Tag: the boxed set series

Family, Memory, Uncategorized, Writing

Photographic memory

Jen

I love photography even though I’ve never been as good at the art as I might have liked; might have been. I’m grateful — seriously, grateful — to Instagram, for allowing me an outlet for the scenes I capture in my mind’s eye and feel compelled to share, but hardly ever render to my satisfaction on a traditional camera.

I took photography as an elective in high school — learned how to develop my own film (not very well), and presumably how to properly use a camera. Whatever I learned there didn’t stick, however, and now I find more pleasure in photography as a researcher than as a voyeur. Although I imagine there is an element of voyeurism to my research, as well.

I love the evidence photography provides. I love the secrets revealed. I love the accidental body of information that corroborates or undermines the collective or individual stories we tell ourselves.

As I dig up old photographs in my cardboard boxes, or in the basement storage room of my mother’s house, I’m getting an education on the people I love … and who loved me. But almost as often as questions are answered or light is shed; there are mysteries. There are, in those photographs, chapters to the stories of my life that were never told to me.

On a recent trip to New Jersey to visit my family, I discovered a photo album my mother acquired when my Bubbi died a couple of years ago. The album chronicled a European trip — the only one, I think — my grandmother took with her aunt when she was in her late forties or early fifties.

Aunt Edna (L) and Bubbi
Aunt Edna (L) and Bubbi

Though I can’t be sure, I imagine this trip must have been monumental for my grandmother, who grew up poor in the Midwest; who was a small school girl when she was forced to care for her ill mother and eventually watch her die; who was shifted from relative to relative as her father journeyed from town to town for business. Her Aunt Edna (her mother’s sister) never married, and was very generous to my grandmother over the years (it’s believed Aunt Edna made a small fortune by investing early in Xerox). The two were very fond of each other. Beyond that, and beyond the little I know about Aunt Edna (she was a school teacher and an author), I don’t know much more about the intricacies of their relationship. I do remember my Bubbi, in her younger days, often going out west to Indiana to visit Aunt Edna. I also remember once meeting Aunt Edna myself in the lobby of the hotel in Philadelphia for which my grandmother worked for many years: She was perched on a velvet-lined settee and looked like an Aunt Edna.  She called me Jennifer, as did most of my grandparents’ friends.

The pages of the photo album my Bubbi created are filled mostly by blurry, over-exposed shots of the landscape, of the sites, of the Coliseum, Venice, the streets of Paris, and presumably, the Alps. There are only three photographs of Bubbi in the album and four or five of Aunt Edna. There is one of somebody’s hand — opening up a compact, perhaps? Getting ready to put on lipstick? — as the other snapped a shot of windmills out the window of a tour bus.

bubbi in europe windmills

There are no captions. No notes on the backs of the matte photographs. No written word at all. There are a few blank postcards — one with a watercolor of Buckingham Palace; another from an Italian resort.

What do I learn about my Bubbi from this album? Other than the fact that she was more traveled than I thought, I am presented with more questions than answers.

Did she slide the photos in under the cellophane and never look at them again?

Did she take the album out, every year on her birthday, reminisce and long for a different sort of life?

Was she grateful for this trip? Satisfied? Or did it only give her a taste for more?

I knew my Bubbi pretty well as far as Bubbis and granddaughters go. I took an interest in her life while she was still with it enough to recall it. But she never told me about the trip to Europe she once took with Aunt Edna. Never recalled the windmills or the Hotel Napoleon or the view from the Spanish Steps.

Of course, there are so many stories we never share; never tell. Not even the ones we love. Not even the ones who ask.

In fact, it’s often the stories closest to our hearts we keep for ourselves.

=== === ===

 

If you liked this post, you might also like this one; also about Bubbi and about photographic evidence.

 

 

 

Childhood, Education, Family, Letting Go, Love, Memory, Relationships, Writing

First love

Jen

Among my cardboard boxes, there is another. It’s plastic. A clear Tupperware container with a blue cover marked “Jen’s papers.”

