truth – Jaime Alexis Stathis

AND THIS IS HOW IT IS

Last night I posted a picture to Instagram and Facebook with the hashtag #welovenighthikes. It’s true—we do love night hikes—but the hashtag could easily have been #welovewhatevergetsusthroughit.

Wondering what’s fair play in social media is a valid question and a worthwhile conversation. We criticize those with piles of unfolded laundry as the backdrop as much as those with nary an item out of place. We criticize those who whine about how hard life is on them as much as those who gloat about being #blessed and #grateful. Sometimes we are those people and sometimes we hate those people.

I have a diverse group of friends and posts in my feed run the gamut from “Look at us going from skiing to surfing in one day!” to “Can someone bring me a bottle of wine and a sandwich?”

Finding the balance on social media is a slippery slope. I’m not sure I understand why we care, but I know that we do. I’d estimate that over 50% of my Facebook feed is news and information, which I love because I mostly get what I signed up for, but it’s overwhelming and I don’t have time to actually read it all. I read very few articles in full, and the rest I skim for the gist before saving the link for the ubiquitous “later” and, well, you probably know the rest of that story.

Like many of us, I show up mostly for the pictures both to post and to peruse.

After I posted the night-hike picture I wondered if it was fair as a stand-alone photo. It was and it wasn’t. A photo is not a film, and a single shot is not a documentary; that’s the thing about any kind of expressive art: it allows for interpretation. And while deriving personal meaning is the beauty in art, it can also be the downside. We’re all free agents here.

Some people (maybe the ones asking for wine and sandwich delivery) look at social media photos (maybe of the people in the members-only lounge at the airport en route to or from a beach or a mountaintop) and they only see the smiles and the wide-open eyes and not the delays or the diarrhea or the fits.

And this is how it is.

I have to say that last night’s hike was crucial to my mental health. I’d had a headache all day. I’d gone to the gym, ran a few errands, walked Lucky in the park, and gutted the crap out of my closet. Nothing had helped the headache, and the headache got in the way of my writing, and then I was just grouchy because I wasn’t using the day the way I’d wanted to. I’d failed to meet my expectation of myself and it was nearly crippling.

I’d also slipped on the ice as I was getting into my car outside the post office and saved myself from hitting the ground (thanks, Pilates) in a way that has my deep abdominal muscles feeling shredded today. Because I’m no stranger to adding insult to injury, I came home and spent some time pulling half-frozen dog poo out of the melting snow. I cleaned out the fridge and the pantry and the linen closet. I cursed myself for saving this or that. I wanted to go for a hike in the sun, but there wasn’t any. It was starting to get dark and I knew there was one last-ditch option for saving the day. I needed that hike.

The truthier, extended version is that I shed some tears on that hill last night. I ran into a guy with his dog, a dog who attacked Lucky and sent him rolling backwards on his bony, old-man spine a couple of months ago. I confronted him about the attack, and although I’m a proponent of dogs running the hills unleashed, when he described his dog as a rescue who is “unpredictable” it boiled my blood. He told me he was sorry, and I’d say the exchange was overall positive, but my takeaway from the encounter was a reminder of was how damn fragile life is and, well, unpredictable.

With that man and his dog heading back down to town, Lucky and I had the whole mountain to ourselves. I kept him on his leash because I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him in the dark and I blasted some of my favorite songs and sang my heart out for no one to hear. I ran, I cried, I lost my breath, and I dropped to my knees. And I felt a lot better. Toward the end I let Lucky off his leash, confident he’d stay with me in the bluish light of dusk, and I took a picture of him because sometimes it’s hard to see where we are when we’re in the thick of it. I needed to shift my perspective.

I saw where the city lights roll right up to the mountain and the companion I’ve had for a long time. I saw a truth that I always end up seeing, that life can be both heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time.

I returned to the cleaning when I got home. I skipped dusting and vacuuming in favor of culling toiletries and tea. I cleaned out as if moving, which I appreciate both in theory and in practice. In my last blog post I wrote about how content I am to be here—and that’s the absolute truth—but then there are those days where I want to be anywhere but here.

