Pressure Cookers

One of the few TV shows I've ever watched over and over is Everybody Loves Raymond.  We Tivo the episodes of this comedy, which has been off the air for a number of years now, and watch them while we eat dinner.  ( I know, I complained about eating in front of the television,  but we're still doing it and I suspect we will be until we're in the nursing home and get wheeled into the dining room to eat at the table.) Anyway, there's something about this show that I just love, and I laugh my head off every time I watch it.  I can actually recite most of the lines along with the characters.  It's pitiful, and I'm almost ashamed to admit it.  Nevertheless, it's true.  I'm a sucker for Ray and Debra, and their whole dysfunctional family.

Tonight we watched an episode entitled T-Ball.  Debra brings an "unapproved" snack to the kids T-Ball game and is chastised by the overzealous team manager.  Ray, in his usual pathetic need for approval, refuses to stand up for her, and tries to make nice with the manager without Debra finding out.  Of course, it all blows up in his face - the manager gets mad, Debra gets mad, and Ray ends up making a fool of himself again.

Believe me, it really is funny.

But it's sad too, because tonight I realized how familiar Ray's reaction is.  You see, I do the same kind of stuff all the time.  I go through all kinds of contortions trying to make everybody love me.  I can see myself doing exactly what Ray did - fixing the best snack ever for the next game, buying every single item on the approved snack list, trying to sneak the snack past Debra (who vowed never to bring another snack to the game) and secretly get in the obnoxious manager's good graces.

This constant need to win everybody's approval creates a lot of pressure.  I'm generally pretty good at containing all that pressure.  Better than Ray,  at any rate, because he completely lost his cool and went off like a banshee at the manager, Debra, and his parents.

However, I definitely understand that impulse.  I'm just better at controlling it.  Sometimes it does feel like life is a big pressure cooker, and people keep throwing ingredients in the pot and turning up the valve.  Before long, something has to blow.

Over the years I've learned ways to alleviate some of the pressure.  You all probably know what my release factors are better than I do - music, writing, reading, walking.  All those things help me blow off steam in a socially acceptable way instead of screaming and throwing things, which is what I really feel like doing sometimes.

But if I acted like that, then people wouldn't love me, would they?

And that would never do.

Of course,  I really should address the root of the problem - the fact that my overly kind and empathetic nature, combined with a generalized desire for approval makes me put all sorts of pressure on myself to be all things to all people.   The result - a lot of repressed anger and unhappiness.

The other thing Everybody Loves Raymond reminds me of is that our behavior and personality are often rooted in our early experiences.  For Ray, his over-controlling mother who withheld love and approval based on his achievement of her expectations, combined with a cold, authoritarian father, primed him to become someone who was constantly seeking approval.

But for me - well, in my family I was the little princess who could do no wrong, and while that sounds rosy, it brings with it a burden to maintain this reputation at any cost.  Hence, I'm still scurrying around trying to make myself look good in the eyes of the world.

Maybe knowing how you got to a certain place in life is half the battle in learning how to get out of it.  I hope so.

Because even the best pressure cooker has its limits, and could eventually explode.

A Typical American

When my son made his first visit to Thailand to meet my future daughter in law's family, we sent along some family pictures by way of introduction.  My daughter in law later told me that her family  remarked that Brian's mother was "so beautiful" and "did not look like a typical American." First off, I was mightily flattered.  Rarely do middle aged American women think of themselves as beautiful, and certainly no one around here refers to me that way much anymore.  But then, as is customary for me, I started thinking about the comment a little more, and had to smile.  Because, whether or not I'm beautiful, I'm definitely a typical American.

Genetically speaking, I am a pure amalgam of ethnicities.  My father's Armenian genes were mixed with my mother's array of Scotch-Irish-German-Jewish-Native American DNA.  The resulting potpourri of nationalities is representative of every "true" American.  Every one of us is the composite of the hopes and dreams of our ancestors from all across the globe, who converged on this great melting pot with hopes of a brighter future and a freer civilization. Whether our Founding Fathers intended for it to happen this way or not, American has been from her inception a place where people desire to come and create a new life.  From the moment Christopher Columbus set sail, until this moment in 2011, American is a beacon of hope for thousands of people.

In light of the Arizona shootings - another tragic violent event, one with overtones of  political polarity, bigotry and hatred-Americans are called upon to remember our origins and how we all came to be here.  None of us are "native" to this country.  Every American, unless they're 100% American Indian, has an ancestor who "belonged" in a different country.  But those ancestors all came here with a common dream, a belief in the ability of a people to self govern with decency and justice.

President Obama had this to say in his remarks at the memorial service for the victims of last week's shooting...

Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.

In the end, all of us - white, black, man, woman, Democrat, Republican - have more in common than we do apart.  We all believe in the power of the American dream and we all want it to work for us and our children.  But it can never be realized to its full potential until we learn the lessons any successful kindergarten has to learn - to respect one another's differences and get along.  Let that be the mark of the typical American of the future - someone who has the humility to know that not one of us is "better" than another, and that we can achieve more working together than we can apart.