I laugh a little at this because the markings on the masking tape are in my mother’s handwriting and I would have expected it to read “Jennifer’s papers.”

But Jen is shorter than Jennifer, shorter than Jenny, shorter than any of the names I answered to during the time of the papers. And easier to write on a label.

I opened this container a few months ago when the shipment arrived, and was first struck sick by the smell, a strong combination of mildew and 30-year-old paste.

I quickly secured the top back on  (imagining my own ironic, horrible scifi death by spores) and put it back on the pile of boxes for later review.

A bit heartbroken, I intended to throw the whole thing away. Clearly the papers inside were ruined; forgotten leftovers stored too long. But before I got rid of all of it I wanted to document the contents.  After all, my mother took care to fill this container over the course of a decade and to rescue it — not once, but many times — from basement catastrophe (flood, hurricane, divorce).

Despite potential ruin, after all these years, the Tupperware reached its destination: in the hands of grown-up Me. It would be a shame not to unload its cargo. Also, and most important, as a mother who hoards, I know well the affection wrapped up in the saving of those papers.

I approached the container again this week, when I had a few hours to myself during the day and when the weather was mild enough to be able to go through them in fresher air outside.

I took out our good camera and prepared to archive my findings.

I knew that most of what I’d find would be handwriting exercises, A+ papers, and art projects. Nothing extraordinary, I imagined, would be discovered inside. What could I possibly have produced in elementary school that would elicit any deeper emotions than sentimentality? On the other hand, my boxes  constantly surprise me and this one was no different.

Among the findings:

  • My first voting ballot — indecision written all over it — from a Weekly Reader in 1980. Anderson or Reagan for the Win? I had checked off both, though I wonder if the Reagan was an afterthought as I remember distinctly wanting Anderson.
  • A report on Voyager 2 when it was still hovering near Saturn
  • A now-vintage souvenir postcard sent to me and my brother (addressed to Miss Jennifer and Master Jason) from Disneyland
  • And, a drawing I made when I was three or four in which my mother’s image was a presence greater than anyone else on page, larger than me, larger than life.

I also found love letters.

Between me and Mrs. Aducat.

I completely forgot loving Mrs. Aducat.

Mrs. Aducat, who wasn’t even my homeroom teacher, not even the woman I spent most of my day with in first grade, but simply my reading teacher. The woman who taught me language, sentence construction, how to express myself with carefully crafted words.

Based on the persistence with which I sought her love, my affection was strong.

ms aducat i love you

Over the course of months, I wrote many love notes to Mrs. Aducat on the back of my writing exercises.

And she wrote me back.

“I love you, too, sweetie,” she wrote in red cursive on the back of one.

And with a smiling heart on another.

i love you too jenny

“Yes!” she answered me with an exclamation point one time when I asked her if she loved me too.

I even made it simple for her once. YES or NO, I wrote under two boxes. An ultimatum, perhaps?  If so, she took the bait and checked off YES. “Lots and lots,” she wrote underneath it in her red pen.

I am struck by this.

I am struck by the love given me by a grownup; not a relative, just a woman paid to teach me to read.

And I am struck by the unrestrained expression and bold audacity with which I expressed my love for her and asked for it in return.

Oh, to love and be loved again — unabashedly, without reserve — as I did, and was, when I was seven.

= = =

This is one in a series of essays inspired by my cardboard boxes. If you like this post, and want to know how it began, read A Case for Hoarding. One post in the series, “Note to Self,” was recently featured on Freshly Pressed. Additional posts are tagged “the boxed set series“.

Letting Go, Love, Memory, Relationships

Music is a Gift with Legs

Jen

I’m a big believer in the magic of books, music, and people falling into your lap when you least expect them to and when you are most ready to appreciate their messages.

(For this reason, I’m about to download The Happiness Project since three people in as many days have referenced it to me.)

