things you can't blog about

     There is so much you are not supposed to blog about. The other night we were reminiscing about Bear, our beloved dog who died in January. Sometimes he was a real pain. He simply was not interested in pleasing others. It was all me, me, me to that dog. He wasn't one of those dogs who felt guilty or needy or desperate for approval. He was interested in laps, a walk, other dogs' food, and barking. Arghhh, the barking sometimes!
     "'Come?' Hold your damn horses. I'm doing something," he'd say.
     "What a jerk," I muttered, mid-reminiscence. Sometimes he really could be.
     "What a jerk!" echoed Laura. Then: "Don't blog about that, p! Diane reads your blog and she and Dan loved their dog. And they loved Bear. She'd be mortified."
     "What?! Diane knows Bear could be a jerk. You can grieve someone's absence and still remember their character flaws."
     "Still. People don't understand things like that. Once a dog is gone, you're supposed to remember him as a good dog, I think."
     "Really? Not Bear. Not yet, anyway. He could be an asshole."
     "It's true. Such an asshole."

     I figured I'd lead you gently into truly off-limits blogging territory -- by first confessing to the no-no of judging the deceased. I'm embarrassed that I have been critical of Bear's personality, if that helps. And to use such a bad word! As someone who tends to say, "Jiminy Cricket!" instead of its many alternatives, I am embarrassed to have it in plain text that I sometimes speak less delicately.
     Anyway, here's what else you can't blog about, and it's ever-so-slightly more taboo than using a bad word to judge your dead dog: your (my) remaining genitalia.
     These days, with the BRCA2 mutation, I have doctor's appointments more often than most women shave their legs. Well, most Chinese women. More often than I shave my legs, anyway. Let's just say I have a lot of appointments.
     Last year I switched to a new gynecologist. I left my previous one because I felt like I was invisible to her -- especially when I got cancer. Cancer makes you choosier in lots of ways.
     This new ob-gyn walks around in stiletto heels -- not a point in her favor when I first met her, but neither is it a meaningful point against. If stilettos help you feel better about peering into vaginas and palpating breasts all day, more power to you, say I.
     "Careful in there," I ask. "I've been downsized. I think some of the stitches didn't dissolve."
     "How can you tell?"
     Here I want you to imagine a brief silence.
     "I can feel them."
     "How?"
     Here I want you to imagine a long silence.
     "I...felt them. You want to check out the basement once it's been renovated, you know."
     She goes in. I hear her stilettos clicking around as she pushes around the light, the speculum, the furniture in the basement. Tock tock tock tock. Tock....tock.
     "Hmm. Those aren't stitches. That's scar tissue." Here she draws me a diagram; a real keeper.

     My favorite part of this diagram is the eyes that are looking into the vagina. See them there on the bottom? No, not on the bottom; haven't you taken human biology? The bottom of the page. Those are eyes, plus eyebrows that are zigzag with keen interest. The eyes are looking in, a little close up for my liking, and they're thinking "Hmm." On the left is a potato, which is what the vagina looks like once you are standing in there, I guess. Those hatch marks are stitches, I think. Pay no attention to the canal in the middle of the page; that goes back to what I called our beloved dead dog.
     "So the scar tissue has just kind of sealed you up a bit. Sometimes that happens," she says with an affable shrug. She seems very proud of her drawing, like this is the part of being a gynecologist that she really likes. Then she says:
     "If you were still using your vagina, we could do something about it. But as it is, we can just let it go."
     Case closed, apparently -- and vagina, too. Weeks later, I still shake my head (see diagram for general location) at her cheeky assumption.
   

