Each time I play the moment over (and over) again, I wince. It all started innocently enough -- a parent of a boy in my class coming in to read a children's book she has written. The children were nestled on the rug, sitting criss-cross, elbows digging into their knees and chins in their palms. I felt it was very important to show the students how ordinary, everyday people-- people just like them-- can become published authors. We write in school everyday and at the time, they were writing their own personal narratives about an experience they have had in their own lives. This children's book was based on the woman's son, my student, and the whole lot of us delighted in the experience of a real author reading her own real book to us. It was a beautiful moment.
I had planned an activity for the kids based on the book, where they would each illustrate on of the pages of the original book that I had photocopied. They had only the words by which to create their page in our version of the story. The students hummed and laughed while depicting their pages, respectfully asking each other for the green crayon or the orange marker. They complimented each other's illustrations while the mom and I stood off to the side, both feeling rather proud of our work-- she, her book, and I, my rocking class!
"What was the most difficult part of the writing process for you, Mom?" I asked. (We'll call her Mom.)
"Well, the writing actually poured out of me. Raising my son showed me that motherhood was, umm... Let's just say, I found a way to channel all the frustrations of raising a son into a humorous story. Lemonade out of lemons, you know? And once I realized that everything he was doing could easily be turned into an adventurous picture book, the words and the story just came right out onto the paper. The hardest part was finding a publisher!" she laughed.
"I know what you mean about finding a place for all those experiences. My best friend and I have had quite eventful years. She is in med school and I'm teaching and we're both realizing that college is long over. Anyway, we started a blog to chronicle the craziness of it all, and having a the blog is like having a place to reflect and make sense of everything."
"Miss Jo, Jimmy is using the blue but I told him I needed the blue and now he won't give it back!" I heard someone yell from the peanut gallery.
"Sorry, Mom. Duty calls!" I said as I rushed over to deal with the blue crayon situation.
"Jimmy, Kate just said she wants the crayon and you are currently using red. The crayons aren't yours to guard, and I'm sure she'll return the blue to the pack once she's finished. Right, Kate?" My two needy friends nodded and I quickly circled around the other tables, watching for any other fires that needed putting out.
"Sorry about that, Mom. We're still learning to share I guess." I apologized, hoping she was impressed with my soft manner, my delicate approach, my air of composure and calm.
"No problem! I know what it's like!" she smiled. "Hey, what's the name of your blog?"
"It's--" and there it was! The moment my secret, personal identity collided with my very public, professional identity. And those two lives do not mesh well.
I felt heat radiate off my blushing face, and I imagined that at the moment I looked like a cartoon character whose level of embarrassment could be measured by the line of red creeping up my face as if being filled with Kool-Aid. "It's, um. Ha, ha (note: nervous laughter). It's called Un Petite Mort."
She tilted her head to the side and squinted. "Hmm, a- big- death? Is that it?" I realized I had all of one hot second to talk myself out of this one, when, as if struck by lightening, Mom jerked her head back and gasped, "Oh!!! Oh! Un petite mort!"
And all I could do, I did. I wrinkled my forehead, smiled, and shrugged. "Well, it's actually nothing like that other petite mort that you're thinking of. It's just that my friend and I totally over use the phrase and are always taking things to the extreme. We're always 'dying' or saying, 'Could you die, right now?;' You know?" Yes, Jo, I'm sure she knew what I meant because she looked like she wanted to die at that moment.
Luckily Mom was super cool and just laughed and giggled to herself. She even emailed me later saying that she thought the moment, albeit awkward, was incredibly humorous! Go figure. However, I couldn't stop asking myself, "Does she trust me to teach her child?" When I begrudgingly uttered the name of this blog I saw flashes of this alternate persona of myself: I saw myself, scantily clad and adorned with a fluffy pink boa, sipping on cosmopolitans and telling racy jokes, all the while teaching my third graders addition or punctuation or geography. At the time, I was actually wearing a sunshine yellow cardigan and grey trousers at the time, but my little blog omission had the power to instantly disolve the image I presented as Pollyanna, the prim and proper teacher.
Throughout the week, as I reflected on this experience (and every time getting flushed and uncomfortable), I happened to attend a lecture on Danny Lyons, the American photographer from the 1960s. His work chronicled the Civil Rights Era as well as various motorcycle gangs that had formed across the country. Ironically enough, at some invisible moment during his two years of documenting the gangs, he became an accepted member of them. Talk about blurring the line between your professional and personal lives! One of his black and white photographs depicted a bikerider whose face was splattered with mud. The contrast of the subject's pale face behind the dark mud gave the impression that the man was wearing a mask. At that point, the lecturer posed the notion of "masking."
