Heeding Direction

I have always prided myself on having a good sense of direction. My mother tells me that I get that from the Street side of the family. My grandfather, David, had an internal compass that rarely steered him wrong.

The truth is, I don't always know exactly where I am, but I can usually find my way from point A to point B and beyond with a fair degree of confidence that I will end up where I hoped to be. Most of the time, I feel superior to the road map.

A few years ago, I came back into NYC through the Holland Tunnel rather late in the evening. From there it was just a hop skip and a jump over the river and through the hoods to Brooklyn where I was staying. It didn't concern me that I went over the Manhattan Bridge rather than the Williamsburg Bridge. To my logical mind, it seemed like I should be able to cut to the left until I reconnected. I thought it might even be a clever shortcut.

This sense of optimism stayed with me as I traveled deeper into the urban midnight. A left turn. A right turn. A pause to let nightclub revelers drunken with the fever of "closing time" cross in front of me. Onward.

It wasn't until I realized that I was the only one on the road who wasn't driving a tricked out Cadillac, that I began to feel uneasy. My heart began to thud in answer to the bass boom of the supersonic stereo systems competing around me. I jumped with each flash of golden hubcap that caught across my windshield. I didn't need a road sign to tell me that I, and my rented white Oldsmobile with Massachusetts plates, needed to turn around. Immediately.

I zig-zagged back through the neighborhoods, back over the river, and back to connect with the Williamsburg Bridge as I should have done in the first place. My well-intentioned "shortcut" took 2.5 hours to correct.

Even more years ago, when I was still living in New Hampshire, I ventured one day from the cozy nest where I lived at the foot of Mount Monadnock to the big city of Manchester for some shopping. I can't remember what I needed or why I went, but any day that I left the mountainside was special.

Maybe I was giddy with the sense of independence that came from being on the roam. Maybe it was simply a moment of inattention, but when I arrived at the junction of several highways, I missed a road sign and ended up heading north on the Everett Turnpike. A toll road. And, I needed to be going south.

Now, that might not seem like a big deal to most people, but at that point in my life when money was scarce, the dollar I paid to go the wrong direction, and the dollar that I paid to turn around seemed a bitter price. I hadn't watched for the signs, and it cost me.

I remember at the time thinking that there was a lesson to be learned. What really is the price of taking the wrong road?

Sometimes we think we know a quicker way, and we end up where we don't belong. In relationships that should never be. And, far from where we know we are safe. We pay a toll for the privilege of traveling the wrong road, and we pay again when we want to turn around and say we made a mistake. Sometimes, if we are lucky, we can get back to where we started without any real harm. We are wiser for the journey although we have wasted enormous amounts of time and energy. Other times, we are not so lucky and end up bruised in a corner choking on the taste of our own blood.

In life a great sense of direction is not always enough. A map exists because someone has already been there. Done that. The tollgates, the bridges to nowhere, the one-way streets, and the dead ends have been clearly marked. The question is, will we read that map and heed direction, or will we head off on our own to pay the price again and again?

Random discipline

I am a painful Picasso when it comes to writing poetry. My "blue period" included such titles as Bad Burton and Chasing Butterflies. My abuse of rhyme and meter should have been tried as criminal.

“call it fate, but I thought it seemed right,
to see a butterfly there in the morning light…”

Bad poetry aside, I try to write a little bit every day. Sometimes I publish it here, and sometimes I do not. I don’t know what this ritual accomplishes other than to discipline my brain to convert thoughts to words through my fingers.

So here goes random discipline:

Every few days I am stirred by something that happens in the universe. Usually it is subtle—the way something looks or smells and releases a fragment of memory or a phrase that marches out of context through my head until I recognize that it needs to be heard.

I saw a "house-biter" destroying a little house to make way for a mansion. The jaws clamped over the roof and crumbled the walls that once held the hopes and sorrows of a family. And, I wrote and wrote and wrote about the old giving way to the new. The cycles of life.

Sausage McMuffins inspired another piece about my mother watching me eat the popular breakfast sandwich and remarking: "I am glad you can enjoy swine's flesh." It prompted me to remember the Hebrew dietary laws that governed the food on the table of childhood even though we were not Jewish. And, the oh, so funny story of how a friend of ours, who discovered that he and his sister were eating bacon, yelled "Spit it out Lisa! It's pig meat."

Once I wrote a whole short story based on the phrase: "It was a road that would have been better left untraveled." Of course, I found out in short order that my spell check didn't think that UNTRAVELED is a word. It wanted me to use the word UNRAVELED. And, unraveled might also have been an appropriate use.