Here is relative. During the years I was near constant motion I felt an exhausting weight whenever anyone asked “where do you live?” If my car was near I could point, because it was obvious with a glance that there was a lot of living going on in there, but sometimes I had no props and was reduced to using my words. Sometimes I’d give a long-winded response of explanation and excuse, but then I discovered a better answer. “Right here,” I’d say, pointing to myself, “I live here in this body.”

Because “wherever you go there you are” is true whether running away, moving toward, or sitting still.

My heart has this edgy feeling right now as if poised to spring into action. I might not have one foot out the door, but I’m light on my toes like a boxer or tennis player. I’ve moved so much and gotten rid of entire households several times over, and although I’ve felt tinges of regret over handing over some items I can say without hesitation that I haven’t actually missed any of them.

I hadn’t felt compelled to read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, but I visited a friend last weekend and found myself thumbing through the book. I knew the theory, but hadn’t put it into practice until yesterday when I asked myself over and over if various items “sparked joy.” If it wasn’t a quick yes then it was a no and into the giveaway bag it went. It’s a process, though, and there are a few items remaining on my hit list because I have to do some deep digging to figure out if I still need them in my space and if they spark joy or, it’s opposite: regret.

I never got around to the vacuuming or dusting, but my house felt “clean” in a deeper way than if I’d wiped surfaces and stuffed unfinished projects into drawers and closets. By the time I went to bed my headache was gone and I got the sleep of all sleeps. I could’ve gotten up earlier than I did for writing, but made an adult decision not to beat myself up over that one. Luckily there’s also a book called The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck so in the spirit of balance and riding that slippery slope like a wave…

“Sing your song. Dance your dance. Tell your tale.”

Last week a video went around of Ash Beckham’s TEDx talk about how she responds to kids who want to know if she’s a boy or if she’s a girl. She explains that it’s confusing because her hair is short and she wears boys’ clothes, but that she is, in fact, a girl. She breaks it down: “You know how sometimes you like to wear a pink dress and sometimes you like to wear your comfy jammies? I’m more of a comfy jammies kind of girl….”

If you missed that video, here it is: Coming Out of Your Closet.

Ash’s talk wasn’t about gender, pink dresses, or jammies. It wasn’t even about homophobia or about coming out of “the” closet. It’s about the fact that we all have closets, but “We are bigger than our closets and a closet is no place for a person to truly live.”

She says that a closet is really just a hard conversation, and that we can’t compare our “hard” with anyone else’s. “Hard is not relative. Hard is hard.” In my case right now, hard is taking care of my grandmother who suffers from both hoarding and dementia, and for some people hard is the fact that I’m talking about it.

My honesty’s been met with minimal resistance, though I know that vulnerability and honesty make some people uncomfortable. But I also know this: other people’s discomfort has nothing to do with me. I’ve done a lot of work learning how to accept and own my truth, and though it was hard I’m coasting down the other side of a life spent minimizing my truth for the sake of other people’s happiness, which is basically an Acela train to frustration and unhappiness. That way of living does nothing to foster authentic connection between people.

Over the years I’ve also learned a few things about truth in writing, with my favorite being that “The more intimate and personal the detail, the more universal the story becomes.” {That’s me quoting myself. I wrote that when I was just starting to become a braver writer, and the blog post it came from is here: WE TELL OURSELVES STORIES.

Laura Munson (a writing mentor and role model of mine) is a courageous writer who wrote a book about her marriage falling apart and her reaction to it. Before she had a book she published an essay in the New York Times’ Modern Love column, and you can read that here: “Those Aren’t Fighting Words, Dear.”

Laura told me (as she will anyone who asks her) that a person can write about anything if she writes with compassion. It’s true. I wrote with compassion about my experiences taking care of and cleaning up after my grandmother, and I was rewarded with an overwhelmingly positive response. People wrote to me and said, “Me too.” They wrote and asked, “Why didn’t you ask for help?” “When can I come?” and “How can I help?” I didn’t have any good answers except that asking for help is scary, it makes us vulnerable, and we worry about meeting resistance.

