Thinking of a friend

I get overwhelmed. I do. I think I may seem to have it together to the people I work with, to my friends. But sometimes I just want to fall apart. Just crumple in a heap and cry for days. Stare at the walls, drink nothing but tea and vodka.  Eat only potato chips, never change out of my pajamas.  It seems like too much sometimes.

The kids fighting.  Smacking each other with the intent to really do some damage.  (And then happily reading comics together a mere 5 minutes later).  The pressure to support the family. Just me. Supporting myself, the kids, the ex even. What if something happens to me? What if the powers that be just decide they don't need me anymore?  I don’t pull my weight.  I'm no good. I am no longer shiny and new (I was never really shiny to them anyway but even less luster is surely possible). What if, I am, proverbially, pink slipped?  Any of these things could happen.  Why won't he share this burden with me?

And then, I am stopped in my tracks. In the midst of being overwhelmed, tragedy strikes an old friend. Friend might not be the right word. An idol. Tracee was a gymnast, slightly older than me. A child wonder and member of the 1980 Olympic team, the team that didn't compete due to a US led boycott. Politics intervened in an incomprehensible manner, at least to a bunch of teenagers who'd trained more than half their lives for this.  And, of course, the starry eyed children that anticipated the Russia games and the chance to see a Kathy or Beth or Marcia win a medal.  We loved Nadia and Olga, but were just aching to see one of our own up there on the podium.

Tracee went on to participate in the 1984 games in Los Angeles; no longer the spunky youngster, four short years later, she was a senior member of the team that won silver, a first for USA Gymnastics.   Though this team was led by Mary Lou, at least according to the TV coverage and post games Wheaties boxes, I cheered for Tracee and Kathy Johnson. The mature. The graceful. The courageous.

Tracee always had a kind word of guidance for me or any teary eyed young girl, who just fell off the beam, or face planted her last tumbling run.  She had been through it. The ups and downs. She was on top and then she wasn't.  She was perseverance incarnate and had the silver medal to show for it.

And in the last few years, we became email friends. She read my book. "Thank goodness," she said. "Someone finally said it all." What courage, she said. This, from courage itself.

This tragedy knows no mercy. Her son, Miles, not yet 5, accidentally strangled himself. The smile on this kid could melt a heart, un-panic a panicker. Remind you why you're here. And why nothing is that bad. Except this.

I have ached for her over the last week. How to undo what is done? How to will her the chance at maybe not happiness but peace, one day. Is it even possible? It seems maybe not. To lose a child is surely the worst thing that can happen to a person. And for it to happen in such a gruesome manner can only be a relentless nightmare.  The woulda coulda shoulda’s must drive a mother to the brink of madness, perhaps even over it. The collision of circumstances required for this to have happened is stupefying. It makes one believe, a non-believer like me, that somehow it had to have been meant to be. How else could this many things have smashed together within the span of a few seconds, to produce such a hideous result?  Is there some meaning, some learning, to be gleaned?  I don't really think that way, but what can one do at a time like this but search for meaning and pray for the mourners?

I don't pray. Not to God anyway. But I have found myself on my knees in recent days, unable to catch my breath. Please make it so that this child did not suffer. Please make it so that his parents can remember the sweetness of his breath, the stars in his eyes. Please make it so that they can find their way to some sort of equanimity. One day. Please make it so that my boys keep pounding on each other only to find themselves, moments later, reading Iron Man together on the couch. Side by side.  In plain view.

Dear Discreet Cougar

A few days ago, I received a spam email addressed to Discreet Cougar. Yowzer. I am hoping I am neither, though that hope is likely in vain. My age qualifies me as a "cougar", I know.  Though whether my looks do or not is up to the beholder. Are cougars well maintained? Or just ungracefully fighting the aging process? Are they pathetic or bold? Or both? I'm not sure and is anyone really using that term anymore? Has it not yet gone the way of "disco", "rad", "awww snap" and "cherry"? Can't I just be a not totally old looking 40-something rather than a "cougar" with all the desperation that term seems to conjure? In my mind's eye, Cougars wear too much make-up, inject too much Botox, get their boobs puffed up, wear spandex or some other too tight synthetic fabrication, all in a frenzied attempt to appear younger than they are.  This ungraceful endeavor is in service of wooing men much too young for them, as these ladies (who don't look young by the way, they look their age, with fake ones) are simply unwilling to face the fact that these gents are no longer in their wheelhouse.