It was a road better left unraveled, but I didn’t know that until I was half way down it.

The road less raveled. The road less graveled. The road less traveled.

Writing. I do love words and good writing. I don’t know how to tell you what good writing is, but I know it when I read it. It is not cluttery. It doesn’t have too many images. And, it should make me see and feel what is beneath the words.

I have come to favor incomplete sentences when used for emphasis. I rather like the idea of breaking the traditional rules of writing. I still feel rebellious when I start a sentence with AND or BUT. I follow the AP stylebook's rules for commas. Writing should just flow and the need for a comma will be apparent. I like a metaphor that adds to my understanding. A metaphor that sits in the middle of the page clipping its literary toenails...well...it isn't so useful.

There is nothing disciplined about this writing and it took me less than five minutes. Will I use this? No. Maybe. Okay. I will.

Tumbling Turrets

Is it just me, or does these turrets look familiar? One was a sideshow and one was a movement. Both were kingdoms built by men. Both reigned at the turn of the century. Both drew people from their very core. Both marked the souls of their believers. Both kingdoms. Both so mighty. Both gone.

Bicycle, bicycle

I am sure that the tune, "Bicycle," wasn't even a glimmer in Freddy Mercury's eye when I got a brand new bike in 1976. It was my tenth birthday. And, the bike was a Schwinn. Every spoke in the big round wheels promised to buy my freedom. In the way that fifth graders can still sorta believe in Santa Clause and the tooth fairy, I had a secret hope that my bike would change my life. (Of course, I also wished for acne, braces and glasses at that age, so you get a sense of my priorities.)

My parents had agreed to pay for half of the $60 needed to assure my place in the band of merry neighborhood bikers. For more than a year I had saved my money to pay for that sweet ride. I dreamed of the curved handlebars wrapped in miles of black tape-grip. The weight of the sturdy maroon frame. The handbrakes at my fingertips. The click, click, click of the gear shift in that the single moment that hangs you in nothingness before your pedals engage, and you gain solid traction again.

In my fertile mind's eye, my social standing would be transformed by the magic in this hunk of metal, rubber, chains, and bolts. I would be cool. Part of a club that mattered. A real MSBO (member of the society of bicycle ownership.)

Imagine my surprise when I realized that my parents would insist that I get a girl's bike instead of a boy's bike. Nowhere in all my fantasies had the bar between my legs been anything but straight. The vision I had of myself riding with no hands did not include anything so sissified as a the dip of a girlie bar. My inner tom-boy shrieked. It begged and pleaded against the injustice. It wept and wailed in a way that no boy would have ever done.

I don't remember how they changed their minds, but I know that they did, because that October I had the bicycle of my dreams.

My only other bike had come from the Drumore public dump that was up the hill and down the lane past the bottom of the pasture on Scalpy Hollow Road. My father had rescued it and brought it home for me to call my very own. He fixed the broken pedal with a wooden block, and tightened the rusted silver handlebars. He filled the little tires with compressed air until they were firm and true.

Under the shadow of the silo I learned to ride that bike in the barnyard outside the chicken house. While our cattle summered in the southern pasture, the winter's accumulation of manure was scraped free from the cement yard to leave a smooth place that was perfect for me to practice.

There were no training wheels for me. I would have none of that. Only my tip-toes would keep me balanced on the white banana seat while I gathered my courage to roll forward. I would teeter back and forth until finally, I picked up my feet, and I was riding. RIDING.

Bicycle, bicycle. I want to ride my bicycle. I want to ride my bike.

Round and round, I sped. As my confidence grew, I would race as fast as I could from one end of the barnyard to the other. I would slam on my brakes and skid to a halt. I can remember how proud I was to be handling my bike like a big kid.

The real test though was the steep hill that stretched from the bottom of our driveway to the top of forever. It took all that fall and winter to psyche myself up for the challenge. Then one morning in early spring found me at the top looking down at the house and barn. I took a deep breath.

One, two, three...

I pushed off and pedaled just a little. My purple Huffy gathered speed and rolled past the stubbled field on the left. The wheels were turning themselves, and the pedals were pumping my legs on their own by the time I passed the second field. The road slid by in a blur as my knuckles gripped the wobbling handlebars. The sign at the bottom loomed in front of me before it registered that I was still upright. I had not fallen when I had been so certain that I would.

Disbelieving my own success, I yanked my wheel hard to the right and leaned over on purpose just to fall and get it out of the way. Later, my mother picked the gravel from my knees and wiped the snotty strings from my nose while I hiccuped and snuffled.