Friends wrote and called to make sure I’m okay, to offer respite, and to commend me for both my willingness to do this hard work and my grit in talking about it. Some readers forwarded my post to friends and family who work with the elderly as nurses and therapists, and then those people reached out and offered their support. Some of these people were strangers until suddenly they weren’t, and I wept with gratitude for those hands and hearts extended in my direction. It was intense, but it felt good to allow people in to my world. I was validated and shored up by people who might not even know me if they passed me on the street.

Other folks were less thrilled. Some asked my mother if she’s mad at me for flinging open our closet doors, but she wasn’t. My mother is the person most worried about the contents of my memoir-in-progress, yet when she’s been questioned about my two recent blog posts she did something incredible: she defended me. My mother acknowledged that she’d be the first person to call me out if I’d written anything that wasn’t true, but that I’d written only the truth and that she was proud. If you know my mother you know that she adores me but doesn’t let me get away with much.

There’s a built in liability befriending a writer (in particular a nonfiction writer), but for some people there’s an overlap that is not a choice, and that’s with family. A family member called my mother to express his anger over my sharing of our family’s stories. He couldn’t believe that my mother wasn’t mad and was even more dumbfounded that she wasn’t trying to stop me. Some of the stories I told are old ones but I told them not as a rant, but as reference points to my present situation. My present situation caring for my grandmother and the ensuing story does not happen to be this angry person’s story. As far as I can see his hand has not stretched out in my direction.

I listened patiently as my mother recounted the hard conversation she had where I was pummeled for telling the truth, a truth that is also hers. She’s glad I’m telling the story because she knows how lonely it can be inside a closet, but for my mother there was an additional element to the hard conversation and her hackles went up: someone was attacking her baby.

I’ve hit the pause button on my life to help my family of three, and although I wouldn’t have it any other way it’s not without sacrifice. Unfortunately the angry family member failed to recognize either my benevolence or my hard work. He made my grandmother’s story about him and criticized my content for one reason: my truth made him uncomfortable.

My mother brought up as an analogy Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, a Pulitzer Prize winning tragicomic memoir (um…thanks, mom….) that is basically required reading for Irish-American New Yorkers. Of course he’d read it, but didn’t see the connection, and said to my mother, “That’s different; that book is about his family.” My mother said, “Yes. And?….”

He responded, “The difference is that Jaime is writing about my family.”

Oh. My. God.

“It’s her family too,” my mother said, because after that what else is there?

In Angela’s Ashes McCourt wrote, “Sing your song. Dance your dance. Tell your tale.” Certainly there were plenty of people who opposed his truth telling, but it didn’t stop the book from being crazy successful and widely received by those who also believe that closets are no place to live. McCourt had fairly late in life success, but taught writing and gave his students the best advice: that they are their own best material.

Our stories do not exist alone, and they intersect with the stories of the people whose lives coexist with ours either as a result of biology or through choice. In my recent “brave post” I mention my mother minimally (it’s really a story about my grandmother) and the only thing that could be considered a slight toward my mother is when I mention that I summon the courage she lacks. But what I said is true and she knows it. Any shame she might have for not being strong enough to do this on her own pales in comparison to her gratitude for my strength to put into motion a plan where there previously existed only a downward spiral. My mother has never been in denial about my grandmother’s illnesses, she just wasn’t able to step back and see the way through (and eventually out of) it.

Even if my mother denied my truth, would that make my observations of my experience off limits? (If you say yes you can private message me and so we can talk about it. Or we can talk about it here. Your call.) It’s just like what Ash Beckham says about hard: we can’t compare our hard to someone else’s hard just as we can’t compare our truth to someone else’s. It just depends on which side of the fence you’re on, and I happen to be on the dirty side.

I like the dirty side of the fence just as much as I abhor living in a closet. I know that mental illness can be an uphill battle, and I also know that not talking about mental illness doesn’t make it go away. I’ve done some research in books and in real life (too much, probably), and I’m 100% certain that not talking about it makes it worse. Silence can be deadly. If you don’t believe me ask anyone who’s lost someone to suicide, depression, addiction, or a combination. Ask someone if silence helped when they worried about whether a loved one was going to use or while they waited for someone to show up alive after they’d disappeared. In silence.

