the Bronx is up and the Battery's down

     It had to happen. Laura is slowly morphing into a New Yorker.
     Like an Escher drawing, things in an environment shape each other and in the process it's hard to tell where the fish ends and the bird begins. New Yorkers are like that; they've come from all over the place and they all kind of shape each other. I know there isn't a New York accent per se, but there is a something. Laura's "A" is getting as flat as a dime or mebbe a quata, for example. Last night as we were going to bed she said, "I wanna read some more, but I just key-ant."
     Not long ago I heard her talking on the phone to a student's therapist. The kid was acting out in ways I would love to describe here, but while I am on this blog fairly cavalier with self-disclosure, it is not mine to other-disclose. Suffice it to say that the student was behaving in ways that will make her grandchildren clap their hands and beg her to tell another story about when she was a kid back at the turn of the century. Laura needed to consult the therapist, as one does in such situations, fifty years before the grandchildren of a rascal adolescent appear on the scene.
     When you're ten feet away from a phone conversation, cooking up lunch, the voice on the other end is a high-pitched gurgle, if it's your average female -- a little bit like if a robin could talk. If it's your average man, you hear a low wuzzah wuzzah, like if a bear could talk. Many good cartoons have actually already nailed these sounds. This particular phone call I can hear the rapid-fire, friendly-sounding gurgle. It goes on for a very long time. This is how New Yorkers talk -- they've been trained from a very young age in competitive conversation. It's like double-dutch, where the ropes are moving fast and you have to jump in at just the right moment. I can see Laura holding the phone doing that rocking motion with just her head, looking for the right moment to jump in.
     The therapist is on the beach somewhere in the Caribbean, taking the call from her danged client's danged high school principal. "Ach," I imagine she says to her main squeeze, who is reclining on an adjacent chaise. "Hon, I have to take this cawl. Could you grab me another margarita?" She is a good egg about it. So is Laura. They're the Adults in This Situation, and you can hear them both doing their best adult voices.
     Laura swings through the kitchen as she talks. She passes me a little sticky note. It says, "She's faking it!" I smile but make sure not to laugh audibly. Laura is playing her own role of School Official. "Well, I'm concerned about the attendance issue. She's going to have a hard time catching up if this goes on much longer." Then a long stream of birdsong, waxing psychological and sincere, no doubt, about this kid and whatever she's going through. Laura jumps in again, beginning to mirror the cadence of her double-dutch partner -- which is what you have to do, right? Otherwise you get tripped up by the ropes. It's like conversing in English with native Chinese speakers; you have to use all kinds of shortcuts through sentences, which they get to do in Chinese, grammatically. If you use all the words you normally use, you're like someone who lugs a picnic table to the picnic, while everyone else has already eaten lunch off the nice blanket on the ground and moved on to frisbee.
     Both the principal and the sunbathing therapist are reassured and reassuring as the conversation draws to a close. They've conveyed to each other that they are concerned but not worried about this kid who will, gawd willin', live a lawng life and go on to tell wild stories to her rapt grandchildren. They can both say to the parents that they've spoken to each other, that they've done their jobs as responsible members of their kid's team.
     I can tell things are wrapping up because Laura has turned to counselor herself, empathizing with some story the therapist is telling: "Oy," she says, with feeling, in response.
     I shake my head. Right there; the fish ends and the bird begins, right there.