Grace Periods

The parental grace period is a small window of freedom, in which you are too old to be dominated by your parents but too young to really worry about them. This grace period is usually fairly short.  And when it ends, it frightens you. Carolyn Knapp, from The Merry Recluse, A Life in Essays

My parental grace period ended a long time ago, and in fact, I'm not sure I ever really had one.  I think I've always worried about my parents, especially my mother, in a way that's probably neither healthy or normal.  My therapist once called it "enmeshment,"  a behaviorist term that refers to being completely involved in someone else's life to the extent that you ignore your own preferences and needs in deference to the person you're enmeshed with.

As a youngster, this manifested itself in an extreme case of separation anxiety.  I recall being totally and completely convinced that if my mother were let out of my sight, something "awful" would happen to her...i.e., she would die.  For quite a few years, I became hysterical if she had to leave me behind.  As an adult, I can see what a hardship this must have been for her.  Rightly or wrongly, she indulged this fear, and did her level best to never leave me home alone.  If that were to happen nowadays, of course I would have been dragged off to therapy posthaste.  But in the 1960's, that was, of course, unheard of.

Finally, and happily for both of us, I eventually outgrew this loathsome paranoia.  But during the time of my parents (really messy) divorce, I found myself again slammed against the wall with fear and worry for my mother, at the agonies she was going through and my complete powerlessness to do anything about it.  Because on top of my problem with enmeshment is a huge dollop of control freakishness, and when people I love get into situations I can't help them with, I'm simply wrecked.

In the past three years, I've come face to face with the kind of loss that's inevitable when you reach a certain age.  I watched my mother in law, my uncle, and my aunt, fall in rapid succession.  My mother will be 84 years old in March.  She still lives alone in her home, which is just down the street from me.  She's ambulatory, and her mind is sharp as a tack.  She still cooks dinner for me three nights a week when I'm working, and dog sits when we travel. She keeps up with current affairs, is very savvy about the modern world.  She's fiercely independent in many ways.

But I can see changes, and I know she sees them too. She's got chronic pain from arthritis that's starting to inhibit her mobility, and make her generally fatigued and depressed.  She's frightened of falling, and so is afraid to get out much when the weather is snowy and icy (which it is most of the time now).  I'd love to take her to Florida for the winter,  but she has continued to resist doing  that every single year, until now I don't think she's up to making the trip even if she wanted to.

So many things I wish we had done differently, my mother and I.  And  I get so scared about her sometimes that I'm frozen with fear.  What can I do to make her life better?  How can I help?  What will I do when there's nothing left to be done?

As I feel time rush away from me, I simply long for the wisdom and strength to take care of her the way she's always taken care of me.

That's the kind of grace I need.

Period.

You've Got Mail

I love getting mail. Real mail, not e(lectronic) mail.

I like electronic mail, but the kind that comes in the mailbox is just better somehow.  I like that there are different sized envelopes and pretty stamps.  I enjoy looking at the magazines and especially the catalogs from places like the public television station, the art museum, and Levenger's (the store for serious readers).  I used to really love getting letters, and actually had a couple of pen-pals once upon a time, whose epistles I looked forward to with eager anticipation.

What I don't like about mail is when I get other people's.

That's become a real problem around my neighborhood.  Lately, I've been getting mail that belongs to someone else on average of once or twice a week.  Sometimes it's just one letter - a credit card offer, or a "This is Your Last Chance" to renew a magazine subscription.  Occasionally, it's something important - once I got a priority mail package.  Sometimes the mail belongs to my next door neighbor - when that happens, it easy to just run over and hand it to her.  Mostly though, it comes from streets farther away in the neighborhood - streets I wouldn't think would even be on this postal carrier's route.

So I always put this kind of mail back into the box with a note saying "This was delivered to the wrong address."

Yesterday, we got 12 pieces of mail that didn't belong to us.  They were for three separate addresses one street over.

"Okay, that's it," my husband said.  "This has gone too far.  I'm calling the post office."

Good luck with that, I thought to myself.  You can never actually speak to a person at the post office.

Amazingly enough, Shirley answered the phone and asked if she could help him.

"I want to report that we've been getting frequent mis-delievered mail," he stated.  "Today we got 12 pieces of mail that were  addressed to three different addresses.  Some of this mail is financial information that looks important."

"You can just put that back in the mailbox and we'll redirect it," Shirley said.

"I don't want to just put in back in the mailbox.  I want to discuss this with someone who can correct the problem."

"You'll have to speak to your carrier about that," Shirley told him.

"Fine, then let me speak to my carrier."

"He's gone home for the day."

"When will he be back?"

"I think he's off tomorrow.  Maybe he'll be in on Wednesday?"