As far as "discreet" goes, not something I've ever been known for. Loud. Boisterous. Sure. Not decorous. And "discreet" has a cagey connotation, a characteristic I try to avoid.

Anyway, I deleted the email as you would with any spam. But started thinking about age and dating and the fucked up dynamic of being a 42 year old woman who has never really dated and now is faced with having to. On match.com the men in my age range are, by and large, looking for women that top out at 35. They took their time finding that special gal, and now in their mid-40s have decided they want children! So what choice do they have but to go young.

Since I signed up I've gotten more emails from men 55 and up than I care to ponder.  You are not my cohort! You are much older than me! Leave me alone silver fox (if you were a silver fox by the way, I might reconsider, but you are simply "grandpa")!

Of those few that have decided they are willing to consider a woman in her 40's, since they too are in their 40's, my first requirement is: a job. A job that he likes. Sounds simple. But you'd be surprised.  It doesn't have to be lucrative. But he has to be passionate about it.  I've had four first dates. No second dates. One fellow who we'll call "Short and Angry" listed himself as a "trader" but then told me he hasn't worked in 5 years.  Eject.

First guy was under-employed. He said "self-employed" but he meant under.  We'll call him "Hippie Buddhist". We met for coffee. It was fine. I was too ... just too.  He lives up North, takes graphic design projects when he finds them and is engaged in studying meditation and Buddhism.  I told him I have one speed and it isn't slow and that was about the end of that. But he sent a nice note after and it was very encouraging in that I was able to go on a date, enjoy a pleasant conversation and leave knowing I wouldn't see him again but that there would be no awkward extrication. We'd shake hands and that would be it.  Ta da!

Second guy, had a job! A great job (or so he said).  He has a shorthand name as well but I won't use it for fear of being offensive.  He was ever so pleased with himself, in a way that I actually had a ton of empathy for. He'd felt criticized and not good enough for years in his marriage and now that he was outside of that dysfunction, he looked in the mirror (euphemistically) and said: Hey, I'm pretty terrific! Which would be fine. If he didn't talk about how cute he was, and how much money he made, and then try to get me back to his place repeatedly which was not going to happen. When I was younger I could sleep with people if 1) I was drunk enough, 2) I'd harbored feelings for them for some time having eyed them around campus. I can't do that now. There isn't drunk enough and I've never seen these fellows before as San Francisco is a relatively big city.  I need to be wooed. I need to fall. Not hard. But there has to be some emotional falling before the panties fall.

On to number #3. "Wine guy".  He assumed I would be endlessly fascinated by how he got into the wine game. Eh. He also seemed to have tremendous disdain for those corporate types who carry smart phones (yikes) and can afford to buy the wine he's hocking. I don't buy $80 bottles of wine. I'm more low key than that and I can't taste the difference anyway. But if that's what you're selling and that's what you like, you can't hate the people that can actually pay for it. Well you can. But it seems counter-productive.   Hand shake, thanks, bye.

And then came "Short and Angry" also known as "Jobless". Who, via email, I'd had tremendously high hopes for because he seemed so smart and funny. So this one was most disappointing. I'm now taking a break to gather myself but then I will try again. None of these excursions have been the least bit painful. I've spent a pleasant enough 2 hours with each fellow, started out hopeful and quickly turned an about face. Which is I'm sure exactly how they felt about me, and Lord knows what nick name they've ascribed - I can only imagine - "Corporate Bitch with 2 Smart Phones", "Agro Levi's Lady", or "Still Into Her Ex". These are all viable appellations to assign, I suppose, without the full picture.

I remain hopeful. I will keep at it. As my friend Anna tells me (and has been said many times before), you have to kiss a lot of frogs.

Croak croak.  Ribbit.

A day at the park

I took the kids to the panhandle this morning. A usual occurrence.  We go when the sun is out to throw the baseball around.  Virgil pitches, I hit and Wyatt mans the outfield. Today we had a few extra players. My brother Chris and his two little guys joined us, creating more chaos, and fun, than normal. Anyway, all of this is to say, it was a beautiful day and we were having a pleasant time of it.