where UPS guys go to the bathroom

     As I take my body for a walk, my mind always takes its own stroll.
     The other day I was nearing home, picking up my pace as the prospect of a bathroom became more and more compelling. A UPS truck whizzed by.
     "Where do UPS guys go when they need to pee?" I wondered. I'm sure there are times when our bathroom on Main Street, Farmington would bring great relief to the man in brown tossing a box onto the porch. But after lots and lots of UPS drop offs, no one in a delivery truck has ever asked to use our facilities.
     What if they have to pee in the truck? It looks like they're rearranging the boxes back there, but at some point they must go behind the boxes and do what must be done. Maybe the trucks are equipped with a little potty. Maybe just a wide-necked bottle. Poor guys!
     Maybe I should put up a little sign near our back porch. "Public restroom inside: please knock." What harm could there be in that? Who else is going to ask to use our bathroom? It's not like "if you build it, they will come." No one comes up our driveway looking for a bathroom.
     What did Ray Kinsella and his family do about bathrooms, out there in the "Field of Dreams"? Remember that line of cars, driving toward the baseball field at the end? Each one of those people is going to have to pee at some point. They should have thought this through! I love the idea of "if you build it, they will come," but let's not forget they will come with appetites and bladders. There must be kids in the back seats of those cars, too. When they've gotta go, they've gotta go.
     Maybe I should just ask the UPS guy if he needs to pee, on those occasions when I'm in the kitchen to actually take the package. "Thanks! Would you like to use our bathroom?" Ach, that would be too weird.
     I feel bad for them, though -- they have to hold it for so long. Maybe UPS has certain criteria for hiring drivers. You'd have to be able to go 8 straight hours without peeing. Guys can do that, though. Maybe that's why all the UPS and FedEx drivers are men. That and the size of the packages. Oh! That's funny. Except that's a penis joke, and I'm really wondering about bladders, so it doesn't work.
     I smile to myself as I walk along. I've yet to be bored on a walk, for reasons that should be apparent.
     I turn the last corner before home. There's that UPS truck, parked right here! And a guy in it! The world was made to be free in, the world was made to be free in. Just ask your question, p.
     "Excuse me, sir!" [he looks up] "Hello!"
     "Hlo." [he smiles, but continues to "rearrange the boxes"]
     "I'm so sorry to...interrupt. Do you mind if I ask a question?"
     "What's up."
     "Where do you guys go when you need to go to the bathroom?"
     "Offices."
     Ohhhhhhh. Offices! Right. How small is my world, for god's sake?
     That's good, though. I don't have to worry about them anymore. Saves me the trouble of making that sign.

follow the feelings, probably part 1

     Most of the time, the quiet of my life suits me fine. Guilty fine, though: I constantly feel like I'm getting away with something. Is it okay that I'm not as busy as everyone else? Shouldn't I be making more of a contribution to the world? Is how I'm living okay? I feel kind of bad about liking my quiet life. Everyone else, including the beloved spouse, is working around the clock. Not me.

     Oh, I would not say I am idle. I get things done. Last week I made a menorah for some friends who are getting married. This small project involved a long walk on the cold beach, searching for a piece of driftwood with a flat bottom and an upraised knot that could hold the shamash, a trip to the arts and crafts store to find that they don't carry candle cups, a search on the internet for candle cups (this could be a blog entry in itself, but I'm too busy, as you can see), research on what makes a kosher menorah and what gets the observant eye-roll, extensive study of the Martha Stewart photo example of a driftwood menorah, measuring out the holes and remembering that 9 candles doesn't mean you divide the length by 9 so you measure again, finding your largest drill bit just won't work and that it's hard to hold a piece of driftwood steady while you drill into it. Shall I start a new sentence? Let's do. Tracking down someone who might be willing to loan you a gigunda drill bit, getting ahold of that, drilling the holes, making sure they're as level as possible so the candle cups aren't tilted, realizing that now the holes are too big for the candle cups, cleaning up sawdust and bits of driftwood throughout the kitchen, which is just a way of stalling since you've just drilled holes that are too big, which is so much worse than too small. Going to Lowe's to ask for advice, buying screws and washers and screwing them into the bottom of the cups, which is a perfect and clever solution for which you thank the Lowe's guy so warmly he seems startled, putting a few coats of paint on the finished product, and then dropping off the drill bits with a thank-you note attached. Oh, yes. I get things done.