"Fine.  How do I get in touch with him?"

"Call back here about 4:30."

I looked at my watch.  It was 4:00 and he was gone for the day. Hmm.

My husband bundled up all the mail, sat down at his computer, and wrote a note (in all capital letters, which I think constitutes yelling on the computer.)  It was firm, but polite.  He wrapped it around the wayward mail pieces, and I put it in the mailbox this morning.

I was almost afraid to go to the mailbox this afternoon.  There was a stack of mail, gathered together in a rubber band, and wrapped in the yelling note.

But all the mail was ours.

I'm not sure what this means.  If the postal carrier read the note and decided he didn't want to carry around evidence of his mistakes, or if he didn't even read it and just wrapped OUR mail in it.

Then a rather horrifying and unkind thought occurred to me.

Maybe he can't read, and that's why we keep getting mail that doesn't belong to us.

I suspect we're going to continue getting mail that isn't ours.  I think the United States Postal Service is going to hell in a handbasket, and it's probably why everyone is using electronic mail now.

See, the thing I really worry about is that someone else is getting MY mail, and that they aren't polite enough to put it back in the mailbox for redelivery (with or without a yelling note).  Perhaps someone has been sending me really lovely, handwritten letters with pretty stamps, and they've been delivered to that awful house down the block where three young guys live - the ones who never take in their garbage cans or shovel their snow.

If I find out that's happened, I'll be writing a yelling note of my own.

Not that it would do any good.

Not that I would know where to mail it.

Bag Lady

I've never been one of those women who were crazy about shoes.  Probably because I have the fattest feet ever, so that even when my body is at its slimmest, I still have to shop for my feet in the plus size department.  When I was a little girl, my mother took me to a special shoe store that carried shoes in widths up to triple-E, and on occasion they would special order a quadruple -E just for my fat little feet.  I feel like I've been wearing old-lady shoes since I was five.  They don't make really cute shoes in quadruple -E. All this to say that I sublimated shoe love into purse love.  There was a time when I owned not one, not two, but seven Coach purses.  I had a leather one in every color (brown, cordovan, navy , white, off-white, cream, and black).  Then a few years ago, Coach stopped making leather purses - now all their bags are some canvas like material and they have these strange geometric patterns on them.  I was extremely disappointed by this.  These bags are very unappealing to me, and certainly do not live up to the standard of classic fashion that I had come to expect from my years of loyalty to the Coach brand.

So, I moved on.  I got into Brighton bags for a while, but was never totally in love with them.  I did like their accessories - the watches, bracelets, and earrings are very nice.   I still wander through the Brighton store at Southwest Florida airport and look longingly at the luggage, especially the bright red pieces.  Very fun.

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine got a Tiganello bag in butter yellow.  The leather was extremely soft and supple, and she looked just darling carrying it on her shoulder.  I coveted it for a while, and when it went on sale at Macy's, I bought it. After a few days of carrying it on my shoulder, I was bent sideways - the thing weighed a ton.  I took out everything that wasn't absolutely necessary (meaning an emergency sewing kit and a teabag) and it still felt like hauling a sack of potatoes around.

For a while I was totally into little purses in every color.  I had purses to match every outfit, and some that matched no outfits just for fun.  I had a red purse one winter, and an olive green purse when they were cool.  I had the yellow purse for spring, and a burnt orange purse for fall.  My friends started calling me the rainbow purse girl.

Last year I gave up on purses.   I still carry one - but the operative word is one.  I've limited myself to one bag per season, instead of having a bag for every outfit.  Plus, I've become extremely picky about the type of bag it is.  It has to have a short shoulder strap, and contain only one inner compartment.  It must have a zipper pocket on the outside, and a cell phone pocket on the inside.   I have become an absolute fussbudget about my purse.

I am amazed at how much time I save in the morning, now that I no longer have to shift the contents of my purse from one to another.  Many mornings I was rushing to dump the wallet, the pocket calendar, the pill container, the ipod, the lip gloss, the reading glasses, the notepad, the breath mints,  the phone (dear God, don't forget the phone), and the office keys (just in case I need to lock up), from one bag into another just minutes before dashing out the door.  Now it's all in one purse, and it stays there through the entirety of one major season.

I feel bad about my purses, though.  I still have a closet full of them.  The cute little brown one with the bow on it.  The purple leather clutch.  A turquoise bag that exactly matched a sweater, jacket, and watch.  The nice thing about purses was that they didn't need to be a size.  It made no difference whether my feet were fat, or my belly was bloated, or my hips a little too wide.  A purse always looked good, and it didn't even matter what day of the month it was.

But one thing I've noticed about getting older - I don't care about all that so much any more.  I'd rather have the extra time spent changing purses each morning to sleep, or drink another cup of coffee, or scratch my dog behind his ears.

After all, I've been wearing frumpy shoes all my life, and my mother taught me that your purse and shoes should always match.