friendship – Jaime Alexis Stathis

Love in the Time of Love

Because reading is at the absolute top of my favorite-things-to-do list, I needed to do some rudimentary math to calculate how many books I needed to bring with me for three months on Ibiza. I use the Kindle app on my iPad—so I knew that I’d have infinite books available for airplanes and indoor/night reading—but I needed to know I’d have enough books for beach reading.

My suitcase has four pockets that seem made for books (or dirty laundry), so that was the number I gave myself to work with. It was hard to pass up some of the unread titles already on my shelf—The House of Sand and Fog, Just Kids, Sister Water—but after an absurd amount of toiling I hammered out my summer reading list.

I started with Beautiful Ruins, a story that takes place over fifty years mainly in Italy and Los Angeles, but—like a sneak-attack preview of my future—an area of Idaho not far from Missoula makes a cameo appearance toward the end. Beautiful Ruins is a clever book. It bridges small village life with big-city dreams, and weaves together stories over entire lifetimes. The common thread is love in various forms: lost, reclaimed, misdirected, selfish, silly, self-defeating, desperate, undeserved, etc.

Thinking of love in it’s various forms made me think of this:

There are so many ways to love.

Beautiful Ruins is poignant but really funny too. I marked many pages with stars, hearts, and underlinings, and in the back made a list of page numbers that include images so good I need to share them withy a friend. I always write my name in my books as well as the place and date when I read it. I can usually look at that and be thrust instantly back to the place I was in (both physically and emotionally) when I first read the book. My markings serve the same purpose, and for Beautiful Ruins it will always take me to the time I lived in a rustic pagoda-style hut tucked into a hill previously burned by fire. It also happened to be the place where my book matched my bedding:

Jess Walter wrote about wishes that get upgraded to prayers, and how “Words and emotions are simple currencies. If we inflate them they lose their value, just like money.” He wrote about how foreigners view Americans, “It had such an open quality, was such a clearly American face…He believed he could spot an American anywhere by that quality—that openness, that stubborn belief in possibility…” I marked that line as interesting though it would be another couple of months before I really understood both the truth and gravity of that statement.

I finished Beautiful Ruins, but wasn’t quite ready to let Jess Walter out of my sight, so I read every word on those pages including an interview with the author in the back where he says,

“The story itself was pretty simple, reflecting a question I had asked myself: what might cause a man to go looking for a woman he hasn’t seen in years? I wonder if the truth we know from physics—that an object has the most stored energy right before it acts (think of a drawn bow)—was true of romance too, if potential wasn’t, in some way, love’s most powerful form.”

Holy Crap. This sentence was how I started my summer, and it became the self-fulfilling, bottomless, occasionally painful thesis for my time spent in Europe.

The next book I dug into was Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. I’m not even into thrillers, but this one is psychological and got me thinking about things I didn’t even know I cared to think about. I even cheated one night and read a few pages in bed. By the time I started it I’d made friends I enjoyed taking to and laughing with, so often toted the book to the beach but never even poised my pen over the open pages.

The Secret History is an upfront book. In the very first paragraph we know someone has died and we even know who, then in the second paragraph we’re told it was a murder yet it takes three hundred pages before the act happens, and then almost that many more pages to flush it all out. I also chose to read this very long book with deliberate slowness—I’d read a chapter and then assimilate the pages with a good, long swim—so I wound up carried The Secret History around in my beach bag for so many weeks that it needed several rounds of surgical taping to make it through.

The end of The Secret History was a pisser because I hated to say goodbye to it (even after 558 pages) and because I wasn’t sure what to read next. One of the books I brought with me is a book I’ve wanted to want to read for over a decade, but although I’ve held the book in my hands like it’s a treasure (and it is) I’ve never been able to sink my heart into it the way I’ve hoped.

I think I can officially say the stars may never align for A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and me, though I’ll never say never. Even though it’s core is autobiographical, it’s not quite rooted in reality enough for me. Without any attachment to the pages, I left it behind knowing that finding it on the yoga retreat’s bookshelves would be total score for someone.

I have a male friend I’ve known for a while now. One summer when I was particularly overwhelmed and self-punishing he’d twist my arm into doing fun stuff I swore I didn’t have time for. Sometimes he’d announce we were going to float the river or go out to dinner and I’d say, “I can’t. I have to get my act together.” He’d sigh, look at me, and say, “No you don’t, Jaime, it’s just an act anyway.” One evening right before I moved away, we lounged on twin couches watching something funny on television, and he turned to me and said, “Isn’t unrequited love the best?”

Both Beautiful Ruins and The Secret History feature unrequited love as a character, and a strong character at that. If my summer thesis was about the potential of love, then my closing statement comes from a book that is the unofficial bible of unrequited love, Love in the Time of Cholera, AKA as the last beach-read that I started (and enjoyed) but didn’t finish. The truth is that I enjoyed the book, but barely got into it, ending at the spot where Fermina’s husband dies and she’s about to give it a go with a man who’s waited fifty years for her. But I got this, and this I needed:

“Think of love as a state of grace; not the means to anything but the alpha and omega, an end in itself.”

Maybe love isn’t about anything beyond the moment we are in it? What if….

