things. So this will have to be my resolution:
    Happy Intermediate is, by definition, happy. Enjoy it.
That’s all.

A New and Better Old Thing

In my Quest for New-ness to keep from going stale, sometimes I end up with an Old Thing Renewed. Like swimming.

It started with a free upgraded month from the athletic club, an upgrade that would get me into the clubs with pools. So while this possibility existed all along, I always concentrated on “it’ll mess up my hair color” or “my skin won’t be able to handle both winter and chlorine” or “it’ll be too crowded.” Negativity can really take hold, but in this case, the mere extra of “winning” this free month sent me into the pool.

And when I took that first plunge and swam across the pool, I felt welcomed into the water. I don’t know how to describe it except that water is my element. It relieves me of the burdens of land.

Land is my klutzy place. Land is where tree roots and cracks in  the sidewalk lie in wait to grab me. Land is where I can fall on my head (and this includes ice because when it’s hard, I count it as land, not water). Yes, I know I run, but I run vigilantly, looking at my feet and the hazards awaiting them.

This is how I start a run: “Grunt, grunt, get going. Creak, creak, get a rhythm. Just go, it’ll get better,” and it does. Eventually. After a few miles.

This is how I enter the water: “Ahhhhhh….”

How did I forget this? I don’t know when I first learned to swim, because I seem to have always done it. When the town pool was built in our town, my family got season passes. We’d spend the day at the pool, go home to eat supper, and return to the pool afterwards with my father. I even did synchronized swimming for a while.

Yes, the same girl who suffered through calisthenics in high school. You know “calisthenics” – the ’60s version of Jazzercise or aerobics or Zumba – the thing that involves rights and lefts and choreography. The phys ed teacher would start by saying, “Let’s begin. Will someone take Barbara aside and work with her?”

This same land klutz did synchronized swimming!

So now I’m in the pool again, doing laps. I count odd numbers out and even numbers back in. Eventually, after a couple of trips to the pool, I reach my ¾ of a mile length: 54 lengths of the pool or 27 laps. I get out. It’s where I always stop, where I have always stopped. ¾ of a mile.

And then one day, I decide to do 56 lengths. I have finished 54 and another out-and-back doesn’t seem so earth-shaking, so I do it.

The next day, I do 60. Then I calculate that if I did 63, and that’s divisible by 9 (just like 72), it would mean I had done 7/8 of a mile. Someone said I must have an active imagination to be able to go back and forth over and over again, and I told her I do math problems. I calculate the percentages of my laps, so figuring out – by ninths – is just one of my little games.

And then it occurred to me: I could swim a mile. I could just keep on swimming past what-I-had-always-done-and-stopped-at, and I could swim a whole mile.

So I did.

I am in my Third Third, and I now swim a mile at a time. Three or four times a week.

My hair is fading terribly (but at least the color is no longer dripping down my neck as I get out of the pool). My body takes gallons of lotion so I don’t itch, and I’m pretty sure the dark circles under my eyes have gotten worse as the swim goggles dig in right there.

But I learned a Big New Thing: I learned that many of the things I carry around are self-imposed limits. I stopped myself at ¾ of a mile my whole life. I’m not sure why, but I think it had to do with having to be somewhere, not having enough time, or just habit. But now, in my Third Third, I have the time. I just had to break my head out of its no-time-to-do-it place and consider the option to … pass that barrier.

This is mildly earth-shaking for me: what other limits are self-imposed? I think of myself as someone who likes challenges, tackles tough things, but obviously, I never swam a mile. Before.

Now I do.

The Cure for Indoor Torture

I hate sweating indoors. I hate the humid, steaming cloud that develops around my face as I sweat indoors. No, I detest sweating indoors. I ABHOR sweating indoors.

But I’m kind of stuck with it. Ever since the knee injury, I haven’t been able to run. I can’t run until I develop really good supporting muscles around my knee, and even then, on the advice of my doctor, the pounding of running is not really good for my joints.

So I swam. But since this is a Third Third story, soon my shoulder started hurting. I took to hiking (with trekking poles to reduce pressure on my knee), but I can only manage hiking one mountain a week (if that). There isn’t enough snow for cross-country skiing yet, so flab grew, pounds appeared, and pants and bras got tighter. And, as we all know, life expectancy diminished and odds of dementia increased. Meanwhile, worrying about all that increased my cortisol levels. Soon I’d be a goner. A depressed goner.

There was no way around it: I had to go sweat in the athletic club.

I could give the elliptical machine a try. It resembled running in an odd, loping, incongruous sort of way, and it wouldn’t pound my knees. Plus it would do my arms.

I picked a machine, checked the TV screens in front of it. My choices were football, NASCAR races, and more football. I put the little foamy covers on the earpieces of the headset and tried to turn on the channel and volume. It didn’t work. I peeled the foamy covers off and moved to another machine, where I put the little foamy covers on, and that didn’t work, either. Not to mention I had to stare at the guys around me to see how the headset is supposed to sit on my head. Upside down?

“You have to pedal to turn the sound on,” one guy said.

Okay. While I was trying to figure out my “options” (weight and age? What kind of options are those?), the machine told me to “Pedal faster.” So I pedaled while I fiddled with dials. I’d aim for 30 minutes of NASCAR.

