Writing through the Worry

I am a chronic worrier.  Worry is a part of who I am, as ineluctable as height. I have learned to live with it.  It is, to me, the most irksome of my unattractive traits.

Here are some of the things I worry about:

--my adult children’s health, safety, and general happiness;

--whether the rats that infiltrated our house two years ago (necessitating a new roof) will ever return;

--my 94-year-old mother’s diminished cognition;

--her sadness;

--the unhappy state of the publishing industry, resulting in people like Snooki getting book deals;

--getting punched on the street for no reason (note: this is now a thing);

--whether the dark brown item on the seat of my car is a rat dropping or (more likely) a crumb of gluten-free Oreo cookie;

--if I am drinking enough water;

--why I have no thirst mechanism;

--if it is worse to drink so much that I have to pee several times during the night (and get less sleep) or drink less and sleep for seven hours straight;

--if the egg recently hatched by these barn owls (http://cams.allaboutbirds.org/channel/42/Barn_Owls/) will hatch;

--how long people are going to be stupid about guns;

--if I will look silly wearing boyfriend jeans and oxfords.

And the list goes on.

 

When I was younger, I found it difficult to worry and write at the same time.  Writing demands a certain immersion—an intentional letting go—that worry works against.  Writing takes you away.  Worry holds you down by the throat.

As I age, I try to write through the worry.  Sometimes I am successful; sometimes, not so much.  I wish I were the kind of writer who finds solace in writing.  Instead, I find that the effort exposes my subconscious in painful ways.  Somewhat counter-intuitively, worry functions as a weird kind of anesthetic, numbing me to my own self, denying me access to the mental space where good work can happen.

I keep trying to find a way to manage all this.

I’ll tell you one thing: that better be an Oreo crumb.  Because if I am going to have to deal with rats in my car, then I may just have to check myself into some sort of facility.

On Someone I Used to Know, and a Writer's Debts and Promises

I knew someone quite a few years ago, about whom I have never written.  In a certain way, this is odd, because This Person (to whom I will refer as TP) ended up being quite important to me.  I don’t write about him because I promised him I never would.  He is intensely private—secretive—and hates being the subject of other people’s scrutiny.

TP had some wonderful qualities, among them resilience, humor, empathy, an astounding work ethic, and an uncanny ability to understand the way other people thought and felt.  TP was spiritually inclined, which was not something one would have assumed after knowing him casually.    He grew up in a home riven by sexual and physical violence, and this fact dominated his emotional life long after he made his escape.  The extent to which he was able to manifest any sort of decency is a testament to his soul’s enduring sweetness.

Today I was thinking about the debt writers owe the people in their lives.  Without them, we wouldn’t know how the world works, which is to say, how other people—those with regular jobs who are able to socialize freely, without distancing themselves and mentally taking notes—function. 

But when writers create characters, we have to be careful.  We can use aspects of our friends and relations and acquaintances; we can even create a character largely based on someone we actually know.  (And even if we make someone up out of whole cloth, a lot of our friends will sidle up to us at parties—or coffee shops, if we don’t go to parties—and say, “That was me, right?”)  But some people have to be off limits.

I never use my kids in my books.  Never.  They are adults now, but still.  Never.  It means I interact with them in a normal way, which is to say, as their mother.  (Is that normal?  You know what I mean.)  I never listened to what they said and wrote it down, hoping to “use it” somewhere.  (Okay, in all honesty, I did that once.  My son wondered what would happen if you cut someone's head off and then held it up in front of a mirror.  "Would he see anything, just being a head?" he asked.  It was too funny to ignore.  I put it in something.)

Same with my life partner.  He will never be a character in anything I write.

 

And the same with TP.  Which is a shame, in a way, because he would be fascinating to write about. 

But it would be cruel, and so I won’t.

And also, I promised.

Maybe this makes me less of a writer.  I'm not sure what other writers do, how they approach this.  But I don't know any other way to be.

Happy Birthday to Harriet

Last week marked the 50^th year since the release of Harriet the Spy, the groundbreaking novel by Louise Fitzhugh.