There’s no actual cholera in the book that I know of, but it’s a punchy metaphor for lovesickness, which shares a lot of the same symptoms. There’s even an adjective—choleric—that refers to a disposition that’s at its worst is irritable and bad-tempered, but at it’s best is ambitious, passionate, and strong-willed. Choleric people like to get a job done and they like to do it ASAP. They’re good at planning but are also impulsive and restless. The element associated with this element is fire. Folks, I think I might be choleric.

I don’t think I’m choleric ALL of the time, but it’s one of my default settings in love for sure. In my last blog post I wrote about how grateful I was when a man I started seeing at the end of the summer called me out on some bullshit behavior. We’d had our first disagreement and I acted like the word choleric was invented for me. The worst part about it was that I’d let a little thing become a bigger thing, and all day the poor guy tried to help me let it go, but I was having an absurdly hard time doing that.

Anyway.

Finally he called a spade a spade, and made it clear he knew what I was up to: I was behaving badly because I loved him and I wasn’t quite sure what to do about it. I hadn’t felt that way about anyone in a long time, and even as I was falling in love I future-tripped about all of the (quite realistic) roadblocks that stood in between a summer fling (flirty and trendy) and something with staying power (boots for inclement weather).

I left Ibiza for Rome, but I found the middle ground between Forever 21 and L.L. Bean, and arranged to spend ten days with Mario in Barcelona before I returned to New York. I knew there’d be a lot of joy in that time together, but I also knew that it would be emotionally with the reality that we had no idea when we might see each other again. I wasn’t exactly sure how choleric I would be…..

At some point I’d had a delusion of recharging my visa and spending ninety days in the USA before going back to Barcelona to live happily ever after, but a different love-related reality hit me the closer I got to it: there was no way in hell I was going to voluntarily spend any more time without Lucky. The summer had a unique set of family circumstances, but that was over and Lucky and I need to be together. He is hands down the number one person who’s taught me about the kind of love that’s as far from unrequited as it gets—the unconditional kind of love.

Somehow I was able to get my old job back, find friends who’ll take me in, and cobble together a plan for a road trip that involves visiting family and friends en route to Missoula. When I mapped all of my stops together it turns out that the shape of my trip is a slightly crooked smile, turned up and curled a little on the Northwest side. It even kinda sorta looks like a smirk, or the mirror image of a question mark depending on how you see it.

I’m beyond thrilled to be taking my old man on what is bound to be his last major road trip. A cross-country trip is enough for most people, but I’m basically doing everything BUT the part of the drive that’s a direct shot between NYC and Missoula.

Lucky has been traveling with me since day 1, and it’s really no big deal for him. Plus, we thoroughly enjoy each other’s company. But, at 12 ½ , is Lucky too old for a big trip? I suppose that’s possible, but he’s going to have a comfy area in the backseat and plenty of time to do what old dogs do best: sleep. If it doesn’t agree with him I’ll figure something out, take a more direct route, slow the pace, whatever he needs. In the meantime I know a few things to be true.

This is a dog who loves to travel:

When he’s tired he can cozy up:

He can get some space from his mama if he needs it:

He knows that there will always be something that makes it worth the trip:

In some rapid time-elapsed version of my current life I’d have an ending to the story I’m entrenched in. The passage of time would be apparent when the reel zips forward to Mario and I living in a sunbeam-filled cottage on a tree-lined street near a town that’s charming but still has a bit of grit. There will be a garden and one or both of us writing books. Soup simmering, tea brewing, even from a photo you can tell the place smells out of this world.

The aesthetic would be a mix of old and new with beautiful colors and textiles, heavy on the house plants. In the final frame one of us would turn to the camera with the surprise being a baby with the gentle eyes of a Labrador. These images will come as the credits roll, but there will be no more dialogue. Townes Van Zant singing “If I Needed You” will play, and people who cry during romantic comedies will cry.

But the thing is, I’m not one of those people who cries at the end of sappy love stories when everything goes right. I can barely sit through a Rom-Com unless I have the flu or five loads of laundry to fold. I’m just too realistic for those story lines, so when I find myself in a live version of one I hardly trust it and feel miscast in a role not appropriate for my range. But we all know that life’s best adventures begin outside our comfort zones.

As if it wasn’t bad enough leaving, I had one of those hideous, terrible, good-for-nothing departure times so my airport taxi picked me up at 5:00am. When we (still) weren’t sleeping at two in the morning Mario decided to hard boil some eggs for my snack bag that also included two cheese sandwiches, granola bars, breadsticks and a plum. He wrapped most of it in aluminum foil, and I overlooked the environmental impact of this to focus instead on the fact that he wrapped my sustenance in something so resistant to corrosion.

When I arrived home I was pretty battered, but I had more than a few things to look forward to and some surprises too. One of the surprises was a package from a friend I made at surf camp a few years ago. It was great timing, because in addition to being a nice treat, it was also a reminder that with a little effort we can stay in touch with the friends we meet traveling. I knew Tracy was sending me something because she asked for my address, but I wasn’t prepared to be so touched by it.

Tracy had sent me a mint-condition, vintage copy of The Mentor from 1919 that she came across while rummaging around in an antique store in Minnesota. “It made me think of you,” she said, and signed her note, “Blessings.” The Mentor is an obscure, defunct periodical, but an interesting one. Its purpose was to present information in an accessible way so that people might “learn one thing every day,” which is also inscribed on the cover.

The issue that Tracy sent was about fiction writing with a focus on women authors. It profiles a few writers and then gives some great writing advice that’s just as relevant today as it was ninety-five years ago, but the best advice is the very last thing printed on those pages:

Make The Spare Moment Count.

