No one grows up for free

The last breaking day of 2017. 

Once, because I am an introvert, I felt that the only thing worse than not being invited to a large, important event full of strangers was attending one. 

Because, small talk. I don't know what to say or ask, I screw up anecdotes, and my timing is bad.

My attitude changed when I grew up, became a writer, and realized that conversations are my classroom.

  

A full year of conversations has come to a close and my bag is packed for 2018. 

For many I know and love, it has been a year of major decisions around all the big stuff – parenting, career moves, relationship shifts, having children, moving, marriage and divorce – and the risk, regret, relief and reward of making those decisions have been significant.

I know someone who left a relationship and someone else who would like to start one. I know someone who wants to make a different career choice and someone who gambled big on a business idea. I know others who wonder if they blew it as a parent.

Issues of regret touch me the most because I am, as my son would say, a "stud" at handling this in my own life. And so on this last day of 2017, I'm going to share some thoughts on the subject of mistakes and regret and the parting gift we are handed as we leave mistakes behind:  new wisdom. 

First, we are, every one of us, every day, as long as we're alive and have a past, still growing up.

Second, no one grows up for free.  

There are only two ways to go when we think back on a bad decision:  Mire in it, loathe yourself for it, and refuse to trust your instincts going forward.

Or, realize that at any point on the continuum, you can't know more than you do. You can't factor in maturity that hasn't arrived yet. You can't factor in the age and wisdom that you haven't earned yet. You can't factor in consequences that will punish your impulses, or outcomes that will reward your intuition because those things are like grades on an exam that you'll get when you get.    

I've learned that all you can do with every decision, even the risky ones, even the big or costly ones, is take a chance on your instincts because instincts, like children, need to be field-tested to work right.

I've learned that all you can do with every decision, is know that in the process of recovering from a misstep, you will have learned something about your decision making that you needed to know.

This is important for people who are considering new jobs, new homes, new love, and new lives, with or without someone they hoped would be at their side.

This is important for people who have ventured into unknowns and stumbled, sometimes badly. It's important for those who regret a thing they've said, or done, or caused. 

You will do it again. 

You have to. 

Because the alternative is to live so cautiously you'll run out of things to think about and eventually won't bother to dream. 

I've learned that wisdom can come from things you've done right, but it usually comes from the things you've done wrong first. And while the parting gift of new wisdom isn't glamorous, it is your co-pilot, and it is your therapist.

Once, I believed that life should be lived with some imagination of how we want to look back on it. I've learned that this is false. To believe we have any control over a future memory at all is to believe we will still be ruled by the moods and moments and motives of today.

We won't be.

Next year, when you do brood over your flaws or mistakes or poor planning or bad decisions, remember this:  You are, thankfully, flawed,  which will instantly improve your likability because no one likes a flawless person. 

Whether we are teens, or college graduates, or newly married, or empty-nesters, or facing retirement, we are always growing up. 

It isn't free.

If you're doing it right.

Pencils down.

"And how was your day?" said Abby
to her friend, Tree. 
(quote credit: Courtney Bonifant)

A little arrow of joy sailed into my heart this morning to realize it is the twentieth of December. 

Because.

When you are in the twenty-somethingth of December, you are not close, but really close to Christmas. And, in my blue exam book, this means pencils down. 

This means it's time to do stuff that matters. If you're a list and task freak, all stressed out over what you have to do, it's time to realize that a lot of stuff is more important than finding holiday plates and napkins that don't have Rudolph and snowmen on them.

Ever since I was a wee me, there has been something magical about December 20. 

Back then, it meant the start of classroom parties and school vacation and the long awaited (single showing) of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, which was punctuated every four minutes with commercials about Norelco shavers. 

Afternoons turned dark before the bus finished dropping us off, and little homes with candles in the windows made even the crappy neighborhoods look like they could be featured in a snow globe.  

