Rule Maker Rule Breaker

Last week I made a list of rules for myself and then I broke them. I don’t think I even made it a day. Who am I kidding. I didn’t make it an hour. The rules all had to do with how I use social media and consume news, and basically, how much I use my phone. (TOO MUCH!) 

The rules seemed like really good rules. 

What inspired me to write them was I am working my way through The Artist’s Way again and there’s a chapter about “blocks.” The idea is that just as we’re starting to break through, feel more creative, and play around on whatever project we’re working on, we self-sabotage and reach instinctively for a block. Drugs or drinking. Spending money. Overeating. For me, it’s the damn phone. 

The task we were supposed to do in Artist’s Way is write a list of things we promise we will no longer do. 

I had a fun time making this list.

1. I will no longer jump on my phone in moments of boredom.

2. I will no longer scroll through the news headlines.

3. I will no longer check emails on my phone. 

4. I will no longer mindlessly watch videos on social media. 

I made the list and promptly jumped on my phone, scrolled the news headlines, checked my emails, and mindlessly watched videos on social media. 

Surely something else was going on with me. The Artist’s Way asks us to answer honestly: 

What is your payoff in holding onto the block? 

I wrote, “It confirms my worst feelings about the world and about myself. That I lack focus. That I can’t tackle a project like the one I’m working on. That I can’t follow through on anything. That I’m acting like I have all the time in the world when I know that I don’t. That it’s okay to waste my one wild precious life because who cares.” 

oh. 

I shut my laptop and picked up my phone. 

Something strange happened. An old friend emailed me out of the blue, kind words about something I’d written. At the same time, another old friend texted me. And another. I’m not lying. Three people I haven’t seen in years, all saying absurdly nice things. 

Too nice. I escaped back into the phone. 

Really, what was going on with me? I had a funny flash of my fifteen-year-old self making up rules, how to act, how to talk, how to eat, how to dress, how to fix my frizzy hair. So many rules. How could I help but break them? 

"Do one lovely thing each day for yourself this week" 

is the next task in The Artist’s Way after the phone block one, and I can already feel myself making it a rule. I can already feel myself breaking it. 

But here is something I want to try: What if I don’t call it a rule, a task, a promise? What if I don’t write it down or even think about it? What if I just take a moment, right now, and do it.

 

 

Lost and Found

Working the information desk at the library and a patron asks if there are any reading glasses in the Lost and Found. Let me check, I say, and I pull out the bin and sift through the left-behind winter hats and gloves, a dropped baby shoe, a nice pen. 

I don't see any reading glasses, I say. When do you think you might've left them here?

Oh, I didn't leave them here, she says. I forgot mine at home.

It takes me a minute to process this. The patron wants to use someone else's lost reading glasses? 

Is this...allowed? It doesn't feel allowed. Regardless, there are no left-behind reading glasses in the bin. The patron is bummed, and she jokes about how blind she is without her glasses and how there's no way she can interpret the form she needs to fill out and fax. She'll have to drive home. 

I'm still stuck on the part where she asked me to rummage through the Lost and Found, but I'm also sympathetic. I can't see without my reading glasses either. In fact, I keep them perched on my head, always. I slip them off my head and offer them to the patron, and she is delighted. I am delighted by her delight, while at the same time, wondering if I am a fool and what if I forget to ask for them back and when I do, should I sanitize them? 

I don't know why I'm thinking about this. 

It's the middle of the night, and I am sleeping on the couch downstairs with the dog who is sick. Correction: I am trying to sleep. Instead, I am writing this post in my head and listening to the dog being sick. Her stomach has the gurglies. Something she ate yesterday? Who knows. Let's just say she has a sensitive digestive system. I've already let her outside once (at 2 am), watching from the back door as she desperately raced out across the snow. It's sixteen degrees. 

And then we're back inside, both warming up. The last time I slept downstairs was May 2020. I didn't get much sleep then either. Our daughter, who had been studying abroad and stuck there during the early part of the pandemic, had just flown home, and my husband and I were dutifully following all of the rules on the CDC website. Basically: Treat her as if she is teeming with a virus that could kill us all. 

For the required two weeks quarantine, we gave her the upstairs--bedroom, bathroom-- and moved ourselves into the living room downstairs. I left her meals on a tray at the top of the stairs. I wore a mask and gloves when I did her laundry. During the day, we took walks or sat outside on the patio, six feet apart. On rainy days, we facetimed. The two weeks lasted forever and then it was over. We gave her long-awaited hugs and lived together in our bubble for a year. A great gift, I understand now, despite all of the fear and craziness of the time. 

The patron gives me back my glasses without my having to ask, and I wipe them off with hand sanitizer, no big deal. A few weeks later, down in the Youth Department, I lose them. They must have fallen off somewhere when I was shelving. I have to pull holds and I can't read the tiny call numbers on the list. A little boy sees me crawling around looking and starts crawling around looking too. 