I’m starting to believe it’s the spare moments that matter most, the time that feels half-borrowed, half-stolen, like the cash you find in the pocket of a winter coat. It’s the time that suspends and contracts without warning, time that’s separate from limitations. It’s everything that exists beyond the outer limits of possibility.

The 40 Train’s Leaving the Station

At the beginning of April my friend Robert came to New York for a very quick trip. He asked me weeks in advance if I could meet him for breakfast before his friend arrived and they embarked on a spree of three Broadway shows in 24 hours. I didn’t hesitate to say “Yes, of course, I’ll crawl there if I have to.”

One of my favorite things about living in NYC is that I get to see so many people. Not only do a lot of my old and new friends live there, but scads of people pass through. Because I love Robert like a brother, I planned my week around having two precious hours eating overpriced eggs in midtown and talking as if no one was around. Our booth was an oasis.

After Robert and I said goodbye and made umpteen tentative plans to see each other soon, I headed off to do a few errands. I sold some coins and a ring in a creepy diamond district office, and then headed off on a hunt to find a simple nylon band for my grandfather’s Timex. The diamond district guys offered to sell me an embossed faux-crocodile for a good price, but I had my heart set on nylon. My Poppy wouldn’t have worn nylon, but it’s what I wanted.

The watch doesn’t even keep good time. It’s a wind-up, and requires winding more than once a day. It’s unreliable and high maintenance. At first I wondered about my sanity, wearing a watch that doesn’t keep time, but I like the multi-day reminder of him, though I don’t need a watch for that.

My father gave me a classy watch for my college graduation, but it’s not waterproof or practical for every day wear. I wear it when I need a confidence boost, like for an interview, because of the inscription on the inside, “Jaime, Keep on Believing. Love, Dad.” The poignancy of his words keeps increasing as time marches on, and as keeping faith becomes more important, crucial even to surviving.

Finding a nylon watch band proved to be a major project, even in NYC, but finally I remembered the old-timey shop in Grand Central and knew they would have loads of striped, preppy bands and hopefully a few solids, but I couldn’t remember where the shop was. I knew it was in one of the passages, but which one?

I got sweaty. Frustrated. Impatient. I used Google to get the shop’s name and called, but reached a recording to call a different number that I couldn’t remember every after three redials. Eventually I had to go to a bank’s deposit station and ballpoint the number on my hand, which felt like a throwback to a different era. I found out that the hole-in-the-wall shop (literally it is a hole in a wall) was located between tracks 38 and 39, so I hunted down that area of the terminal. I was not going home without an eight-dollar watch band.

On my way there I walked by the entrance to tracks 39 and 40. I peered down the ramp and saw that there was one train, the 40 train, and it was leaving the station. The passengers had boarded and I reached the platform in just enough time to catch this picture before the train pulled away.

I haven’t had a particularly tough time with turning 40, but then again I planned a few months ago to spend the entire month of May in Spain and Portugal, so there wasn’t a whole lot to be lamenting. Except a few things. There are always (kind of) a few things. Life is not a work of art, but good god the world sure is.

I finally finished writing a book (an accomplishment I thought at times I’d never see) but I don’t have an agent or a publisher. Yet. I keep telling myself that the key word is yet. A week at a yoga retreat taught me a lot about so many things, but one that we kept repeating is that things are just as they’re supposed to be. Patience. Stick with the uncomfortable moments, the pain, the delayed reward. Sit with it.

I had such a good time in Barcelona that I didn’t want to leave, but Ibiza welcomed me like a big hug. After about an hour alone at the pool, I met four British guys who after chatting with me for a short bit invited me to dinner with them. Nazed, Abi, Gully and Azeem are all first generation Brits with roots in India and Africa, and I think all of them speak five languages. Some of their fathers were friends back home, and these boys have all been friends since they were small.

I hesitated only for a moment about going to dinner with them. My gut said it was okay, and I knew with a few euros in my pocket I could get myself home. But why? Why would they want me to join their boys’ weekend away? It didn’t feel right to question their motives, which as it turns out are as pure as pure gets.

The boys are Muslim and I discovered at dinner that they don’t drink, which reassured me because I knew that although they might get hopped up on sugary, fizzy drinks, they wouldn’t have alcohol muddling their decision making. I felt safe. They’re all about my age, and we thought we should check out the famous Ibiza “club scene” though we were early in the season (it kicks off in June) and early to the club at 10:30. Geezers.

We ended up having tea and dessert back near the hotel where I snapped this picture of them that I coined their “boy band picture.” They’re well-dressed and refined, and unlike the majority of American men they don’t throw on a hoodie or fleece when it gets cold; they wear cardigans. Their boy band name was easy to come up with: THE CARDIGANS.

I spent the next day with The Cardigans poolside, laughing and joking like old friends. These are good men. They are patient, kind, and generous. They share. We had several round of food, beverages, ice cream and chocolate and I don’t think anything hit the table that we didn’t all offer each other a taste of.

I’m already pretty blessed in the faith department, but these are the kind of men you meet who restore faith. Faith can be easily lost or misplaced, but with time it always returns. My twelve days in Spain were extraordinary for faith boosting. The kindness of the Catalayunos (a population that doesn’t accept outsiders easily) blew me away. The kindness of a group of married men who simply thought I was funny and clever, shocked and surprised me in a way I hope I never fully recover from.