lucid dreaming

     Last week I got a call from the mother of a 15-year-old boy who was doing a science project and needed to interview a psychologist. As I always do, I hurried to explain* that I'm not a psychologist. Psychologists are very firm on your doing this quickly. They'd prefer if you wore a t-shirt during session that said, "I am not a psychologist and you are getting less than optimal care by seeing me." Bona fide psychologists get their fur up if anyone without a license as a psychologist calls themselves a you-know-what.
     It's all part of the pecking order, and if you are licensed as a measly clinical social worker or professional counselor, you get the beak. From psychologists who have fur. These are pecking creatures with fur, and they are the dominant species in the therapy biz. Except for psychiatrists, who prescribe medicine and whom we all think are Not Relational Enough, and aren't really doing The Work. We all use a lot of capital letters when we talk about each other.
     "Whatever," said the mom, which is usually the response (it's important that this be kept, however, from the psychologists). "Could he interview you? He needs to speak with a scientist."
     Ah. That there is no license for. Psychology, which I taught for quite a few years, is the scientific study of human behavior and mental processes. I love the science of it all; it highlights both our determination to figure people out and the limitations of our conclusions. Most studies should actually have longer "limitations" sections than "conclusions" sections. Anyway, I made an appointment for her kid to come in to talk with me because I am a scientist who works in the field of psychology. But not as a p*y*h*l*g*s*.
     The boy was doing a project on lucid dreaming, that fabulous state wherein you realize you are dreaming and then suddenly have the freedom and ability to do anything you want. Anything. Lucid dreaming happens in that place where you can kind of play with your unconscious mind, consciously; two things that don't usually blend suddenly do and you're in a different state altogether. It's like mixing blue and yellow and coming up with green. Remember learning about that as a kid? Whoa.
     "Have you ever had a lucid dream?" he reads from his script of questions.
     "Oh, yes, many times!" I answer with enthusiasm.
     I can tell by his facial expression that he himself has not. "You have?" I am to him someone who has actually seen a ghost, a unicorn, a martian. He is very excited. He scribbles something down, though he is videotaping our conversation.
     "What did you choose to do in your lucid dream?" he reads.
     I pause for a second and then say, "I usually choose to fly."
     This is durn close to the truth. Often when I become aware that I am dreaming, I choose to fly. Seize the moment, man! Up, up, and away! It's fabulous to fly in a dream, and I savor the memory for days.
     In the momentary pause, though, I was busy resisting the impulse to tell him the other truth: sometimes, lucid dreams are the perfect opportunity to have sex with a stranger. I thought better of telling that to this 15-year-old boy, right at the awakening of his own sexuality. Such a confession from a 57-year-old breastless woman might cause the tiniest shift in his mental picture of sex and sexuality, and not in a happy way. I just think it might ruin something, like inserting a glitch into a stem cell, or going flat early while singing an otherwise catchy song. I didn't want to accidentally show up in his first lucid dream, you know?
     Not long ago, I had a lucid dream in which I excitedly approached the first person I came across.
     "You're in my dream!" I nearly shouted at that person.
     "I know!" he or she answered, as tickled as I. I don't even remember if it was a man or a woman.
     ""LET'S HAVE SEX!!"" we both shouted with delight.
     Afterwards I thought, "I have the title to my book: You're in my dream! I know! Let's have sex!" 
     It turns out that I must have still been asleep when I had that thought, because in the light of day it didn't quite sound like something a publisher would go for.
     All that happened in my mind in the moment I took to muster a response to my young interviewer: "I usually choose to fly."
     Still! What fun, all around. I love being a scientist.


* Please ignore all the other asterisks in the word p*y*h*l*g*s*. They do not relate to footnotes. But when I think of "hurrying to explain" I think of the moose joke where the guy is heading to a costume party in a moose suit and is spotted by a hunter. "I'm not a moose! I'm not a moose!" he hurries to explain, waving his arms in alarm. The hunter looks confused and tilts his head to take this in. "I'm not a moose! I'm not a moose!" the guy in the costume shouts again. BANG. The hunter comes over to the guy whom, let's say, he has shot in the leg. "I am not a moooooose," the wounded guy whines. "Oh! Sorry, man," the hunter says. "I thought you were saying that you are a moose."
   