But just because the wisdom fortuitously appears at just the right time doesn’t mean its vessel hasn’t fallen into your lap previously … maybe even shimmied back and forth a bit; stirred almost otherworldy sensations down there. Somehow, though, you overlooked the deeper message the first time around.

What’s even more incredible is when the words of comfort or inspiration have been there all along — in your CD cabinet, let’s say — just waiting to be understood.

There all the time
There all the time

This is the case with my collection of Grooves compilation CDs that were a hand-me-down gift from a boyfriend’s mom in the mid-90s.

I have seven of them still. Two I’ve loved since college, but the rest mostly gathered dust buried there at the bottom of my alt/folk rock section. This past week I’ve been listening to volume five (one of the dusty ones) on my way to work and school. It’s been a week of transition, and a week in which I need to feel understood, and loved.

It’s been, as I like to say (quietly to myself), a sing-with-the-windows-down kinda week.

Here’s the playlist of volume five:

Hold Me Up – Velvet Crush

Layer By Layer – Steve Wynn

You R Loved – Victoria Williams

Tell Everybody I Know – Keb Mo

Partisan – Katell Keineg

Holding Back The River – Luka Bloom

Who’s So Scared – Disappear Fear

Dreams In Motion – Felix Cavaliere

Good Times – Edie Brickell

Mockingbirds – Grant Lee Buffalo

Send Me On My Way – Rusted Root

Her Man Leaves Town – Rebecca Pidgeon

Two Lovers Stop – Freedy Johnston

You And Eye – David Byrne

Oye Isabel – Iguanas

And If Venice Is Sinking – Spirit Of The West

Century Plant – Victoria Williams

I’ve had this CD in my possession for two decades (the copyright says 1994 on the disk jacket), but I’m only now finding meaning in the messages.

Only now.

This is what good music does to a soul: Seeks it out and seeps in deep just when the spirit craves it most.

And the songs, just as they were advertised at the time, are fresh. juicy. like new. 

Gifts …even in the form of hand-me-down compilations CDs … have legs, I guess. And can walk a long, long distance in order to deliver a much-needed message.

Writing

This poem comes in pencil only

Jen

This guy popped out of nowhere after 30 or so years just when I needed him most.

pencial sharpener antique 1980s

He looks like a dapper old cat, but what you can’t see … what he’s hiding behind his back … is his secret weapon.

And exactly what I need right now.

A pencil sharpener.

It’s hard to explain exactly why I found him where I did (inside a personalized pink plastic container holding personalized pink hair ribbons), but I’m not one to question serendipity (okay, I am.)

It just so happens that I’ve been desperate for a good pencil sharpener lately.

If I had my choice, I’d get a vintage one from a 1950s midwestern schoolhouse and hammer it into my kitchen wall — BANG BANG BANG — but those guys seem to be going for big bucks on ebay and anyway I need mine to be the travelin’ type.

And this dandy cat looks ripe for travelin’, don’t you think?

He needs to fit in my handbag, the one holding a heavy spiral bound notebook with a hard cover decorated in mandalas.

I’m writing more by hand these days, you see.  Not because I want to. (Frankly, I prefer the feel of a circa 2005 keyboard against my rapidly tap tap tapping fingers. I also covet the ability to quickly delete the last thought I just had. See? I just deleted a thought you will never know.)

But because  I’ve accidentally become a poet: a compulsive stringer together of words. And poets (potentially the most compulsive artists of all) need at their side a means to satisfy their urges.

A computer won’t do. One needs to get down words with haste.

A smartphone won’t either. My thumbs are too thick, too clumsy. “Bogus” accidentally becomes “booger.”

If only I had a secretary by my side. … the cat would surely do if only he was alive.

“Please, kind sir, take down this line,” I might say to the cat if only he could lift his  hand away from his orange man purse and take dictation. “No, strike that! Change compulsive to inveterate.”