It was hard to leave The Cardigans, and I stayed several hours past my intended departure time because I could and because one of my favorite things about getting older is the ease with which I identify what I want. I enjoyed the south side of Ibiza because of the company of my new brothers, but the hectic club-scene isn’t my thing; I was ready to head over to Benirras, and I told the guys I’d let them know what it was like and if anything interesting was going on.

Benirras is special. It’s the only beach on Ibiza that doesn’t have a hotel. The yoga retreat is at a couple of villas and pagodas scattered about the hillside. Down on the beach there are a few restaurants including an elegant one, a pizzeria, a juice bar and two places for paella and typical Spanish food. They recently opened a spa, juice bar, and two small boutiques. Lounge chairs and umbrellas can be rented, and that’s it. It’s perfect in its minimalism. It happens to have everything I need.

I wasn’t sure it was enough to warrant The Cardigans coming over, but then I found out that the next night (Sunday) is the night of drumming in Benirras, which started as a protest against the first Iraq war and hasn’t stopped. I emailed Gully about it, and he wrote back, “We will come. We are missing you.” I melted. He also asked if they should wear beach gear or evening wear and I said it was kind of a hippie thing and it would be chilly so they should bring their cardigans.

I told a few of the yoga girls I’d met that my friends were coming over and that at least half of them would be wearing pressed button downs. They laughed and didn’t quite believe me. They also didn’t buy that The Cardigans intentions were pure with nothing ulterior, but you only need to be around them for a few minutes to see that The Cardigans are no-joke awesome.

They are direct, which I find relaxing because it’s exhausting to try to figure out what another person wants and/or if they’re the type who even knows how to express needs and wants. They’re also dead-pan funny with spot-on delivery. In short: The Cardigans are a delight.

The drumming intensifies as the sun goes down, and the crew of us took an “Ellen-style” selfie with the addition of Lucy, who lived across the hall from me in the villa and who must be the sweetest girl in all of London, if not the world.

I think everyone feels a touch of hesitation when they’re going into a group where they’ll be living, eating, and practicing yoga with a bunch of strangers from around the world, and then an enormous relief when it’s discovered they’re not all loons. I can honestly say that I enjoyed every single person on my Ibiza Yoga retreat. I got closer to some than to others, which is only natural; we were far too big a pack to roam everywhere together.

I spent most of my time with Lucy, Lisa (Ireland) and Sarah (Chicago, but had just finished a semester abroad in Barcelona) as well as Maija (the teacher) and Leonie from Holland. I blew out my first birthday candle with Lucy and Lisa (a full week early), and then another one a couple days later at the truly awesome Bambuddha Grove (google it) with the whole group. And it’s not even my birthday yet.

I’m telling 40 loud and clear that i’m not afraid of it. I might even be taunting 40 a little bit, “Oh yeah? What you got? I can almost do a handstand by myself…”

Maija, Leonia and I went to the hippie market one afternoon and we each bought a few things they we were individually drawn to, but we also bought friendship bracelets, friendship rings, and friendship shawls. We drank friendship beers and then friendship aperol spritzes. We drew the line at friendship caricatures and friendship piercings.

Lucy gave me a bracelet from the shop in Benirras for my birthday, and I’ve layered it on with the others and have a wrist full of metal, which symbolizes the raw self and the capacity to be transformed into a higher, incorruptible self. Yes,please.

Sure, I’m tanned and happy with a bunch of things wrapped around my arms so I look exactly like someone who just came from a yoga retreat on Ibiza. I do not care. I’m nearly 40. It’s time to stop caring for real. Why not look like exactly what we are?

A lot of people don’t tell you how terrific and liberating it is to turn 40. Maybe they don’t want to brag? I don’t know. I can let you know tomorrow. Maybe there’s a hesitance to admitting they’re happy to be aging gracefully without all the silly worries and imagined problems of the twenties and thirties bogging a person down. That stuff is heavy, weighty, and cumbersome.

It’s kind of like the opposite of how nobody tells you how hard it is to be married and to parent, because if they did nobody would do it. We don’t warn each other about the tough stuff, but act all blasé about the good stuff? C’mon, folks, let’s get it together. I’m on the edge of 40 and I’ve never felt happier. True story.

I wasn’t completely sad to be leaving Barcelona because I had Ibiza to look forward to, and I couldn’t be completely crushed leaving Ibiza because I was headed to meet my Soph (will explain in a different post) in Lisbon where I’m turning 40 with one of my dearest friends whose birthday follows mine by 4 days. It’s not just a birthDAY for each of us, it’s a birthWEEK.

Our 40 train is leaving the station. Together.

Stan, a Stinker

Eric Adema, my good friend from Kent, turned forty yesterday, and he asked this on his Facebook page:

“What I’d like more than anything else today is for everyone I know to go out and practice 1 random act of kindness on a total stranger. Most people I know do this anyway, but today make it an extra good one.”

How lovely, right? I think we should all do this on our fortieth birthdays. If we did—WOW!—the world would surely be a better place.

It was on my mind all day, but the thing about a random act of kindness is that it has to be spontaneous and, well, random. My friend Rich and I went out to lunch then ran errands around town. We stopped at Wired, the gorgeous, exotic coffee shop, and I thought about buying coffee and snacks for the high school boys who asked me outside, “Do we look seventeen?” But I was sitting outside enjoying my tea.