squatty potty, advanced

     Once you've started to study holistic health in earnest, it's only a matter of time before you feel like you are missing out on something by not owning a Squatty Potty. You've been just sitting on a regular toilet? All this time? How...primitive.
     It's kind of like what happens when I think about the position I was in for the births of T'ai, Ting, and Yani. What? I now think. I was lying down? Why didn't they suggest I squat? Why didn't I think of delivering babies under water, in one of those pop-up pools you can set up in your living room? It really did not cross my mind, and now I feel like it all could have been done more sensibly. It's like I was trying to get the swing going without knowing you could pump your legs. Here I am talking about an actual swing.
     I guess none of this applies to Yani's birth -- she came out her own door, one created with impromptu carpentry. It probably made sense to be lying down for that, I'm thinking. Though she was my third perfect little baby, I have always resented that the obstetrician elected to bring Yani into the world by C-section. I wasn't in distress; the baby wasn't in distress. Yani seemed to be perfectly content being bottom first, and now that we know how much she moves around when she sleeps (whomever she selects as life partner will have to sleep like a rock), we should have just waited for her to grab all the covers and roll over.
     But the doctor was in distress; I was to her like a kid who was just learning to tie my shoelaces and taking a very long time getting my Keds on. She had those Velcro sneakers, maybe even with wheels on the back. Which is to say that, though those are extremely cool, and I feel envious whenever I see kids sliding through the grocery store in their wheely sneakers, I felt rushed by my doctor 23 years ago.
     The next morning she came to check on me. "I wish I could give this woman upstairs a C-section and hurry things up like we did with you," she sighed with understandable fatigue. I imagine that if she hadn't been so tired she might not have shown that card, but there it was. The truth sprayed itself out in a sorry mess, scatological analogies to which I have written and deleted several times. I will spare you that much.
     I am ever the trendsetter -- cutting edge, you might say -- and C-sections are unfortunately almost routine these days. Now I know about and so regret all the biological consequences of Yani's not having been exposed to my, ah, vaginal flora, which is just such an unfortunate thing to be blogging about when I started out wanting to talk about pooping.
     Squatty Potty. I was telling you about the squatty potty. Suddenly I had to have one, to honor my ancestors who squatted so that I might one day live and prosper in Farmington, Connecticut, despite having spit into evolution's wind by birthing my progeny while lying down.
     I make my way to the Squatty Potty website. Once you've chosen your Squatty Potty style, you choose the height. They try to guide you a bit: "Order the 7" if you are new to squatting. If you are advanced or limber, get the 9". Our 5" works great for grannies." This gives rise to serious rumination, and I take days to decide: am I new to squatting? I do it all the time in the garden. Am I advanced? Along what scale? Are we talking spiritually, or what. I sure as heck was not going to order the one for grannies. Not yet, baby.
   The Squatty Potty website will make you feel as though you have long been a fool, tempting death and disease, really, not to "elevate your feet in order to eliminate." And it does help. Oh, I don't actually notice much difference in pooping. But when I put my feet on the Squatty Potty I get a little ego boost -- because I got the advanced.
     Then, when I realize that this type of thinking is not in the least bit advanced, I go back to feeling like my same old foolish self. I chuckle at myself -- and as I sit there, I feel like my ancestors are chuckling at me, too.

a quiet evening in middle age

     We share a driveway with our beloved neighbors, Roy and Arlene. Both in their 60s, they are like ants: constantly moving, carrying around things that are ten times their weight. We cannot keep up with them. Laura and I are more like beetles. Beetles just kind of walk around. You can pick them up and carry them outside; they wiggle their legs a bit, but otherwise don't protest. And once you toss them outside, they flip themselves over and keep walking like that's where they meant to be anyway.
     We had a quiet evening last night. Did you? Or were you out dancing, like Roy and Arlene were. Most weekend nights, while we clean up after supper we look out the kitchen window and see them heading out to dinner in New Haven or to go dancing who knows where. I would not know where to go dancing other than in the kitchen.
     Last night, after Roy and Arlene drove away in black tie outfits, we, in blue jean outfits, got to work on trying to find a movie. Laura wanted something funny. My two suggestions, "In Search of the Perfect Human Diet," and "Escape Fire: the fight to rescue American Healthcare" were not her top choices, but she agreed to let me try to find them.
     Gradually, we got lost in the dark space between the television and the remote(s). You've had that happen, I'm sure. It's like getting one number wrong, early on, in Sudoku. The situation gets worse and worse as you go on, and at a certain point you might as well erase the whole puzzle and start again.
     We do not generally watch TV, in the sense of watching something that is "on," like one used to do with, say, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. On those occasions when we do turn on the television machine, things we want to see are either on "my DVR" or "On Demand" or on another machine entirely -- the DVD player -- which talks to Netflix, something called Vudu, and a couple of other cyber libraries we've never ventured into.
     Last night we were ambitious, though, and wandered deep into the dark, electronic forest. We could not find our way to a good movie. A couple of times I found myself at a place where I could begin "typing," painstakingly, with the remote, "in space search space of space the space perfect space human space diet." Do you know how long that takes with a remote? Long enough for Laura, who is chewing and watching the letters appear, one by one, on the screen, to finish her salad and go get seconds. I try this on Netflix, On Demand, and, in wholly uncharted territory, the aptly named Vudu. Each time I am told that "There are 0 matches to your request," I have to find my way out of the forest and then go back in again, struggling for the secret path that takes you to the secret cave that leads to the place where you can begin typing again. Each time, this: There are 0 matches to your request.
     Periodically, Laura asks for the remote. "Let me try," she'll say. Though this is never a successful move, I occasionally comply and pass it to her so that I can take some more bites of food. Each time she quickly reaches the end of her rope and passes back the remote. We begin to find this pattern increasingly funny, but march on. The final time she asks for the remote, I tell her "No, La. Not once have we made any progress when you've had the remote." She accepts this and goes back to her salad.
     Exhausted with bushwhacking through the forest, we see among the "JUST IN!" selections a Bette Midler and Billy Crystal movie that we had never heard of. This is not a good thing, when choosing a movie to watch on a quiet Saturday night. We actually pay $3.99 (so desperate are we at this point) to watch the first 15 minutes of a very bad movie. If I could remember the name of it, I would advise you to steer clear.
     At 9:00, we head to bed with our books. This is where we should have gone in the first place. Yes, we were ambitious: salads on Saturday night in front of a movie. This does not seem too much to ask, but it was.