For me, December 20 starts a short stretch that is not about undone tasks on the list, but stuff that doesn't make the list because if it did, the list would look like this:

Replace candles

Thank someone for making a difference in your life

Pick up sugar cookie mix

Check beer and tortilla chips
Say something encouraging to a stranger. 

For me, in these last days, have-to's become hope-to's until all that's really important are the want-to's which tend to arrive late. 

I was hoping to receive and wrap the balance of gifts I've ordered by now. I was hoping I'd find a new centerpiece for the Christmas Eve table. It would have been nice to replace some of the linen and towels before everyone arrives. I should buy new candles. 

But it is December 20 now and my "want to's" are here.

Handwritten cards - meaningful ones - will be composed  for best friends and others.

Comfort foods that my children love and request every year, even though they would never order them in a restaurant, will be waiting.

There will be a date with my husband in a quiet place where we will likely have a conversation about life; how it changes, how it doesn't, and how it should, if we want to embrace memories in the future rather than dodge them.  

There will be an airport reunion  with the daughter who moved to California two months ago and wasn't planning on coming home for the holidays until two weeks ago, when she changed her mind. I will cry before I see her, to know I'll see her.

There will be more than one meaningful conversation with another daughter and her husband about career dreams and marriage and life goals and raising children and other relationships, because they are artists, and artists are bad at talk that isn't about stuff that matters.

There will be attempts on the part of both of my sons to teach me about football again. It will start with the annual, remedial explanation of downs and yards which I will forget. It will end with diagrams on post-its of tiny figures and directional arrows which I will not understand but will save anyway to put with the others in a box near my bookcase.

And as this day fades into tomorrow, marking exactly one month since my father's death, I will focus on a memory I've gone back to a few times over the last four weeks. 

It was Dad's last Christmas Eve with us, his nineteenth.  At the end of the night, he said the same thing he said every year. "This was the best one ever. I don't think you can top it, next year."

In a few days, when Christmas is finally here and we raise a glass, I will think about that and offer a special toast to Dad, the best one ever. 

Happiest of holidays to you. Make them the best ever, surrounded by people who matter the most. 

Love,

Susan

Missing comes last

My dad

James D. Cook
1933 - 2017

Where there has been love, tears come first. 

Where there has been suffering, relief comes next.

The plans – what to say, where to be – wrestle you from your moments of reflection. 

You're surprised. 

You think you're doing well on top of that wave, not falling in like you thought you would.

Because the business of dealing with death feels, blessedly, like coping with death.

Missing comes last.

Missing comes in line at the supermarket.

When a song plays.

When a photo surfaces.

When a memory  - the way they looked when they were amused, frustrated, relieved – appears before your eyes while you're looking for a parking space somewhere.

It comes with knowing you'll deal with some thing alone now,  for the first time. 

You begin to forget what they looked like when they were failing

When they went quiet

When they stopped smiling

Now, while missing is happening, you're hearing the sound of their laugh again

The feel of their goodbye hug

The look on their face when they first spotted you in a restaurant, and raised a hand, "Right here."

You forget how you worried

Sat in the car and cried

Prayed in guilty silence for a swift and gentle end

Now, when missing is happening, you reflect on what they taught you:

Not to take yourself too seriously

Not to hold grudges

Not to lose your sense of humor – ever. EVER.

Not to waste your gifts if you are lucky enough to know what they are.

To be fair, forgiving, and above all, generous.

You wonder if you said "Thank you" enough.

You wonder if you said "I love you" enough.

You wonder if you did enough about it when you missed them.

When missing is happening, you don't think so, even though you know you did.  

You fall in. 

The wave tosses you, swallows you.

The feelings stop you in your tracks, take your breath away.

You cry. In your kitchen, in your car, in a shop when the sales person hands you a top and says "Is this too bright for your event?"

You remember more every day, and it  feels like too much.

This is you, walking in the restaurant, looking for that hand. 

And this, when missing is happening, is when your loved person, who has already taken their place beside you, says, "Right here."

Forever.

Goodbye, Dad.

A thing I learned in November about trees, leaves and love.

