Life shopping

My childhood best friend Shelly and I used to take the Sears catalog and "call" an item on every page spread.
"Oh! I call the green shimmery dress..."
"Well, I get the leopard print pajamas..."
on and on through the whole book, through lingerie (interesting and educational!) and power tools (I call the riding lawnmower!) and jewelry (where subtle and understated was not in our vocabulary).

Then we'd shut the book and go climb trees and pretend Donny Osmond was our boyfriend. (We were good at sharing him.) The wanting of things didn't get in the way of living our real lives; it was just a game of choosing and figuring out what we liked. We knew we couldn't have everything in there but we knew what we'd choose if we were given a choice of wigs, that's for sure.

* * *

Recently it has come to my attention that I have been treating my forays into blogland like a catalog of regrets and longing, thinking wistfully that I would love to have everyone else's life but my own

{oh! I wish I had...

a newborn baby with sweet eyelashes...

a fabulous closet of shoes...

a big happy brood of six children...

a marathon-running body...

a fixer-upper cottage in France...

a career as an actress on Broadway...

a flair for dressing with just the right knack...

exquisite phototaking talents...

a bestselling novel...

a husband who works from home...

big jolly dinners with extended family who live nearby...

an obsession with cleanliness (or at least a very clean house)...

such a hilarious way of writing about life...

etcetera...}

When I should be treating these views as a fascinating museum of lives and a chance to celebrate differentness and sameness, to say "good for her" and "well done" and "I feel for you."

{Okay, with the secret hope that you have dustbunnies sometimes, too}

I like my life. I do.

It's constructed out of a series of choices and silly luck (both good and bad) and trade-offs.

Yours is too. I like that about all of us.

I'm just relearning that lesson about shutting the book, walking away, and living my own life.

{And cheering you on while you live yours.}

My life's a little bit broken lately.

photo via Design is Mine

Just a little, though.  

Just enough that I haven't had anything much to post.  Enough so I shrug my shoulders, wonder what's the point? (laundry, cleaning, school, writing...) and go lower my expectations (often in the form of returning to bed).

You know when you have a cupboard that won't quite line up or a leak that's not major enough to call someone to get it fixed?  That's the low level of brokenness of my life.  The warranty on my sanity maybe just expired.

• I lost two credit cards this week.
  
• Broke my cell phone.
  
• Reportedly ruined my daughter's love life (having to do with refusing a not-yet-16 invitation to Jr. Prom)
  
• Made two back-to-back trips to Costco (40 minutes RT each--I forgot I had lost my credit cards)
• Waited for 30minutes for a friend who didn't show (awkward!)
  
• Had to give away our tickets for next Wednesday (to go to a fifth grade concert I forgot about on the same night, which I will love attending. But still.)
• Found that my blog posting well was empty (which is just as well since...)
  
• Have the blahs 
• And the weepies

All I know is, if I were a snake, I would want to wriggle out of my skin and start over, clean and new.

But I have a feeling maybe a three day weekend will also do the trick.

(Clap if you believe in the magic of weekends!  I do believe in weekends, I do, I do!)

[post script: I wrote this earlier in the week but never posted. Already things are looking up. A nice long weekend with the family does do wonders. Sometimes my moods are like the weather in England: wait a minute and it will change. Hope yours is doing wonders for you too.]

Last Lecture for now

Today was the last session of the human development course I taught this semester. To wrap it up, I asked the students to bring in something about a life story, real or fictional (novel/movie clip/article, etc.) to relate to some aspect of the course.  I loved what they came up with.  It ended up taking the whole class since everyone had given it such thought and had so much to say.  If you have a few minutes, the links (I starred the ones that were especially compelling) are wonderful:

• Father of the Bride 2 -- middle adulthood, Levinson's theories of midlife change
  
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower -- attachment, identity formation in adolescence (Erikson, Marcia)
  
• *Mean Girls clip (3:43-5:27)-- identity moratorium, adolescent social aggression
  
• Smashed -- Erikson's intimacy vs. isolation stage, inhibited by alcoholism
  
• song "Time of Your Life" -- developmental transitions, exceptions to set theory
  
• **About Schmidt final letter-- Erikson's ego integrity vs. despair in mid adulthood
  
• song Mr. Larkin by State Radio -- older adulthood, prejudice
  
• Old School -- exceptions to older adulthood preconceptions
  
• Goonies -- middle childhood Erikson's industry vs. inferiority stage
  
• *the Last Lecture -- loss, ego transendence, Erikson's generativity, 
  
• Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius -- early adulthood and Erikson's intimacy vs. isolation
  