29:20

29:03

I tried playing games with myself: Don’t look at the time remaining until the next commercial.

27:58 Does that count as “making it to 27” or is it really still mostly 28?

27:26 Oh, this is excruciating! My eyes wandered to every other television in the room. By the time I got back to my TV, the cars were still going round and round. There was a moment of excitement because a piece of lint got stuck in front of a brake air vent or something and somehow the pit crew cleared it while the car was still racing around.

26:01 Wow, that piece of lint was worth a minute and a half of distraction!

Eventually the steam started coming off my body. I was breathing sweaty air! I was breathing everyone else’s sweaty air! I had to think about something else – NASCAR had to get more interesting – or I was going to have a panic attack from insufficient fresh air.

Eventually – because time moves on, even on an elliptical, even when it’s torture – I got to 0 minutes remaining. And then, I actually went back another day. It happened to be a weekday at 3 pm.

Jeopardy was on! I watched and answered (or rather asked the questions), and when Alex Trebek took a break, I looked at my remaining time: 15 minutes! Time had flown! It was miraculous! I knew the words were from Australia’s national anthem, that Cervantes had written Don Quixote, and that antidote and anecdote were often mixed up.

I still sweated and breathed sweaty air, but I didn’t notice.

Now I even go a little earlier to make sure I get the foamy earpiece covers on in time. Tim asked if I go to the gym to watch Jeopardy. No, I go to the gym to exercise … but I’m only happy when Jeopardy is on. I once was stuck with a CSI or an NCIS or an SUV or whatever, but it didn’t make time fly as much as Jeopardy. Jeopardy exercises my brain, too!

My whole life, I always equated watching daytime TV with sickness or depression or degeneracy. With being a slug. Now, in my Third Third, daytime TV is making me fit. Ha!

Curmudgeon or Sweetie-Pie? That is the question.

As we age, we face choices. Actually, we face choices every single day, every single moment. But the big one I’m focusing on right now is whether I’m going to age as a curmudgeon or as a sweetie-pie.

I’m not sure whether sweetie-pie is the right antonym for curmudgeon, but it’s all I have. Even thesaurus.com doesn’t provide one, but there are lots of synonyms for curmudgeon: grouch, crank, sourpuss, grump, crab.

I’ve always thought I was tipping towards the curmudgeon side, mostly because I have Rules. Rules, as in:

• Do not litter.


• Your dog is supposed to be on a leash if he is not calmly at your side.


• Do not contaminate the plastics recycling bins by throwing in unrecyclable, miscellaneous trash.


• Cell phones should be off during public performances.

I have been known to enforce these Rules in public. Yes, we all discovered the heart of gold in A Man Called Ove, but I’m not sure the recipients of my Rule Awareness Lessons would speak to my heart of gold.

I fear it’s even worse than that. Recently, we had two couples over for dinner. As they were removing their shoes at the front door, some kind of issue arose. When Danny came up the stairs, he was griping about the rules in his house. “We even have a rule about synchronizing the light switches.”

What does that mean to synchronize the light switches? “It means that when one at the top of the stairs is up, you can’t turn off the light at the bottom of the stairs because then the light switch at the top is in the wrong position.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s right. They have to match. Light on means switch up.”

The husbands looked at me. “When the light is off, the light is off. What difference does it make what position the switch is in?”

Oh, yes, this is one of those little glitches in the universe. I am married to a man who doesn’t care what position the switches are in. I run around to the back of the garage to make sure the switch there matches the switch in the front of the garage. Apparently, I am not alone. Women like me are married to men like them. The men call these things “rules.” Personally, I don’t make Tim synchronize the switches … but I do readjust them when I’m in the garage.

I was at a party. A person nearing retirement asked a retired person about the transition.

“I love it,” the retiree said. “I enjoy every day.”

“Well,” I offered, “there are a lot of ups and downs in the transition.”

“Not me,” said the first. “I love every day.”

I draw a lot of conclusions from this, many of them revolving around Barbara-as-grouch and my inevitable fate as a curmudgeon. If I were particularly generous, I might try some self-description of Barbara-as-careful-observer-of-reality, but “I love every day” will never pop out of my mouth.

Lately, however, I have been encountering individuals who take my perception of sweetie-pie to new heights. In my new job with OLÉ (Opportunities for Lifelong Education), I receive phone calls from mostly older individuals wanting to enroll, to register for classes, to sign up friends, etc. I return their calls.

“Thank you, thank you for returning my call. I really appreciate your calling me back.”

And that’s only the beginning. I am thanked for providing information, I am thanked for remembering their names, I am thanked for talking them through the computer process. I am encountering more overt kindness and gratitude than I would have imagined was possible in routine human interaction. Yes, this says even more about Barbara-the-grouch, but my eyes have been opened! I have encountered appreciation to such an overwhelming degree, it’s changing my personality.

Sweetie-pie-ness begets more sweetie-pie-ness. The glow of sweetness just reflects and magnifies. I find myself going the extra mile just because it’s so appreciated. I’m a newbie at this: I still have Rules. I’m still not good at initiating sweetie-pie-ness but only remember it when I encounter it. I have to remind myself that being a sweetie-pie is not the same as being a vacuous optimist. It means appreciating the human effort around us.