Here are some brave
 trees showing their bark.

I love November.

Last week, I watched a storm of leaves swirling outside my window. My cat Gus darted left and right on the sill, trying to follow the path of each one that broke free and sailed into the air.  

I wonder why some leaves hang on so much longer than others, but for now, those sturdy trees and their twisty, intricate branches are stark and without cover.  Against the November sky, the contrast is striking or poetic, depending on how you wish to view it.

You see where I'm going with this, right?   

Several years ago, when all of my siblings and I were busy with marriage and kids and the general chaos of life's middle third, we saw each other at usual intervals, the Fourth of July, on Christmas Eve, etc. 

We were together enough to have conversations and enjoy each other, but while our lives grew bigger and richer with each year, we didn't necessarily know each other better, it seemed to me.

That's common.

But, at some point it began to bother me that if I'd been given a quiz about the pivotal  things in the lives of all of my siblings  - what they were thinking about, struggling with, conquering - I wasn't sure I'd pass. 

Disclosure, sharing the things that make you the tree you really are, evolves of  trust and history of course. But ask any tree, when you disclose, you lose your leaves and then, there you are with your  bark showing, making you vulnerable to the elements: judgment, approval, criticism. 

Not showing your bark isn't untrue. For some of us, probably most of us, it's more comfortable to show our leaves. But it is true, that when you do let it show, you're trading vulnerability for the possibility of being loved by someone who is trying to shed their own leaves. 

We are all vulnerable, under our leaves

about something.

We are also capable of accepting

when someone needs it.

and of forgiving.

when someone asks for it.

After our younger brother died, and my sister-in-law lost her mother, some of us gathered for the first time to celebrate Thanksgiving together. There were seventeen of us. We laughed and told stories, and if different and busy lives had made us unfamiliar with each other's day to day,  it was not evident that day, nor has it been since.

I lost a lot of leaves that Thanksgiving, and more over the years and months that followed in all of my relationships. Pretty regularly, I think about everyone more, and more than I wonder what they are thinking about, struggling with and conquering, I ask them to tell me. 

I love November.

I love the way we shed those leaves, easy ones first, harder ones later. If it feels risky and cold at times, you know that in the spring, your cover will be new and fresh and lovely and your bark will be happier, too.

Ask any tree. Good things happen when you aren't covered in old, expired leaves anymore.

So love November with me. And when life is whipping by, don't keep your leaves from leaving their tired twigs. 

It's too hard.

Let them fly on the wind. 

Cheers to you, and all the trees in your forest. Enjoy your Thanksgiving with all your bark.

You don't need the right words. You need something that might be easier.

Here is a picture of honesty

I have a greeting card that I like so much, I bought two of them and I hope I never need either.

It says:  I'm really sorry I haven't been in touch. I didn't know what to say. 

Whether you would send that card or not, the person who does is conveying that their sympathy is real, and probably larger than their ability to express it with the "right words." 

I like that. 

It wasn't until my brother died that I learned - from the receiving end - how much less really is more when people are feeling that absent the "right words," they have failed to comfort you. 

I remember being incredibly moved when someone looked in my eyes and said, simply, "You are going to miss him so much."

Because that was true, and the person who said it understood my feelings, more than he wrestled with making me understand his. 

Here are some thoughts about that.

When someone has suffered loss

...or has been hurt

...or is afraid

...or isolated

...or is alone

Don't worry about what to say.

Be able to say nothing.

No one is waiting for you to come up with something. 

No one is going to be disappointed.

No one is going to doubt your depth of feeling.

Don't worry about how well you can describe your sadness.

Be willing to imagine theirs. 

Keep your heart wide open.

Don't worry about the right words.

If you're present and listening and feeling

that's better than many things you could say.

Don't worry about the right actions.

If you can hold someones eyes, someone's hand

that's as right as actions get.

Don't worry about where to stand or sit.

If you are standing with a person in their place of pain

and you can give up the duty of right words

you are where you should be.