Kibbutz, Making Friends, Memory, Mindfulness, Relationships, Writing

Return to sender

Jen

I let go of Shira yesterday.

I called her up on the phone, walked over to her house, met her on the path there, and let her go.

She laughed.

So did I.

It was swell.

I had in my hand 18 year old Shira.

With love, I gave her back. To 40 year old Shira.

Some would call this surreal. Others would call it silly. I call it an extraordinary gift.

How did it happen?

In my cardboard boxes, I found letters. Shoeboxes filled with letters. Composition notebooks bookmarked for years with unsealed envelopes torn open by younger hands. Manilla folders stuffed with old exams, but peppered here and there by notes unsigned; the author’s identity only revealed by her handwriting.

I found a few from Shira. (Even if she didn’t live across the street from me here on this kibbutz in Israel, I would have recognized her 18 year old handwriting. It’s distinct. And handwriting, like phone numbers from childhood, is something I tend to hold on to strongly in my memory.)

The letters were from 1991 and 1992. The summers she and I respectively traveled to Israel for the first time.  In 1993, we’d arrive here together one winter break during college as participants on a 2-week volunteer program. We’d be stationed on an army base that’s now less than an hour drive away from where we live.

shira and jen 1993

The letters, when I read them yesterday for the first time in more than 20 years, emphasized a certain awareness I’ve already arrived at on my own.

Shira, I’m so grateful to say, has known two different Jens, maybe three, maybe even four or five, depending on where you slice me.

It’s a gift, indeed. A friend who knew you as a girl. Who knew you when you were thinner, blonder, filled with greater energy than you are now.

But an even greater gift is a friend who notices how much you’ve grown since then. Who knew you when you were less worldly, to say the least, less clever, less kind …and has forgiven you your youth.

In reading the letters, I remembered a younger Jen and a younger Shira, and a much younger friendship. I remembered the moments that punctuated that time. In her short letters — one scribbled in cursive on airmail stationery, another stuffed inside letterhead from her father’s business — our world in ’91 and ’92 came  alive for a moment and made me smile. In a different voice than the one I know today, 18 year old Shira reminded me of who we were then.  I was touched by the Shira I had forgotten; touched by the Shira I had never known then. I also fell in love for a moment with the Jen I must have been then. A Jen I never knew I was; not at the time.

It’s complicated — the gift of old letters, of old friends — but it’s also so very simple.

I could have thrown them away, the letters. Like I’ve tossed other papers found inside the cardboard boxes.

Instead, I decided to return them to sender.

It seemed symbolically appropriate. I can’t explain it, though I’ll try.

I returned them not because I was certain Shira would want them or need them (though it was a kick to laugh over them for a minute or two), but because handing over Shira to Shira seemed like the right thing to do.

Giving Shira’s letters back to her — instead of holding on to them — allows Shira to be whoever she wants to be in the world. Now.

And forces me, in a way, to accept her as such.

Not the Shira I used to know. Not the Shira who was what she was then. Not the Shira I thought she was yesterday.

Just Shira. Now.

Giving Shira back her letters gave me the opportunity to explore a concept I have great difficulty with (and the chance to practice on someone I knew would make it easy on me!)

The concept? Giving up my past so I can be present.

I can’t say I know what the outcome of this experiment will be. But something about it just seemed right.

Just like, I suppose, something felt right about saving letters in a shoebox.

* * *

This is one in a series of essays inspired by my cardboard boxes. If you like this post, and want to know how it began, read A Case for Hoarding. One post in the series, “Note to Self,” was recently featured on Freshly Pressed. Additional posts are tagged “the boxed set series“.

 

Writing

What’s Off-Limits When I Die

Jen

Who gets to decide what of yours gets published after you’re gone?

Who says that your journals, your letters, your doodles in the margins get to be publicly shared posthumously?

I assume the obvious: Your next of kin. Your estate’s executor.