In a few minutes another little boy joins him, and then, both of the boys' mothers, another child and their nanny, a whole silly group of us on our knees, peering between the shelves and under the furniture. 

What I'm trying to say made more sense to me in the middle of the night, the dog's stomach rumbling in the dark, my worries keeping me from sleep. The large and small ways we try to help. The gifts we share with one another. All of our foolish and lovely gestures.   

                                   

Heard

I've been watching the TV show The Bear. It’s very good. If you don't know it, it's about an acclaimed master chef named Carmy who inherits his family's sandwich shop after his older brother commits suicide. He decides to come home to run the place, and it's very stressful for him (and for us, watching). The crew is skeptical about the changes Carmy wants to make. In the kitchen everyone is used to doing what they want and yelling at each other. 

What I like about the show is how when they are not yelling, they are telling each other where they are and what they are doing. Behind! they will say, when they are walking behind someone. Or, Corner! when they are racing around a corner. When someone gives them an instruction, they say, Heard!

Sometimes they say Heard! when they are having an uncomfortable conversation. I like that, I say to my husband. We should try that. 

Heard, he says. 

This is important to me because I know I am not always a good listener. Sometimes I tune out without meaning to and burrow into my own head. Or I get distracted by what else is going on or by a thing I'd meant to do. My family will joke about how I stand up in the middle of conversations to pace around or to do a household task. 

Some days I literally cannot sit still and feel like I might crawl out of my own skin. I don't know why I'm like this. Well, I do sort of know why I'm like this, but I'm starting to wonder how much knowing can help with potentially changing. 

The Bear isn't really about what goes on behind the scenes of a restaurant. It's about a person who is struggling with grief and loss. The long term, seemingly never-ending effects of trauma burrowing into all of the nooks and crannies of the kitchen, into Carmy, and into his family and friends. 

It's a funny story too. And most episodes are heartbreakingly lovely as the people strive to do better, be better. How they begin to learn, one by one, that there might be another way to interact with each other without the yelling and the contempt and the casual cruelty. 

How when they say Heard to each other, we know they are really trying to listen. 

A Bear, a Pillow, a Pomelo

The bear was a black bear and it was dead. Probably hit by a car. The body rolled a little way off the road and down into the woods. My friend and I were walking our dogs, and I stopped to take a picture of the bear, but then I said, Wait, what if it's not dead? 

My friend laughed. If it's not dead, we run. 

Later, we all went on a hike. There was snow on the ground and the trail went straight uphill. We were all wearing sneakers and it was slow-going. Why are we doing this? I kept thinking. But then we reached the top and I understood. The view. I don't know how to describe it. I took a picture. 

This was New Year's Eve. Every year for the past twenty-four years my family has met up with the same good friends to celebrate, except for 2020, when we met up over zoom. This year my husband and I almost cancelled. He was getting over being sick. I was afraid I'd catch what he had. 

But he felt better and I was okay and off we went. On the drive we talked about our health and how when you have good health, you don't think about your health. But when you have bad health, it's hard to think about anything else. It makes you wonder about time and how you want to spend it. 

After the hike we browsed around thrift stores and I kept looking at pillows. I don't know why. The cushiness. The color. There was an orangey one I kept going back to and finally my husband said, just buy it. So we did. We were using cash. Long story, but we had some, and I said, let's play a game where we can't use our credit cards for anything until the cash is gone. 

This meant going into gas stations to pay for gas, something I have no memory of ever doing in my life, and I had to ask the clerk how it worked. She said, you tell me how much gas you want and you pay me. 

But how did I know how much gas I wanted? A tank? How much is a tank? I know she thought I was a weirdo. Also, one week into this new only-cash lifestyle, and I think our credit card company is probably worried about us. Have we been kidnapped? Are we okay? 

We are doing great! 

On the drive back, I am a pro with the gas. Let's mix things up, I tell my husband. Do other things differently. Just for funsies. We go grocery shopping when we get home and walk the store in the opposite direction we usually shop, ending up at the fruit and vegetables. We buy two artichokes because we have never bought fresh artichokes before. We buy something called a Pomelo because we don't know what it is and it is large and round and green and why not? 

Turns out it tastes like grapefruit. I take a picture of it. 

The old year is out

and the new year is so new it hasn’t even started yet. 

A friend says instead of making resolutions, we should choose a word for the year and her word is Wellness. I like this word. After a year of not-so-good health news, I could use more of it. Here is something I’ve learned about learning about scary health news. First, there is a gut punch. Next, a scurrying around online for more information, after which you think, Okay, I can do this, 

and then you do this. (Public service announcement: if you notice a weird spot on your shoulder that was never there before and it doesn’t go away for five months, schedule an appointment with your dermatologist.)  

My husband’s word is Connections and I like this word too. Over the past year I have been reconnecting with old friends and I’m making new connections with new friends. I also do the Connections puzzle in the New York Times puzzle section every day. Have you done that? It’s a puzzle with sixteen words and you have to figure out how to group them. Some days it is very tricky. Some days you can’t figure it out and you want to fling your phone across the room. It’s fun! 