Is there such a thing as a sweet curmudgeon?

Heroes or Goats?

Like a lot of us, I was watching the Oscars Sunday night. I saw the Great Mistake in the announcement of the winner for Best Picture, and while it was just one moment, it set me down a winding, philosophical path.

NOT, as one commenter put it, “Don’t let the 80-year-olds do it anymore.” In my sympathetic Third Third, I think, “That could have been me,” and I cringe at the jump in people’s minds to feebleness. I felt bad for Warren Beatty; the whole thing did made him look feeble and confused. He had a reason to be confused (so he passed the problem to Faye Dunaway).

My friend Steve focused on something else: he marveled at the graciousness on display:

“The mistake was acknowledged immediately and openly and the response was all so adult, so gracious, so harmonious. … Our news has been so dominated by three-year old tantrums lately, that this is a wonderful relief, and we should all be glad for the error, just to see how decent people behave.”

But my friend Marie had a different take:

“So, if Warren Beatty knew something was wrong, why didn’t he say something? At that moment, he had the opportunity to correct a mistake but didn’t. … Let’s promote taking responsibility where we can. When you see something or feel that something doesn’t feel right, say something.”

That reminded me of an interview I read a long time ago with Philip Zimbardo, the Stanford professor famous for the prison experiment where the “guards” ran amok with their newfound power. He was trying to account for the one person out of 100 who does the right thing.

Zimbardo was once sitting in the front row of a presentation when he noticed the speaker having difficulty, so he interrupted – just before the speaker collapsed. As he puts it:

“Essentially, it’s shame and guilt: you have to live with the guilt of not doing what you should have done vs. the shame of doing the wrong thing. All my life I’ve done things to make people laugh at me, and playing the fool means when the time comes I don’t care if people laugh.”

“…when the time comes, I don’t care if people laugh.” I disagree that you have to “play the fool” to prepare for this, but you do have to prepare yourself. Maybe as pre-teens, we’re too caught up in the fear of ridicule, the pressure of the peer group; but we’re in our Third Thirds now. Are we willing to risk embarrassment? We live in a world of “see something, say something” – are we ready? Can we all do it?

Sometimes I think I was born with a big mouth. Friends might have a hard time thinking of me as “reticent.” Yet I have uncomfortable memories of the times I balked, times I imagined all the eye-rolling I’d get for making a fuss, and so I abdicated. Like Charlie Brown, “I could have been the hero ... instead I’m the goat.”

It comes back to what Marie talked about, taking responsibility and speaking up. Zimbardo calls them “everyday heroes,” the ones who move from passivity to action. We can’t know how we’ll react in an emergency, in confusion, when faced with injustice. We can’t know if we’ll be gracious when a mistake is made.

I’m sure Warren Beatty is kicking himself. We can all take that as a cautionary tale and hope we’re ready when our test comes. But we can’t lose sight of heroes when they do emerge; the La La Land heroes took the microphone and volunteered their congratulations to Moonlight. Yes, they were adult and kind and generous.

I’m practicing my “see something, say something” muscle, right along with my squats.

Do-able Resolutions

This is the big thing I don’t understand: why – when I need to feel better – I don’t do the things that I know will make me feel better. I’ve talked with friends; I know I’m not the only one. Let’s say I feel sluggish and depressed. I know a run will make me feel better, but I don’t do it. Why is that?! What is the sabotage or lack of will that leaves me blobbing around, digging a hole for myself?

Maybe a run outside is not your thing. Maybe a hike or a social outing or a phone call does it for you. But then you don’t do it. Why is that?

Every new year, I start off hoping I’ll be a better person, maybe even Making Plans to intentionally be a better person, and it doesn’t happen. But as I mentioned here, my daughter taught me something about New Year’s resolutions: if I make them cumulative, I see progress, not the times I miss. My resolutions to work out three times a week always left me missing weeks and feeling failure; her resolution to run 500 miles in 2017 takes the miles whenever they come.

So I looked at how I wanted to grow as a person and how could I take baby steps to get there. Maybe it would be like exercising my oomph muscle. (And if I’d missed along the way, I could always race to catch up at the end of the year.)

I want to be more thoughtful, feel more gratitude.
I was so moved by the condolence cards after my mother died that I wrote thank you notes for them. I wanted people to know how much I appreciated their thoughts. My friend Linnea writes appreciation notes often. I save them (even though Linnea says, “You’re supposed to be de-cluttering!”) because they make me feel … appreciated. So: I will write 20 thoughtful notes in 2017.

See? It’s a baby step, but maybe it will feel so good, it will become a habit. If it doesn’t, I will still have written 20 notes.

I want to be more of a hostess, welcoming people into our home.
So: I will hold four dinner parties. Most years, I’ve done this, but this past year, I’m not sure. I’ve still socialized, but I want our home to be a welcoming spot. The point is, it’s not a killer task. It’s do-able.

I want to be more fit.
Here’s the 500 miles of running/skiing. I already do both irregularly, but I let things interfere. Maybe this will help on those self-sabotaging days when I’m digging my personal hole.