"This image almost forces us to question the masks we wear in our own lives. And I don't mean a mask that you wear on your face, but your entire presentation-- your clothes, your posture, your expressions. It's just interesting to think about the masks that we wear and when we wear them and how they change the way we are in the world. Something to think about."
And being the diligent student I am, I did think about that and then couldn't stop. Growing up, my sister and I were always in costume. I can actually chronicle the milestones in my life by what outfit I was wearing at the time, going all the way back to my first day of kindergarten: golden yellow shirt dress with a side pocket from the Gap. So when the prophetic lecturer threw out those ideas of masks, I was taken aback even more so since I was at that point analyzing the "teacher me" and the "personal me" -- the me I am during the day and the me I am with my friends when I go downtown to the West Village. Part of the reason I was so embarrassed by telling Mom about my blog was because my different masks were competing for attention. During the day I wear a rainbow of cardigans and clogs, using the tone and timbre of my voice to manage the behavior of my students. And after work, when I'm with my husband in our cozy apartment, I'm completely relaxed, usually wearing cuffed boyfriend jeans and white T-shirts, and am not afraid to kick my feet up and relax. The other roles and personas I take on are no different than anyone else's really, we all slip in and out of our social and professional and personal masks.
But what I have started to think about is whether or not my roles are truly as defined and isolated as I make them out to be. Why should I be embarrassed by a blog whose title means orgasm in French even though I am a fabulous and very appropriate teacher of children(if I say so myself)? I'm not sure what the answer is exactly or how I feel about my various well-outfitted roles, but I do know the next time a parent asks me what I do outside of school, I won't be so quick to tell her I write for a blog titled 'Orgasm.' That much I know for sure!
Monday, October 26, 2009
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Kill the Buddha, Find Myself
When I first read If You Meet the Buddha On the Road, Kill Him, a book about one’s journey through psychotherapy, ironically, I had no idea how I would one day end up taking those words scarily out of context. Meeting the Buddha means you are seeking acceptance and guidance outside of yourself, allowing another person or force to hold the reins of your life. And you see, my Buddha, the Svengali of my eye, had been Lady Tremaine, publisher of all book publishers. She spouted ideas and practices I could only hope to emulate. Her rapid interpretation of new philosophies, ideas, and writing was, to me anyway, akin to a game of quick-fire. Her brilliance always astounded and awed me. So you can only imagine my elation when she asked me to work closely with her, shoulder-to-shoulder, on a journey to new epiphanies! Yes, how young and naïve I was.
My husband always tisk-tisked me about my adoration for Lady T. “You don’t need her. You are and can continue to be successful in your own right. You don’t need to work for her to make it. You just need to be you. All I’m saying is, be careful.”
“I know, I know. You’re right. Totally… But it doesn’t hurt to be associated with her – the Lady Tremaine.” That was, in a nutshell, my pat response.
He and I both knew I didn’t believe him. We both knew I was playing my own game of Follow the Leader. This grown up version, however, had new rules. Instead of commanding others to tap their heads while prancing around in line, a common command from my fearless leader was, “Get it done, perfectly, and by yesterday.” Well, that’s not true. She didn’t always explain herself that clearly.
Secretly, I was so happy to have found my Buddha. It meant she’d provide my next step—give me opportunities I had always hoped for. So what if I was blindly following her commands? She was my Buddha. How could I say no?
A few months down the pipeline in our work together and I was baring the brutal chill of her frigid moods and impossible demands while bunking at her upstate cottage. We stayed at her rustic abode in order to work through the day, be uber-productive, and remain cut off from all cell phone and Internet service. Fun! She would gulp down a pot of coffee, walk the dogs, inhale cereal and read through 100 or so pages of our manuscript all before I had come downstairs at 7:30. (I say “inhale” the cereal since there was no milk added and no spoon used, just her fingers scooping the Cheerios into her open jowls until she tossed the bowl into the sink.) Over the course of our time together that week, she would say things like, “Let me just stop you right there. From the moment you walked in here and started telling me about whatever it is you’re trying to explain, I’ve had no idea what you’re talking about!” And who could forget the classic line she delivered while I gnawed on the aglet of my sweatshirt, clammy and wane from my high BAC (blood anxiety count), wringing my hands and wrinkling my eyebrows. “You’re nervous. I see that—obviously. But just. Get. Over. It. This is no time for big emotions.” For a moment I actually thought she had cured me.