Rich and I were on our way out the door, when he stopped to say, “Good Afternoon, sir” to a man eating soup by the door. “Sir?” he said, “I’m no sir. I’m not an Officer or a Lieutenant?” I walked outside and left those two to work it out.

I sat there in the sun, drinking my tea, listening to as much as their conversation as I could hear, which was punctuated with boisterous laughs from both sides. I’m deep into the book I’m writing now, but always thinking of new books. One popped into mind, “Rich and Jaime Travel Around and Talk to Everyone.”

It’s true; we do. Now, I wrote about Levi and Amanda last week and labeled then my newest old friends because although we just met, we connected quickly and I hope to know them forever. Rich and I are actually old friends—we went to school together starting in Kindergarten—but for many years we lost touch until this winter in Taos, so he’s my oldest new friend. And everywhere we go, we talk. We connect to each other and to strangers through talking and sharing stories. It’s awesome.

NOTE: I love my friends. Every single one of you who brings so much joy to my life whether you’re near or far. I mean it. So much.

Rich and Stan came out to join me in the sun. This is where Stan and I officially met, and we hugged right out of the gate. He smelled my hair and neck and swooned a little, but we cooled him down and then we sat.

We sat there for a while and learned so much about him. He’s ninety-two years old. He has five kids with five different women. His youngest is twenty-six and his oldest is twenty-five years younger than him. We didn’t do the math, but I said, “Your youngest son’s mother must have been much younger than you?”

He described her as being “As big as a house” but lovely, and she was at “that age” he said, so I asked what age, though I knew. “Thirty-nine,” Stan told me. I told him I’m inching up on thirty-nine and he said, “Beautiful single women make the world go around.”

Rich had walked away, and not knowing that we’re good friends and not a couple, Stan said, “I’m not a stinker. I don’t break up marriages. I don’t break up couples. But YOU….Oh, my Stan said, “You.” We hugged again. Lots of hugging.

Rich came back and we all kept talking about Stan’s travels, his twenty-five years in Taos, his shopping list of one item—dish soap, which he recommends for the tub—and then we looked at his sketchbook of drawings. He was in Japan during WWII, and he’s traveled a lot since then. He’s made a family for himself here with the Native Americans at the pueblo and with the Spanish in the area too.

He told us about big, white cat who showed up and who he decided to feed. He told us about his neighbors and their dog, and how the woman of the house is “More beautiful than Beyonce,” and how he brings her son two toy cars every day. (That may not be random, but it sure is kind.)

The sun dipped behind some trees and Stan started to get cold. Rich and I had more errands to run, so it was time to say goodbye, for now. I couldn’t help but think of my Poppy, his own service in the second World War, and the flag I received at his funeral that tipped my scales big time. He absolutely hated goodbyes and didn’t say the word, so we always said, “See you later,” So I told Stan we’d see him soon and we knew we’d walk him inside.

It was clearly time for more hugs. I stood in front of Stan to help him out of his chair, and he ignored my hands and put his two hands firmly on my hips. He liked what he felt and wasn’t shy about expressing it.

We hugged. And hugged. And hugged. Stan said a couple of things that aren’t fit to print, but there was a mention of what might have been happening in his sweatpants, which he told us he has five pairs of and wears every day. He smelled my neck some more. He nuzzled right in there. He told me he liked my earrings. He wanted a kiss and I delivered. He wanted a “real kiss” but I laughed it off. He got a little frisky. He reminded me he doesn’t want any more children and I told him I didn’t think he had anything to worry about. We laughed. Rich said he wished he’d caught the whole thing on video, but he did snap a couple of pictures of the Love Fest between me and Stan, who despite turning out to be something of a stinker, made my day.

That’s the thing about a random act of kindness. You make someone else’s day, but yours is made too. Thanks, Eric Adema, for encouraging me to take the time to sit and spend an hour with a darling old stinker of a man; you’ve certainly brought much kindness to my life, old friend. Cheers to you and forty!

Neither Here Nor There

I never, ever type directly into WordPress (though I used to), but tonight is different: I’ve pulled an all-nighter.

At this age I do this quarterly at most with about half of those sleepless nights spent tossing and turning in bed wishing for sleep. But a couple of times a year it just seems like the right thing to do.

It is not right. It is inhumane. But when your airport shuttle is picking you up at 4:15 am, and at 7:00 pm the contents of the home you’re dismantling and dispersing are strewn everywhere, and your suitcase is still in the garage, and some of the clothes you plan to pack are still spinning in the washing machine…well, 11:00 and 12:00 and come quickly.

Even when friends help diligently, saying, “I can’t leave you like this…” I wanted to say, “I got it,” but even I’m not that good of a bluffer, and besides: I think those days are over. The days of bluffing, I mean. The days of pretending it’s all okay when even a blind man could sense it’s not.

Honesty is not overrated.

The clock ticks faster and faster just like it did when I pulled multiple all nighters every month studying for tests, frantically writing essays, and sometimes just because we were having too much fun to go to sleep.

It’s the week before Christmas and every seat on the plane is likely to be booked and every person will schlep slightly more than the required carryon allotment. But not me. I’m checking a bag and traveling light. I’m going to sleep, I hope, on my first flight, and when I get to MSP I’m going to do something I’ve never done: I’m going to get a massage, a manicure, a pedicure, a trim, a facial….i’m going to get whatever I have time for because…I deserve it?