Since my exercise tends to be one dimensional, my muscles are pathetic. Tim and Sophie say squats are big, that they also help with getting up (for when we’re older). I hate squats. I can’t imagine anything more boring than doing squats. Tim says I should do three sets of them a day. With weights. Ha! I’ll do 50 sets (three times ten squats) in a whole year. I’ve already done one so far. Baby steps.

I want to eat better.
This one is really an odd one. I already don’t have meat in our house; I only cook vegetarian. So, of course, I thought I was getting my five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. I go through four pounds of Costco grapes a week, but I just read that it takes 32 grapes to equal a serving! Yikes! Maybe this means I need to move off beans, carbs, and cheese more. So: I will eat 15 servings of fruits and vegetables each week. Yes, I know that five a day means 75 a week, and that this isn’t a cumulative measure like the others. What should I say? Eat 780 servings in 2017? Too much recordkeeping. Besides, I don’t know how to count the vegetables IN my meals and this is just to get me thinking more intentionally about meal preparation. I’m going out today to buy baby carrots. It only takes nine of them to make a serving.

I want to keep up closeness with my sisters.
So: I’m going to have five Skype or phone conversations with them in 2017. We email regularly, but that’s email.

Missing from these resolutions are the things I already do. I read 75 books last year without noticing, trained for and ran my half-marathon as a matter of course, and wrote this blog because I do (This is post #203!). I don’t need to resolve to do those things. For whatever reason, desire and will are sufficient for them to happen.

Some researchers say willpower is a muscle to be exercised. Others say we can suffer willpower depletion if we have to rely on self-control too much. If you draw on willpower too much, you drain your self-control for the next situation.

Baby steps.

Visits from a Newly-adult Daughter

You know you’re in your Third Third when your daughter says she’d like to come for visits … and she buys the plane tickets!

You know your daughter’s still in her First Third when her visits are for Thanksgiving and Hanukkah; she still hasn’t created traditions and commitments of her own for those holidays.

But this is a visit from a newly-adult daughter, and it’s fraught with transition. One friend described her planned visit to her daughter. The daughter told Mom that the visit would be too long; Mom would have to move on after several days. Mom knew this was true – guests and fish go bad after three days – but Mom had held out hope that she wasn’t one of those “other mothers,” the ones who have to leave. (sigh) So do we all.

So when we go to the movies, and I lean over to ask something of the adult daughter, and she glowers at me because “You don’t talk in movies!” I wonder if she never lets peers talk to her in movies. It’s not like I’m chatting; I just have a question. And I know that very particular form of mother-daughter irritation, and it shatters the visions of the wonderful, mutually-approving, adult mother-daughter interaction I’ve been hoping for.

But I really admire this newly-adult daughter. She makes New Year’s resolutions that she keeps. She’d decided to read 52 books, to travel monthly, to do more daytime social activities (which I learned was meant to pose an alternative to night clubbing). And she’d done them all … but still had four books to read over vacation.

I had heard about the new book Feminist Fight Club which might shed light on some issues in office politics the newly-adult daughter was confronting. I borrowed it from the library for her. First trip, she tossed it aside. Another mother dud. Second trip, I renewed it and prodded a little more. (By my Third Third, I know how to prod.)

Victory! I went up MANY notches on the Big Mother Scale. Not only did I give her a book that spoke to her issues, but she completed her 52-book resolution with it! I had done something right!

It colored the whole rest of our trip and our conversations. Somehow I was now a person who’d learned something worth sharing. I’d grappled with professional life, faced my own workplace trials in my Second Third. In my Third Third, I had perspective.

Meanwhile, she taught me about making New Year’s resolutions. I told her I’d given up, that when I set a goal of working out three times a week, I’d miss one week and then have to catch up, and I never knew how I was doing. And she said I had to do it differently; that if I said I’d run 500 miles in 2017, it was cumulative. I could see my progress, not the times I missed.

Brilliant! I’ll do it.

I think coming home for the newly-adult daughter is a time to decompress, to give herself the space to cocoon. We save up some interesting things to share, we play lots of Five Crowns, do a jig saw puzzle. We make sure we do winter; she sees old friends. The rhythm of my Third Third makes all this easier.

And of course, she helps me put Find My Mac on my laptop and create a master password and look for a blouse at Nordstrom.

I invite her into the kitchen to make a simple avocado dish I’ve discovered. She loves it, asks for the recipe. I just glow and glow.

This is the first time she’s been here for Hanukkah in a long time. She pulls out the menorah – her favorite – and is  in charge of lighting the candles all week. The candles just glow and glow, too, and we are a family.

Beware the Cosmic Light Bulb

We say the Third Third is the one without a parent, without a boss; it’s the Third we get to define for ourselves. But there’s a certain peril in not working in an office, not having the hustle and bustle of externally-mandated to-dos. Not having to do things because someone else or some institution wants them, having lots of alone time, sometimes unencumbered time. The same thing applies with the empty nest: no kid responsibilities.

Before, my roles and responsibilities – daughter, student, employee, wife, mother – defined a lot of my being in the world. In my Third Third, I define myself.

The peril is self-centeredness. I’m not sure that’s the right word. Being self-absorbed? Edgar Bronfman calls it “incessant self-focus on my own problems and issues” in his recent book. In college, we called it being the Cosmic Light Bulb.