But I wonder — those of us who read the words of the dead without their explicit permission (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, The Diary of Anne Frank, Kafka’s The Trial) — do we care whether or not the author wanted the materials published and read? (Kafka apparently vehemently did not. Tough noogies for him.)

Sure, it’s fun to discover that Tolkien had a “semi-secret” talent for sketching. And Jim Morrison wrote psychadelic poetry.

Fun for us.

But for them?

I’m not so sure.

Of course, one could argue that they’re … um… dead. That would be a pretty good argument for why it doesn’t really, truly matter.

But why, then, do we respect the dead in other, superstitious ways? We wear black, hold our breath, cover our mirrors. Shouldn’t we think twice before reading their private journals?

Presumably their material was published in the name of art by someone who had something to gain from the publication: money, fame.

But does this mean we have to read it?

I think about this a lot as I go through my cardboard boxes.

At the end of the day, I save stuff for me. I might think I am saving it for my kids, but I’m really saving it for me to share with my kids. Not for them to discover on their own with no historical reference. No filter. No explanation.

And I wonder, what would I be okay with them sharing after I’m gone?

Anything marked “FINAL DRAFT,” I’d be good with, I guess. All files tagged “SUBMITTED_2_2013” or any such combination of publication name + date, I’d be good with.

But the other stuff? My journals? My notes to self? My letters? My teenage angst poser poetry?

I don’t know if I want those aired out in public by anyone else but me.

I might change my mind when I’m famous. (I’ll let you know.) But I doubt it.

What about you? What are your thoughts about publishing rough work or private writings posthumously?

Community, Letting Go, Memory

The Things We Keep

Jen

When my husband and I were first married, we were part of a group of people in Tucson, Arizona designing a new cohousing community— our very own little American kibbutz!

This is actually how the community was described to us by a colleague, and why our ears perked up when we heard about it. We had never heard the word cohousing before then, but we knew what a kibbutz was (or we thought we did) and after the first informational session, we handed over a check and joined as one of the first young couples in a group made up mostly of divorcees and soon-to-be retirees.

We participated in a year or so of planning discussions — during which time I got pregnant with our first child — but in the end decided the community wasn’t an ideal fit for us. When I think of why, I remember most the day we had to decide if we would build a community laundry facility or instead choose that private homes would have laundry rooms.

My husband and I were strongly in favor of an easy access washer and dryer. We had spent too many years shlepping canvas bags to and from laundromats in various cities to give up what we now saw as a necessary luxury. Furthermore, dirty bibs and stinky onesies were in our near future.  But the majority of the group thought that building one community laundry facility better fit our group vision. It would be more environmentally-friendly (we could use the gray water on the central lawn!) and would mean our homes would take up a smaller footprint.

This conversation spiraled out of control pretty quickly.  Soon it wasn’t about the laundry room, but about how much space we occupy and why. Which became a conversation about the things we need vs. the things we can let go of. Which became — finally! — the real conversation, which was:

There is a stage of life for acquiring things. And there is a stage of life for letting things go.

My husband and I were acquiring.  We’d been married less than a year. We had a new baby on the way. Stuff was in our future.

The rest of the group, most of whom were 20 – 30 years older than we were, were ready to let go.

I understood then, intellectually, the difference. But I couldn’t possibly comprehend how I’d ever be ready to let go of my things. I could see parting one day with my Dyson vacuum or saying goodbye to my extra set of Pottery Barn bowls. (Even though I really liked both sets, which is why we registered for two in the first place.)

But I couldn’t visualize or emotionally connect to a time in which I wouldn’t need extra space. For I didn’t travel lightly. In addition to all the gadgets I used to make my life more comfortable, I also carried with me all the signs and symbols of who I was and who I wanted to be.

Art on the walls.

Tchotchkes inside cabinets.

Magnets on the fridge.

All those things that reminded me where I’ve been and where I wanted to go.

All the things we keep so we know when we’re home.