But then there is this:

     Laura's school has a driver service. In New York City, United States, this is not amazing. It makes more sense for the School to pay for a service than to reimburse people for parking and travel between campuses. Right? So of course you have a shiny car and friendly driver that's waiting for you just like your assistant set up for you. And of course you get out of the car and don't ever have to pay. I get that.
     Hm? My day? Normal. A few clients. Oh, Juni had her vet appointment. Yep. She's fine. There's a little tartar on her teeth. They're going to send an estimate.
     CEO of what? She did? You said that? Did she laugh? That's so great, hon. Wow.
     I had a new client no show today. I know, right?
     You guys ate there? I read a review of that in the Times. Supposed to be great. Oh, that sounds fabulous!
     Hey, hope it's okay that I'm roasting the last of the frozen butternut squash tonight. I'm kind of glad to put all that past us.
     Sure, I remember that movie. That guy? Is he nice? Yeah, it seems like he would be, you know? What grade is his kid in?
     You wouldn't believe the line at the post office today. I was mailing Yani her belt. I saw that Porter's parent from down the road who's always so nice; remember her? Can't remember her name. Right; her. She said to say hi. Her cousin went to Fieldston.

empty your boat

On a quiet Thursday afternoon in the 4th Century BCE, the Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi was sitting around with his very best friends. They were sipping jasmine tea, opening sunflower seeds with their teeth, eating some of those intense salted prunes. Oh, they were having a moment! These were guys who all enjoyed a good philosophical tussle, and their conversations were animated, rich, sometimes deeply serious, sometimes absolutely hilarious. I like to think they cracked each other up and also had good cries together (Egad, I'm talking myself into missing them!). Zhuangzi was the storyteller among them (and also Teacher's Pet to the more well-known Laozi), and so his perspective on things has stuck with us. 

Zhuangzi's friend, Ralphzi*, was pissed off at someone. Who knows why; probably the same stuff we get annoyed by now. Someone had knocked over Ralphzi's wheelbarrow, and the pigs had then snarfed down the day's harvest. Someone laughed when he tripped on his robe, right in front of someone else he was trying to impress. Who knows. 

Zhuangzi doesn't seem all that sympathetic with Ralphzi's situation that afternoon. His take on things sounds holier-than-thou, but I think he was really trying to help Ralphzi get a grip. He said something like this, which you can find any number of places online (so forgive me for not citing):
If a man is crossing a river and an empty boat collides with his own skiff,

even though he be a bad-tempered man he will not become very angry.
But if he sees a man in the boat, he will shout at him to steer clear.
If the shout is not heard, he will shout again, and yet again, and begin cursing.
And all because there is somebody in the boat.
Yet if the boat were empty, he would not be shouting, and not angry.

If you can empty your own boat crossing the river of the world,
no one will oppose you, no one will seek to harm you....

I first came across that parable about 20 years ago. It stopped me mid-sip and mid-sunflower seed. I clung to it for awhile, and tried to take in its message as I thought it applied to my life. I was struggling through my divorce and confused, hurt, and sad that this person seemed so intent on ramming his boat into mine. I had hurt him badly, but had tried very, very hard not to. I couldn't understand why he seemed to want to capsize my boat. I tried to envision his boat as empty, so that I wouldn't be so hurt and so angry. I pictured myself gently pushing his vacant skiff out of the way and keeping to my own wobbly path down the river. 

It's only lately that I am realizing how badly I've misunderstood Zhuangzi's message. I don't know how I missed it; it's the whole point: it's my boat I need to empty. Duh (or as the Chinese say, te*). 

ALL of which is to say that I've been thinking about the matter of having at least one client who is reading this blog. And I am trying to empty my boat. It is lifelong work, this boat-emptying, especially since I feel like I need to hop back into it to bail it out now and then. But, if you can follow me: I think I am meant to write freely, and I think I am meant to tell my stories, freely. I don't think they will last through time, but they will guide me through my time on this river, on this earth. 

And I do so enjoy sipping tea and eating seeds with you, sometimes laughing and sometimes crying. It is good being with you this Thursday afternoon, my friends.

*to protect his privacy, I have changed Zhuangzi's friend's name. In fact, I made up the whole story of Zhuangzi hanging out with his friends. There might not have been a group of men under a tree, sunflower seeds, or tea -- and there's only one in 7 chance it was a Thursday. Also, if Laozi meant all the stuff he said in the Tao te Ching, it is unlikely that he had a teacher's pet.
* ALSO not true! It's a linguistic/pronunciation joke. I don't know what is becoming of me: this may be a side effect of no one being in the boat.

