The end of an era

About 20 years ago, not too long after I moved to Seattle, I began to work with an organization which puts on trainings for people all over the world whose work includes intense, high-stakes interactions.  Actors are used to portray people in different situations/crises/emotional states, etc. in order to give trainees a chance to practice their communication skills in a simulation.

The training which is conducted in Seattle is a program for journalism students, designed to give them their first chance to interview people going through a traumatic event.  Thousands of UW journalism students have taken this training, and the teaching staff have reported back how many of the students mention this training as the most impactful event of their educational careers.

Fourteen years ago I was asked to take over leading this program once a quarter, since the current leader was moving away.  I had really enjoyed being one of the emotional characters in the program's simulations, and I knew that to lead would mean giving that up.  Still, I was so flattered at being asked, I said yes immediately.  (It has occurred to me that I've done a lot of things I didn't want to do because I was flattered to be asked.  Certainly a lot of boyfriends entered my life that way.)  It's not that I didn't want to do this, because it is honorable, challenging, meaningful work.  But I was terrified.  Easy to brush it off as Imposter Syndrome, which I suffer from even though I know I'm smart and capable and committed to excellence, and have the power to win people over (not everyone, mind you). Still, I was always anxious that the students have fantastic time, and what if they don't engage or don't like me or are snotty or don't get the benefits of this amazing training? 

Recently I decided to retire from leading this program, but not without qualms.  There is no one trained to take over leading.  This program is much too valuable to be allowed to disappear.  I felt a bit trapped.  However, the man who created this and all the other training programs was so gracious and appreciative for my service that he eased my qualms and assured me another way would be found for the trauma training to continue.

The day of my last session, last Wednesday, the teaching staff gifted me and the training's four actors with mugs, and handed me an enormous bouquet in a ceramic vase.  So very thoughtful (although I had taken the light rail that morning and ended up having to call Sweet Hubby to pick me up, since the flowers and gift bag and my own personal effects were too much to handle getting to and on and off the train.  Sometimes people give you a gift, sometimes a problem).

It was an emotional day for me, and not just because it was my last time to conduct the program.  Journalism and journalists are currently under assault in this country; it take more courage now to become a journalist than it used to.  Without being overtly political, I impressed this as much as I could upon the students, these fresh-faced young adults who are the future of the world.  It's their turn now to make of their lives and this country what they will.  I hope I've helped, even a little.

Good Old Dirt and other take-aways

 Sweet Hubby and I recently attended a film festival in Pt. Townsend, a sweet little city about 2 hours away from us.  This is an annual event for us, and we always have a terrific time.  There are 6 venues, but they are so close together, it's possible to see as many as 5 films a day.  Because of the rushing from screening to screening, our meals often consisted of a hot dog or slice of pizza or cup of yoghurt.

Altogether, I saw 2 full length narrative films, 12 full length documentaries, and 41 shorts.

My favorite film of the festival was "Come See Me in the Good Light", which introduced me to Andrea Gibson and her wife Megan Falley, both poets.  Andrea, the subject of the film, was poet laureate of Colorado.  This film follows the couple as they deal with Andrea's terminal cancer.  No other documentary has ever made me laugh as heartily, nor weep as fully.  Watching this film is like meeting two clever, funny, smart, magnificent people, falling in love with them, and then realizing one of them is going to die.

A favorite line that came out of that film is "Whatever you are feeling, label it love."  On the surface that seems a bit facile and new-agey, but as I thought about it, I realized there is a lot of wisdom in that statement.  My rage at the current administration, for example, is based on my love for this country and its highest principles, my love of justice and fairness.  Grief is based on the love we have for what/who we've lost.  I'm definitely going to keep reminding myself of this splendid idea whenever I am full of feeling.

Another wonderful take-away from the festival is this: "Parents lay the foundation.  Children build the house."  I don't remember which film it's from, but I think it might have been "Her Fight, His Name", a short documentary about Eric Garner's mother, who has survived a string of terrible losses, the worst, of course, being the murder of her son by police.

While waiting for a film to begin, I had a sweet conversation with another audience member, a woman who was very frank about having been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, although she must be in the beginning stages.  The best part of the conversation, the part I have taken with me and want to share, was when she said that she thinks of God as Good Old Dirt.  And also Great Out Doors.  Now that's a god I can definitely believe in and even worship.  Thinking of god as the natural world strikes me as infinitely wise and practical, because it's possible to have a clear, concrete, enlivening relationship with Nature, and Nature is the source of all things.

We had a great time, SH and I, doing something we love together in a lovely place.  Who could ask for anything more?  That's what I would want on my tombstone, by the way, if I were going to have a tombstone, which I'm not.  But that is what I want you to know I feel about my life: Who could ask for anything more?

Hope

Somewhere along the way of my life, I began to be disdainful of hope.  I thought it was the flaccid (flak-sid), shrugging response of people who feel they have no power when confronted by a problematic situation.  "Oh well, nothing I can do about it.  Sure hope it gets better."  Hope felt to me like a mushy place to stand.