After my blog post last week a few people shared an article with me that was published in Slate. The title is “Nobody Brings Dinner When Your Daughter is an Addict.” It’s amazing. Please read it.

Sure it’s hard for people to ask how it’s going with my grandmother, but the brave ones do, and many tell me about their struggles. One friend wrote about her fear of talking about her family’s mental illness and thanked me for my honesty. She said, “I hope someone is bringing you dinner,” which is just as good as someone actually doing it and the perfect antidote to the stones being thrown by people who aren’t offering anything but fear dressed in a thin veil of judgment.

I’m not wavering on my position to tell the truth nor have I even considered backpedaling out of it. Here’s why: for all the people who aren’t hearing what I have to say there’s a hundred who are, and that number has the potential to grow exponentially as one says to another, “Read this; It might help.”

I’m not delusional in thinking the sharing of my story can change the world, but I know that real change happens one person at a time and that I’ve helped more than a few. One said that enabling is a “lonely place to live,” and another told me about her experience with family mental illness and “trying to minimizing the consequences of her behavior and picking up the pieces of her actions.”

What we’re saying to each other is “We’re in this together; I’ve got your back,” and this more than counterbalances the haters. Dr. Brené Brown says, “Don’t try to win over the haters; you are not a jackass whisperer.”

Brené Brown’s been on my hotlist for a couple of years, and in her now famous TED talk on shame she said this:

If we’re going to find our way back to each other, we have to understand and know empathy, because empathy’s the antidote to shame. If you put shame in a Petri dish it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence and judgment. If you put the same amount of shame in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive. The two most powerful words when we’re in struggle: me too.

She also said,

“If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive….“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of our light.”

If that’s not gorgeous i don’t know what is.

Closet’s are not as safe as people think. Sounds, words and thoughts can creep in there, and those dark places aren’t as hermetically sealed from the light as the closet-dwellers believe them to be. I don’t know what makes people think closets are safe. It could be shame, guilt or some other emotion masquerading as anger.

Denial is the first stage of grief, and it’s followed by anger. We circle through denial, anger, bargaining and depression until we eventually reach the blissful place of acceptance. Sometimes a person gets to acceptance then takes another lap through the list because life isn’t always (or ever) as easy as having a checklist. The path to acceptance isn’t always (or ever) linear.

Truth challenges. It stretches. It pushes limits of comfort and safety. I know that some family members aren’t angry, but are instead sad about what I’ve written about my grandmother. It is sad, but sadness can’t erase reality. You know what helps? Yeah: empathy.

My mother and I are in this together and we’re in deep. The best part—because I’m a silver-lining kind of girl—is that my mother and I are cooperating and working together in a way we never have before. We’re living under one roof and barely fighting because we have something bigger to deal with than the pettier stuff that’s ruled us for too long. The woman who’s been most afraid of my truth is actually embracing it, and that’s a beautiful thing in the midst of a messy situation. But here’s the thing: I wish it wasn’t necessary for my mother to defend me.

There’s a very good chance that the (closet-living) people who need to be reading this aren’t. Maybe they’ve written me off, maybe they don’t care, or maybe my presence hasn’t even reached their closets’ radar. I have no control over that, just as they have no control over what I write. I also have no control over any debriefings my mother might receive over my actions, but if anyone has a problem with me it would behoove them to talk to me about it directly otherwise it just might get my Irish up.

The “angry relative” interrogated my mother, and asked her if I’d interviewed my grandmother and then wrote about what she’d told me in confidence. It was nothing like that. My grandmother and I have conversations like we’ve always had, and like a lot of the best conversations they happen spontaneously. My grandmother’s concept of time and reality is altered now, but occasionally she’s able to really be in the present and I cherish those moments.