Here’s an article about it in Publisher’s Weekly: http://publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/childrens/childrens-book-news/article/61119-harriet-the-spy-celebrates-50-years-of-sleuthing.html

When I first read Harriet the Spy, I was about nine.  For the first time, I recognized myself in print.  I didn’t look like Harriet (although I appreciated that she chose to wear glasses, a condition foisted on me by virtue of bad eyes), and I lived not in Manhattan but in Berkeley, California, which struck me at the time as woefully pedestrian.    I went to a rather large public school, my father was a surgeon, and no one in my neck of the woods had either nannies or cooks.  I did not have a Sport or a Janie in my life: my best friend was Susan, who I think wanted to be a cartoonist.  (Now I see this as admirable, but at the time, I desperately wanted a friend who planned on blowing up the world.)

Nothing about me looked like Harriet.  And yet, I saw myself in her.  What I saw was a girl who understood what writing was, what it meant, why it mattered.  A girl who valued her interior life more than her social life and had to struggle to make room for the friends she loved a lot.   Someone who thought she didn’t care what other people thought about her but, in fact, did.  Someone who genuinely liked herself, even as she was able to take meticulous note of her flaws.

 

Of course, I tried to spy.  I couldn’t.  Houses in Berkeley were too exposed, and there were no dumbwaiters.  Also, I was shy and terrified of being caught.  In that, I was not like Harriet.  It was a source of profound disappointment.

I tried to like tomato sandwiches.  Ultimately, I had to admit that I liked pizza more.

But I did write everything down.  I looked at people wherever I was, and I wrote about them.  And that was how I found myself, how I finally realized who I was.

I strongly urge everyone who hasn’t already done so to read the book.  It is still wonderful, and you will be a better person for having met Harriet.  She remains a treasure.

Sometimes the Lamp Breaks

Yesterday was my mother’s 94^th birthday.

Robert and I drove up to see her.  Because she has dementia, it is difficult to go to a restaurant with her, so we brought flowers and took her for a drive, which she very much enjoys.

In the car, she said, “I thought you were coming around dinner time.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, Mom,” I said.  “I told you to write down that we were coming at twelve.  And you said J [her caregiver] was writing it down as we spoke.”

“I don’t remember,” she said.

“Well, I’m sorry you were surprised,” I said.  “J must have written it down wrong.”

“Oh, J is wonderful,” she said.  “I don’t blame her.  I blame you.  It’s easier.”

She said this without a trace of humor or sarcasm or irony.

I know that dementia is a terrible, insidious illness that wreaks havoc on one’s essential self.  But what she said—“I blame you.  It’s easier”— is my mother at her most truthful and least inhibited.  This is the way it has always been between us.  (“I had the most beautiful legs when I was young.  I weighed 125 pounds all my life until I had you,” she told me when I was a teenager.)

My father, who has been dead 36 years and whom I adored, had a thing about ownership.  “It broke,” I said once over the shattered remains of a lamp I had unintentionally knocked from a table.  “It didn’t break!  You broke it!” he thundered.  I can still hear him saying it.

My parents really did a number on me.  I am responsible.  Always, I am the one to blame.

Oy, that word.  Blame.  For many years, I seemed unconsciously drawn to people who liked to affix blame.  Years of therapy later, I’ve learned that the people who want to blame you for everything are usually the people who are afraid they are responsible for whatever is wrong in the world.  You are their scapegoat.  They are hiding behind you, terrified of their own flawed selves.

I’ve learned this, but I have to keep reminding myself that it’s true.  My subconscious self is very used to taking the hit.

Over the years, I’ve become defensive.  It’s not a quality of which I’m terribly proud.  I think I became defensive when I was learning, in therapy, to refuse blame, to stand up for myself.  Now, it’s just a bad habit, a behavior I no longer need.  I am trying to learn to squelch the impulse to defend myself against all complaints and grievances.  Because, you know, sometimes I really screw up.  And then I have to own it.

Oh, here’s another thing I’ve learned.  Sometimes, the lamp breaks.  (Not that one that I knocked off the table when I was six.   I broke that one.)  Sometimes, the washing machine overflows or the cell phone won’t pick up a signal or the car won’t start, and it’s not your—or anyone’s—fault.