Yes, I volunteer and I do things for other people, but I’m the one in charge of deciding what I do. I’m autonomous, and the dictionary says that’s “self-governing; independent; subject to its own laws only.” Sure, I think independence is a good thing, and it’s probably a cornerstone of my personality, but every now and then, I see the pitfalls in the available solitude and autonomy of my Third Third. If I’m not being vigilant, my world is About Me.

Even if I regularly examine my life (and the philosopher in me does it all the time), the autonomy of my Third Third often means that’s happening in isolation. While I may be a constant critic of myself, I’m still a one-sided critic. Sometimes that’s not fair to me, and sometimes that’s not fair to everyone else. In my own world, in the land of I-decide-what-I-want, I can be an autocrat.

It happens gradually. I look at the world and stop noticing that I’m looking through Barbara-colored glasses. And then someone plays Copernicus to that worldview; they see things differently, want different things. Suddenly, the universe becomes multi-dimensional – rotating around the sun, not around me – and from that other perspective, it makes sense. A different sense, but still sense.

If I’m lucky, that’s illuminating and enriching, and I re-orient. I appreciate the different sides to the universe, the variety of wants and desires, hopes and viewpoints of other people. It’s a tremendous feeling of social connection with a spirit of compromise. But if I’m unlucky, I’ve already focused on Me, disparaged a few feelings, overruled a few choices, pushed too hard. Without even noticing.

Okay, this isn’t unique to our Third Thirds. The land of About Me isn’t restricted to any age group. Maybe we thought by the time we reached our Third Thirds we’d be better – resolutely empathetic, kind, and generous. (sigh) Sometimes I still need a smack to the head to reflect, reconsider, and make right with other people. I still make resolutions to do better. I worry that a blog is the very epitome of self-absorption.

There’s a fine balance between working to define ourselves without our old roles and thinking too much about ourselves. A fine line between autonomy and pushiness. If life is a constant story of error, correction, and resolution to do better, I guess there’s more of the same in my Third Third. Yup.

Pushing Ourselves Uphill

Over the July 4th weekend, we rode our bikes to the Girdwood Forest Fair, a little over eight miles on the “Bird to Gird” path. I ride a one-speed with coaster brakes, the only kind of bike I’ve ever had. (I’ve done triathlons with that bike. People laugh. Did I mention that it has a big basket on the back?) Coming back from the Fair, I used to walk my bike up the relentless uphill. Then, about ten years ago, I started riding the bike up. Somehow, I’d gotten stronger. Now, it’s what I do.

Except this year. This year, I became convinced I wasn’t strong or fit enough. Heading out, I noticed all the downhill, thinking, Oh, no, that’s the uphill I won’t be able to do. So on the way back, I steeled myself, grit my teeth, groaned and pushed and sweat and got that stupid bike up the #!*&!# hill.

All the while, I was thinking, “No one has a gun to your head. You can stop anytime and walk the #!*&!# bike. You can just stop, get down, and walk.” My heart was racing, sweat was pouring, and I thought, “You’re going to have a #!*&!# heart attack and yet you won’t stop and walk the stupid bike.”

I didn’t have a heart attack. I got up the hill and continued biking along. Did I have some incredible feeling of accomplishment, of pride, of relief? No, mostly I was trying to figure out what gun I had to my own head.

Do you know this feeling? Is it about facing down some age-related decline, some fear of mortality that’s fueling this doggedness? Is it about having some notion of my capabilities and not wanting to see them wane? Or is it just pigheadedness and tenacity looking for a target?

Years ago, I wrote and performed in two one-woman plays. After publicity was already out and tickets already sold, I panicked. Not only was I portraying some personally revealing subject matter, but I was doing it on-stage with lines I had to memorize. Memorizing those lines became a trauma for me. I distinctly remember saying, “Nobody put a gun to my head. Why on earth did I sign up to do this harrowing thing?!” I was consumed with terror at the thought of forgetting my lines on a stage with no safety net.

In the end, I made it without a problem, but only after the fact: each night, I was positive on-stage humiliation loomed.

In two weeks, five other women and I hike the Chilkoot Trail. I have not trained as much as I’d like specifically for that so I’m just POSITIVE I’m missing some vast storehouse of strength and fitness, and I’m worrying about it even though a few weeks ago, I ran my annual half-marathon. (Yes, I can run a half-marathon and still worry about whether I’m fit or not. I can come in fourth in my age group and still worry about it.)

Before any race, I am never sure I’ll pull it off. This time, on the way to the start line, the sun was shining and it cast my shadow in front of me. That shadow – that person – looked really fit. She swung her arms, had a zip in her step – she was really strong. She knew she’d finish well. At some point, I made the connection: that shadow was me. I could be that person. I relaxed and ran my happiest half-marathon yet.

Yes, in my Third Third I have skills and capabilities that I don’t even question. I tackle plenty of things that cause me no angst. But on the ones I have self-doubt about, I have to struggle to entertain a positive outcome, to believe that I am strong enough or capable enough or resourceful enough to pull off whatever it is. And yet I sign on for these things!

What I ask of my Third Third is that I’ve learned something. Maybe wisdom, maybe just insight – so elusive! But now I have two thoughts that I’m trying to internalize for the challenge of the Chilkoot Trail:

• The Chilkoot Trail is a plodding kind of trail. It’s meant to be a walk uphill. There is no timing chip, just one foot in front of the other. Metaphorically, I can get off the #!*&!# bike.