"I found your blog."

That's what a client said to me today as she was putting her coat back on at the end of session: "I found your blog."
"Oh," I said, not sure what to say next. My mind raced around the room, through a few fairly revealing blogposts, then back.
"Do you want me not to read it?" That was nice of her to ask, I have to say. I took a moment to answer.
"Well, I think if it's findable, I need to figure out how to deal with that. I can't tell you not to read it," I came up with. I think we both knew something had happened, but there weren't exactly words for it. It's like "Is this your underwear? It was hanging on the waiting room doorknob."
No, it's more than that.
It's like "your deepest fears and foibles are hanging on the waiting room doorknob. Would you rather I pretend not to see them?"
This is likely not the only client who has found my blog; just the one who had the courage to tell me. I'm feeling torn and sad. On the one hand, I work hard on this blog to be my most authentic self, and that is precisely what I am hoping to help my clients do in their own lives.
"The world was made to be free in!" I proclaim this all the time in session.
On the other hand, this complicates our connection. The juju of counseling is supposed to work in part because the focus is entirely on the client, and the therapist "self-discloses" only in the service of the growth of the client. That one has underwear, fears, and foibles is shared very judiciously, if at all.

I'm not sure if I need to shut taotechu down, give myself a nom de keyboard, just be free in the world, or what.
Of course: of course I know that when you put something into cyberspace, that's where it goes, and it becomes visible, findable. It's not practical for me to want "people" to find my blog and enjoy it, but not have my clients be among those people.
Really struggling with this one, dear followers, and you who are just stumbling upon taotechu. I would love to hear words of guidance and -- dare I ask this? -- comfort.

BRCA2, ripples

     Some of you have likely surmised what's been going on behind the scenes ever since we discovered my BRCA2 gene status last March. Most people, though, don't make the connection: each of my three beloved children has a 50% chance of having it, too. The same goes for my beloved brothers and my beloved sister. And if they have the mutation, their biological children have a 50% chance of having it, too; the ripple spreads thus.
     My genetic circle of six needed to get tested, and we've been working on it for nearly a year.
     This gene is nothing to sneeze at. You may recall that a woman so endowed has an 87% chance of developing breast cancer, a 67% chance of ovarian cancer, and a 20% chance of pancreatic cancer, all by the age of 50. For young women, a positive test means extreme vigilance, mammograms and MRIs as often as you buy bananas, and ovaries that get whisked away as soon as you're done birthing children. Some young women who are BRCA2 positive have their healthy breasts removed, sometimes even before nursing.
     For men the risks are not as dramatic, but still involve a 20% chance of prostate cancer and a greatly increased chance of male breast cancer. It's not good, this mutation.

     Step one is actually not medical: you start by buying life insurance. If you test positive, that shop closes: you are uninsurable for the rest of your life.
     Kevie was the first to get tested. Already working for the State Department, he is insured up the wazoo -- though his wazoo was not technically in jeopardy, to our knowledge. Out in California, to get genetic testing you just spit into a cup and they send that elixir off to a lab. Why we haven't invented that outside of California, I cannot imagine. His was our first good news: Kev is negative.
     Then came Lee, who was also set with life insurance, but seemed to need vigorous and prolonged cajoling, which I proceeded to offer. Recall, dear followers, that his wife, mother to their three daughters, died of cancer four years ago. You can see the potential ripples, can you not? After months of ineffective sisterly cajoling, I clued in my beloved nieces (who hadn't realized the implications for Lee and for themselves), and set them on their dad. He snapped into action fast, and I felt dumb for not remembering that Lee sometimes responds to vocal volume, especially in the form of a collective hue and cry. He tested negative, and we all breathed another deep sigh of relief.
     For months, El was thinking about it. El was looking into it. She and Rob started by getting more life insurance.
     My three kids, meanwhile, were all working on getting life insurance of their own. Ting and T'ai both easily jumped the various hurdles involved. Yani, meanwhile, ran into a series of extremely frustrating snags in getting life insurance, and more knots with the testing. Her whole process became a gaggle of snags and knots. It is not a good feeling to watch your 22-year-old wrestle with life insurance and health insurance companies. It's a little bit of an unfair fight.
     This fall, though, one by one, through teary, joyous phone calls, the kids shared their results. Yani: negative. Ting: negative. T'ai: negative. All right, T'ai texted his news. But I was teary and joyous.
     Do you know, followers, the odds of these happy results? Lee, Kev, T'ai, Ting, and Yani, all negative? One in...gee, I forget how to do that math. One in lots. One in so many that you begin to think something weird was up, that maybe they had made a mistake with my test. Or that there was just something weird about me. That felt strange, yes, but so much better than having someone I love, as I do these six people, share the mutation.
     We were holding a lottery ticket and each number that was called out was on our card. One more number and we would win. We had begun to feel almost certain of it.
     Last week Ellen got her call: she had tested positive for BRCA2.
     I am just so sad. I wanted to be the only one. I wanted everyone else to be safe, forever.