But I recently had an epiphany which gave me an entirely new way of looking at hope.  My siblings and I were talking about illnesses, and about how, if you live long enough, someone might very well discover the cure for what ails you.  And I realized that that is what hope is.

To hope isn't to pray.  It's not the belief in some intervening god.  To hope is being willing to believe that something you can't predict, can't be sure exists, may hold the seed of your salvation, no matter what problem you're grappling with.  Some genius is going to find the cure, the answer, the new technology, the new biology that will make the world a better place for more people.  No telling who it will be, when it will happen, if it will be the solution to your difficulty or someone else's.  But smart, committed people are working to solve the problems of the world (most of which we have created ourselves).  Hope remembers that she or he or they exist somewhere in space and time.  Hope doesn't solve your problem, but it makes the journey you're on a little less arduous.

I've never known what Emily D. meant when she called hope "that thing with feathers".  It's possible she was saying the same thing I'm saying now, only describing it more delicately, subtly, beautifully.  Or maybe she meant something else entirely.  It doesn't matter.  I finally know what I mean when I say "hope".

Daddy's demons

Daddy was moody. Some of those moods were light-hearted.  He had a sense of play and there was a lot in life he enjoyed.  But he could also be dark and sullen, or sharp and sarcastic, tight-lipped and private  He was sometimes passive-aggressive because he didn't seem to know how to say what he wanted.  He never, ever talked about his feelings, not physical nor emotional.  When his beloved wife died, lots of people attended, and there were no dry eyes in the chapel - except for his.

I worked hard to feel close to him, to understand and like him.  I went to movies and Dracula Society meetings with him so that we could have something to share, but as a child I was often afraid of him because there was no telling when his mood might change.  As I grew older, that fear became impatience and resentment.  I knew he loved his kids, in his way, but he didn't seem to be able to say "I love you", and he wasn't a hugger.

He's been dead now for 8 years, but of course he is still and always will be a reference point for me.  Even now, I continue to try to understand him, maybe partly because I'm more like him than I am like my sunny, cheerful, loving mom.

Last night I found myself wondering if maybe, possibly some of his moods were because he didn't have the life he wanted.  He had the life he was supposed to have, was expected to have, the life of a husband and father, a working man who put on a suit and tie every day and fought the traffic to go to his job as a petroleum engineer.  But was that what he wanted to do and be?

He loved movies, especially horror movies, and delighted in being around celebrities.  He was also an inveterate armchair conductor, and feasted daily on classical music.  He played the piano as a younger man, and would practice sometimes, but simply didn't have room in his life to focus on that or most other elective pursuits.

I wonder if maybe he wanted to be in the movies, or at least behind the camera in some capacity.  Or did he long to be a musician or conductor?  Some of his happiest moments were the three times he earned the opportunity to conduct fairly simple musical selections for the orchestra of whatever city he lived in.

He did love his children, but I don't think he really liked to be around kids.  He enjoyed us more when we got older.  Had he really wanted to be a father, or did he just see that as the right, the expected path for a man to take?

I think perhaps men of that era might have been almost as restricted in their choices as women were, at least a man like Daddy, to whom doing the right, the expected thing was very important.  I'll never know what bigger, wilder, more creative dreams he might have had for himself, how much of a sacrifice he was making every time he knotted that tie.  So I'm left to wonder, with a sympathy for him I didn't always have when he was alive.  And also with gratitude, because the way he lived his life made it possible for me to live mine exactly the way I wanted to, to follow my dreams and passions and interests and hardly ever do what is expected.

So thanks, Dad.  I wish I'd understood you better.

Oughtta, don't wanna

 A long-time but not intimate friend (K) died a couple of years ago.  She had been a best friend in junior high, but once I moved from where she lived, our friendship became more desultory.  We liked one another, but our paths seldom crossed.

I knew her husband, although not very well.  I liked him fine but I don't think he and I ever had a one-on-one conversation while K was alive.  After her death, I called him just to express my sympathy and concern.  The call seemed to mean a lot to him; they had moved not long before K died, and he hadn't made friends in their new town.

After that, I called a few more times, but every call was the same.  He would talk for more than an hour and I would listen and murmur "uh huh" in the right places.  He was never grim nor complaining; he had a dry wit and made a lot of puns, told jokes, just talked and talked.  He never asked me about myself, and didn't introduce topics of wider interest. I got absolutely nothing out of those calls except the thinly rewarding feeling that I was doing something kind.  My calls became less frequent and eventually I stopped calling altogether.

I have a friend (N) here in Seattle who is part of a gang I hang out with sometimes, most of us actors, all of us aging.  N has aged the most drastically.  He now lives in senior housing, and although his mind is still pretty good, his body is terribly, terribly fragile, and to have a meal with him means spending 2 hours watching him try to get food into his mouth.  I am one of only two of the gang who has ever visited him, and now the other one doesn't drive any more so it's just me.  N lives about 40 minutes north of me, so when the gang gets together, I'm expected to pick N up and bring him, which turns what would be a 2 hour outing into about 5 1/2 hours, what with getting to N's, getting him and his walker into the car, the drive, the gathering, the drive back.