“Yes, that’s it! I’ll just stop being anxious. That’s the answer!” But obviously, those thoughtless and helpless words could not perform a task that a lifetime of therapy had yet to do. She yelled at me, told horrifying tales about raising her children, and laughed at the hardships of our colleagues. My Buddha was turning into my nightmare right before my eyes. That week went to sleep every night (while swatting mosquitoes, and making due with the pancake of a pillow) hoping for a brief respite from the crushing anxiety she conjured up inside me. With each birth control pill I popped into my mouth, I knew I’d survived one more day and had only a few more to endure. Curled up in bed, I’d pray for one of the lone kayakers on the lake, the lake we never had time to venture into, would rescue me and row me to a neighboring upstate cottage where the police could escort me home to Queens. And then, as if out of thin air, it occurred to me...
Drop two Ambiens in her cup of coffee—so simple yet brilliant! All I had to do was drop in two pills (since her hardy, German body could probably fight off the affects of one) and watch her eyelids start to flutter and her head begin to bob. I would actually fantasize sinking the sleeping pills into her ceramic mug with the flick of my wrist while preparing my breakfast of toast and cereal. All I needed were a few hours of peace, a few hours to silence the incessant criticism and settle the bar of anxiety pulsating up and down my chest. And two Ambien in her coffee would do it. It was a daydream, or as I like to call it, an option, that got me through the early days of our union. Truth be told, I never actually drugged her, but the urge is still there.
OK, so I had met my Buddha on the road and followed her so intently I might as well have baaed while I did her bidding. But all that time on the road together—with me baaing, and she steamrolling my self-esteem onto the pavement—had made me pretty homesick. What had happened to my spark, my joy, my je ne sais quoi? Where, oh where, had my confidence gone? Where, oh where, could it be? While developing a severe case of workaholism, my true self had withered away. I was tired. I was hurting.
That’s about the time my fantasies turned a morbid corner. Sleeping pills just weren’t strong enough. Homicide… Now that would do the trick. I’m not proud of the detailed tableaus I’ve mapped out, but the mind strays something gory while the body is trapped. One of my favorite musings was to imagine standing behind her at the top of the stairwell and giving her a little push. All I had to do was feign a little stumble and send her cascading down the cement flight of stairs. Sick. I know. The effect of repressing all her mockery and abuse conjured up a whole new side of me that I am not proud of. But the satisfaction the morose daydreams produced allowed me to retain whatever remained of my own power. I was taking If You Meet the Buddha On the Road, Kill Him way too seriously, knife in hand. And in my defense, and to quote William Steig’s Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, “In feeling helpless, Sylvester started to feel hopeless.” I was helpless and definitely starting to feel hopeless.
On night, after jumping through yet another one of her fiery hoops and crashing down on the other side, I knocked something back into place. I started to see things very clearly. The “hoop” entailed printing out a 300-page document and Fed Exing it to her overnight, even though I had already printed it out earlier in the week and left on her desk. (It always amazed me that she was always unable to remember or care enough to bring the anything she needed with her.) She needed the package “by the crack of dawn.” Apparently she thought I needed more direction than "by morning." So I made it to a Fed Ex in time to hand over the package to the delivery man on the last shipment going out that night, which was Friday, Friday, at 7 p.m. When I came home, sweating through my button-down, trembling with fear that the sun would rise before the delivery truck pulled up to her front door, only to see an email from her that read: If the most recent copy is the one you printed out for me, then I have it. I assumed you had done massive work on it by tonight. Guess you haven’t. Call me. – Lady T
That was it. Yet upon reading those short, very harmless (compared to what I was used to) sentences I collapsed to the floor, curled up in a ball, and started to sob. My tears came from somewhere deep inside. The flood of emotion came from a part of me that had been silenced for too long and had nowhere left to go except up to the surface. I knew what I had to do.
I quit. I called her up and, and instead of indulging her in a conversation about my inadequacy and incompetence, I quit. She threw some more barbs my way—my favorites being when she said I was, and could never be, as “emotionally robust” as she is, and when she informed me that I had been "set-up" because I could never live up to her or come near to being her and in that way was set-up.
Ah yes, and there it was.