Can i say that out loud? Sure, why not, especially if I’m following my new mantra: Honesty is not overrated.

(P.S. Once I’m lucid again I wonder if I’ll delete this post…)

Sentimental Value

‎”People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels.” —Charles Fort

This has been a tough post. I’ve rewritten it multiple times both in my head and on the screen. I could blame my second head cold of the winter (and it’s not even technically winter for another five weeks), or a lot of editing, backspacing, cutting and pasting. And don’t forget control + Z.

I’m thinking about what I wrote last week, about how “We’re all doing the best we can all of the time.” I wrote about how sometimes synchronicity abounds, and how sometimes we feel like we’re banging our heads against a wall. And sometimes the wall hammers back.

I’m also thinking of something a friend said years ago while she was dating a particularly challenging man, “If I expected him to act the way I want him to act I’d be disappointed, so instead I expect him to act that way he acts.” So simple. So complicated. So.

Election day had my nerves in tatters and I counteracted that by announcing on Facebook that I was going to send a big box to Sandy victims back east, and that if anyone in Missoula wanted to contribute I’d box their stuff and ship it. Two days later I had two big bundles delivered to my doorstep, and off to the garage I went to dig out more big boxes.

I picked up a few more generous heaps. I wanted to finish what I’d started, but started to worry about the cost of shipping. I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask, so I got in touch with a friend who works for a shipping company and asked if it would be possible for him to ship my boxes using his discount.

Thank goodness he said yes, because then another friend (who works in a real estate office with over fifty agents) said she’d let her co-workers know about my drive. Woah. My drive? Was this getting too big? When did a collection among a few friends turn into a drive? The only answer I could come up with was: when it needs to.

So, “I said yes! That would be awesome!” Her texts started rolled in letting me know about the big bags people were bringing in and the boxes she was packing and maybe I would need to do two pickups. {woah.}

I turned my living room into sorting/boxing stations and categorized the items. Kids clothes together, cozy sweats and fleeces together, guy stuff together. I packed the boxes tight. I rolled t-shirts and tucked socks into gaps and slid scarves into corners until all the air space was taken up. Then I wrote notes on cheap Snoopy cards, because I’m a sucker for a handwritten note and nobody writes enough anymore. I recently heard about Paperless Post—it’s sure nifty, but in my opinion it lacks the punch of finding something in your mailbox.

I’d been semi-annoying the friend who was going to ship the boxes all week. I wanted to be able to use his discount, but didn’t want to create too much extra work for him yet realized that was inevitable. He was going to have to schlep my boxes to work with him, so I felt obligated to let him know that my “one big box” was now looking to be quite a bit more than that, like maybe four, and asked if there was a limit. This guy is a gem of a human for a multitude of reasons, and he told me “No. No limit. Glad to help.” {I didn’t know yet that I’d be getting an incredibly generous SEVENTY-FIVE percent off.}

Before I went to pick up at the real estate company I had seven(ish) boxes, and my station wagon was not quite half full. As I was getting ready to walk out the door my friend asked, “ Is the boy coming? I have treats….” Lucky ran through the office like he owned the place, got his treats, gave his old buddy a bunch of hugs (he jumped up on her when she asked), then posed with her and the bounty.

Two of the best helpers with some of the boxes. Grateful for heavy-duty tape and a handcart. And those two.

Everything fit in my car, no second trip necessary, which was good because I didn’t want the generous shipper to have to make two trips, but I figured one more box wouldn’t tip the scales. Before the drop-off I went back in my house and got ruthless with my drawers, my closet, and myself.

I found half a dozen pairs of good socks. A scarf. Another hat. Oh no, could I pack that hat? The hat is in great shape, but twenty years old. I brought in on my 1992 post-high school NOLS trip. It’s freezing in the Wind River Range, even in July, and I slept in that hat every night for thirty nights. If I took a “bath” in an above tree line lake with a view of the snow that was its source, that hat was the first thing I put on before drying myself with my “towel,” which on a NOLS trip is a bandana that triples as napkin and snot rag. That hat served me well then, but now? I don’t wear it because it barely covers my ears. It’s a kid’s hat. It was time to give it up. (By the way, I still have the the long underwear top and fleece jacket from that trip. Please, no judging.)

Two Yankees caps hung on my back door hooks. Do I need two? No. The unworn one went in, despite the fact that it was a gift from my Uncle Jimmy who sends me the sweetest care packages filled with pieces of New York.

Jimmy was a NYFD firefighter who became President of the Uniformed Firefighters Association. His son Michael hoped to follow in his father’s footsteps, but boarded Engine 33 at its East Village firehouse in civilian clothes—he was off-duty—the morning of September 11, 2001 and died when the North Tower collapsed. His body was among 244 bodies found intact.

Among the many gifts Uncle Jimmy has sent me, I have a few t-shirts commemorating Michael and his childhood friend David Arce, who he worked and died with. In my quest to find things to send to Sandy victims I came across a navy blue t-shirt, too big for me and never worn, with Michael and David’s names on the front and a big, white FDNY on the back.

It was hard to let it go. I never wore the shirt though I enjoyed looking at it, but I wondered if the unearthing of that shirt might make someone’s day the way it had made mine numerous times.

I imagined a pile of meaningless t-shirts on a folding table somewhere in New York or New jersey. I imagined someone just needing something to sleep in. I imagined the possibility that someone who knew Michael or David might find that shirt. The discovery of that shirt might provide a glimmer of hope in a seemingly hopeless situation.