You get used to the fact that there are always vagrants lingering with 40 ouncers of malt liquor, matted hair and mangy dogs. They're generally fairly benign. I guess it's a San Francisco thing. I've lived near that panhandle, which shoots east off of Golden Gate Park, for almost 20 years. They gather in groups, near the park benches. They drink their forties, talk smack to each other and generally leave the joggers, kids and vast array of health seeking exercisers alone.

Today a bigger group had gathered. They were each of them identical in layers of sooty clothing, dreadlocked hair, smudged faces and a Pigpen like cloud hovering. We settled in not too far to begin our games. I didn't think twice about being close. I suppose a suburbanite might have balked. But like I said, they are fixtures of panhandle life and I barely pay them any mind. Like dogs, dog poop and bicyclists who would just assume mow you down if you cross the dotted white line on the bike path as key your SUV. (I don't have an SUV.  They're not well regarded in these parts which isn't why I don't have one. I don't have one because I don't regard them highly. But wouldn't key one. Some of the SF-ers are more aggressive in their eco-stance. But I digress...)

Wyatt and my brother are playing catch. Virgil is teaching his nephews how to hold the bat. I'm going back and forth between the two sects. When I hear: "You did this. We didn't do this man! You did this to yourself!!" I turn and two of the homeless men have a third on the ground and they are stomping on his head. I'm floored. I'm not scared. But don't really want my kids witnessing this. I've never seen any kind of outbreak, the group turning against a member, in all my time living here.  At no point do I fear for myself or children.  Oddly no one really pays it any attention. We are trained to tune these people out. They are everywhere. There's a general notion that some of them have chosen this life, that if they were offered something different they would not accept. They are different than the homeless people you see downtown. I don't know if I buy into this "they chose it" stance. I suspect many are runaways, many are mentally ill. I don't hold it against them that they drink. I'd drink if I lived in the park and slept in a tunnel. They don't ask for money. It's a strange dynamic. They don't want to be seen, it seems.

So it's not terribly surprising that no one stops. No one appears to even notice. When they're done kicking him in the head, which takes maybe a minute, the crowd of them disperses.   The guy who was beaten gets up, stumbles around (was he stumbling because he was drunk? or because his head was smashed?), his face is bleeding but not very much. He walks in a circle for a bit and then plants himself and seems to doze off on his back. I play catch.

But then I can't. What if he has a horrible head injury and he's actually dying right in front of us? I get the feeling that I am breaking some code between the Golden Gate Park homeless and it's nearby denizens by seeing him. And calling the police. But I do.  My brother is surprised. Not because he lacks empathy. This he does not. It's just that no one does this. You're not supposed to notice them. They want it this way. If you don't notice them you won't care if they drink and smoke pot in the park. And you also won't call the police if one appears down for the count. There's good and bad for them in this silent pact. What's in it for those of us who live here, I'm not sure other than our liberal mindedness would be proven disingenuous if we were to chase them from their 'home' when they're not bothering us.

After calling 911, I have a fleeting thought - am I calling because I saw that show "What would you do?" on TV last weekend? Where terrible pranks are played on unsuspecting passersby. A nasty act (performed by an actor) is performed upon some other actor - a fat woman is counseled by a waitress that she shouldn't order a cheeseburger, a teenage girl is denied birth control by a pharmacist because he is morally opposed - to see if the witnesses will intervene. Many do not. Some do. I hope this is not why I call. But if it is, I guess the show's not all prurient badness.

The police and an ambulance are there in seconds. Go San Francisco. They put the man on a stretcher and take him away. I approach and tell them it was me who had called. They take down what I know. They are un-phased.  Of course. No one was murdered. It's a beautiful day in the park.

I'm left wondering if he's ok. I supposed I'll never know. I'm left wondering why they kicked him. And where they went when they wandered off.  And why why why I've only chosen to notice, really notice, these people for the first time today, after two decades of San Francisco life. And what I do now that I have.

C'mon over Angus!

My son Wyatt can be awkward. Maybe not awkward. Exceedingly shy, intense and nervous.  He didn't speak until he was over three years old.  He had panic attacks all last year, fearful, he said, of dying.  His first grade teacher told me he was the quietest kid he'd had in well over a decade of teaching. My dad - a pediatrician - said it might be "selective mutism" which I guess just means you don't talk when you don't feel like it.  Needless to say this makes it hard for the boy to make friends.