I think it took weeks for my scabs to heal. And, my trusty bicycle leaned against the stoop for a couple of days before I tried to ride it again.

Today, there are times when someone I know really messes up. They make choices that can only bring heartache. And, I wonder what in the world they could be thinking. Then I am reminded that it was I who brought myself to ruin at the bottom of that hill so many years ago.

And, I wonder if it is sometimes about choosing HOW and WHEN you fall rather than waiting for it to happen.

Ability to Inherit

It is always a sad thing to have a marriage come apart. The hope that once was bright, the future that "falls down midflight," and the heart once full of promise, collides at the intersection of faith and reality.

A friend of mine is going through a divorce right now. The process has been slow. Who gets what? What is a product of the marriage? What is fair? Are there any children? Who gets the tax deduction? What insurance should be carried? Who contributed what? There are so many parts and pieces to sorting the debris.

Most of the equitable distribution has been textbook. I was surprised to find, however, that one's ability to inherit plays significantly into a divorce settlement. For example, if one's parents are worth millions and one's spouse stands to inherit a good portion of that, it is factored into the final settlement.

Interesting.

Who has the best lawyer? And, when do you stop caring for the other person enough to protect yourself and your own future?

The Boy-Kickers

I loved my shoes from the minute they met my feet. I found them in a little shop tucked around the corner over by the Boulevard. They were on the bottom shelf on the far left hand corner. There were so many other colorful shoes shouting for attention that day; I almost didn't see them sitting there in their quiet dignity.

These were sensible, heavy-soled shoes. Sturdy leather. Boy-kickers, really. They were the kind of shoes you might own once in a lifetime. They looked good with jeans, and more than passed muster with a pair of tights and a skirt.

My boy-kickers tromped me through the streets of Boston and NYC. They traipsed the halls of power in our nation's capitol. They traveled by moonlight, and they embraced the light of day. They took me through snow and even splashed in a puddle or two.

They held my feet steady while I delivered speeches, formed partnerships, and closed deals. They carried me where I lacked the courage to go. And, they helped me walk away from things that really needed to be left behind.

I used to suspect that shoe shiners everywhere recognized how much I loved those boy-kickers of mine. From their street corners and airport terminals, they would beckon my shoes to step up to their stands where they would treat them with the holy ritual of polish and gloss. They understood the value of maintaining shoes you can trust.

Shoes are not unlike the friends who matter the most to you. Trustworthy. Easy

Last winter my boy-kickers died. I wore them until I could no longer ignore the fact that the beloved leather had broken loose from its seam on the instep of my right foot. It flopped as I walked and let the winter slush eat my toes.

I should have thrown them out.

But like a friend, I was reluctant to let them go. The shoes reminded me of the few people in life who have become intimates. You break them in. They wear well. And even when they, like my boy-kickers, start to fall apart and let in the cold, it is hard to toss them away.

New friends and new shoes are always a gamble. They look shiny on the shelf, but they can chafe your heel. Crimp your get-a-long. And, there is always a chance that they won't go with everything. Instead of pitching out the old and replacing it with a fresh new style, I tend to find a different place for these "sole/soul" mates to rest. One that doesn't matter so much, but where I can always find them.

I am thinking about making my boy-kickers into a geranium planter this summer. Maybe a handsome pair of bookends. Would bronzing them be too much?

My faith lives in Vancouver

Sitting cross-legged under a scraggly tree was a girl not much older than Jayna. She was staring straight ahead as if to tune out the tears. A poncho covered her thin shoulders and her cardboard sign read simply: "I am broke and hungry."

I walked by her, because that is what you are supposed to do with street people. There are so many and the need is so great that you cannot possibly make a difference. But, that stare and the young face haunted each step that took me down the block. My own tears pushed hard behind my eyes until they finally fell.

"How old do you think she was?" I asked Anne.

Anne had to think for a minute who I meant because we had gone three or four blocks past the girl. Then she answered, "Jayna?"

And, I cried.

Something about it hurt so much. Not knowing her story, I couldn't assume that she had a home. I couldn't assume that if she did, it was a happy or safe one. I couldn't assume that she was a drug addict. I couldn't assume that she wasn't. I just knew that if she had a better gig going on, she certainly would not be sitting on the cool October pavement at 10 o'clock at night asking for food.