I never could and never would come close to being Lady Tremaine. She was absolutely spot-on. Being her would mean putting her work before her family, and cutting down others to feel is superior in every way. Yet most importantly, being her would mean losing me.
Unfortunately, burning bridges didn't mean I have walked away unscathed. In fact, I know she has stolen and erased a degree of my drive and dedication somewhere along our time together. I no longer want to go above and beyond. Why bother when everything-- above or not-- is wrong? At some point she also turned me into her own self-fulfilling prophecy; treating me as if I could barely photocopy or collage actually diminished my abilities and quality of work, giving me the Shit Touch. I ended up being the inept, worthless person she treated me like. I don’t know what will come next or where my invisible compass is leading me. And for the first time in my life I’m not afraid of the unknown. The open expanse ahead is for me to navigate. And who better to lead the way than me—my own Buddha.
My husband always tisk-tisked me about my adoration for Lady T. “You don’t need her. You are and can continue to be successful in your own right. You don’t need to work for her to make it. You just need to be you. All I’m saying is, be careful.”
“I know, I know. You’re right. Totally… But it doesn’t hurt to be associated with her – the Lady Tremaine.” That was, in a nutshell, my pat response.
He and I both knew I didn’t believe him. We both knew I was playing my own game of Follow the Leader. This grown up version, however, had new rules. Instead of commanding others to tap their heads while prancing around in line, a common command from my fearless leader was, “Get it done, perfectly, and by yesterday.” Well, that’s not true. She didn’t always explain herself that clearly.
Secretly, I was so happy to have found my Buddha. It meant she’d provide my next step—give me opportunities I had always hoped for. So what if I was blindly following her commands? She was my Buddha. How could I say no?
A few months down the pipeline in our work together and I was baring the brutal chill of her frigid moods and impossible demands while bunking at her upstate cottage. We stayed at her rustic abode in order to work through the day, be uber-productive, and remain cut off from all cell phone and Internet service. Fun! She would gulp down a pot of coffee, walk the dogs, inhale cereal and read through 100 or so pages of our manuscript all before I had come downstairs at 7:30. (I say “inhale” the cereal since there was no milk added and no spoon used, just her fingers scooping the Cheerios into her open jowls until she tossed the bowl into the sink.) Over the course of our time together that week, she would say things like, “Let me just stop you right there. From the moment you walked in here and started telling me about whatever it is you’re trying to explain, I’ve had no idea what you’re talking about!” And who could forget the classic line she delivered while I gnawed on the aglet of my sweatshirt, clammy and wane from my high BAC (blood anxiety count), wringing my hands and wrinkling my eyebrows. “You’re nervous. I see that—obviously. But just. Get. Over. It. This is no time for big emotions.” For a moment I actually thought she had cured me.
“Yes, that’s it! I’ll just stop being anxious. That’s the answer!” But obviously, those thoughtless and helpless words could not perform a task that a lifetime of therapy had yet to do. She yelled at me, told horrifying tales about raising her children, and laughed at the hardships of our colleagues. My Buddha was turning into my nightmare right before my eyes. That week went to sleep every night (while swatting mosquitoes, and making due with the pancake of a pillow) hoping for a brief respite from the crushing anxiety she conjured up inside me. With each birth control pill I popped into my mouth, I knew I’d survived one more day and had only a few more to endure. Curled up in bed, I’d pray for one of the lone kayakers on the lake, the lake we never had time to venture into, would rescue me and row me to a neighboring upstate cottage where the police could escort me home to Queens. And then, as if out of thin air, it occurred to me...
Drop two Ambiens in her cup of coffee—so simple yet brilliant! All I had to do was drop in two pills (since her hardy, German body could probably fight off the affects of one) and watch her eyelids start to flutter and her head begin to bob. I would actually fantasize sinking the sleeping pills into her ceramic mug with the flick of my wrist while preparing my breakfast of toast and cereal. All I needed were a few hours of peace, a few hours to silence the incessant criticism and settle the bar of anxiety pulsating up and down my chest. And two Ambien in her coffee would do it. It was a daydream, or as I like to call it, an option, that got me through the early days of our union. Truth be told, I never actually drugged her, but the urge is still there.
OK, so I had met my Buddha on the road and followed her so intently I might as well have baaed while I did her bidding. But all that time on the road together—with me baaing, and she steamrolling my self-esteem onto the pavement—had made me pretty homesick. What had happened to my spark, my joy, my je ne sais quoi? Where, oh where, had my confidence gone? Where, oh where, could it be? While developing a severe case of workaholism, my true self had withered away. I was tired. I was hurting.