Maybe it was sitting in a kitchen where generations of our family’s women have prepped and cooked meals. Maybe the cup of tea steaming in front of her triggered something. Maybe the act of peeling of an orange sparked a memory. It’s impossible to know what triggers my grandmother’s reminiscing at this point, though I know that when she’s ready to talk I’m ready to listen.

We value our time together, and when it’s just the two of us she opens up more than in a group because in a group she tends to space out. It could be because she can’t hear everything or because she can’t keep up with the pace. When it’s just the two of us in a quiet room talking directly to each other our hearts engage with each other’s more specifically.

Our conversations and sharing make her happy, and the other night after our good, honest talk she made up a little song and sang it to me, “I’m so happy I could dance all night.” We danced a little then I helped her into some cozy pajamas, because it’s life’s simple acts that are the most challenging to her these days. I poured her a glass of milk, got her into her recliner with a blanket and turned on the television. My Mimi is definitely a comfy jammies kind of girl.

SMILE THOUGH YOUR HEART IS BREAKING

Sometimes as I’m walking down the street I’ll catch a scent that reminds me of my grandmother. It’s not the aroma of a flowery perfume or a roast in the oven or the cinnamon sugar of fresh-baked pastries: it’s a sour smell. It’s garbage.

The smells surprise me. They emerge from restaurants’ grease traps, from musty, piss-soaked sections of concrete, from dank subway platforms. The volatile molecules seep out of confined airshafts or from one of New York City’s many manholes that try, but fail, to contain an underbelly overflowing with waste.

My olfactory memory engages where my grandmother’s arrests, her deficit a result of mental health issues that include dementia and OCD, both undiagnosed due to an irrational fear of doctors, both also an expression of her disorders.

The grandmother I know now is not the grandmother I’ve always known. That woman: she’s gone. Throughout my childhood my grandmother taught me many lessons that I took as truth, but only now am I questioning the validity of what she preached and modeled. She told me not to take on anyone’s problems as my own, to let life’s baloney roll off my back and, as one of her favorite songs instructs, to “Smile though your heart is breaking.”

My heart breaks for my grandmother’s lifetime of stifled emotions and for her belief that a smile is a permanent Band-Aid. It’s challenging to keep smiling as I clean up my grandmother’s life’s accumulation, as the stories my family has told disintegrate like the dust that covers her cherished collections.

I am an only child of an only child, which means there are exactly two of us to care for and clean up after my grandmother. My mother and I have spent the past five weeks sorting, donating, and disposing of the results of my grandmother’s hoarding, but walking into her house it’s impossible to tell a single thing has been removed let alone a dumpster’s worth. It looks like the woman who lives there is destitute and without anyone who cares about her, though both couldn’t be further from the truth. There’s a fine line between choice and disease.

A couple decades ago my grandmother tore up the floor in her kitchen and hall exposing several layers of the previous generations’ style choices, leaving behind the heavy ridges of rigor mortis-like glue. In the hall is a tower of tile that’s been waiting to be installed for twenty years, though for my grandmother it’s “never the right time.”

Only one of the tiles has been used though not for its intended purpose; she’s used it to cover a gaping hole in her bathroom window where a pane of glass is missing. I don’t know what happened to the window, but because my grandmother has a temper it’s not out of the question that she put her fist through it. This isn’t something she’d share with us though she’d smile, look us in the eye and deny it. She’ll do anything to preserve her façade.

Her kitchen only has hot water, several light switches are taped over, and most of the house’s wall outlets are inaccessible. Those that can be reached are overloaded with tangles of outdated extension cords that snarl in corners and run like track marks across the parquet floors.

There are two broken televisions, furniture you couldn’t give away, and orphaned lampshades stacked like miniature versions of Pisa. There are enough envelopes, blank greeting cards and paper clips to open a small office supply store. My mother has shredded a dozen thirty-gallon bags worth of bank statements and tax documents from the last century, and we’ve recycled just as many bags of long-expired coupons, cancelled envelopes and discount-store circulars.

As my mother and I remove the garbage—dozens of blown out light bulbs, a plastic whiskey barrel full of mop handles and curtain rods—we reveal additional disasters and it becomes clear: my grandmother’s house is crumbling under the weight of what it’s been carrying. It’s trying to take my grandmother with it.