Fitbit Fitbit, booooo hissbit

Below the earlier entry about my Fitbit, Ravi posts a comment in which he makes a comparison between the Fitbit creators and stinkpot poopyhead Jabba the Hut. You may wonder why the out-of-the-blue hostility toward the Fitbit company, particularly from such a sweetpot like Ravi, whom, if you have the pleasure of knowing him, you know to be deeply gentle and loyal. Perhaps, as you see in his comment, Ravi's loyalty trumps his gentleness, ever so slightly. That's okay with me.

What Ravi knows is this: several months ago, I typed up a very carefully crafted, extensive proposal to the folks at Fitbit. I raved, artfully, about their product and its impact on my own health and well-being. I made a compelling argument for its potential value to schools, and suggested they work with me to get independent schools to buy in to discounted purchases of their faboo product. There are so many possibilities for this, and I wrote with equal parts enthusiasm and specificity about what could happen: math students calculating and tracking numbers of steps within their school (how long might it take their school to walk to the moon? at what pace? what about their walkers with bigger strides?), departments competing, grades competing, faculty versus students competing, schools competing. Deerfield v. Choate? Hotchkiss v. Taft? Are there more passionate independent school rivalries in our midst? I think not. And think of the press releases for the schools and their visionary wellness programs! While they're at it, the most important thing would be happening: they would be building greater health within their community.

I tried to establish my credibility with them: how I know independent schools and their students, and even have a school lined up (Laura's) where I could get things started. I explained exactly how all this could be done -- step by step, so to speak. I proved that I was a devoted customer of Fitbit, and gave them my step count up to the time of my writing to them. It was a good number -- almost as many steps as one of them had (you can see these things on the site). He might have reached Utah before me, but not by much. Actually, he's in San Francisco, but you know what I mean.

I sent my envelope, addressed to the two handsome young men who head up Fitbit. I sent it Special Delivery, Certified, sign-here-saying-you've-embraced-the-mail-carrier to prove you've received the letter. They received it. They signed. I kind of hope they embraced the mail carrier. They tossed my proposal in the trash and, quite unlike the kind soul, the kind cartoon editor at the New Yorker so many years ago, never responded to me.

Laura is angry at them.
"I'm going to write to them and tell them they stink!" she says.
"Nah, La. It's okay. They have bigger fish to fry."
"I'll fry fish on their faces," she says, employing our customary retort of last resort, used to punctuate a conversation with something you really can't argue with.
"Maybe they don't think a 57-year-old, breastless, graying, shrinking woman is who they want representing their fitness product," I suggest, stung but trying to accept this very real possibility.
"I don't care. It stinks not to respond to you at all. I'm going to write to them and tell them they blew it."

She hasn't, and I don't think there'd be much point, but I appreciate the spirit of support. Truth is, I'm getting good at failure. It's one of my greatest successes: to launch these lead balloons over and over again and still think the next one might sail into the air. Or, even better: sail into their faces!