He frets about this. His older brother Virgil is what one might call a "social butterfly". He talks. A lot. Like really a lot. He won't stop talking to me right now while he's playing a video game and I am trying to write this.  It's a constant mind-numbing stream of inanities.  He's a good student but every teacher he's ever had has felt the need to speak with either me or his father about his spontaneous verbal eruptions. They seem to have calmed this year but his impetus to talk appears rooted in wanting to be included in every conversation. In every friendship. Which he manages to do. He finds himself at the center of the social circle of Ms. A's 5th grade class.

Thus Wyatt has said to me: I'll never have friends like Virgil, mom.  He squeezed my hand, a little desperate, pleading for help. Which cracked my heart a little bit though I managed to hide my weepy eyes.

So it was with tremendous relish that I rang young Angus' mother when Wyatt told me he wanted said Angus to come over to play. Yay! Wyatt made a friend. Yippee!! Happy happy day. I called. Angus' mother seemed confused. "Why?" she asked.  "Well...because. Wyatt likes Angus."

"Is this a sleepover or something?" she quipped. She didn't sound pleased in the slightest. Meanwhile, I was still grinning the grin of a canary eating cat.  I did not relent. We made a tentative plan. She didn't call me back though to confirm this tentative plan.  Why wasn't she as excited as I was? Was Angus too cool for my Wyatt? Was Wyatt an undesirable in the 2nd grade New Traditions class? Who knew, who cared.

I persevered. I texted, probably irritating the poor woman to death. She didn't seem to care if Angus came over or not. But I did. So here he is in my living room on a rainy Saturday. I didn't even know what he looked like, acted like, nothing, before I hassled his mom into bringing him over. He could've been the thug of our local elementary school, stealing lunch money and tripping kids with trays of chocolate milk and chicken nuggets. Thankfully he's not. He's a sweet kid with big glasses and teeth awry. Wyatt says he's smart and that's why he likes him. That's my boy.

They're playing Wii and then a round of monopoly. And I think Wyatt may just be unselecting 'mute' this year. Sigh.

No no, it's my fault

I've always worried a lot, panicked in some instances, about whether I'm doing things right. In a way that might bring approval. In a way that avoids descriptions like lazy, unfocused, undisciplined, stupid, mean.  This is cowardly, I am sure. I don't want to see those scathing words attached to my name, so I toil against them. Not for something, but against something. Avoidance.

I don't know if it started with gymnastics - my coaches were very critical and I would have done anything to avoid that raging criticism, avoidance of it amounted to praise - or if it was simply honed there. My therapist - who I haven't seen in some time, but probably should, many of my friends would assert - said that it was innate in me, but that it was sharpened through gymnastics. Because it worked. In my desire to extract approval, I worked very hard. Sometimes against my own best interests (broken ankle, dragged behind me, training still - I didn't realize this would have repercussions later in life). And when I worked very hard, I met some degree of success. So there you have it.  Fear of disapproval --> tenacity --> moderate success -->avoidance of disapproval --> more hard work --> more moderate success.

So it is who I am and that is fine. I've come to accept it, I think. I've turned it over and over, looked at it from many angles. In a desire to make others proud or at least not mad, I work. I take blame sometimes deserved, sometimes maybe not, though I never believe that when my boss tells me so (this wasn't you, you know?) He's missing my role in it, I think. He's being nice, because I beat him to the punch. But in all this self-flagellation, I achieve something. And make myself proud. I am reminded here of Amy Chua's philosophy on parenting, which she claims is "Chinese" in nature. Be hard on your kids, make them work beyond what they would ever feel was comfortable, because you believe in them, because it will make them successful. Not being exceedingly tough on them - in her case demanding hours of violin practice a day, no TV or sleepovers, calling one daughter 'garbage' in public - amounts to not believing in them, prompting failure.  My coaches must have been secretly Chinese.

Anyway, I now find myself wondering, extremely anxious, about whether I'm separating from my husband right. Whether I'm making him mad. I know I already made him very mad. And very sad. I left. I fucked up. My egregious mistakes feel unrecoverable and irrevocable. In my heart, I can't see what he's done in this, though when I read old journals, I know in my head, he did stuff. I just don't feel it. And it doesn't matter anyway, I know, because here we are. No point is divvying up blame now, is there?