• When I am an Old Woman -- older adulthood, theories of positive aging
  
• **The Giving Tree (2) -- lifespan development, attachment, Erikson's stages
  
• *Guys and Dolls -- (first few minutes of documentary of Lars and the Real Girl-type relationships) social work practice, culture/microculture, Erikson's intimacy/isolation 
  
• Tuesdays with Morrie -- ego transendence and generativity
  
• Archie comic book -- adolescence transition, scaffolding, conceptions of adolescence
  
• Dalai Lama -- moral development, ego transcendence, older adulthood, "good death"
  
• Mr. Rogers -- social learning theory, attachment
  

It feels so great to be done but I'm going to really miss that class, those students.  They were very patient & accepting of this green, nervous, shaky-voiced first-time prof.  

class of idealistic, passionate grad students + human development course content =

life affirming and hopeful alchemy

Witness to serendipity

Today I was meeting with a guy about a potential project.  We had never met but only spoken on the phone and via email.  After discussing lots of options for locations (suburbs? office? city? cafe?), we settled on a cafe near a subway stop in Somerville (right outside of Boston). Convenient and both of us knew where it was.

I got there first and scoped out all the tables.  I hate this part: trying to determine who is your meeting guy.  I know that (a) everyone in the cafe thinks this is like a meet-up from Match.com and (b) they are all watching to see if I get stood up. (C) I feel like I'm re-enacting Are You My Mother? in a post-modern, grown up version (Are you my meeting?  No?  Are you my meeting? No...okay, bye.)

After determining that every single man was NOT my meeting (so embarrassing),  I settled down to a table by the window and eventually let him find ME.  We had a great meeting, very productive, and all of the sudden he jumped up and knocked on the window at a passing pedestrian.  The guy outside did a double take and beamed with recognition.  Meeting guy jumped up, excused himself and said "that's my college roommate!" then dashed outside, where they hugged and talked for a few minutes and grinned at each other.

What are the chances?

~Meeting guy was in town from Chile, where he lives and works.  He's only in Boston once or twice a year.

~He hadn't seen his roommate for over 5 years and they had lost contact--no email, no Christmas cards, didn't know where the other was.

~Of all the places we discussed meeting, we chose this one place at this time where I chose a place by the window and his friend walked down the street into the "perfect storm" for crossing paths.

I think I was excited as meeting guy was (or almost) although  refrained from running out and hugging the guy myself.

I love serendipity!

(Also the movie Serendipity was cute.  Sometimes I think G looks a little like John Cusack.)

Magical thinking

The topic for that class’s session was Loss, Death, and Dying. Pretty heavy for the second session, I remember worrying. I wanted to not just talk about dry theories and research (Kubler Ross’s “stages” of grief, research on palliative care, on grief at different developmental stages) but to be able to talk about real issues and experiences. These are social workers in training, after all. I prepared a few extras to generate conversation, illustrate the concepts and provide a bit of variety to the class.

Scenes from Away From Her. And Ponette (a gem).

And, also, audio clips from StoryCorps. Here and here.

{I’m a crier. If my heart is at all cracked open, the tears flow. Truthfully, at home I kept crying during those scenes and so I had to watch them over and over so I got used to them enough to maintain my composure in class.}

It went well, better than I expected. As I played the clips--narratives of real people talking about their experiences with death--one of my students, just inside my line of sight to the left, started weeping quietly. She searched her pockets for tissues and dabbed at her face for several minutes. At the end she left class before I could catch her so I emailed her to make sure she was okay and that the class hadn’t brought up some painful experiences or memories.

“Thank you for checking in” she wrote back. “I am okay :) but I was definitely struggling to balance my emotional mind and rational mind! Those were wonderful clips and I am glad you exposed us to them--thank you; it must be a difficult subject to have to teach, as well.”

As a fellow crier, I have had a soft spot E ever since. In a room full of wonderful and inspiring students, she is a favorite. We chat now and then, before or after class. But I am her professor and we are not really friends.

I received an email from her last week during break. “I just wanted to let you know I’m going through a difficult time right now. After our recent break-up, my boyfriend of three years has gone missing. We’re all worried and desperate to find him.”

And then, on the weekend, an email from her roommate. They found his body. He took his own life. E is, of course, devastated.  But she plans to continue the semester and attend her classes.

And so I cannot stop thinking about her. Can I even imagine what she must be going through? My mothering instincts outpace my professorish professionalism. I want to hug her. To slip a handkerchief into her hand inscribed with “it will eventually feel better.” Mostly, I want to go back to the second session and prepare her for the looming tragedy, to whisper soothing and protective words. To find some secret formula to ward off this kind of pain. 

I know, I'm not in that kind of role in her life. But I'm too new at this to have that fact even matter.  All those theories and research suddenly feel too paltry.

Ah, life.  Sometimes I don't know what to do with you.