Tomorrow I leave for a 2-week trip (part business, part pleasure). I'm excited by the prospect of getting to Azerbaijan and delighted that I'll be getting back to Istanbul, which is one of my favorite cities in the entire world.
So right now I should be all packed and bubbling over with anticipation. But I'm not. Instead, I'm full of dread. I'm generally like this before a big trip.
My dogs, Diamond and Diego, will be going to their babysitter's house for the two weeks. They're leaving tonight. In fact, I'm waiting for Andrea (the babysitter) to appear any minute now.
Saying goodbye to my two bulldogs is incredibly difficult for me. I usually cry, especially when Diamond (the 6-year old) turns from Andrea and attempts to come back to the house, certain in the knowledge that her rightful spot is with me. She looks at me with those beautiful, soulful brown eyes and she seeks the reassurance: that I will be back, that I will not forget her, that I will not abandon her, that I will not replace her.
(For his part, Diego, the puppy, trots along happily, willing to go along with the program no matter what it is. He's the kid I always pretended to be, but never really was, not on the inside.)
With a lump in my throat as I write this tonight, I think about the idea of Home. What is home? Where is home?
For the first 18 years of my life, Home was West Hartford, Connecticut. Home was my parents and my sisters and our dog. We lived in the same house for the entire time; my parents never moved. We ate dinner in our dining room (my mother was very proud of that).
Then I went to college and, later, graduate school. And still West Hartford was home. Still that same house on King Philip Drive: white, with aluminum siding and black shutters. A red door.
Then my father got sick. Home was that same house but with some modifications. Now we had dialysis equipment in the guest bedroom and bags of peritoneal solution in the pink bathroom my sisters and I had shared growing up. There was a funny, sweet, sickly smell in certain parts of the house -- the odor of disease, that faint whiff of something medicinal and antiseptic.
My father died in December 1998. My mother remained in that same house. I had moved to London by then and, still, when I thought about "going Home" it was that house that I imagined. My father's ghost graced us, a funny spirit who was loved and remembered and missed. Always.
And then my mother started getting lost driving to a friend's house. She bought fava beans at the store when I'd asked her for a vanilla bean. She didn't always remember to shower. She bought food and shoved it -- literally, shoved it -- into the already crammed freezer. She stopped cooking and lived on prepared egg salad and tuna fish sandwiches. This was a woman who had once worked her way through a significant portion (the bread and poultry sections, anyway) of Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
I came and went, back and forth from London to West Hartford. And my house -- and all that it represented, all that it meant -- was still there. Yes, things had changed. Yes, it was different. But I would lie there in my twin bed in my yellow bedroom and I would feel anchored. Connected. I belonged to a story and that story started with Home.
Summer 2004. My mother is diagnosed with Alzheimer's. She's unable to draw a clock. She has no idea what decade we're in. She can't remember the name of the president. When reminded, however, she is quick to tell the gerontologist, "I hate Bush. He's an asshole." The doctor recommends assisted living.
My sisters were enthusiastic; I was less so. I thought we should look at nurses and aides and even 'round the clock care. "Mom's going to want to be in West Hartford," I argued. "This has been her Home for over 65 years." But in the end it just wasn't practical. None of us had settled anywhere near West Hartford and most of my mother's friends wanted nothing to do with her anymore. "She shows up early for bridge games and it's very annoying," we were told. She had become a nuisance. One friend "thoughtfully" suggested we try and get my mother a volunteer job shelving books at the library. Subtext for please get her out of my life; she's frightening me.
In October 2005, we moved my mother to an assisted living community here in New Hampshire. And I made the decision to return to the States and to move to New Hampshire, as well. I wanted to help my sister Betsy. I wanted to be here to bear witness to my mother's final journey. I say this but I'm not sure that's all there is to it. I think I also wanted to find Home again and I suspect I needed to step out of the life I was living in order to so.
So is New Hampshire now my home? I don't think so but I don't know.