But maybe I can make up a little ground by being good at getting a divorce. My past mistakes are something I will have to learn to live with. Something that will grow duller over time, I hope. You'd like to think that by willing something enough - I am desperate to take that back, that action, those words -  you could actually change what happened.  But you can't.  It doesn't stop you from trying, playing it over and over in your mind. If only...

But now, in the moment, am I doing this right?  This thing I can still change because I haven't fully done it yet. Am I being nice? Am I being fair? Is he getting what he needs? Does he have enough money? I just dropped my kids off at his house and find myself wondering, is he madder than normal? Have I done something wrong today? How do I fix it? How do I avoid making him hurt more? Do I ask him? No. Doesn't seem possible given how little we speak. So I am guessing. Inaccurately, I am almost certain.

Can I let go of trying to satisfy his expectations? Should I? If I do, will it change my entire orientation to the world, to life? And is that good or bad?

At worst, I'm a people pleaser. At best, I'm driven. How do I lose the first, and keep the second? How does a person accept appropriate blame, but not carry the whole of it around all the time? Accountability, but with limits, with - I hate this word, but can't think of another - boundaries. In marriage, in work, in child rearing. If I don't learn it, it's going to eat me up. So I better get on it, work on pleasing myself. That came out wrong.  You know what I mean.

Tacos and tearfulness

Just the other night as I was setting the table for dinner, I spontaneously combusted into tears in front of my two boys.  This spontaneous combustion happens fairy regularly these days but I try to keep it in check when they are around.  Little boys don't need to feel like they need to take care of their mother. Unfortunately, it seems to be not all that controllable right now. It is truly an unexpected explosion. Nonetheless, this was the first time I'd done it in front of them. If they've been there when it's happened in the past, I've managed to seek cover in the bathroom for long enough to hide any trace of weepiness. Not so this time.

It had been a very difficult day. The first day that my husband and I spent locked in a mediator's office trying to negotiate the terms of our marital dissolution, as the mediator politely and euphemistically likes to call it. We were arguing - maybe debating is a better word - about the terms of our impending divorce. How much alimony and child support should I be paying and for how long.  Needless to say I was saddened to be having these conversations, utterly confounded by the fact that I was sitting in a room with the man I married and had two children with and neither of us could look each other in the eye. And crushed under the weight of the probability that I will be financially on the hook for a very long time to come. At times I felt barely able to breathe from the pressure of knowing that there would never be a break for me, from the pressures of work, given the likely terms of our future arrangement.  Part of me wanted to jump into his lap and throw my arms around him and feel his scratchy face against my cheek again.  Smell his warm neck.  And part of me wanted to bang the table in frustration and fear and rage.

So I started crying while I put the tacos on the table. At first, my face contorted. Virgil said: mommy you're making a really weird face. Oh! You're crying.

"Yes, I am. I had a hard day.  I'm sorry. I shouldn't."

"It's ok, mom. You should cry if you're sad. You should let it out," Virgil empathized. Quite a kid.

"Are you sad that Aunt Rachel's dad died?" asked Wyatt.

"Well, sure, I'm sad for her. But I didn't know him very well. But I am very sad for Aunt Rachel. And I'm sad that Brain (our cat) died. And I miss daddy. And our family. And work is really hard right now. But I'll be ok. Let's have some tacos."

"It'll be ok, mom. And you can always tell us what's wrong. Really, it's ok."

And I felt better. And we ate tacos.

Sunday Black

A long Sunday awaits. The Sunday blues have taken on an entirely new shade of blue (deeper, darker) since Sunday has become the day I return my kids to their father.  No longer a hazy, ill-defined sense of sadness. Sundays are sadness incarnate.   I'm fraught contemplating the 12 hour stretch ahead with no human interaction. And knowing that I won't see my kids until 3:30 on Wednesday afternoon when they are finished school for the day. I will try to put some of my new year's resolutions to work today. Make use of my time alone to enjoy the things I like to do (what are those again?) Write down the things that bother me, make me panic so I can put them out there, with the vague and hopeful notion that if they are "out there, on paper" they won't rot in my gut. Like: the agitated frenzy that sets in about 10 hours in, that my kids won't want to come back to me on Wednesday. There I wrote it down.  Is it mitigated? We'll see.

I will exercise. Cry less. Not not at all. Just less.

Ok. Here we go.