That’s a really freeing thing to learn.

When my mother said, “I blame you,” I didn’t say a word.  Two years ago, I would have read her the riot act.  I would have felt righteously indignant. 

Yesterday, it was easy to stay silent.  

Later this week, I'll write about my mother's thing about men.

Running for Meg

Yesterday I ran four miles to honor a woman I never met.

On January 13, Meg Cross Menzies was out for a morning run when she was struck and killed by a drunk driver.  According to her obituary in the Richmond (Virginia) Times Dispatch, she was 34.  She is survived by her husband, her three young children, her parents, and other relatives.

Her friends designated Saturday, January 18^th, as Meg’s Miles Day.  (They note that with a careful rearrangement of spacing and punctuation, the day can be known as Meg Smiles Day.)  They asked runners worldwide to run in honor of Meg, to take off their headphones and be conscious of their surroundings, to feel grateful for good health and strong bodies.

In photos on her Facebook page, Meg looks beautiful, healthy, athletic, and happy.  In other photos, her children (whom I would guess to be about eight, seven, and five) pose with Santa.  In October, the whole family went to Disney World.  (I think it's Disney World.  I've never been there.  That's what it looks like.)

It’s an odd thing to be stalking someone I never knew.

 

As I was running, I couldn’t shake the heavy sadness I felt.  I knew I was supposed to be concentrating on gratitude for my own good fortune and the beauty around me, but I just couldn’t.  (And besides, I try to do that anyway.)  I knew that in order to honor Meg, I would have to write something down.

To anyone who even thinks about driving drunk, or texting while driving, or being otherwise criminally irresponsible, I would say that the harm and horror you might leave in your wake is unimaginable, and really, is that what you want to inflict on this world?  Is that what you want to leave behind?  Isn’t the slimmest possibility that this might actually be your legacy enough to get you to man up, sober up, look up, pay attention?

Also: it is very easy to look at photos of Meg’s beautiful children and feel a crushing sadness, a sense of devastation wrought, of innocence randomly shattered.  But those children will know pure, unadulterated happiness again: not now, and maybe not for a while, but someday.  Yes, they will.

Meg’s parents won’t.  I’m willing to bet they thought the hard part was over: they’d gotten their daughter through driver training and first boyfriends and living-away-from-home homesickness and whatever else befalls young adults when they’re out on their own, learning to navigate in the world.

   

I’m willing to bet they weren’t banking on this.

So yesterday, I ran four miles for Meg.  I know it didn’t do anything for all those people who are trying so hard to cope with such a grievous and unacceptable loss.  But I did it anyway, because when there's nothing you can do, you still have to do something. 

I send all my sympathy to Meg’s family and friends and pray for their comfort and peace.

On Lena Dunham Walking around Naked

I have a lot of writers on my mind today. 

For Christmas, Robert snuck into my office, took note of every Philip Roth novel I own, and then bought me all the ones I didn’t.  That pretty much takes care of my reading for the year.

Before the holidays, I read Alice McDermott’s Someone.  It’s one of those books you read slowly, so you don’t finish it too fast.  Beautiful.

Another holiday present: my friend Jim sent me Tom Barbash’s Stay Up with Me, a terrific collection of short stories.

But the writer I’m thinking about the most these days is Lena Dunham.  For those of you who don’t know, she is the twenty-seven-year-old creator of the HBO show “Girls.”  She writes and directs and stars in the show.  She has also made two movies (Creative Nonfiction and Tiny Furniture).  In her spare time, she writes for The New Yorker.

Twenty-seven.

When I was twenty-seven, I was married, pregnant, and working (unhappily) for Bank of America.  The closest I got to writing was drafting incentive compensation plans. 

Lena Dunham gets a lot of flak for her appearance.  She is a perfectly lovely looking young woman who has a lot of tattoos and does not appear to be a super- model.  But people are outraged—outraged—that she dares to appear naked in “Girls.” 

(By the way, the people who are outraged by this are the same people who watch “Game of Thrones” and tell their friends it’s quality television.  Which it may be.  But there are a lot of naked women in it.  Who look like super-models.)