I can't say that I love my life here. I work for myself and I'm alone nearly all day -- no meetings, no lunches, no drinks after work, nothing. I find it lonely. And I find it hard. I miss meeting people from all over the world. That doesn't happen all that often here. I find it boring and I miss theater and foreign films and public transit. I really do.
And yet.
Now that my mother has died and her journey is complete I could move back to New York. Or back to London. Or just about anyplace I want. And something stops me. I'm starting to believe that I'm not looking for a new address or a change of zip code. What I want -- and what I've wanted all along, ever since I lost West Hartford and lost my childhood to time -- is Home.
Now I know that when I left London, I left for Home.
I haven't found what it is I'm looking for yet. I don't think I will find it. No, what I think is that I will create it. I will build my Home, not find it. Building a Home is a metaphor for building a life and living it. Really living it.
I look down at Diamond and Diego and I know why it hurts so much to leave them. It hurts because they are part of the Home I am building -- the life I am making -- and I am going to miss them very, very much. I will come back full of enthusiasm for and stories about Azerbaijan and Turkey. Of course. And I will be thrilled that I had this opportunity.
When I land at Logan on 10 July, I can't say that I'll feel like I'm Home. No, I don't think I will feel that way. But, here's a starting point: when Andrea (the babysitter) brings the "kids" back later that day, the circle will feel more complete than it did without them. That is connection. And that is the starting point for the place I call Home.
Today was an ordinary day.
That's how I would characterize it. Not an especially memorable 16-hour stretch. Nothing wonderful happened, nothing awful happened. Just a laundry list of everyday normal activities. A momentary work crisis that got resolved. A potential new project that may or may not come through. A pedicure.
It strikes me, as I sit here at my dining room table, that the overwhelming percentage of the time spent on earth comprises ordinary days.
Let's say, for example, that I live to be 85 years old and that I die with my faculties intact. And let's say further that each day is approximately 16 hours long. I'm now 51. That means 34 more years x 16 hours = 198,560 hours of ordinary day-ness.
But let's go one step further and say, wait, some of those hours will be extraordinary: moments of extreme joy, moments of anguish, et cetera. So, let's make it easy and say, Right, 198,560 hours x 75% of the time = 148,920 hours of ordinary day-ness.
What an amazing thought.
That's a helluva lot of time, I'm thinking. And that's time that is spent doing every day, not especially memorable things. The kind of stuff I'm unlikely to look back on at the very end of my life and say, Wow, yes, I did that.
But what if I could learn to do that? What if I could learn to look at each day -- and each activity within the day -- as something special just for the sake of existing?
What I mean is this: What if I turn this whole thing around and say, Wow, my life comprises hundreds of thousands of hours of all kinds of moments and it is therefore complex and interesting and full?
What if I can get to that?
Better question: How can I get to that? How can I enjoy moments as they unfold and keep the unpleasant times in perspective, realizing they're temporary or they're normal or they're just a new reality that has to be dealt with?
I don't have the answer. What I have is the question. That seems like such a great place to start.
I'm committing to something tonight. At random points throughout the day, I'm going to stop and notice what I'm really doing. I'm going to acknowledge what that moment is about. It might be crappy (I'm paying a parking ticket); it might be fun (I'm singing along to "Company" while driving and I'm hitting all of Elaine Stritch's notes). No judgments. Just an acknowledgment.
An awareness. Being alive to some of those 148,920 moments I might very well have ahead of me.
So here's a start. I'm writing a blog. I'm writing. I love writing. I am making time in my life right now to write. I'm telling my truth. This is one of my moments.
Someone I know died this morning in a freak accident: she had a gas leak and her house exploded. I don't know this woman well. I know her daughter and her future son-in-law, but only slightly. I won't be rushing to her daughter's house to comfort or to do any of the things we do when someone dies, because I wasn't that close.
I am a mourner from a distance.