That’s about the time my fantasies turned a morbid corner. Sleeping pills just weren’t strong enough. Homicide… Now that would do the trick. I’m not proud of the detailed tableaus I’ve mapped out, but the mind strays something gory while the body is trapped. One of my favorite musings was to imagine standing behind her at the top of the stairwell and giving her a little push. All I had to do was feign a little stumble and send her cascading down the cement flight of stairs. Sick. I know. The effect of repressing all her mockery and abuse conjured up a whole new side of me that I am not proud of. But the satisfaction the morose daydreams produced allowed me to retain whatever remained of my own power. I was taking If You Meet the Buddha On the Road, Kill Him way too seriously, knife in hand. And in my defense, and to quote William Steig’s Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, “In feeling helpless, Sylvester started to feel hopeless.” I was helpless and definitely starting to feel hopeless.
On night, after jumping through yet another one of her fiery hoops and crashing down on the other side, I knocked something back into place. I started to see things very clearly. The “hoop” entailed printing out a 300-page document and Fed Exing it to her overnight, even though I had already printed it out earlier in the week and left on her desk. (It always amazed me that she was always unable to remember or care enough to bring the anything she needed with her.) She needed the package “by the crack of dawn.” Apparently she thought I needed more direction than "by morning." So I made it to a Fed Ex in time to hand over the package to the delivery man on the last shipment going out that night, which was Friday, Friday, at 7 p.m. When I came home, sweating through my button-down, trembling with fear that the sun would rise before the delivery truck pulled up to her front door, only to see an email from her that read: If the most recent copy is the one you printed out for me, then I have it. I assumed you had done massive work on it by tonight. Guess you haven’t. Call me. – Lady T
That was it. Yet upon reading those short, very harmless (compared to what I was used to) sentences I collapsed to the floor, curled up in a ball, and started to sob. My tears came from somewhere deep inside. The flood of emotion came from a part of me that had been silenced for too long and had nowhere left to go except up to the surface. I knew what I had to do.
I quit. I called her up and, and instead of indulging her in a conversation about my inadequacy and incompetence, I quit. She threw some more barbs my way—my favorites being when she said I was, and could never be, as “emotionally robust” as she is, and when she informed me that I had been "set-up" because I could never live up to her or come near to being her and in that way was set-up.
Ah yes, and there it was.
I never could and never would come close to being Lady Tremaine. She was absolutely spot-on. Being her would mean putting her work before her family, and cutting down others to feel is superior in every way. Yet most importantly, being her would mean losing me.
Unfortunately, burning bridges didn't mean I have walked away unscathed. In fact, I know she has stolen and erased a degree of my drive and dedication somewhere along our time together. I no longer want to go above and beyond. Why bother when everything-- above or not-- is wrong? At some point she also turned me into her own self-fulfilling prophecy; treating me as if I could barely photocopy or collage actually diminished my abilities and quality of work, giving me the Shit Touch. I ended up being the inept, worthless person she treated me like. I don’t know what will come next or where my invisible compass is leading me. And for the first time in my life I’m not afraid of the unknown. The open expanse ahead is for me to navigate. And who better to lead the way than me—my own Buddha.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Thursday's Child
It’s amazing how one moment you are enjoying the summer sun, laying out at the beach and barbequing, and then suddenly you are pulling out fall sweaters and picking out pumpkins for the front stoop. I love October; I love everything about it. I love the chill in the air, the smell of freshly fallen leaves, and the crunching sound of the dried up ones. October means Halloween is around the corner. It also means that I will be turning one year older.
I was born on a Thursday, at the end of October. My mom makes the story of my birth seem about important as the birth of the Christ Child, and every year she will call me up and recite the story. Although this is embarrassing, I still enjoy it, because, besides being un petit bit egocentric, even at age 25, I’m as attached to my mother as a one-year-old with detachment anxiety. Every year, my mom would try so hard to make fantastic birthday parties. One year she designed a pirate treasure hunt to search for Trolls (twenty of them laid out in a treasure box) in our backyard. Another year she organized a party at a farm, where fifteen wild girls ran rampant around the place, throwing hay bales and screaming the song from Voyage of the Mimi. She baked cakes and cut them into fun shapes like caterpillers, fish, and pumpkin faces. So what if no kids wanted to eat the cake out of fear that there really were caterpillers in the cake?