You know sometimes you can feel compelled to do something even when you know it doesn't make sense? This was one of those times. I walked to the nearest store to buy her dinner. The turkey pita sandwich and apple juice I bought from 7 Eleven went into a bag along with the biggest, reddest apple I could find. I bought a couple of cereal bars and some chewing gum and retraced my steps to find the girl who had broken my heart.

At first I thought she was gone. But, then I could see that she had only hunched down further. Seemed smaller. More forlorn. I didn't trust my voice, but I knew that I had to speak. It was part of what was compelling me.

"Hey, how are you tonight?" I asked. The streetlight caught on the tears behind her stare.

"GO HOME, little girl," I wanted to scream, but, of course, I didn't.

"This is for you," I said as I knelt next to her. The bag of food hung as an offering between us. A dirty hand with broken nails came out from under the poncho.

"And, this is for you too." I dropped several Canadian coins into her palm. Enough to buy coffee or something warm.

She smiled, and then I saw that she was not as young as I thought. Her skin was older. Her teeth were starting to rot. Her matted hair had not been glossy for years. It startled me for a minute. It caused a moment of doubt in my judgment.

But, I had been compelled by something beyond that moment.

I don't practice my faith in a church. I don't even know what I believe or how I feel about those things any more. However, I have promised myself that I would always respond when I felt that tug to reach out to another human being.

My faith stands in two things...

First, we entertain angels unaware. I used to think that meant that actual angels were walking the earth seeking our hospitality. It was a pass/fail sort of test. Now I believe that the angels we entertain unaware are of this earth. Our fellow man. People who bless us when we help them.

And second, the scripture that reminds us: "Whatsoever you do unto the least of these, you do unto me." If you remember, on the day that counted, it was the ONLY thing that separated the sheep from the goats.

My angel was gone when we walked back by less than an hour later.

Mrs.Betty HoityToity From The Past

Once in a while something you thought you left far behind snakes forward from between the pages of the past to grab you around the ankle. This morning it reached me through the telephone line.

I was still sitting in my home office finishing a few calls and reviewing a proposal. I hadn't slept well last night, so I felt like I was moving through molasses when the phone rang.

"Hello there, this is Betty HoityToityFromthePast."

The cultured New England voice hadn't changed a bit in the years since I stood in her laundry room pressing the fine boxer shorts and blouses that clothed the backs and bottoms of the HoityToityFromthePast household members.

Yes, I pressed boxer shorts in a past life. And they all wore blouses. Even Mr. HoityToityFromthePast. His "blouses" required careful attention because they were to be BOX folded and put in his drawers NOT simply arranged on a hanger.

Those had been transitional years for me. Years where my childhood faith collided so hard at the intersection of reality that I left the career I had shared with my husband for more than a decade. Years where I avoided even the slightest shadow of the tabernacle. And years where my prayers, if they could be called prayers, were more like whispers of rage and disappointment spit through clenched teeth in the direction of heaven.

They were also years that took me back to school. They were years pieced together with odd jobs that allowed me time to study, write and still spend time with my children. Years that I pressed boxers and blouses, polished silver trophies for a local polo Princess, cooked for folks richer than I, raked leaves, baked bread, spoon fed Jell-o to a cranky invalid who spit it back in my face, changed the diapers of the elderly and held the hand of a dying woman.

It wasn't living. It was existing and a means to an end.

There was a bit of desperation in Betty HoityToityFromthePast's voice this morning. Her regular girl was going to be gone for two weeks and she wondered if I could "press" in her absence. In that moment I realized that she never heard me when I told her my path for the future. A career path that I have followed with a fair degree of success. She didn't listen when I told her why I propped my text books on the window sill next to the ironing board so that I could study while I worked.

Her smile did hold a mild curiosity when she walked me around her estate in early spring to show me the sprightly yellow daffodils pushing their funny little faces toward the sun, and I launched into a full recital of "I wandered lonely as a cloud..."

She never really saw who I was though or who I hoped to become. And that remains a shame. I didn't plan on "pressing" and "piecing" forever.

This week I gave testimony in front of a governmental sub-committee assigned to review the plight of the underprivileged across the state. As a community leader I spoke directly and from my heart. Everyone laughed where they were supposed to laugh. And they all took notes. Mostly they looked me right in the eye. I liked that. They saw me. They heard me.

"As I followed the trajectory of my life..."

(You will forgive me for not mentioning the pressing/polishing/baking/raking years, but I knew they were there. They helped shape the heart that speaks with such passion today.)

I did learn some lessons from Betty HoityToityFromthePast.