Far easier than finding the right words 

is looking into the eyes of a lost person

and saying with the part of your heart that knows: 

"You are hurting so much right now and I am here with you." 

They will hear you.

In the middle of a great memory

Here is where people sit
when they visit my loft.
 Have a seat.

Several years ago, after my first marriage ended, I woke up in a sudden, panicky pothole of Oh my God, what's this going to be like?

A therapist said to me: "Not knowing what your new life is going to be like doesn't make the former one better." 

At this moment, I know six people who are making, or dealing with, some level of change in their lives  - divorce, relocation, loss, career change, and marriage among them. Some of them are changing, some are being changed, but all will be happier, after they finish being uncomfortable.

"I'm not a fan of change," said a friend of mine. Nobody is. We go through it for the greater good of personal growth, however, much like we go to the dentist for the greater good of not having teeth like a jack-o'-lantern when we're older. 

If this is you, I have a story and a little advice for you.

When I was a wee me, I took a job that was going to pay a lot more than I was making. It was kind of a haul, but that didn't bother me really.

It was also a stretch skills-wise, "for once," as someone pointed out at the time, because I was very good at finding "safe" jobs that I could do in my sleep and have plenty of time leftover to gossip with my co-workers about the senior executives. 

This bothered me a little.

But the move was right; it was time to have enough money to buy shoes that only went with one outfit,  it was time to move to a nicer place, and it was time to send my brain to the gym. 

I went after this hard, and I was offered and accepted the job. Five minutes after I hung up the phone my first case of workplace anxiety walked up to me and said, "Hi I'm Imposter Syndrome. Are you kidding me?"  

For a while, I didn't know where things were or how everything worked. I had trouble keeping up. To make up for what I didn't understand, I over-listened and understood nothing.  

This bothered me a lot.

A couple of weeks later, I was still freaking out if my boss knocked on my door frame with, "got a second?" and still feeling unsure how to back away from a manager who told stories of her weekend that were five years long.

This bothered me most.

I wasn't a fraud of course. I stayed with it, calmed down,  and  soon, I was able to say "Yup," without looking up when my boss tapped on my door frame, and I could even debate with people who had the good parking spaces.

But until positive changes began to multiply and ripple through my life all I knew was what I didn't have anymore.  I didn't have my old job with the co-worker who did newscaster impressions, or my Friday night drinks, or my cafeteria which served cheeseburgers like they did in my elementary school, or my boss who thought I was fantastic.

I didn't know I'd changed, I only knew I was comfortable. But until I became comfortable, what this felt like was, Oh my God. What's this going to be like?

Here are some thoughts:

Change is exhilarating and frightening and when it's both at once, it can be hard to figure out if you're comfortable or not. What you need to know when that happens is: you aren't. But you will be.

If you feel like you miss your former life it's because you see it as a thing that has ended rather than a point on the continuum of all things that evolve as they live, unless they are plants for which I am responsible.

I have learned that we don't have to do anything about that. You will change without trying. A week will bring footing.  A month will bring familiarity. Six months later, you'll know how to skirt that manager and say "yup" without looking up.

I see it this way.

The things we do, the people we see, the plans we make, the memories we have, the experiences of joy and sadness, the brilliant and bad relationships, successes and losses are the elements of a lifelong portrait in progress; one that becomes richer and more beautiful to view with each step away from the single brushstrokes that have created it.

Whether you move from your home, or change your career, or lose someone who can't stay in your life as you want them to, when all is said and done, if you are in motion, you are adding brushstrokes.

"You never know when you're in the middle of a great memory," said my son recently, who is too young to be so wise. 

He's right.  However many we leave behind, however many we have yet to make, we are always in the middle of a memory.

I wish you many great memories of today, and the happiest of those yet to be made. 

And, thank you for visiting.

Beyond #MeToo

The break rooms of the future

When I was sixteen, I worked in a stationery store as a cashier. My boss, the owner, was intentionally intimidating, and one day, after I came to work from a day at the beach, he stood behind the counter with me. 