Despite all those lovely birthdays, sometime, over the years, I have grown to detest my birthday. One of my problems with turning older is that I was always the oldest in my class. Having a fall birthday, I could either be the youngest, or the oldest in the grade. Due to child care arrangements, my mom decided to send me to kindergarten older, as a five-year-old. For the next decade, I would have to explain to the other children that, no, I was not left back, and no, I was not too slow to start kindergarten “on time.” I didn’t even care that I was one of the first to drive, buy cigarettes, and buy Smirnoff. I just felt old.
Later, in college, I always felt awkward celebrating my birthday. Unlike some of my other friends who threw themselves birthday bashes, or treated themselves to big birthday dinners, I felt uncomfortable celebrating my own day. “I love your birthday,” my best friend Jo would tell me. “It’s so exciting to see you get to the new age first!” I wish I could see it like that!
A sense of regret always lurked in the shadows of my attempted birthday joy; a feeling like I’m disappointing someone by letting the year go, a feeling like I didn’t finish something.
Like any narcissist, I indulged in some self-reflection, and one of my earliest birthday memories took form…
It was very early in the morning, barely dawn, when I crept into my parents’ bedroom. For the first time, I was very aware that today was my birthday, my own special day!
“I’m five today!” I exclaimed, bursting with pride. My dad reached out an arm to pull me in.
“But I liked you when you were four,” Dad said.
After I returned to my bed to wait for the day to begin, I thought about Dad’s response. “Too bad,” I thought, miffed. “I’m turning five anyway.” And there it was. That first tinge of regret.
When I told this story to my mom, she agreed that my dad responded quite strangely, but then she added, “But Cece, you really were the most adorable four-year-old.” (Over the years, I've learned that the last time I was cute, funny, or lovable was in 1988.)
“Too bad,” I thought, “Now I’m twenty-five!”
I know part of the anxiety I have surrounding my birthday is related to the timeline I created in my head. Married by age twenty-four (like mom, of course). Doctor by age twenty-six. Buy first house at twenty-seven. Kids at age thirty. And the list goes on. Well, age twenty-four came and went, sans wedding bells. I’m still years away from my medical degree, and have no plans to buy a house anytime soon. My OB/GYN rotation scared me away from having any kids at all. (Well, for now anyway...)
Although I’m not “on schedule”, for some reason, this year I don’t feel the same dread about my birthday. Maybe because that’s it--I’m entirely not on any schedule. Maybe it took missing the landmarks to free myself from the burden of those self-imposed deadlines. I am now charting my own course, and living without an agenda feels great. (Well, of course I have some agenda, I am Type A after all!)
Like the nursery rhyme says, I have far to go, and I’m looking forward to the journey. And along the way, I’ll be enjoying homemade, pumpkin-faced cupcakes every fall.
I was born on a Thursday, at the end of October. My mom makes the story of my birth seem about important as the birth of the Christ Child, and every year she will call me up and recite the story. Although this is embarrassing, I still enjoy it, because, besides being un petit bit egocentric, even at age 25, I’m as attached to my mother as a one-year-old with detachment anxiety. Every year, my mom would try so hard to make fantastic birthday parties. One year she designed a pirate treasure hunt to search for Trolls (twenty of them laid out in a treasure box) in our backyard. Another year she organized a party at a farm, where fifteen wild girls ran rampant around the place, throwing hay bales and screaming the song from Voyage of the Mimi. She baked cakes and cut them into fun shapes like caterpillers, fish, and pumpkin faces. So what if no kids wanted to eat the cake out of fear that there really were caterpillers in the cake?
Despite all those lovely birthdays, sometime, over the years, I have grown to detest my birthday. One of my problems with turning older is that I was always the oldest in my class. Having a fall birthday, I could either be the youngest, or the oldest in the grade. Due to child care arrangements, my mom decided to send me to kindergarten older, as a five-year-old. For the next decade, I would have to explain to the other children that, no, I was not left back, and no, I was not too slow to start kindergarten “on time.” I didn’t even care that I was one of the first to drive, buy cigarettes, and buy Smirnoff. I just felt old.
Later, in college, I always felt awkward celebrating my birthday. Unlike some of my other friends who threw themselves birthday bashes, or treated themselves to big birthday dinners, I felt uncomfortable celebrating my own day. “I love your birthday,” my best friend Jo would tell me. “It’s so exciting to see you get to the new age first!” I wish I could see it like that!