So here is where I'm torn.  On the one hand, I have many, many blessings in my life, and can certainly afford to be generous with my friendship.  Being a friend to people who don't have friends is the right thing, the kind thing to do.  On the other hand, I'm older myself now, and more aware of how precious my time is.  I want to spend it doing things that are rewarding and interesting and stimulating.  I don't really want to spend an hour on the phone listening to the maundering of someone I didn't know all that well to begin with, and it's a pain in my ass to be N's driver and only friend.  I didn't have a friendship with N separate from the gang gatherings.  I like him well enough, but I just don't feel I like him well enough to give so much of myself for his sake.

I think I have the right to say "I want to do this, I don't want to do that."  I think we all do, at any stage in life, but certainly by our 70's, when there is so much more past than future for us.  For close friends, for family, for Bill, I would do anything and everything.  But for these peripheral acquaintances, I just don't know how much of myself I want to spend.  And yet I feel as though I must be awfully selfish not to be willing to make a boring phone call now and then, or clear my schedule so I can be a taxi.

I just don't want to.  Why do I feel I have to?  Why don't these men have other people showing up for them?  Why does it fall to me to make up for the fact that they didn't make friends?  I'm sure I could be more generous, but, sadly, I sometimes end up feeling impatient and resentful, although I do my best to stay attentive and kind.  I don't feel good about giving these men my shoulder, but I also don't feel good about denying it to them.  As I said - torn.

Panic

Eons ago, in another life, I was driving up winding, unlit Highway 1 along the Big Sur coast at midnight on a Christmas Eve, headed north  from Los Angeles to spend the holiday with my sister, whose then-husband was a ranger in a coastal park.

I hadn't seen another car in several hours, which was actually rather nice as I could take my time and not have to navigate around slower cars.  Finally another car passed me heading south.  When I looked in my rearview mirror, I saw that car turn around; it was now behind me, following me, although it hadn't had a chance to catch up to me yet.

All I could think was that the driver(s) had seen a young woman alone and wanted to - well, I hardly dared visualize what might be on their minds/his mind.  It didn't seem possible that the U-turn was a coincidence.

Until recently, I had never been as scared as I was right then.  I stepped on the gas, taking the dangerous curves as a dangerous speed.  There was no place to turn off the road, nowhere to hide.  I was so full of adrenaline that I had no say in what I was doing; I felt as though I were running for my life.  The good news is that eventually I lost sight of their headlights; perhaps they knew I was on to them and they gave up.  Maybe they crashed.  I'll never know what would have happened if they had caught up to me, and I will always be thankful that I didn't find out.

That was the first time I remember feeling pure panic.  The second time happened quite recently.  Sweet Hubby and I were on the couch eating salad, settling in to watch a movie.  I realized SH was coughing very strangely and that he was clearly in distress.  "Do you need me Heimlich you?" I said, or maybe shouted.  He turned his back to me so I stood him up, wrapped my arms around him from behind, and punched. 

I know the basics of the Heimlich, of course, as we probably all do.  But knowing the theory is as different from actually performing it as reading sheet music is from singing.  Oh my god oh my god what if I try to save him and I can't and he dies in front of me and it's my fault?  What if I'm doing it wrong?  What if this doesn't work?

The second punch got the slippery bit of lettuce off of SH's windpipe and he was all right.  I, however, was a gloppy mess.  I don't think of myself as a hysterical person, but I was as close to hysteria as I've ever been, even including that terrible midnight drive.  It took quite a while for me to stop sobbing.  Even now, a couple of days later, I get a sensation of hot water running from my stomach down my legs when I revisit the memory of that terrible moment.  What if the Heimlich hadn't worked?  I will always be thankful that I didn't find out.

Real questions

Last night I found myself imagining, as I sometimes do, what my life would be like (I refuse to say 'will') if Sweet Hubby died before me.  I pictured myself in a very dark place, wailing to the Universe, "How am I going to survive this?"

But I quickly realized that it doesn't have to be a cry of despair.  It can be a real question.  How would I survive SH's death?  What measures can I take now, what details can I plan for while I have my wits about me?  What support can I line up ahead of time?  For example, I need to think about who I know I would want to talk to and how I would handle the people I don't want to talk to.  Who could set up a meal train?  Who could take care of the garden?   

Most importantly: Who would be the best person I could call on to reassure me that I will figure out what I don't understand and remind me that there are lots of resources to turn to.  It will take a very special person to be able to do that because it will take a lot of work on both our parts for me to stop feeling frightened and helpless.  I have some idea who that person might be, but I may not truly know who it is until the moment I need her or him.

That's another thing.  I must decide now that I'm going to listen to exactly what my heart and guts and brain tell me and be brave enough to do what they say to do or not do or change or whatever.  I have to put it into my mind now that I am going to be able to survive and figure everything out and get the help I need.