• If the sun shines, I can find my shadow and follow her to the finish.

Hooray! I'm a mentor.

If you’re lucky, one of the things you get to do in your Third Third is to be a mentor. If you’re even luckier, someone picks you. They think you can be a help to them in their career, their lives, or their general development. There’s no better affirmation of the fact that you’ve acquired experience, expertise, and maybe even a little wisdom.

I got picked! For many years, I’d arranged mentorships for the participants in Leadership Anchorage. I did workshops on mentorships for the Society for Human Resource Management; I worked with organizations to set up mentoring programs. But be a mentor? Never.

And then Derrick picked me. (Why does that sound like a song?) He picked me at a time when I felt overloaded, not so high in self-esteem, a lot bothered. But I agreed to meet with him, still not sure why he’d picked me – where did he even get my name? – or what I could possibly offer him.

Derrick is a young, black, small businessman. He’s run for political office, is committed to his community, family, and profession. So we met. We talked. It was okay, but finally I asked him, “What do you want? What do you need a mentor for?” And Derrick said, “I feel stuck.”

“Aha! Stuck is good. Stuck is what I can help with. Unsticking is what I do.” So we talked about his Big Goals, what was holding him back, how he could free himself up so he could pursue them. We got pretty specific, talked about passing responsibilities to a partner, saying no to things. Along the way, we talked about thank you notes, about how I think sending thank you notes differentiates you from the crowd.

Within a week, someone called, mentioned that they’d met Derrick, spent some time with him, and then received a thank you note afterwards, wasn’t that nice? Whoa, this guy was quick.

The next time we met, Derrick had made plans to take the law school admission test, had researched law schools, was planning to sell his house and his business. Not just wildly scattershot either; he had made Plans. Once he un-stuck, he moved. He claims I’d helped, but Derrick is a guy with a lot on the ball. He’d even read a book I’d briefly mentioned, and we talked about it.

So then I thought, what else can I offer him from my Third Third to his Second? I know people. If he’s planning on law school, maybe I could arrange some interviews for him to meet folks: the U.S. Attorney, a successful defense attorney, another small businessperson who’d gone on to law school. He’s in the middle of those now, and I’m trying to figure out more ways I can tap into my accumulation of years and experience to help him along his way.

I remember reading somewhere that the real reason Alcoholics Anonymous works is not because people GET support but that, as sponsors, they GIVE support. Finding that they have something to offer is a source of strength for the sponsor and that keeps them sober.

So this was my big discovery: being Derrick’s mentor is also mentoring me. You can’t sit down with someone who has so gloriously un-stuck himself without thinking, “What’s your own Big Idea?” Oh, I have one or two, but too many commitments were already in the way, my calendar filled up. They kept getting back-burnered. Not to mention they just seemed … too much, too complicated, too difficult.

But Derrick was selling his business, looking at law schools!

So I had to do something bold and new and adventurous, too. I’ll tell you more about that next post. The thing is, Derrick is leaping off a big cliff. I am stumbling off a little cliff. But I feel a little persistent stuck-ness has given way.

Here I’d set up all these mentorships for others, telling everyone it would be mutually rewarding, and here I am realizing IT’S TRUE. I may offer Derrick the benefits of my experience, but he’s adding inspiration, gung-ho energy, and a whole different view of the world. My world is richer.

What can I say? Go find someone to mentor. Make it official. Enjoy.

Moving muscles: A to Zumba

Way back in October, I publicly announced my plan to try out all sorts of exercise alternatives. I was going to embarrass myself into fitness.

It didn’t work. I had two days of skiing in November, and then I just vegged until I started ice skating. But ice skating the way I do it is outside-in-the-air more than it’s exercise.

Then I signed up and committed to hiking the Chilkoot Trail this summer with a group of women. Not only does that mean 33 miles, Golden Stairs, and a 3000-foot elevation gain, but also a pack on my back. Mostly, my camping involves kayaking or rafting and the boat carries the load. Carrying a pack uphill? This would require Training.

And this scared me into my first Zumba class, last week’s New Thing. The good thing about Zumba is there’s no partner so your errors mean you’re not bumping into and stepping on someone. The bad things about Zumba are that there are choreographed steps and it’s heavy on rights and lefts. If motor coordination is not your thing, then it’s pretty obvious when you’re headed right doing something no one else is doing as they head left. The great thing about Zumba is nobody cares.

The other thing about Zumba is fashion. Yet again, I seem to have missed the world’s fashion instructions. Everyone is wearing stretchy, black, yoga pants. I am wearing my blue running shorts.

So on Monday, Tim and I Zumba-ed around. Then I did some heavy-duty leg lifts and tricep things on the machines. Distance running keeps my legs strong, but while I’m at it, I’d like some Michelle Obama upper arm definition, too. Visions of sleeveless tank tops danced in my head.

Then I came home and couldn’t walk easily for two days. I couldn’t lift my arms to brush my hair.

Uh, oh, this is when you realize you’re not 25 anymore, there are more than 650 muscles in the human body, and a whole batch of them have not been taxed for a very long time. You’re lucky you have six months to get in shape. So on Wednesday, we were back at Zumba again. Except the people looked different, and there were more men there. And the instructor was a guy … who said this was “Insanity.”