My heart breaks for this woman's daughter. The what if's, the if only's, the hundreds of thousands of times she will play and replay the scenarios, looking for clues, looking for answers. In my case, it was easier. My mother was 83 years old and had suffered from Alzheimer's for six years. So I didn't need to spend time thinking about what might have been had some key element to the story been different.
This death was senseless and cruel. Tragic. I don't know how her daughter will ever come to accept what has happened to her mother. How long will it be before she forgets the explosion for five minutes? For ten minutes? Until she's able to watch a football game? Go shopping for a dress? Go away for a weekend with her husband? Get through a week without thinking about this every second of every minute of every hour of every day?
No, no sense can be made of this.
A couple of hours after I heard about the explosion, I received news of another sort. A close friend called to say that a difficult relationship in his life is starting to get a little easier and his faith in the human spirit -- and in friendship -- is being restored. He sounded happier than I've heard him in a while.
I am struck by the two extremes that presented themselves to me in the course of a very typical, very average morning: grief and agony, joy and faith. These are the twin towers of our lives, very often standing at some level of distance from every day life; speaking for myself, I live mostly in the in-between bit -- that stretch of relative okay-ness that is neither pain and suffering nor delight and wonder. I go to the dry cleaner and I have a pleasant chat. I buy arctic char because they've run out of swordfish. I chat with my neighbor about lawn maintenance. And this is all good. Oh yes, very good.
Life turns on a dime. It's that old line: Stop in for a jelly donut and end up living in a foreign country. We make plans (and God laughs). We think ahead.
And then something stops us in our tracks. It can be grief, it can be joy. It stops us and makes us live in that moment, right in the here and now. I am reminded of this so often lately that I wonder if someone in the universe is trying to tell me something.
And the answer to that query is: Yes. Someone is trying to tell me something. And that someone is me. I am telling myself to pay attention. To look up. To be.
In this moment, I am devastated for this poor woman and her family. And I am happy for my dear friend and his peace. Feeling both ends of the spectrum and believing I am more alive in the moment for allowing myself to do so.
A smart therapist of mine from New York once told me that I lived my life in that very safe range of roughly 60 to 75 degrees on a 180-degree line. She said I would be more fulfilled -- but less safe -- if I broadened my experience to reach as far to the right and as far to the left as possible on the spectrum of full emotional experience.
Today, I am feeling 180 degrees in all its wonder, complexity and difficulty.
Today's blog is dedicated to my friend Joan, with a huge thank you for giving me great, great insight.
Over lite frappucinos at Starbucks in Peabody, MA, we caught up with each others' lives and shared confidences.
"Sometimes," I said, "I look at peoples' Facebook pages and think, Jesus, I am a big failure. Because I read the postings and all their information about their jobs and what they've accomplished, and I just can't believe how little I'm accomplishing."
And Joan said something very, very smart. She said:
"Amy, EVERYONE feels like a failure. That's how it works."
She went on to explain that the I'm-A-Facebook-Failure Syndrome is a close relation to the How-Come-I-Don't-Have-A-Perfect-Life-Like-Hers and the I-Wish-I-Were-Part-Of-That-Perfect-Family mythology. No one's life is perfect. Scratch the buffed veneer and lots of tough stuff lurks: troubled children, drug addictions, eating disorders, shitty marriages, financial woes. Perfect families? No such thing. Turns out Mom's an alcoholic, Dad's having an affair and Grandpa is in a Federal witness protection program.
I know this stuff. Intellectually, that is. But knowing something intellectually and believing it emotionally are two different things.
At the emotional level -- the one that kicks into high gear 'round about midnight or later -- I've been wondering how I missed the turn. You know the one. The turn that leads to Fulfillment Land. The turn that would have directed me to that satisfying and challenging career. The turn that would have put me directly in the path of that endlessly fascinating partner. The turn that would have led to children and the summer house on the Vineyard and legs the length of Carly Simon's. Yes, THAT turn.