Until recently you had to shimmy sideways to get from one end of the apartment to the other. Because it’s unsafe, my mother and I have threatened to call the fire department or insurance company and my grandmother responds by slamming a door in my mother’s face or telling me to pack my bags if I’m there to bust her chops. My grandmother’s lost her ability to reason, but one truth is as clear as it ever was: she doesn’t want anyone coming inside her house.

She has enough sets of fine china, sterling silver flatware from Tiffany, and glassware (for everything from apertifs to digestifs) to host dozens of guests, but there’s a catch: she doesn’t entertain. She never has. I can count the number of people she’ll invite into her home on one hand, and it’s been so long since anyone has been allowed inside for so much as a simple repair that what was once a home has deteriorated into a hovel.

My grandmother has resolutely denied anyone the opportunity to clean for her, but with the courage my mother lacks I matched my grandmother’s fierceness and finally said, “I am not going to let you die in that filthy apartment.” It started as a threat, but then there I was in a mask and rubber gloves, stuffing two black contractor bags full of moldy clothes from her bathtub. I worked for four hours in that bathroom, but she didn’t seem to notice or more likely she didn’t want to talk about it.

Last Sunday my mother took my grandmother to visit relatives, and I stayed behind to tackle the bedroom. I started by bagging up and dragging out most of the items belonging to people who no longer have a pulse. It seemed cruel, but we just can’t keep it all. What got us into this mess is not what will get us out. I repeat that like a mantra.

I found hundreds of crumpled and balled up knee-high stockings, dozens of crocheted doilies, and seventeen curtains still tagged and wrapped in plastic. I unearthed enough ace bandages for a professional ball team, at least six sets of slippers, and a mint-condition abdominal exercise machine (my grandmother is almost ninety).

I discovered a box of hundreds of laminated prayer cards for every funeral she’s been to and some that she hasn’t, and just as many keys to long-defunct locks, some of which opened doors that never even belonged to our family. I found stacks of restaurant napkins because how else is she supposed to get the rolls home?

I dug out yellowed newspaper cutouts on depression, anxiety and the danger of emotional attachments to things.

A cedar trunk and several Rubbermaid bins held enough bed linens to outfit several families, and I bagged most of them for Goodwill. My grandmother sleeps in my deceased grandfather’s old, broken down recliner in what should be her dining room, but I kept a few sets of sheets in case she ever changes her mind. Erring toward hope, I decided to freshen up the recently cleared off bed.

I pulled back the musty comforter and sheets, and saw that my grandmother had used a ballpoint pen to draw faces and write words on the fitted sheet. I crawled onto the bed and kneeled over her art for closer inspection. Some of the faces had hair, some sported sideways smiles, and some had a straight line where a mouth would be.

She signed her autograph a few times, and in black Sharpie penned a note to me, “Hi Jaime,” she wrote, “Hope all is well with you, Love ya,” and next to it a simple, “Hi Jaime” in perfect cursive. With an impossible lump in my throat I stripped those sheets off the bed.

I’ve always loved that verb for changing a bed: strip. I exposed it; I made it naked. It felt wrong—stripping my grandmother of her secrets—but someone has to do it and the job’s defaulted to me. The bare mattress was deplorable. Its satin cover has vertical splits, and a ruptured side seam exposed the inner foam and wire. Even without a body sleeping on it the mattress came undone from the weight of what’s been piled on it for years.

I located a mattress cover, a set of soft, clean sheets and a heavy, brocade coverlet that my parents bought on their honeymoon in Greece. I pulled the linens taut, tucked tight hospital corners and jammed clumpy pillows into cases and decorative shams. I made it beautiful. I made that bed as if it matters, as if it might make a difference.

When I finished I stood back, admired my work and burst into tears. When I’m doing this work with my mother I try to keep it together, but alone I let it rip. I sobbed and worried about how much of my grandmother’s turmoil is inside me, and I wondered, as I often do, why we’re so culturally adverse to showing our true feelings. And I don’t mean just my family, though we seem to have a bad case of it.

