There was something about the way you said

Last night, my weariness was stretching my skin. I was at work until 8 p.m. So, I called almost everyone under the sun to get a drink but no one answered. I thought to myself, this is why people get married. I was only one block from work and had several more to go, my iPod was inoperable. So, I walked to the train "naked." When I don't have music pumped into my ears, I hum or sing to myself and I was singing a Ray LaMontagne song, Burn, mixing up chorus with verse and always coming back to the same place. I thought I really need to read through the Bruckner piece and the Mendelssohn too. I could possibly make yoga class or go for a run. I began making up all these tasks to do, to reassure, to comfort me.

I checked my phone one last time before I entered the subway and walked to my usual spot and read "The End of an Affair". Something big had just happened and it was such a good twist to the plot but, the train came after only a page was cleared. I stepped into the car and saw my Saturday yoga teacher. Mr. P. is one of those people that I have been intrigued by for a long time. I've seen him cry from being so moved by our practice. He's easy to laugh but he gets very excited when people stretch their limits. I also think he's pretty cute. I sat down next to him and said, "Hey." We struck up an conversation and that lead to dinner and more conversation. We laughed a lot and I was very at ease with him.

I do not believe in miracles from God but I cannot explain this encounter any other way. It was exactly the kind of human interaction I was craving. I could not think of anything that I had done or could have done to send out the message to Mr. P that I was coming his way. It was just coincidence?

One thing I want to remember. After I sat down and we told each other what we'd just been doing (he was taking a self-defense class. To which I asked, "Like kick-em in the balls and run?" To which he responded, Fighting Chaos.) earlier that evening, Mr. P seemed to step back from what was happening and rewind. He said, "What did you say to me? You said something like 'Hello there' or something?" I said, I think I said "Hey."
"Right! But you said it as you sat down next to me. You said, "Hey." And he looked at me like I just fallen over attempting to rise in crow pose.

It's YOU (meaning me)

I was catching up with a friend last night over Jameson and a cheeseburger and we got onto the subject of how people who give advice think they are trying to help, but really they are judging you or talking to themselves. We've all experienced the veiled message of "you're just not good enough" as "Yeah, I did that but I ... you should..." I've been the deliverer and the receiver of such conceit. It's not worth debating whether or not doling out judgment in spoonfuls of personal-wisdom-that-pats-them-on-the-back is good or bad. It happens. Why it happens seems more interesting to me.

Reading Eat, Pray, Love, I felt as though Ms. Gilbert was telling me to take the time to really work on yourself and you'll experience generosity, grace, and ultimately love, but YOU gotta be ready for it! So, she prepares herself by getting a divorce (not married - failure!), getting a book deal that pays for her fabulous trip (no one reads this blog, how can I get a book deal?), and then she spends hours meditating (I have a boney butt). The saying goes, "Good things come to those who wait", and not "Good things come to those who can chant for three hours every morning in a remote village in India."

I know, it's a book. I just wish someone else out there as put-off by E,P,L as my friend and I are put off by conceited advice. To Ms. Gilbert's credit, I finished the book thinking, damn that woman is smart! She exposed herself as a control freak, a needy, clingy woman, a chatterbox who needs constant attention. And she did it with humor, with candor, with clarity but more importantly - care. She likes herself and she writes herself on the page with sympathy. Maybe if I were more sympathetic towards myself I could read her book without throwing my hands up in the air in defeat when she contracts a urinary tract infection from too much awesome sex with her South American businessman in Bali.

Vacation curve

It seems that I can make anything into a challenge to fail, even vacation. It took me a few days to shed New York City, pressures at work, troubles with friends, and the man thing to allow my shoulders to drop, my thoughts not bounce from one thing to the next, and just be. And then, I buy Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert and tell myself, I can finish it all while I'm on vacation. Not enjoy it. Finish it.

I'm half-way through the book by grit. Eat, Pray, Love is not a story that makes my liberal heart bleed. She's in her early 30s, an author, with a career in writing, a country home, and a husband. She has a pretty enviable life by conventional standards. What's with the crying to God in the bathroom? I'm bad. I know. How can I judge? If all those years at Calvary has taught me anything it is that successful people and screw-ups alike seek out God, who is supreme, reassuring, affirming, and the origin of grace. I opened my heart up with each page and try not to look at her smiling, golden-haired photo on the back cover and smirk.

I'm on vacation and I have spent an entire week away from the office and the people, situations, and pressures that make it such an unpleasant place for me. What do I wake up thinking about today, the penultimate day of my vacation? Uh, huh, work. This sad realization has lead me to another realization that I must summon Nacho Libre - my chubby, slightly touched masked champion - to wrestle my control issues, my frustration, and my fear of failure to the ground. Andale!

Believe me daughter

Every visit with my parents holds the unpleasant possibility that mom and I will squabble over something and my feelings will get hurt or my mother's will. This is the way it goes and I accept that possibility (not peacefully, yet) as a part of being my mother's daughter. Based on my parent's visit to New York in September, I had hoped that we would keep our conversations civil, polite, and filled with inane pleasantries. That is easier said in a city that offers constant entertainment, distraction and anomaly to discuss dispassionately. But we're not made of air, but of water (blood), and each of us - my father, my mother, and me - crave to connect, to communicate, to be seen and heard. In fact, the connection and expectation to connect is part of the problem between us.