The comparison between that fantasy life -- the one I would have if I'd only seen the sign practically screaming TURN HERE -- and my current situation makes me feel like a failure. And I get on Facebook and think sometimes, Wow, all of these people managed to make that turn. I am a turn-missing fuck up.
But Joan, a definite smart cookie if ever there were one, tells me that everyone feels like this. And suddenly it's like having a headache lift -- there's that magical moment when the pain behind the eyes disappears and you're finally free.
"And you have so many friends," Joan adds. She says she has been really struck by how many people I interact with regularly on Facebook. "People from all over the world!"
A second gift from my generous friend. A moment of recognition (which, when you stop and think about it, is re-cognition -- re-realization) when I think, Hey, that feels good: I connect.
I'm adrift at the moment. I've lost my mother, I'm living in New Hampshire, I work for myself and by myself and there's risk and loneliness (and reward, too, of course) in that choice. I'm searching for some sort of place to start. Like when I was designing my kitchen and I knew from the minute I saw it that I would create the whole thing around that stove, that beautiful, beautiful stove (GE Cafe Series in stainless).
In this new life that I am molding, my starting point can be my ability and my willingness to connect. That's a real realization. Thank you, Joan.
Last January, I started studying Spanish. I took two 7-day, total immersion classes at the University of Miami, and made great strides. Then I stopped the week my mother's health took a turn for the worse. Tonight, for the first time in six weeks, I mustered the energy and the focus to return to Spanish. I had a one hour lesson this evening.
Learning a new language is like being issued a passport to a new identity. When I learned to speak Italian, I became Amy Selvino. I rolled my rrrrrrr's and I gesticulated wildly, and I channeled the inner Monica Bellucci.
When I learned to speak French, I felt like Deneuve and I started wearing my hair in a chignon. I listened to Edith Piaf. I cried when France won the World Cup and the band struck up the Marseillaise.
And now it's Spanish.
There's a family link here that I should explain. My father's parents fled Russia in the early days of the century, approximately 1911. They were Ashkenazi Jews -- typical Eastern Europeans arriving by the boatloads at Ellis Island and probably smelling of pot roast. Or worse.
My mother's family, on the other hand, hailed from Spain -- part of the Jewish community ushered out of the Sepharad in 1492. A big year for Columbus; a bad year for Spain's Jews. My mother's aunt was a world-famous flamenco dancer by the name of Estrellita (real name Stella Paul), whose photo hangs in an arts museum in San Francisco and who had a very public affair with the writer Jack London.
(Incidentally, this is small potatoes compared to my mother's grandfather, blackface comedian and Ziegfeld Follie Frank Tinney, who pulled down $1,500 per week back in 1912 and was kicked out of the Follies when he bit the nipple off of some chorus girl he was shtupping.)
So, back to Spanish. As I explained to my very patient and kind teacher, the lovely Julio from Argentina, I have managed to forget nearly all of the verb conjugations. Except, interestingly enough, the present tense. Talk about a sure-fire way to remain in the moment. If the only tense you know is the present, then the only thing you can talk about is what is happening right now.
At the end of our hour, I was remembering more and the words were coming more fluidly. It will happen. I will speak Spanish. I long for the day when I can sing along with a Marc Anthony CD and converse -- at least in my fantasies -- with Javier Bardem in his mother tongue.
But there's a serious point to all of this. Not just that I managed to stay in the moment for an entire hour, bound by my limited grammar and vocabulary. No, beyond all that, there was a tremendous feeling of connection. Finding those dots that connect and form a line -- literally, a life line. From a people, from a country and a culture, to my mother, to me and to our story.
There's something incredibly magical -- and comforting and reassuring and wondrous -- in knowing that I am part of a story. A dot on a line, yes, but a dot on a line that is continuous. Like there is a plan and I'm part of it. I'm meant to be here.
The story continues. And note that it is in the present tense.