My cleaning is not going to mend my grandmother’s brain or heart, but yet I continue. I dig through the rubble and scrub surfaces in part because it needs to get done, but also because an organized exterior might calm some of the agitation that percolates inside her. I have faith and hope in that possibility, but I do this work for a different reason: I do it for love.

On some level I’m doing this work more for me than for anything or anyone else. I do it because loving someone when it’s difficult is one of life’s greatest challenges and rewards.

We have a responsibility to care for our young and our old, and often the work is terrible. I have to tell my grandmother, “You wore that yesterday. You can’t wear it today.” I don’t mention the previous days because she can’t remember those. I have to tell her when she wets her pants and needs to change, and then I have to take the soiled garments and bag them because if I don’t she’ll squirrel them away. It’s degrading for her, but I do it with as much compassion and grace as possible and I’m constantly amazed at what we’re capable of when choice is removed from the equation.

I like a plan, but my mother and I were so far out of our depths that drowning pushed in, so I hired two geriatric care consultants to come assess the situation and help us devise a strategy. The five of us sat around my mother’s dining room table—actually, my grandmother stood, too lathered to sit—and we didn’t make much progress because all my grandmother wanted to talk about was how furious she was at me for inviting strangers into our private business. I assured her I did it out of love, and she said, “If this is the way you show love I’d rather you hate me.”

She asked me who died and left me boss, told me I should be ashamed of myself, and ordered me to leave her the hell alone. The emotions passed, and within minutes she’d forgotten her anger and agreed with the consultants who told her how lucky she is to have a granddaughter who cares so much. I told my grandmother I was confused because minutes earlier she’d told me to pack my bags. At the end of my rope I asked, “Which is it?”

“I love you when you’re not giving me a hard time,” she said laughing, and my reply shocked me, “Are you telling me that your love is conditional?” The underlying causes of OCD and compulsive hoarding are immense, but among them are a fear of not being loved and a desire to receive love through control. With the added attraction of dementia, my grandmother’s well-honed defenses are down and her natural inclinations are up. To say the situation is dicey is an understatement.

One of the phrases my grandmother has always used to diffuse a situation is one she still employs regularly, “Everything is under control, baby. Don’t you worry.” For most of my life I’ve believed everything my grandmother’s told me, but those days are over. I’m no longer buying; I just can’t. It’s not helping and it isn’t the path that will guide us out of this mess.

I’ve realized that the more out of control things are the more adamantly she’ll try to convince me that they’re not. The more she smiles in the midst of chaos, the more I prepare for the bottom dropping out. I actually feel encouraged when she cries, because although it’s sad, she’s expressing her emotions without resorting to rage or compulsions. This is good. I think she’s as tired of the worn-out stories and excuses as I am.

Each day new truths manifest from the dregs, and the path is clearing. I see that it’s the truth that will get us out. Well, that and smiling.

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.

Roots

I wrote my first blog post, Be Yourself; Everyone Else is Already Taken, on October 4 last year. I can’t believe it’s been close to a year, and today I want to get back to the roots of sorry I’M NOT WHO YOU THOUGHT I was and to the essence of that first post. I wrote, “We all make conscious and subconscious decisions about what we reveal to people and what we hide. Many of us are scared to be ourselves and rightfully so; we’re a judgmental lot.”

It’s been quite a year of hiding things, but it seems the tide is turning. We are fed up with lies and cover-ups, and what were previously tolerated as passable excuses are no longer acceptable.

In August it was confirmed that Lance Armstrong used performance-enhancing drugs during his cycling career, which included seven Tour de France wins that he’s now been stripped of. He fought the charges for years, saying there was no evidence, but finally gave up the fight and essentially confessed by quitting. One of Armstrong’s defenses was that by doping he was just leveling the playing field—every rider who finished second to Lance in the Tours has been connected to doping—yet he was (unfairly) given hero status for his supposedly “clean” performance, and their “lesser” performances were judged against his.