1. Always write thank you notes. (E-mail doesn't count. This was a pet peeve of Mrs. HoityToityFromthePast's. One she would speak on for a full fifteen minutes if given the opportunity.)
2. Never look through people who work for you. Really see them.
3. Listen.
4. Listen.
5. When you have enough money, you can have your boxer shorts starched and folded.

I told Betty HoityToityFromthePast that I had finished school and was happily launched into a satisfying career. My pressing schedule didn't allow time for "pressing." I thanked her for thinking of me, but I took her number just in case I decide to offer my daughter a chance to build the character that can only come from ironing the boxer shorts and pressing the blouses of the rich and famous.

Negotiations

I remember when my daughter was young. She had a friend who lived up the little hill past the stone wall. Laura and my daughter were as thick as thieves. (and just how thick is that, I ask?) The two of them were as opposite as any two could be. J's dark ponytail and chocolate-brown eyes stood out bold against Laura's white-blond curls and blue eyes. J was quick with her words and quicker with her wit. Laura was faster than a bunny rabbit when she dashed across the lawn. J wrote poetry and played a guitar. Laura jumped higher than anyone on the trampoline.

Still they were best friends. They ran themselves ragged as they climbed the cherry tree. Celebrated un-birthdays. Built forts. Rode bikes. Did the things that kids do. They picked blueberries and tried to sell them to the neighbors. They mixed lemonade and sold it one warm cup at a time to anyone who happened by. There were times in my kitchen they made cookies that only a mother could eat. They were inseparable except...

When they played, J always was in charge until Laura wanted to go home. Laura was not shy about playing the "I am going home" card to her advantage. With the utterance of those four words, Laura tipped the power in her direction every time. With Laura's deliberate steps toward the door, J began to offer anything to make her stay. I remember watching J follow Laura out the door and up the road negotiating all the way: "I will give you one Barbie...okay, if you turn around now, I will give you two Barbies."

I stopped her. I had to. It was her lesson, her relationship, but I couldn't bear to see her bend over so far that she lost herself. Her dignity. It was too raw. Too real. I might have been a good mother that day when I held her back. Or I might not have been, but I wouldn't let her give herself away all the way back to Laura's house.

I guess the human need to hang onto that which we deem valuable plants its roots in the playground of our youth. The friendships. The approvals. The confirmations. The affirmations. And the fear of losing them all. We still reach for those in our own way even if we are adults. Yet the neediness is as transparent and painful as the pleading child offering her toys to keep the friend who is walking away.

Google a Malady

Before "Google" became a verb, I admit that I poured over the pages of medical dictionaries with some degree of regularity. I traced my symptoms through the glossy photos and definitions until I was convinced that I was the carrier of some genetic disorder that manifests itself only in the second born of tenth generation rice farmers in the far most corner of Indonesia. Never mind that it was as improbable as Mother Teresa giving birth to Mike Tyson. I could convince myself in a nanosecond that I had it, and I was going to die.

You might assume that the advent of the Internet and its powerful search engines eased my worries. Instead with that much medical information at my fingertips, I have been able to detect signs of scurvy, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, diabetes, and a host of other potentially life threatening illness lurking in the ache of my joints and behind the itch in my eyes.

I found that not only am I a knucklehead, but I am an alphabetically deficient knucklehead.

Trust me. One hates to be deficient in any letter of the alphabet on any day of the week. My deficiency happens to fall in the letter B. More specifically--vitamin B.

Consumption of sugar, white flour products, processed foods (lack nutrients and may contain many additives), conventionally grown produce (lack nutrients and are contaminated with toxins such as pesticides), alcohol, and stress contribute to a vitamin B deficiency.

What does this say about my coffee roll and road rage and me?

Symptoms include:

hypochondria (now THERE is a surprise)
mild to severe depression
vague fears, apprehension, suspicions (who is reading this??)
restlessness (who wants to go to Alaska before dinner?)
fatigue, stomach pains
decreased or increased appetite
craving for sweets
heart palpitations, chest pains
muscular soreness
pain, tingling or achiness
soreness of the mouth
burning or itching eyes
difficulty swallowing, sore throat
headaches, insomnia or sleep disturbances

Of course, this list reminds me of Bill Murray in "What About Bob?" itemizing his maladies to Dr. Leo Marvin: cold sweats, hot sweats, numb lips, fingernail sensitivity, pelvic discomfort...

So my question is: Does the need to eat wheat germ mean that I am getting old? Or could it be I am not the twenty-four year old who once thought that a "Coke and a smile" doth a complete breakfast make?