* * *

Since not choosing to buy a house in the cohousing community, my husband and I have lived in 5 different houses. We’ve moved across country, across town, and across the sea.

We’ve lost some tchotchkes along the way. And half of our Pottery Barn dishes.

Accidentally, of course. But, in the larger scheme of life, very much on purpose.

You can’t keep on acquiring forever.

There’s only so much space.

In your closets. In your house. In your heart.

And there’s only so much time.

Losing the Pottery Barn dishes is preparation for the greater losses to come. Dirty bibs and onesies — as stinky as they get — are gone with the blink of an eye, don’t you know? As are the wee ones who used to wear them.

Letting go is a tool we must learn. We have no other choice … but learning to let go is not a group decision.

It’s one we each arrive at on our own.

In time.

Little by little, we get there.

Broken plates, missing teacups, forgotten floor lamps become stacks of letters, boxes of mixed tapes, address books from long ago.

Little by little ...

Regrets, broken promises, what ifs.

Little by little…

Fear, anger, shame.

Little by little…we get there.

We let go.

Childhood, Family, Letting Go, Memory, Mindfulness

Since I put your picture in a frame

Jen

There’s a photo in one of the albums in one of my cardboard boxes that nobody posing would want me to scan and post anywhere. It’s a #TBT that will never happen, and yet I almost wish I was bold enough to post it anyway because there’s a glorious photobomb inside an awkwardly posed reminder of a difficult time.

In the photo, I’m looking particularly young and particularly blonde —  caught in a rare moment of photogenicity. (Yes, spellcheck, that’s a word!)  I’m standing in front of a DoubleTree Suites in Washington, D.C. with my left arm around my 12 year old brother (his cheeky adolescent face accentuated by a blonde bowl cut) and my right arm around my then-boyfriend.

What you can’t see in the picture, however, not unless you know, is that I’m also in the middle of the end of my parents’ marriage.

That weekend — the weekend my other brother graduated from college — lives in my memories like a rotten piece of fruit.  Because even though my parents wouldn’t actually split up for another six months or so, it was during that weekend I knew their marriage was ending.

In the years since, I’ve told both my parents as such. And both were surprised. I’m not sure if they were surprised because they didn’t yet know their marriage was ending or because they were surprised I could tell.

I was surprised, too. Not at the certainty of it, but by the sorrow it caused me.

I never really thought I’d be terribly sad if my parents’ marriage ended. And yet, I was. Deeply. When my boyfriend and I returned to our apartment in NYC after that weekend, I remember crying and crying and crying. Sad not just for my parents, but for love, in general.

I understood then that love, while well-intentioned at the start, was ultimately doomed.

In the picture, in the three of our faces, you can tell something is wrong. An uneducated acquaintance might browse through that album and think we were just annoyed at having to pose.   But knowing what I know, I can see a certain heartache in our eyes.

***

The gift of cardboard boxes is that you can hide away pain until it no longer hurts as bad. Until you can bear to be with it. And look at it from a different perspective.

Discovering that photo from 15 years ago while digging through my cardboard boxes, I automatically zoomed in on the sadness. It’s where I’m programmed to look when I think of that time. It’s how I frame my picture of May 1999.

But the distance allows me to zoom out.

And there in the corner of the picture, under the awning at the DoubleTree Suites, is a photobomb of my Bubbi.

There she is with her hair done, in her special occasion outfit — a blue knit two-piece, she’d probably call it — beaming.

Her smile is real and touching. It’s the most real thing in the entire photograph.

She’s watching us and she is consumed by joy, for though happiness was no easy feat for my Bubbi, she adored her grandchildren. Through us, I dare say, she rediscovered love.

Just beyond our gloom, my Bubbi radiates happiness. Smiling, for she must have seen the larger picture.

Or decided to enjoy the moment in spite of it.