Lena Dunham is quick to talk about the people who vilify her.  I follow her on Twitter.  She seems mildly amused and incredulous about the vitriol she inspires.  She does not appear detached; neither does she seem overly concerned or wounded.

Twenty-seven.  Twenty-seven.

When Lena Dunham is naked on “Girls,” it is often without reason.  Like, she’s just walking around without a shirt on.  This leads people to complain that there is unnecessary nudity on her show.

I disagree.  I believe that nowhere is nudity more necessary than it is on “Girls.”  Here’s why: because Lena Dunham knows—at age twenty-seven—that her nudity inspires outrage and vitriol and maliciousness and panic and senseless hatred. (Really.  Check out the tweets at @LenaDunhamTroll if you want to be disgusted.)  And she does it anyway.

Why panic?  Because she is a real woman who is comfortable with her nakedness.  (Or maybe she’s not, but she’s doing a fantastic job of acting as though she is.)  And this is just terrifying to men AND women.  I don’t have proof, but I’m willing to assume that a lot of these outraged people aren’t really outraged by Lena Dunham walking around naked.  They’re outraged by Lena Dunham walking around comfortably naked.

(By the way, outraged people.  If you think you look better naked than Lena Dunham, think again.  I bet you don’t.  Nobody does.  Unless you are Bar Refaeli, and even then.)

I wish Lena Dunham had been around when I was twenty-seven.  As it is, I’m glad she’s around for my twenty-four-year-old daughter and her friends.  I’m glad she’s out there writing and speaking and cavorting naked and leaning in.  And tweeting things like “Feminism is never a matter of convenience, not for me and I hope not for anyone I admire.”

And whoever is behind @LenaDunhamTroll?  Go fuck yourself.

Thoughts about Jewelry and Memories in the New Year

My father (who died 36 years ago) was a very smart man.  He studied hard to become a surgeon, and he read voraciously all his (too-short) life.  To me, he passed on a love of English literature and a respect for knowledge and fact.

 

Yesterday, I felt oddly compelled to go through my jewelry box.  Ostensibly, this was because last weekend, my mother asked me to return her wedding ring.  I told her I didn’t have it, and she asked me to check.
    

But I felt as though something else was urging me to take the box from the shelf where I keep it and pore over the tangled chains, lone earrings, and broken-latched bracelets I barely remember I own but can’t seem to throw away.

I’m funny about jewelry. I have pierced ears but a lot of hair, so I never wear earrings.  And I tend to wear the same pieces over and over: two cuff bracelets (one given to me by my son, another by my friend Jim), a ring with a silver horse on it that I bought in London, another with a dolphin, a gift from my daughter.  Plus a diamond watch and a couple of things Robert has given me.  I have lots of beautiful jewelry made by my friend Tracy, and I wear it often.  It makes me feel cooler than I am, because Tracy is one of the coolest people on the planet, and I know if she’s made something, it is unarguably fantastic.

 

In general, I wear jewelry that means something to me.  I’m not very good at buying a piece because I like the look of it or think it will go well with something else (which is what I love about shopping for clothes).  I like wearing jewelry that people important in my life have given me.

I never did find my mother’s wedding ring.

 

But I found something my father gave me a few years before he died: his Phi Beta Kappa key, inscribed with his name, his college (UC Berkeley), and the year he was graduated (1944, when he was 20).

Immediately on finding it, I dug around for a silver chain (with a working latch) and hung the key around my neck.  I have decided I will wear it for a while.  It makes me feel close to him.

Today is the second day of 2014—happy new year!!—and I find myself thinking about someone who has been dead more than a quarter of a century.  Someone I only knew for nineteen years, who never knew me as an adult, a writer, or a mother. 

My mother—soon to be ninety-four, with ever-worsening dementia—is losing her past.  It is slipping away, like the foam that washes up the beach and then ebbs, swallowed by the depths behind it.  Each moment disappears into a vast abyss of moments, all the same, un-remembered.

Today, moving forward, I am so grateful  to have that key—that link to an old time—and to remember why it was important to my dad and why he gave it to me.