"Well," he said, "look at you. I'll bet you think you look like some Swedish movie star with your hair and tan like that."

He wouldn't move to let me pass.

I didn't say, "Get away from me you disgusting, middle-aged creep who married his wife for her money." 

I said, "I don't."  

A customer walked in. I quit two weeks later.

I told my kids this story and others when they were entering the work force for two reasons. First, to let them know about dinosaurs who walked the work planet when I was a young beach-goer. And second, to let them know that smart, self-respecting people can be ensnared in moments of powerlessness that force them to choose between escaping and confronting. 

Recently, after the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke, Lara Weber of the Chicago Tribune editorial board wrote a piece that I will love forever about the power of millennials to change the culture of sexual harrassment.

They will. We raised them to.

Says Weber: "Women (and men) I know who are in their 20s wince at the stories we tell of the sexual harassment we’ve brushed off over the years. They say they’d never stand for it, and although that’s easier said than done, I believe them. These are the 3-year-olds who were taught to raise hell if anyone touched them, and now they’re filling the workforce." 

In his male-dominated workplace my son has said there is "zero tolerance" for predatory behavior, nor would his female counterparts stand for it. 

On a recent "Closer Look" segment, Seth Meyers made a comment about the #MeToo campaign that went something like this: "Nothing will change until we acknowledge how prevalent the climate of sexual predation is, and until men realize that they are complicit."

The audience went crazy.

I get the applause, I get that Seth would never behave this way, and is sympathetic toward women, and is scornful of complicit men. And sure, I like that he's a contemporary man addressing an age-old problem.

But shouldn't we talk about what already has changed? Shouldn't we talk about what isn't happening to the women Seth is not referring to? And why it isn't?

The number of women who responded to the #MeToo campaign with their stories range wildly in age and the experiences they report. No doubt many of them were cornered in the70's, 80's and 90's and I have no doubt that there are women today who feel dominated and intimidated by men who have not evolved out of that behavior.   

But in talking about "complicit men" is Seth referring to dinosaurs who work for and won't report other dinosaurs who won't change their behavior?  

Because, I know millennials who would go to work in their underwear before they'd sexually harrass anyone they were raised to see as equals.

In high and low places, what went on between men of power and the women who weren't drawn to it for decades, still goes on. But in clear and distinct ways, in far reaching, permanent and progressive ways, the past has changed us all.

It's changed the way we've been raising children for the past twenty years and more. Many of us who have dealt with predators in the workplace, have been even more determined to raise a next generation of neither predators nor prey.

It's changed the way women and men choose friends and partners. It's changed the way they socialize, and it's changed the codes of acceptable social behaviors. Inclusion in those circles is person rather than power-based.  

And, if there are still self-respecting, professional women not calling out predatory behavior on the spot, there are plenty of non-complicit men who will. My son would. His peers would.

With every new #MeToo post that graces my newsfeed, I am sympathetic and sorry to be able to identify with the abrupt feeling of powerlessness that seizes anyone when even for a moment, they know they are not seen as a person, but a personless object to play with.

And yet, for all the stories I've read about powerful men who still exploit the women who work for them, I know there are vast examples of rising stars – men and women – who are taking and will continue to take those executive chairs. They will not be Harvey Weinsteins, and many of them will continue to be women.

We can't kill the dinosaurs through hashtag campaigns and outing alone. But we can look to attrition to assist in the job of eliminating the breed and its behavior. We can have faith in the unwillingness of new players to keep it alive.

Today, I know if my behind-the-register moment happened to one of my daughters, it would not be them leaving; likely the behavior would result in disciplinary action, or even a termination.

There would not be shame and silence, but angry talk about it among a peer group at work, half of which would likely be men willing to co-out such behavior.

As much as women will fuel change over time by coming forward every time a Harvey Weinstein makes the front page, we have already gassed up the "change bus" by putting our experience to use: we've raised good people who will not tolerate the mistreatment of others in the new workplace of the future. 

It's already happening.