I’ve also been making a lot of connections in my therapy, uncovering the past and having lightbulb moments about how much I’ve carried into the present (talk about gut punches!) and working to break old, unhealthy patterns. It’s hard, but I recommend it. 

(Another Public Service Announcement: It is called the Three C’s. And it refers to how to approach being in a relationship with a person who has an addiction, but I think it could also include anyone you love who has a mental illness or is struggling from dealing with their own trauma. You can’t Cure them. You didn’t Cause the problem. You can’t Control the situation.) 

(I am thinking about having this tattooed on my arm so I will never forget it.)

My word for the year is Trust. One of my therapy gut punches was learning that I don’t trust people. This lack of trust extends to the world. And it extends to myself. But I would like to break this pattern. Times are scary. There’s war and illness and climate emergencies and another crazy election looming, and then you add in health screenings on top of it and who knows what is going to happen in the new year. 

But I trust that I—we can do this, whatever comes our way, and together, old friends and new, we will make it through.

It's quiet in the house

and for the moment, I am the only one awake. Six people, three dogs. Three kinds of coffee to be made. Food for the vegans and the carnivores. We have enough pillows but bring your own blankets. Yesterday my mother-in-law and daughter and I made multiple desserts. Here is a secret about Linda’s famous chocolate chip and m&m cookies and don’t tell her I told you. It’s the recipe on the back of the chocolate chip package. Except, after you add the package of chocolate chips, you throw in an entire bag of m&ms. Honestly, I didn’t think there was enough cookie batter to contain this much chocolate candy. But Linda proved me wrong! 

We also made the longtime favorite rum cake and a new recipe, vegan chocolate truffles, which we decide taste like chocolate brownies (secret ingredient: dates). We did not make the Danish potato sausage this year, a decades old family tradition that used to halfway freak out the kids, with the special-ordered sheep intestine casings and the raw pork. I never thought I’d say this, but I kinda miss the annual stuffing of the potato sausage, the kitchen turned into a science lab, the counters a biohazard. It’s the connection, though, to the past 

and to the people who passed it on, and do we really want this tradition to end with us? Maybe we will resurrect this recipe next year. For now, we have the cookies and the rum cake and vegan chocolate truffles, the familiar Christmas carols, the jigsaw puzzle in partially completed chunks on the dining room table. Home is where the hearts are

and sometimes all the hearts aren't home and there are several new hearts. I don't know what I am trying to say. It's early and I haven't had my coffee yet because the coffee machine is loud and people are sleeping in the other room. Last night the dogs arrived, one a dear friend and the other a first time guest. My own dog was not having an easy time of it, but eventually she quit anxious-drooling and greeted the company. Now everyone is friends. 

More guests (people, not dogs) are coming in tonight, some who have never visited us over the holidays, so we will have to bring them up to speed. Where we keep the towels and help yourself to the variety of desserts. I can already hear the laughing and the barking, some singer from the past singing about how she's rockin' around the Christmas tree and having sentimental feelings about people telling her to be jolly. 

I have never had someone tell me specifically to be jolly, but I hear her on the sentimental feelings part or whatever that feeling is where you ache so painfully over the people who aren't here and at the same time feel you might burst with gratitude and love for the ones who are.

But for now, the house is quiet except for the old house creakings, and somewhere upstairs, the soft patter of a dog. 

  

Guests are coming and the house is a mess

with unwrapped presents piled on the dining room table, a stack of lovely Christmas cards from family and friends strewn all over the counter. Which reminds me, if I want to send out cards, I'd better get on it. Or is it too late? Time moves along in weird bursts, so that one minute it is August

and suddenly, we are heading toward Thanksgiving, and Boom

Thanksgiving is in the rearview mirror. Maybe it's the weather. Too mild and creepily sunny for Ohio and how is it December? I build a holiday playlist to get in the proper mood, the Charlie Brown Christmas and the Judy Garland song that makes me want to cry about how someday soon we all will be together, 

and I want to believe this, but what does "soon" mean in this new reality of mine with the weird time bursts? Yesterday, when I was looking for where I stored the Christmas cards, I stumbled on old family photos and went down that rabbit hole for a couple of hours, the kids at various ages posing in front of various Christmas trees, a cat we once had, a dog, people we love, loved, but now they are gone from us. 

A first year without them. A fifth year. A fiftieth. We had no time at all with them. We had all the time in the world. What I want 

is to pin time down and pin myself in it. All of my loved ones in one place, but in every time and with every cat and dog. Until then, Judy Garland says we will have to muddle through somehow. But enough with that sad song.

This year I am amending what I want, starting today as I clear off the dining room table and wrap the presents. Send out the Christmas cards. Clean up the messy house to make room for the people who are traveling to see us. Have faith that we can check in on the ones who are celebrating elsewhere.  

Here and now is all we have and I can't bear to miss a moment of it.