     I'm sorry -- I know I'm going on a bit, but the story of last night's evening in middle age is not over yet.
     As I am getting ready for bed, Laura actually points at me and laughs. She is laughing at the new underwear she bought a couple of weeks ago. One of those 3 packs of Jockeys. You know them.
     "What." I say. "I told you these were weird."
     "But they were 'French Cut'! I thought we wore 'French Cut'! Maybe we wear 'bikini."
     "No, hon," I tell her. "We wear 'French Cut.'"
     "But that can't be right!" She points at me again.
     "I know! That's what I was telling you!"
     "What happened to 'French Cut'? Like these guys." And here she points to her own underwear.
     "Jockey doesn't make them like that anymore, La. The French have changed their cut."
     "What do you mean? How can they do that?"

     Suddenly, I feel like I am channeling my parents. So many conversations they'd have like this while ending their day. Everyone in the family has memories of overhearing their sweet conversations after they'd gone into their bedroom.
     "I think the problem is," my mom would say, "that they don't make things like that anymore."
     "Unh?" says Pop.
     "No, honey. They're all something called digital now, I think."
     "Digital. How you spell?"
     "D.i.g.i.t.a.l."
     "Oh! Digital. I know this word."
     "Yes."
     "All record and tape like this?"
     "I'm not sure. I think so. We can ask the kids in the morning."
     "A good day, Mama. So lucky."
     "A wonderful day, honey. We are so lucky."

landslides on our shared path

     As the human family trudges and dances and runs along our shared path, thunderous landslides occasionally crash down onto that path. Even if we as individuals happen not to be trudging or dancing or running in the very spot where a giant rock face lets go and tumbles with unthinkable power and weight onto the path, even if we were nowhere near the rock when it fell, it sometimes feels like a narrow, frightening miss, and our hearts thump hard for a long while.
     But these metaphorical landslides slam onto the human path, and so they hit the family. Some people who were right next to us just a second ago were plowed under by the slide, and are gone or terribly hurt. For awhile, we are stunned. We stand and look at the massive pile of rock, trying to take in the power, take in the loss. We look for where the rock came from; it's a natural response, but it doesn't repair what has been done, and it doesn't stop other landslides from happening.