A sense of regret always lurked in the shadows of my attempted birthday joy; a feeling like I’m disappointing someone by letting the year go, a feeling like I didn’t finish something.
Like any narcissist, I indulged in some self-reflection, and one of my earliest birthday memories took form…
It was very early in the morning, barely dawn, when I crept into my parents’ bedroom. For the first time, I was very aware that today was my birthday, my own special day!
“I’m five today!” I exclaimed, bursting with pride. My dad reached out an arm to pull me in.
“But I liked you when you were four,” Dad said.
After I returned to my bed to wait for the day to begin, I thought about Dad’s response. “Too bad,” I thought, miffed. “I’m turning five anyway.” And there it was. That first tinge of regret.
When I told this story to my mom, she agreed that my dad responded quite strangely, but then she added, “But Cece, you really were the most adorable four-year-old.” (Over the years, I've learned that the last time I was cute, funny, or lovable was in 1988.)
“Too bad,” I thought, “Now I’m twenty-five!”
I know part of the anxiety I have surrounding my birthday is related to the timeline I created in my head. Married by age twenty-four (like mom, of course). Doctor by age twenty-six. Buy first house at twenty-seven. Kids at age thirty. And the list goes on. Well, age twenty-four came and went, sans wedding bells. I’m still years away from my medical degree, and have no plans to buy a house anytime soon. My OB/GYN rotation scared me away from having any kids at all. (Well, for now anyway...)
Although I’m not “on schedule”, for some reason, this year I don’t feel the same dread about my birthday. Maybe because that’s it--I’m entirely not on any schedule. Maybe it took missing the landmarks to free myself from the burden of those self-imposed deadlines. I am now charting my own course, and living without an agenda feels great. (Well, of course I have some agenda, I am Type A after all!)
Like the nursery rhyme says, I have far to go, and I’m looking forward to the journey. And along the way, I’ll be enjoying homemade, pumpkin-faced cupcakes every fall.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Girls just wanna have fun
Plugging my ears as a fire truck came barreling down the road at 7:30 in the morning, I had to seriously resist the urge to wave and wink at the lifesavers on board. One of the many things that bonds Cece and me is that we walk—nay, strut—the fine line between self-centeredness and the ability to be overly empathetic. When you think about it, what allows one to be excessively empathetic with others is that one can and quickly put oneself in other people’s stilettos and suede booties, what have you. It’s a double-edged sword that also causes one to be a bit too much in other people’s situations. “Yes! Me too! That’s also happened to me! Me, me, me!” It’s not that Cece and I don’t care about other people’s situations. Quite the contrary, we really do care. And overly empathizing and walking in other people’s shoes is our shared tactic to show we do. In any case, as that truck blared past me the other morning, I was reminded of how on one Christmas latte and snow filled shopping trip through Manhattan, Cece and I both, simultaneously, turned toward one of those screeching fire trucks as it came down the street behind us, and looked up expectantly as if we were being honked at. That’s right. Honked at. Flirted with, if you will, by the firemen.
“Actually girls, if you would be so kind as to move aside as we go SAVE LIVES, that would be great. Love your knit caps, but seriously… We’re not honking at you, we’re trying to get to an actual fire. You know, do our job.” OK, the firemen didn’t actually pause in all their glory and explain this to us in so many words, but it was clear when we saw they were racing down the street, trying to get the smug cars to pull over, and pull on all their gear. C’est la vie. So maybe in that instance we were not erring on the side of empathetic, but I did come right out and say we tinker with self-importance, didn’t I?!
Anyway, it was on this most recent encounter with a powerful fire truck that I had the idea (albeit, unoriginal) for this year’s Halloween costumes. I flipped my cell phone open and called Cece. I left a message saying, “Maybe instead of Disney princesses by way of trollops, we can be firewomen! That way we can wear tights, hot shorts, and tanks that we already have. And we even get to buy cute hats and say things all night like, ‘You look hot!’ What do you think? xxoo, Jo.” I knew the response I would get from Cece—“Done and done."
But much to my surprise, all did not go as planned.
All I remember from her voicemail message are a blur of phrases; “May not be able to celebrate Halloween this year,” and “On-call till 1:30 am many nights,” and “Let’s see.” I think my heart actually stopped while I listened, although I can’t recall for sure. Us not spend Halloween together? Not hit the town in matching onesies from American Apparel? I just about died.
Then a terrifying thought crossed my mind: When had our adult selves taken our youthful selves hostage?