***

 

This is one in a series of essays inspired by my cardboard boxes. If you like this post, and want to know how it began, read A Case for Hoarding. One post in the series, “Note to Self,” was recently featured on Freshly Pressed. Additional posts are tagged “the boxed set series“.

The title of this post was inspired by the Tom Waits song, Picture in a Frame. It’s perfect background music for when you decide to dig through your cardboard boxes.

Writing

The poetry inside other people’s cardboard boxes

Jen

A new hobby is birthing itself, pushing its way out. 

Like when I took to exploring New York with my neck cranked back

gazing up at building sides looking for signs of  shoe polish advertised 100 years ago.

A new research topic. A new obsession.

The confessional.

Sylvia Plath. Anne Sexton. These are writers I never read.

Can you believe it? I’m embarrassed to even admit to it. (Though I already did.)

I never read those ladies on purpose. Their tragic endings were enough to put me on alert.

Enough to scare me into avoidance.

I was terrified of discovery. Worried that by exploring their darknesses, mine would be triggered. I didn’t need any more triggers — my mind’s been busy enough for decades.

However, slowly, slowly — as I’ve begun to creatively confess here on the blog and privately in long-form and poetry — I’m dipping my toes into their confessions. Learning from them. Growing. Chuckling. Feeling relief that I am not the only one pained by the beauty of tulips.

Today, I discovered “All My Pretty Ones” by Sexton, and smiled as I realized her poem is a consequence of rooting through cardboard boxes, both literally, i imagine, and figuratively. 

“a gold key, your half of a woolen mill,

twenty suits from Dunne’s, an English Ford,

the love and legal verbiage of another will,

boxes of pictures of people I do not know.

I touch their cardboard faces. They must go.”

It’s humbling, knowing that you’re not the first person in this world to suffer. It’s reassuring knowing you’re not the first writer to reach for a thesaurus in search of just the right word because your mind will not allow you to escape from the hunt until you do. It’s a relief, in a sense, as Lena Dunham shared about her experience reading and exploring Plath in college to know that your darkness is a little bit lighter than it could be.

It was good I didn’t read Plath or Sexton until now, I suppose.

In the same way it’s all good.

All of it. The stuff we hide away accidentally or on purpose until it’s ready to be discovered, explored, shared.

Turned into poetry.

Uncategorized

Egyptian Eye

Jen

The weekend arrives and most of us crave comfort food.

Doesn’t matter if we’re so old we force ourselves to gulp down steel cut oats with flax seed meal and craisins. What we really want is challah french toast. Or bacon. Or grits.

We want our mom, our dad, our Bubbi over there in the corner, back of their head to us, shoulders hunched over, feet inside slippers, flipping something hot on the stove with our name on it.

In my imagination, this something with my name on it is called “Egyptian Eye.”

Some people call it Egg in a Nest. Others Frog in the Hole. But in my childhood home, an egg over easy inside a piece of toast paid homage to the Eye of Horus, which, if you knew my dad, made perfect sense.

Despite the fact that gluten makes me cranky, and eggs make me bloated, I fried myself up an Egyptian Eye this morning. I did this as an Ode to Joy.

I forced myself to remember how much joy I used to find in breakfast.

In being a grown up.

 

***

It all started with an irritation.

A cranky feeling stuck in my throat, which is where cranky lives in me.

Didn’t feel like washing the dishes left over from being too tired last night. Didn’t feel like making my kids anything healthy to eat, even though weekend mornings are when I usually make the effort to do so.

In general, I felt annoyed. With adulthood. With obligations. And in that moment in particular, with the burden of breakfast.

Then I stopped, chuckled.

For years, you yearned and burned for this, I told myself. Don’t you remember? Isn’t it funny now?

You wanted to be a grown up. 

Don’t you remember how you screamed at your parents, “One day! You’ll see! I’ll get to decide! I’ll choose!” How you longed for your own money? For work that paid? To stay out late. To sleep where you wanted when you wanted. Eat sugar. Drink vodka. Tell people what you thought of them.