It’s unfortunate, but we judge ourselves by the people around us, using external factors for our benchmarks. The playing field is not level, nor will it ever be. Some are more athletically inclined and others possess musical aptitude. We have left brain people and right brain people. Some people are born rich, while others are born poor. The comparison and differentiations are endless and ongoing.

One of the biggest conceals of the year is still unfinished: Mitt Romney hiding his tax returns. Even Republicans have called Romney arrogant for not disclosing. Ron Paul, former Republican candidate, said, “Politically, I think it would help him…In the scheme of things, politically, you know, it looks like releasing tax returns is what people want.” People want truth. In general we are more forgiving of sins if we don’t feel we’re being lied to, and in many cases the lie, cheat or steal is worse than the actual offense.

Ana Navarro, former advisor to John McCain, said, “He should just release the stupid taxes and eliminate the Obama campaign tactic of insinuating he’s got something to hide.” I don’t want to speak for the Obama campaign, but insinuate seems like a light word for this. The question is no longer does Mitt Romney have something to hide, but what is Mitt Romney hiding. We already know he’s rich, but what the people want to know is what tactics he’s using to make himself richer.

It’s kind of like people saying their hair is “just lightened by the sun,” or claiming to have year-round golden tans when in reality they get their color through sprays and bulbs. The proof is in the pudding though, and the truth is eventually revealed. I often have massage clients who are there to receive their first massage. Some come right out with it, “I’m so excited! I’ve never had a professional massage!” while others seem embarrassed to confess. I always ask the usual questions—Any accidents or injuries you’d like to tell me about? Any areas you’d like to focus on? Anything you particularly like or dislike about massage?—and I usually get a lot of information to make the massage better for both of us. If I feel the client isn’t sure what to say or is looking for the “right” answer I ask another question, “How long has it been since your last massage?”

The answers are telling. Some say that it’s been a year or three months, and others are vague, telling me “it’s been awhile.” It’s amazing how difficult it can be for someone to say, “I’ve never had a massage.” It’s as if they’re embarrassed to admit that they’ve never had one, but if they told me that right away I’d have walked them through a typical session and told them that the time on the massage table should be controlled by them, not me, and that we can make modifications to make the session more comfortable and beneficial.

Sometimes people are so nervous and embarrassed by their not-so-big secret of never having a massage that they barely listen to my shtick, and are more focused on their lie than on what I’m saying. They panic when I leave the room and tell them to “Get undressed to your level of comfort and start face down in between the sheets.”

“I didn’t listen! Do I leave my underwear on? Take it off? Do I get under the blanket? The sheet?” I’ve returned a couple of minutes later to find people in their underpants on top of the sheets, people wrapped in the sheet like they’re in a doctor’s office and sometimes a fully dressed person standing in the room waiting for the next instruction. Then they say, “Um, I’ve actually never done this before….”

Why wait? Why go through the turmoil of not just telling the truth? Why are we so dang embarrassed to admit what we don’t know?

Mitt does not know how America will react to the information in his tax returns, but he’s finally realized that it’s imperative he release them. According to the The New York Times Mitt and Ann Romney filed their 2011 tax returns this morning, and this afternoon the return will be posted online. According to the Romney Campaign, “Also posted will be a notarized letter from the Romneys’ tax preparer, PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP (PWC), giving a summary of tax rates from the Romneys’ tax returns for the 20-year period of 1990-2009.”

Does Mitt get a pat on the back for doing something he should have done months ago? Probably not. The findings are likely to create a larger gap between him and the average, middle-class Americans and further generate anger that he waited so long.

I don’t want this blog to become politically slanted one way or another—that is not the purpose. The purpose is to think about where we place ourselves in the world, and the decisions we make about how we present ourselves. It’s about what we choose to reveal, and what we choose to conceal. It’s about choice.

Undies on or undies off—it really just doesn’t matter. What matters is telling the truth, being forthright, and not having anything to hide.

A quote has been floating around the Internet lately that hasn’t been attributed to anyone (that I know of) but I think it makes good sense:

“Live in such a way that if someone spoke badly of you no one would believe it.”