Or maybe they know Jimmy or had heard of him. In addition to his union work for the FDNY, Jimmy also lobbied lawmakers to pass the James Zadroga Act, which provides treatment and compensation for Ground Zero workers. (Daily Blood Boil: Health insurance won’t cover people hurt at work—even in a national crisis such as the attack on the WTC—so this was necessary to help those hurt there.)

And now for the daily non sequitur: New Yorkers are survivors. But we know this.

I ~~didn’t~~ couldn’t stop there.

An old boyfriend gave me a fancy Paul Smith hat and scarf set for Christmas in 2005 (AKA almost seven years ago). I loved it. The bright color blocking, the fine merino wool, the thoughtfulness that he picked something “so me.” I loved that set, but for a variety of reasons rarely wore it. The shape of the hat didn’t quite work with my head, and the unlined Merino irritated my forehead. The scarf was a little stiff. But that’s only part of the story.

I don’t like to be too matchy-matchy (this from a former girl who adored the mix-and-matchability of Esprit in the 1980s), and for whatever reason I didn’t want to separate the pieces. When worn together something that was “so me” became exactly it’s opposite.

He’d bought the set at Barney’s, and each piece probably cost close to two hundred dollars. It was shame for it to be unworn, though they did look cute on the shelf in my closet. Truth be told, I tend to “save” my more expensive things and wear the bargains. This is a habit I’m breaking myself of slowly but surely; I understand why I (and other people) do this, but it’s really silly.

It translates into this: I usually have a brand new cashmere sweater on hand to wear on a date (best not to ask when my last proper date was), but I walk around most days in Mossimo. I’d moved that dang scarf and hat into and out of too many houses and storage units to count; into the box it went.

More. I wanted to put more in there but had just a little bit of room. Then I saw the perfect thing: a pair of sterling silver Tiffany hoop earrings. They’d been re-gifted to me ages ago, and I’d been meaning to sell them on eBay. For years. But I hadn’t. Guilt? Hard to say.

I tucked them into their robin egg blue bags then into a wooden, heart shaped box and placed that heart on top of the box before cramming it between my thighs like a Thighmaster and forcing it closed with tape. Done.

There’s a good chance they’ll make someone’s day, and when I almost second-guessed the decision I reminded myself: Some people lost everything. Everything. It was a win-win. I packed some sentimental value into that final box, but also some needless baggage.

There is tremendous sorrow and suffering in the world, and it’s often beyond explanation. And what do I do with the unexplainable? I look for answers in astrology. Rob Brezsny, one of my faves, let me know that November 13^thwas World Kindness Day. (This is fairly irrelevant, but 11/13 also happens to be my half-birthday, and I dare to ask: what kind of thirty eight year old counts half birthdays?)

Brezsny quotes journalist Andy Fraser:

“Scientific research is showing that being kind and compassionate to others is surprisingly good for you. Did you know that when we do something for someone else it activates the same parts of the brain that turn on when we eat a piece of chocolate, receive a reward, or have sex?”

Oh good. That makes sense. But there was another piece to the astrological puzzle this week. Deborah O’Connor, another favorite astrologer who doesn’t have the exposure of Brezsny, emails notes when the moon, planets and stars align in particularly precarious positions. Below is a condensed version of her notes from this week. If you want the complete version email me at jaimestathis@yahoo.com.

The Sun is eclipsed Tuesday afternoon/evening, and many of the other planets are shifting so intensely that you may feel as if you’ve wandered into a carnival and are wondering which wild ride would be the least bumpy. Hang on. This month promises to stay interesting.

We are being shown what we’ve hidden, or are hiding from. This deep work cannot be carried on by your shining intellect. You must trust your instincts on this, allow yourself to believe those feelings you keep trying to shove back into the depths of your chest. Stop that. It can only lead to more self-delusion and confusion.

If you feel anxious, understand the anxiety is only a light flashing in your inner sanctum, asking you to let go of something you think is of great value but which has completed its role now.

Scorpio asks for the naked truth. “Don’t mess with me,” it says. “I promise you will rise back into the warmth of the Sun if only you will drop away from your debilitating old patterns.”

If you cannot hold back the flood of emotion which may fill you today and over the course of the next few weeks, please just let the dam break down. This week it is time to welcome the dark, to build an enormous inner fire, and let go.

Debilitating old patterns. Let the dam break down. Let go of something you think is of great value but which has completed its role. Let go.

Be kind. Be compassionate. Activate that feel good part of your brain.

Mean Girls: All Grown Up

I’m not always up for a Naked Ladies party. Sometimes I think the dynamic of a group might be too intense, or I don’t have time to go through my closet, or I just don’t feel like subjecting myself—in bra and panties—to trying on what may or may not work in a roomful of other people. You kind of have to be in the mood for that last one.

I prefer going into any dressing room alone, though will occasionally share with a close friend, but only if no other option is available, and have never even liked getting dressed—from my own closet—in front of my boyfriends. I know many women who are not so shy; they’ll take an entire basket full of clothes into a dressing room and be perfectly comfortable with a friend sitting on the floor drinking an iced mocha and commentating on every hem, collar, and waistline. I am not one of those women.