Oh, no, not Insanity! I’d seen that through the doors of the athletic club once. Those people were nuts. They didn’t just jump; they leaped two feet into the air. “Don’t worry,” the instructor said, “I’ll modify.” Ha, ha, ha! He didn’t have a speck of fat on his body. He was an anatomical model of pure muscle. If he tried to swim, he’d sink. His “modify” is a whole other vocabulary word from my “modify.”

I actually lasted a half-hour before bailing. Later on, I couldn’t lower myself to a toilet seat without crash landing on it.

A couple days later, I found Zumba again. This time, it felt more like dancing, and I remembered some of the steps. If I just listened to the music, my legs sometimes went where they were supposed to. Nothing is sore in my body any more. I’m trying to map out a calendar of how strong I have to be by when. When do I have to strap on my backpack with weights and do stairs?

Back in the ’80s, I was a big Jazzercise fan, and I still can’t hear Beat It or Jump or Girls Just Wanna Have Fun without moving into aerobics mode. They got imprinted in my head as aerobics songs, and they instantly trigger bouncing. I had a punch card and there were Jazzercise outlets all over town – in churches, schools – and one two doors from my house in San Francisco. I remember when the dancing stopped and we did the abdominals. We’d screech and shriek lying on mats on the floor. Zumba doesn’t have mats on the floor. Hmmm, maybe I’ll have to try Pilates again, too.

Even back then, I missed the world’s fashion instructions. Everyone was wearing leotard-type outfits. I wore my purple running shorts. Why do people wear nice clothes to sweat in?

I hope this isn’t just a burst of fitness that dies. I don’t think so. When you have to make a change, you need inspiration, and sometimes the best inspiration is fear: as in, I’ve got 33 uphill miles ahead of me, and I’d better be ready.

The Over-examined Life

Back about 15 years ago, I discovered that other women were shaving their armpits and legs. Somehow, I’d missed that memo and thought that during the ’70s, we’d all radicalized and stopped doing that. It was one of those “Uh, oh. Uh, oh: Am I outside the standard deviation again?” moments.

Yesterday, in the midst of writing this blog, I crashed under another of those moments. I was writing about Dr. Atchley’s stages of retirement, about disenchantment spurring reorientation. That makes total sense to me: when you feel things aren’t working, you change direction. But I began wondering what the time frame of that stage might be: When would disenchantment spur reorientation? After six months, a year? Is there a stretch of disenchantment leading to a period of reorientation? Does reorientation end?

Which led me to the bigger question, the one about Other People. How frequently do Other People re-evaluate their lives? Does everyone reflect every day on whether his or her life had the meaning they wanted it to have? (Uh, oh. Uh, oh.) I am constantly deciding whether today – if it were followed by other days like it – would add up to a good life. And then wondering whether that’s enough because shouldn’t the whole be greater than the sum of its parts? And if not, how might I fix it tomorrow?

Suddenly, it was overwhelming. What started as a literary panic attack (How can I explain all this in the blog?) became a full-fledged onslaught of desperate self-evaluation: was all that questioning a thing to STOP? Was introspection crushing me?

I’m not sure if this has accelerated in my Third Third, what with having the time to think combined with intimations of mortality. I am after all the person who had dozens and dozens of identity crises. And I do like the philosophy that every moment is an opportunity to “repair the world,” to make a choice to do well instead of ill. So that makes for a lot of decision-making over all those moments.

So what happened yesterday was I heard all the whirring of decision-making in my head, the constant muttering of self-evaluation and I thought, “That’s the problem. It puts me too inside myself and not enough outside.”

To the rescue, my friend Linda, who emailed:

“I seem to forever be in an existential crisis of re-evaluation, self-examination, and relentless rumination and would like to get off and enjoy the moments. Maybe this time of year is not the time to expect to jump off this particular merry-go-round as reflection and rumination go along with the New Year, so my New Year’s resolution is to really enjoy my moments instead of trying to figure IT all out.”

Now Linda wrote this at 3:40 in the morning so I’m guessing she was awake and busy figuring things out, but she’s right!

And it means “Other People” includes Linda (and you perhaps?) so I’m not so outside the range of normal! Not so crazy in my own skin.

I don’t know if I’m constitutionally able to stop thinking things to death or if it’s just a deep rut I have to break out of. I was, after all, once a Philosophy grad student. When I work a job or contract, all my problem-solving is on work place problems, strategic problems, project problems, NOT how-am-I-living-my-life problems. That’s challenging and – right now – seems like a refreshing break. But writing about one’s Third Third requires personal reflection.

Living my moments is different from evaluating my moments. I’m going to remember that. It’s my New Thing.

All the world's a stage...

I think the first formalized stages I’d ever heard described were Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief after the death of a loved one or similar bad news.







Recently, I heard of the six stages of retirement described by gerontologist Robert Atchley:

And now, I’ve discovered the Nine Emotional Stages of Holiday Travel:

1   Nostalgia	4   Frustration	7   Annoyance
2   Anxiety	5   Calm	8   Excitement
3   Productivity	6   Happiness	9   Relief

So I guess if we were just looking at the complexity of the process, it takes more steps to do holiday travel than it does to retire, and it takes more steps to retire than to get over a loved one’s dying. Okay, I’m being facetious.