The last few days I haven't been very peppy or interested in exploring the area. Partly because of exhaustion. I stayed up all night on Friday to make my plane early Saturday and didn't let myself go to bed until 8 p.m. I ate too much on Sunday and had a fitful night which made me groggy yesterday. The 2.5-2.7 mile run to the clubhouse and back helped. The other issue is that they take it easy - all. day. long. So, when they ask me what I'd like to do while I'm here I have to tell them what I think is actually possible, which seems reasonable. I did say I wouldn't mind visiting the largest telescope in the U.S. which is 8,550 feet in the air and visible by the naked eye from their back yard. They just made a face like I asked them to eat bugs and said, "Ehhh, nah." But then, we're driving around Tuscon (depressing place) and mom says to me, "Are you as bored as you can be yet?"

I'm getting ahead of myself though.

Yesterday, was my mother's birthday. She's 65 years old and the mother of four children (one who forgot it and just called to chat). She chose where we went for lunch. Not more than 10 minutes into the meal she says to me, "I know you've told me before but would you say that you are an atheist?"

I'm eating mayonaised pasta and a tuna with chedder on dark rye. It was going to be a lovely day. I had fit in my run and a reviewed my investments (a long overdue task). I was looking forward to helping dad make mom feel special all day. I'd bought dad two cards, which he gave to her and she loved. We were going to a nice restaurant for dinner and I was going to surreptitiously pay for it. It was going to be a good day. And then, I'm eating lunch and all the sudden it's 20 questions about your beliefs.

I responded as I usually do, I look her dead in the eye and say as calmly as I can, "I do not believe in god."

Last September, that was enough, she stopped herself. This time, she continued, "What do you believe in?"

I'm trying not to stare at the Star of David around her neck, which most of my life carried a cross, and took a deep breath, "Well, I guess I am an existentialist. Which means, that I have morals and ethics but do not believe in a higher power." I know that's not exactly what it is but giving her any more words to work with would have been suicidal.

She has these watery blue eyes and the corners of her mouth are turned down. She's got her shoulders squared but her hands are folded over each other on the table, like she's bracing herself. She's bracing alright to forge ahead, "So, you believe in right and wrong but you decide for yourself what that is?"

"Yup."

Her eyes blink and she is taking in her own connection and deciding whether or not she is going to ask this next question. She proceeds, "So, when you die. Do you believe that you're just dead?"

This time I look at my father and my mother. "Yes."

"I know lots of people who are sick who just wish they were dead," she says in response. I figure this personal tid bit is the conclusion of our discussion, but I was wrong.

"Do your friends believe in anything?" She's trying to get a picture of my life, possibly to shroud me with prayer warriors from her Bible Study.

Why yes, they believe in evolution, humanism, democracy, the Bill of Rights, and even God! But I don't say that, I tell her, "Some were raised Catholic or Protestant but they're not practicing. They say they believe in God but that's about as far as it goes."

My mother nods her head to the familiar description of people "who believe in God."

"There ARE a lot of Cafeteria Catholics out there," She says condescendingly.

I can hardly swallow that statement. She's wearing a Star of David around her neck for chrissake! She was raised Methodist and converted to fundamentalism in her early 20s. Then, perhaps 11 or 12 years ago, she began a journey to discover where her true spiritual self lies and found that she is a Jew for Jesus, or a Messianic Jew. So, she wears the symbol around her neck, sometimes proudly, sometimes under her shirt, it depends on the company, I would guess. She of all people should sympathize with a spiritual journey, for chrissake!

So, I say, "What about you? Do you still consider yourself a Messianic Jew?"

My veiled aggression is none-to-subtle and she looks at me with all her motherly contempt and says, "Jesus was a Jew. I am a Christian. Your father and I don't go to church anymore. We stopped going about five years ago when your brother was sick. I guess we fell out of the habit. And Calvary changed. It catered more to young Christians and it was all Christianity 101. We found a Bible study that is one of the deepest and best I have been in. I consider myself to be a growing Christian."

Cue my father to pipe up, "What are we going to do today?"

Bonding

Someone keeps hogging the pillow at night and that's why I am so restless. Fortunately, she's adorable. Today, I just need to keep my head up off my desk. I stayed up too late watching a fascinating program on PBS about the amazing capacity humans have to love, to empathize and to bring one another joy.

The first section of the program focused on mother-child attachment studies of orphans from Russia. Many of these children have social and emotional difficulties and disorders that prevent them from understanding boundaries and bonding with their adoptive parents, even after a decade of attentive care and affection. It's not aspergers but rather a learned response to abandonment. When they cried no one responded. They learned that no one is there to hear them or care. It made me think of my uncle, who also had trouble with boundaries, but he was rescued from neglect as an infant.

Studies show that children who are raised in institutional care longer, tend to develop more social and emotional problems than the orphaned who are not one of many. I was very fortunate to have a foster family and only spend a few months with them before coming here. And, personality has something to do with how a child will adapt to their new family. Not to forget that mothers' brains fire off when they see their happy, smiling children in the same part of the brain that registers food or sex. So, we have a built-in reward system and children who provide parents with the rewards - smiles - are helping their adult caregivers to bond with them.

Bonding with others has been on my mind lately with conflicts at work, changes in the nature of friendships in my life, and renewed search for a partner. What this program helped to clarify for me was that bonding with those around you is a combination of early and subsequent experiences with bonding, personality, expectations, and communication. Given all of that, bonds of family, friendship, and romance, which are vital to our happiness, are amazing feats of the heart.