It's a bummer to fear your president

You know how you let things go. 

You wear less make-up and stay on your treadmill longer because feeling better makes you look better.

You stop making starchy sides with entrees because greens make you feel better and more responsible.  

You don't dress up as much because you have a better time when you're comfortable. 

You stop expecting your president to act like a president because you're so repeatedly shocked by his behavior, you are becoming a chipmunk.

My husband used to yell out from the stands when our son was up to bat:  "Okay, you've seen it!"

We will continue to be disgusted, but not surprised anymore.

We've seen it.

Trump has already said things that are worse than his "moved like a bitch on her" comment, which still brings out every woman's ugly. 

But, everyone has their threshold. Even as Trump has challenged our ability to remain reactive, we all have the deal-breaker, a thing, the thing that Trump has said, done, been caught doing, or will be, that makes us put down the paper, turn from the news, stop reading Facebook, and just mentally start crossing off the days (1192, as of 10/15/17) until we can rise without taking cleansing breaths. 

It was the paper towels, for me.

No, that wasn't it.

It was the threat to withdraw federal assistance from Puerto Rico.

No. It wasn't that either.

Wait. 

Was it Trump responding to human suffering with delay, self-aggrandizement, and then assaulting the beleaguered, traumatized mayor of San Juan with punitive, antagonistic, shaming, and threatening language because she didn't love him enough for what he believed he did?

Yes, I think that was it. 

But now?

Trump, a spotlight junkie who rages when criticized, and turns vindictive when he can't get the praise he thinks he deserves, has taken it up a notch. He can't surprise us with tantrum-tweets anymore, so he's scaring us with terror-tweets. They start with "I might," or, "Maybe," or, his latest cliffhanger:  "There's only one thing that will work with North Korea..." 

It's always the "..." that bothers me. 

I  have learned to keep my fear of terrorism in check, and can live with uncertainty and risk. But I've never wondered if our safety mattered less to our leader than a perfect political strategy to get back at someone who called him a name on Twitter. 

It is becoming imaginable that he will throw all of us under the bus and then hop into the driver's seat.

I've loved and loathed leaders of the past like you have, but I have never kept track of how many days it would be (1192) before we could stop worrying that our own president would run us over. 

It reminds me of kids who rail against their parents' rules, lobby for their "rights," fight to be understood and respected, and are unabashedly vocal because a) it poses no threat to their life to be vocal, and b) because if they think their parents are wrong about curfews, they also know their parents would lay their lives on the line for their welfare.

In other words, if they feel wronged, they still feel safe enough to act for change. They know that the people in charge have the interests of everyone at heart.

And then, there are children who live with unpredictable, chaotic parents who can never be trusted to show up, to aid, to guide, to impose a single rule because their first and foremost concern is themselves. Kids in homes like that never feel safe, never know what's going to happen next, often become hyper-vigilant while they wait for the other shoe to drop.

What will happen to us, they want to know, because Mom and Dad aren't emotionally or mentally present to make the question unnecessary. 

As Trump rages about being misunderstood, hunted, cheated, screwed over, and takes to  Twitter, deaf to the pleas of sane people not to do that, while more and more red banners appear at the top of national publications to tell you that something is happening that you must know about, we are constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop.

What will happen to us, we want to know, because our president isn't emotionally or mentally present to make the question unnecessary.

I wonder, as Kathleen Parker did in her piece on the subject,  if we are all going a little crazy with Trump's splattering of crazy all over the place, attaching itself to damaged minds while the healthy ones just try to look at anything else.

But while we are becoming more afraid of what will happen to us, we have no choice but to become less shocked by Trump's atrocious words because Trump's potential deeds could be so much worse.

But it's not forever. 

If he doesn't kill us, we will never appreciate life more than we will in three short years. 

Whoever is president will be Batwo/man.

  

In the meantime, I will think about how every day shortens the time left  (1192 days) before a grown up is in charge again. Until then, I will be the brave parent to my scared child.

It's a bummer to fear your president.