Kübler-Ross’ stages don’t begin with looking forward to something – hers are all about reacting to horrible news – so she’s missing those steps of positive anticipation. But it seems to me that the other two processes are basically the same thing: looking forward to something, making plans, confronting the reality of that which you wished for, feeling bummed, and then recovering. (The travel one has more steps because it’s a round-trip: you get to visit family – with both positive and negative anticipation … and then you get to come home.)

This is called a PGIO. I learned this in college:

After hearing this, I bet you’ll see PGIOs everywhere, too. These same five steps apply to everything:

For instance, a First Third, college example: (1) I really wanted to go to that party, (2) I called up friends to go with me, (3) place was full of drunk assholes. (4) What a waste of an evening! (5) So let’s all talk about it and hoot and laugh over at the coffee house.

Now a Third Third example:

1. My job ends in April; I can hardly wait for all that free time


2. I’m going to take an art class, finish binding those books, finish the quilt, travel


3. I seem to be drifting, not getting any of it done, and I’m not a very good artist anyway


4. Yikes, what have I done! Am I going to be this worthless and unemployed for the next 30 years?!


5. Oh, I get it: I’m making my own future. Who knew it would involve blogging, some contracts, teaching, ice skating? But I need to impose some structure for this to work.

The thing is, I have a hard time seeing these steps as describing a period of my Third Third (or any third). It makes it sound like once you move through the steps, your caterpillar has turned into the butterfly. Well, even the grief folks say that’s not true; you can keep repeating the cycle as new realizations or situations hit.

I think there are two versions of this cycle: the daily one and the Big Picture one. I had the daily one just yesterday, with the quest for the calendars: (1) Today I’ll buy my new calendars, (2) Off I go to the store, (3) They’re all out, (4) It’s taking forever to find the calendars I want; 2016 is a mess already, and (5) Wow! I found a way to get the calendars after all.

But the Big Picture one: can we only see it in hindsight? Do we only see the stages of our lives as we move out of them?

[to be continued due to the existential crisis of the author who found herself in a paroxysm of re-evaluation, self-examination, and relentless rumination]

The Apology Test

This is that complicated post I was struggling with. Here’s a little pre-blog survey: When you think of things that require proper apologies, do you think of apologies you need to receive from others or apologies you need to give to others?

    __    Someone owes me an apology for something they did
    __    I owe someone an apology for something I did

By the time I reached my Third Third, I’d heard these two sayings many times:

1.  First time, shame on you. Second time, shame on me.
2.  Hate does more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to the object on which it is poured.

So while they’re not complete opposites, they do reflect differences in how to deal with transgressions. Other people’s against us. Do we stay on guard and protect ourselves from people who take advantage, are cruel, or are inconsiderate? (#1) Or does holding onto our feelings (like distrust, resentment, even hate) damage us? (#2) When do the healthy boundaries we set for ourselves become grudges?

So here I am with a discussion group on the subject of Forgiveness and Repentance. In Judaism (the framework for our discussion), there’s no absolution that comes from some designated authority. God isn’t “in charge” of forgiving sins against other people. Only the parties concerned can right the wrongs between them. I like that, but it means the question of whether or not to forgive sits right in our court.

The philosophers came up with all sorts of lists as they closely examined the issue. Repentance is when you’re sorry and you want to make it better. For repentance to count, five things must be present: recognition of the act as bad, remorse, not doing it any more, restitution, and confession. And this is the biggie: none of it counts unless you don’t do it anymore.

So let’s say someone does all five things, is the other person required to forgive? Philosophers agree that repentance must be sincere, initiated by the bad guy, and involve some element of personal transformation. There is no easy forgiveness; you have to earn it and deserve it.

So Judaism is mostly big on repentance, stopping doing bad things. Not so big on forgiveness because the big deal is stopping doing bad things. The idea is that if you forgive too easily, you’re allowing evil to continue. But if you forgive too slowly, when do you become cruel?

So there I was, thinking about all the rotten things people have done and mentally cataloging which of the five things they missed in their inadequate – or even absent – apologies. Concluding, of course, that they did not earn or deserve forgiveness. So my big decision was whether to keep my distance from them (#1) or move on (#2). That was my big issue.

Only afterwards did a light bulb go off and I re-read the bit that said “…mostly big on repentance … because the big deal is stopping doing bad things.” Click! I looked in the mirror and had to ask if I was doing my five things, had I repaired things I might have broken and was I not breaking them anymore?

Oh, no, here I am again at the contest between Better Barbara and Shitty Barbara (who made their original appearance here). Shitty Barbara focuses more on the rotten things other people do rather than her own rotten stuff, so my first concern had been Forgiveness. Like, who’s entitled to it? Not you! But now it’s, What counts as a Bad Thing? To me or to you? Do I even notice my Bad Things as easily as I notice other people’s? Will I fix them?

By the time we’ve reached our Third Thirds, we’ve experienced many wrongs, both as the good guy, the bad guy, and the bystander. I keep hoping I’ll acquire some sort of Wisdom-with-a-capital-W, but really it’s always the same: Does the Better Barbara win?