     (There are places in the world where landslides are daily occurrences -- tragedies that happen so far away that we don't hear the thunderous crash, don't notice the rubble or register the missing. I know I have the blessing of being able to dance and run in relative safety. There are those in this family of ours who live in fear, and who mainly trudge and wail.)
     I did not want to blog about the Boston Marathon. But for awhile you just can't write about anything else. It is there, like a giant rock that slid onto the path right next to you, blocking your way. For awhile, things like the Marathon bombings cover with rubble all your ordinary ideas, feelings, thoughts -- everything that might otherwise move about freely. You can't get to those things under the rubble without bowing to a supreme and incomprehensible power, without bowing to those who were right next to you on the path and now are gone.
   

even Obama has a ghostwriter

There are times when Principal Danforth is truly too busy to craft a tricky email. The Letter Composer, as we all know, is not. This is the best way I can help her, and sometimes it is actually fun. Today I had a good time writing this one, for example:

Dear Upper School parents:

I'm writing this brief email to ask your help in augmenting some of the fragments of clothing that are being worn to school. Many of the girls are coming to school in shorts that are simply too short, for one thing. I don't believe I need to elaborate on what "too short" means in detail, or the visual that "too short" foists onto hapless witnesses. Furthermore, exposure of backs, bellies, and breasts are becoming a distracting and annoying norm: Janet Jackson incidents are not rare in the hallways. Many of the boys, meanwhile, are walking underwear commercials; it is not appropriate for school. 

Though we don't have a formal "dress code" at Fieldston, students need to come to school simply wearing more material, and that material needs to cover any underclothing that is also worn. Please help my colleagues and me by more closely checking your son or daughter's wardrobe before it struts out your door in the morning. I am trying to be a good sport in this email, but we are unhappy about this situation and need your assistance. 

Thank you in advance.

I've a long, penniless career in ghostwriting. My best story - have I told you this already? - is of being asked by a committee (on which I did not serve) at my previous school to craft a letter to the Head of School. This was 15 or 20 years ago. The issue was delicate - there was a politically charged personnel crisis brewing, and the matter needed to be approached just so. I wrote a bang up letter and the committee was pleased. The next day, the Head of School called me into her office, showed me the letter from the committee, and said, "Would you be willing to write a response for me?"

Typing back to myself that night, ghost to ghost, was bizarre. Though the crisis was averted,  there was no one to celebrate with, since it remains the ghost's secret to this day.

My thanks to busy, wonderful Principal Danforth for permission to out us both with this post.

longer recesses and pizza every day!

     When Yani was in 5th grade, she ran for president of the class. She prepared a great little speech. In it she made no promises other than to try her best to represent her grade, the student elders of little Harwinton Consolidated School. But in fellow candidate Buster McBuster's (not his real name, though maybe it should be) speech, he said, "When I'm class president, we're going to have longer recesses! When I'm class president, we're gonna have pizza and ice cream at every lunch!" Lots of the 10-year-old voters stood and cheered. Buster won handily, never to be heard from again.
     That experience was actually a real disillusionment for Yani, and it was hard to watch her try to sort it out in her mind. At that age of giant teeth and giant beliefs that people are good and kind, she was stunned that Buster had made a false promise and gotten away with it. Despite her 23 years, despite experiences a-plenty that life is darned complicated and that people are often untethered from principles of kindness and fairness, this early experience remains a tiny smudge on Yani's generally affectionate view of humankind.
    Buster and his high-pitched promise changed in my mind when I read an email Laura received today. I now understand Buster may simply have been naive -- and an optimist -- hoping against hope that that's how things work: you get elected to a leadership position and the adults ask you for guidance on what needs fixing. He may have thought he could inform the school of the pizza scarcity issue...and pizza would appear. Though one might fault him for false promises, and little Yani understood why his campaign speech was not fair play, I can no longer blame him for giving it a shot. Who, I ask you, would not want longer recesses?

     Here is the email that allowed me at last to absolve Buster of all ill will:

Dear Principal Danforth,

We are running for FSG Presidents and one idea we have had is to make "Sleep-in Tuesdays" a more frequent occurrence, perhaps every four to six weeks or so. We are sure we don't need to emphasize with you the importance of sleep for young people, or the fact that we rarely get enough of it, and our hope is that because late starts do occur on Tuesdays with some regularity* to accommodate faculty meetings, accomplishing this agenda item would not be impossible. Our question for you is whether you would view this as something we would be able to explore using the appropriate channels if we are elected?

Thank you very much for your help.

Sincerely,

xx and yy (not their real names)

Sent from my iPhone

I just love that. "Sent from my iPhone." Hope, man. Hope springs eternal.

* FYI: twice a year