So?

What happened?

I think I completely forgot what was so great to be a grown up.

***

I remember once feeling joy and gratitude for finally being out there in the world on my own; responsible for my own well-being.

I remember my parents leaving me at my college dorm. I didn’t cry a single tear. I felt FREE.

I remember walking through the deep tunnels of the subway system of New York City when I first moved there after college and thinking, “Nobody knows where I am right now. I can go anywhere I want. And nobody is here to stop me.” I felt FREE.

I bought groceries — first at the local market and later at the health food shop — with such pride.  I strolled the aisles with curiosity. I carefully chose interesting items and paid for them with money I had earned. I felt FREE.

I woke up on Sunday mornings, turned on some Stevie Wonder and danced around the kitchen while I made challah french toast, or pancakes, or Egyptian Eye. I felt FREE.

***

It’s easy for me to lay blame.

Blame the absence of joy on things being “different now.” Harder. Busier.

Blame it on the kids.

Blame it on the government.

Blame it on my work.

Blame it on my neighbors.

Blame it on modern living.

Blame it on my own choices. My husband’s. My generation’s.

I could get sucked into this blaming so very easily.

In fact, I often do.

I often get so sucked into blaming others or blaming myself that I forget what I once held to be true.

I am an adult now. I am free.

The responsibility for my well-being is on me.

I get to choose.

***

So I chose.

I made myself an Egyptian Eye. Truth is, I offered one to my kids too. They declined, choosing “sugary cereal” instead.

Secretly I was happy.

Happy to make something just for me.

I ate it alone. Burst open the gooey yellow center with the fork prongs, watched it seep over onto the toast. Lapped it up with joy.

Felt free.

egyptian eye

Mindfulness, Modern Life, Philosophy, Relationships, Spirituality

The Unlikely Path to Inner Peace

Jen

I just finished reading The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, a story of a man who sets out on a journey, both metaphorical and literal, in search of inner peace and acceptance. A friend, after hearing about “the boxed set series” project I’m working on, recommended the novel as a complementary “research tool.”

It was a good suggestion.

Harold is in his mid-sixties when he receives a letter from a former colleague – a terminally ill woman with whom we understand from the beginning he has unfinished business. On his way to the post office, to drop off a return letter to the woman, he instead decides to deliver the message himself, by journeying on foot across England.

In addition to the truisms delivered throughout the book – wisdom worthy of highlighters and stars in the margins – I walked away with a sense of hope … and of more time. After all, if I am facing and acknowledging my past now at 39, I’m a few steps ahead of Harold, aren’t I? Doesn’t this mean I might actually find my inner peace SOON?

I smile even as I write the words. I know how silly this mindset is – how contrary it is to the intention of finding inner peace.

“Finding it” requires work.  “Soon” implies a deadline. Neither of which allows for the relief that I associate with inner peace. Did I learn nothing from Harold Fry? My imaginary book club asks me right now.

What I did learn from Harold is that we always think we are wiser than we are; that “now” we finally get “it.” And this is where we trip up.

At least, this is where I trip up.

So often, I cringe at or even attack my younger self, as if I am oh-so-much-wiser now than I was then. (I’m not.)

As if I am not making the exact same mistakes now that I did then — just with different supporting characters, and saggier boobs. (I am.)

What if the way to inner peace actually is acknowledging we will never truly be wise? Just more aware. Just more willing to learn from our past and from our present. Just more compassionate of ourselves and others when we trip up (again and again and again).

And what if the work to do was actually not such hard work? What if the assignment was to simply be more open to not knowing.

Not knowing the way to inner peace; and saying, “cool.”

Allowing for the possibility of finding it in unexpected places, faces, and moments.

***

I imagine a fat, happy Buddha smiling at me and nodding.

“Yes, my young padawan, that is Buddhism 101.”

What can I say? I’m a slow learner.

Very, very unwise, indeed.