Erma Bombeck was a slapstick columnist and best-selling author who made a career out of finding humor in the mundane. One of her titles speaks for itself All I Know About Animal Behavior I Learned in Loehmann’s Dressing Room. Loehmann’s dressing rooms are legendary in that they are long, open rooms with three-way mirrors lining the walls end to end. There’s nowhere to hide, nowhere to avert your eyes, nothing to do but hope the women around you don’t narrate your experience of trying to make an 80% off designer dress work for you, when you both know it won’t. Some things you need to figure out for yourself and some things are better left unsaid, but in Loehmann’s dressing room all bets are off. Women have even been known to put another woman down not because she looks bad in something, but because they want the item for themselves. It’s cruel. It’s mean. It’s sad. It’s typical.

Girls are inherently mean. In 2004 Mean Girls debuted as a number one hit movie based on the book Queen Bees and Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman. Adults thought it was hilarious, but teenagers, screenwriter Tina Fey said, “…watch it like a reality show. It’s much too close to their real experiences so they are not exactly guffawing.”

When we are too close to a situation we might not be able to laugh, but from that uncomfortable place we are prime for retaliation. We only know how to be hard on other girls because we’re so hard on ourselves. Boys are mean too, but their aggression manifests on sports field as physical acts of violence, whereas girls are socially obnoxious and engage in bitchery that seems to know no bounds. The door tends to swing both ways, though, and a trendsetter one day might be eating her lunch in the bathroom the next. Self-doubt and insecurity are generally at the root of “mean girl” behavior, but that’s hard to remember when you’re on the receiving end. One woman had such a terrible experience as a sorority girl that, even twenty years later, she was wary of female friendships and avoided dealing with women, “particularly women in packs,” and wrote an article about it for the New York Times, which turned into a book called “The Twisted Sisterhood” that the Associated Press described as “an earnest look at how women might stop turning away from one another.”

It’s not always so bad, or at least it doesn’t have to be. Most of us grow up, and we have the option to natural select the mean girls out of our lives as we bury our own inner mean girls. We learn to be gentler and more forgiving of ourselves, and in turn we can offer the same to others. In the same way that meanness proliferates, so does generosity.

I had a hunch about last week’s party. I had a feeling it was going to be a good one. I knew a few good friends would be there but that the majority of the group would be acquaintances and a couple of people I’d never even seen before and that new friendships would be made because barriers are instantly bulldozed when you have to ask the woman next to you, “Um, I’m stuck; can you help me out of this?”

I wanted to get rid of stuff and didn’t even care if I brought anything home, while other women went with the intention of taking home a mother lode; that’s what makes these events so great. But is that it? Is it just about cleaning out your closet and/or scoring a new, free wardrobe? Nope, not at all.

There were thirty or so women at the party ranging from early twenties to later forties. Some with kids, some practically kids themselves; some with bigger incomes, some with EBT cards in their pocketbooks; some who always buy new things, some who’ve stuck with the same styles for years. The women in this group were polite, thoughtful, and humane, but I didn’t know that yet. I’d heard horror stories of women being aggressive, hoarding treasures, acting like little girls.

We drank wine and snacked on appetizers before the main event. We introduced each other to our friends, and re-introduced ourselves to each other. With so many women there the pile was epic in proportion, and though we were all excited to dig for treasures, we had so much fun connecting on a human level that we almost forgot about why we were there. One friend called another right before the digging commenced and said, “I think you need to get over here…”

My friend Charlotte and I had our eyes on the same pair of barely worn, apricot-colored, basket weave Seychelles, and we almost bonked heads reaching for them when our hostess told us to “Go!” but came up laughing and each holding a shoe. They were on the smaller end of my range and the larger end of hers. She tried them first, “They’re too big; you should have them.” I tried them on and they were a little tight. I considered trying to stretch them out, but have been down that road before. Bursitis? Tendinitis? I did that in high school when I desperately wanted a pair of loafers from Barney’s (not my size but they were on sale…..), and god help me if I haven’t grow out of certain adolescent behaviors, not the least of which is trying to force square pegs into round holes. We both loved the shoes, and it was almost absurd how we wanted the other to have them. We finally agreed that she could add an insole so should take them, and then we were off and digging through the pile with the rest of the ladies.

Clothes flew across the room as we found things we thought would be great on our friends. It didn’t stop at the friends we came with, and we sized up our neighbors, though not in the bad way. The flatter-chested traded with the bigger-boobed. The taller gals passed the shorter pants and skirts to the more petite. The first round of try-ons went back into the pile, which at times seemed bottomless. Every once in a while we turned the thing like a giant compost pile, and eventually the pile evolved into more of a slug shape so more women could have access to it. We were cooperative and conscientious.

A stranger turned to me in a sweatshirt, “What do you think?” “It’s too big,” I said a little tentatively, “And I don’t think it’s your color. Try this one.” She loved it, thanked me, and then we exchanged names. I downright cheered when a woman found a hot dress and a pair of booties that matched perfectly. My excitement overwhelmed her at first, but other people joined in and the next thing you know she was vogue-ing for us all.

We also told each other, “Sorry, but I don’t think I can get this zipper all the way up,” “That jacket doesn’t do you any favors,” and, sometimes just straight up “No.” It’s amazing what you can say if there’s a genuine smile behind it and a complete absence of malice.

The take-home: you can be honest and still be kind. You can share and expect nothing in return, you can understand that giving and receiving are the same, you can love yourself and others. Can this evolved behavior extend beyond naked ladies parties? It sure can. Ladies: let’s do this.