Maybe I had spent my Sunday morning throwing up five times (or more… clouded memory) after drinking the night before at a wedding—and in doing so turned the hangover corner from pop two Advil to quiver and cry dramatically face-first over a toilet bowl for hours. Maybe I had recently taken to wearing cardigans everyday to work because they cover that pesky midsection. And maybe I do wait to watch MTV's The City on the computer the next day since I'm never awake by 10:30 anymore. However, when my plans for Halloween were threatened by Cece’s adult work schedule, I got the distinct feeling that we weren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto. Oh no.
I envision our adult selves sitting behind proverbial desks, slapping our youthful selves on the wrist for dancing on the bar to Pour Some Sugar On Me. “Ouch!” our younger selves cry. “Girls just wanna have fun!” we whimper, in between sips of Seltzer and Vodka drinks.
“Well, you’re not girls anymore!” our adult selves snap back. “You’re grown-ups now and there will be no more gallivanting on Halloween for either of you.”
“Waa!” we both cry. But it’s no use. We’ve been taken hostage. We’ve been taken hostage by ourselves—by our jobs, our schedules, and our alcohol-intolerant bodies. So what is a girl—nay, a woman—do to? I don’t have the answer just yet, but I can tell you I’m on the lookout for it. And I’m sure I’ll negotiate a way out of this hostage situation at some point, and truthfully, it’ll probably be when I least expect it… Most likely while I’m nursing a hangover, cuddled up in a cardigan, watching The City On Demand.
“Actually girls, if you would be so kind as to move aside as we go SAVE LIVES, that would be great. Love your knit caps, but seriously… We’re not honking at you, we’re trying to get to an actual fire. You know, do our job.” OK, the firemen didn’t actually pause in all their glory and explain this to us in so many words, but it was clear when we saw they were racing down the street, trying to get the smug cars to pull over, and pull on all their gear. C’est la vie. So maybe in that instance we were not erring on the side of empathetic, but I did come right out and say we tinker with self-importance, didn’t I?!
Anyway, it was on this most recent encounter with a powerful fire truck that I had the idea (albeit, unoriginal) for this year’s Halloween costumes. I flipped my cell phone open and called Cece. I left a message saying, “Maybe instead of Disney princesses by way of trollops, we can be firewomen! That way we can wear tights, hot shorts, and tanks that we already have. And we even get to buy cute hats and say things all night like, ‘You look hot!’ What do you think? xxoo, Jo.” I knew the response I would get from Cece—“Done and done."
But much to my surprise, all did not go as planned.
All I remember from her voicemail message are a blur of phrases; “May not be able to celebrate Halloween this year,” and “On-call till 1:30 am many nights,” and “Let’s see.” I think my heart actually stopped while I listened, although I can’t recall for sure. Us not spend Halloween together? Not hit the town in matching onesies from American Apparel? I just about died.
Then a terrifying thought crossed my mind: When had our adult selves taken our youthful selves hostage?
Maybe I had spent my Sunday morning throwing up five times (or more… clouded memory) after drinking the night before at a wedding—and in doing so turned the hangover corner from pop two Advil to quiver and cry dramatically face-first over a toilet bowl for hours. Maybe I had recently taken to wearing cardigans everyday to work because they cover that pesky midsection. And maybe I do wait to watch MTV's The City on the computer the next day since I'm never awake by 10:30 anymore. However, when my plans for Halloween were threatened by Cece’s adult work schedule, I got the distinct feeling that we weren’t in Kansas anymore, Toto. Oh no.
I envision our adult selves sitting behind proverbial desks, slapping our youthful selves on the wrist for dancing on the bar to Pour Some Sugar On Me. “Ouch!” our younger selves cry. “Girls just wanna have fun!” we whimper, in between sips of Seltzer and Vodka drinks.
“Well, you’re not girls anymore!” our adult selves snap back. “You’re grown-ups now and there will be no more gallivanting on Halloween for either of you.”
“Waa!” we both cry. But it’s no use. We’ve been taken hostage. We’ve been taken hostage by ourselves—by our jobs, our schedules, and our alcohol-intolerant bodies. So what is a girl—nay, a woman—do to? I don’t have the answer just yet, but I can tell you I’m on the lookout for it. And I’m sure I’ll negotiate a way out of this hostage situation at some point, and truthfully, it’ll probably be when I least expect it… Most likely while I’m nursing a hangover, cuddled up in a cardigan, watching The City On Demand.
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