“Is it brave to try something new? Really? What if you succeed and that sucks. Maybe it’s all colossally stupid & horrendously painful.”
~My brain, the mean part.
Now, many of you know that I suck at so many things that the list, written front and back if unfurled, would reach to the moon and back—a couple of times.
Things like transitioning from sitting on the floor to standing. It is not a one-step process for me anymore. No longer can I just jump to my feet like I used to, now I have to approach it pretty much like parallel-parking. On a good day, it takes me three tries. Other days five.
In other words—I’m not afraid to suck.
But over the past month, I’ve found out that I suck at something I had no idea you could suck at.
I suck at succeeding at something new.
Now before you take a hammer to my face, let me explain.Last year, my Bff, and partner in all manner of spiritual thuggery and I had the audacity to throw some energetic spaghetti on the wall to see if it would stick. We’d come up with a Master Class we thought would remind women of the “cheat codes” they could use to navigate life. Namely, ignore what you’ve been taught—line up your energy first—then go.
Inspired action.
It felt rebellious in the best way. You know, the second definition. So hence the name—Sacred Rebellion.
The program was loosely based on a spiritual initiation or rebirth I’d gone through back before Jesus could grow a beard, so it lasted nine months or the length of a pregnancy.
And it went well. Like really well.
I’ve been told that groups can be tricky. Women can be bitches.
There was none of that.
All of the women were trusting and incredibly open-hearted. And they ran with to—all of it—as Steph and I watched in awe while their lives changed in what can only be described as “miraculous” ways.
They formed a community. They bonded.
We all bonded.
Then when we finally met in the physical in Tofino, in November—we fell madly in love.
**********************************
At the end of the nine months, the day to say goodbye had the nerve to dawn bright and sunny while my mood was more of a match for a nuclear winter. Saying goodbye at that point was merely a ritual because these amazing women had already left the nest.
They were ready to fly!
“We did it!’ Steph said in a call, “It’s time to turn over the reins.” I expected to feel jubilant. Wasn’t that what we’d designed? A program that launches them into the stratosphere where we’re just a distant memory?
But apparently, success sucks. Almost as much as goodbye which I thought would be super easy.
Sometimes I can be such an idiot.
So this feeling of Yeah! Hurrah Fuck! has followed me around for most of January, messing up my mojo and muddying up my mood—just like I would warn you it could do—you know, energetically.
I have the keys to the cage I’m in. I know this shit! I have all the spiritual tools I need to get out of this. It’s just that the other day when I was particularly vile—I sold them on EBay.
One thing I know for sure is that “this too shall pass” but if you say that to me right now—I will hurt you.
We did it! Yeah, Hurrah! Fuck!
And in one in a month we start again. I will bond and fall in love—and suck.
We first met on December 18, 2000. Then he died. On this, the nineteenth anniversary of our first blind date here’s a recounting of just what happened from back in 2014. This is our very personal Christmas miracle.
“Life is a dream walking. Death is going home.” – Chinese proverb
He died for a minute and 56 seconds. His heart stopped and his breathing ceased. I’d just say 2 minutes, but hospitals and doctors are exact. They are to-the-second precise. So, when he tells the tale; he died for a minute and 56 seconds because four seconds more would be way too long.
Just writing this makes my eyes well up.
He…is my husband.
In December of 2000 he contracted bacterial spinal meningitis on an airplane. Or as I now call them, flying, metallic, germ delivery systems.
He’s a car guy, often referred to as a gear head. That second week of December he took a one-way flight from LA to Houston to look at a car, which he then purchased and drove back with a buddy. Trouble was, he boarded that flight with a bad head cold. It was mid-December, everyone’s sick with something around the holidays. Right?
As luck would have it, that was just the route an opportunistic virus used to infect him. The meningitis rode in, like a sinister villain in a spaghetti western, on the back of streptococcus pneumonia. Once the pneumonia had chewed up his lungs to the point where they resembled snowflakes, all the meningitis had to do was dismount, and stroll on in.
Meningitis is a jerk. And an opportunist.
He’s a fragile, lazy, coward of a virus. If everything isn’t just so, he takes his badass self and leaves town. But pneumonia is efficient and the path had been prepared, so he set up camp in my husband’s lungs.
Three days after he got back to LA, as pneumonia went about doing its dirty work, he felt pretty lousy. Meanwhile, meningitis was still lurking in the shadows. He felt lethargic. By then he was probably running a fever, but men don’t check stuff like that. He just got out of bed, showered and dressed. He had plans that night.
He had arranged a blind date with someone who was recommended by a friend’s girlfriend. She sounded…intriguing. And she had big boobs. Yep, he was just that shallow.
That someone was me.
The blind date story is epic and meant for another day. We got married nine months later, so I’m gonna say it went pretty well.
I’ve always been fascinated by near-death experiences (NDE’s.) Now I live with someone who’s had one and he’d be the first to tell you, it profoundly changed him, it set him free.
Two days after our first date, and a super gushy follow-up phone call, he drove the new car up to San Jose, with his dog, to celebrate the Christmas holidays with his younger brother, his wife and their two young kids. He was driving five hours to cook the Christmas bird.
If a turkey is involved you drop everything and call my husband. He is the Turkey Whisperer. THE turkey cooker extraordinaire. The next morning, in between long stints in bed he did all the prep. He was trashed, feeling sicker with each passing hour and had developed the headache from hell. Now, he figured, he had a hell of a bad flu bug.
I will remind you, my husband is a BIG guy. He’s 6’3″ 230 lbs of big handsome, and that helped save his life.
When he makes a promise, he keeps it. It’s one of the things I admire about him, and damn it, he cooked that turkey. From his sickbed, even though he never had a bite.
The next day he got out of bed once and collapsed. The paramedics were called and he was rushed to a local teaching hospital that was affiliated with Stanford.
During transport, the paramedics called him Ralph. “Stay with us Ralph. Any pain Ralph?” My husband’s name is Raphael. I’ve been told they do that to piss you off and keep you conscious and talking. It worked. “My name is Raphael” he kept correcting them.
Genius. But it was short-lived.
His brother told the doctor all he knew, that Raphael had complained of a terrible headache and the flu. He used to have migraines but this was different. The ER was about to send him home with migraine meds, but his brother refused. He’d never seen Raphael that ill. THAT solitary act saved his brother’s life.
Just about that time, it ceased to matter. His blood test came back with an astronomical white cell count, and he had gone into a coma. Now suspecting meningitis, they did a spinal tap. So, normally our spinal fluid is clear and under pressure. Normal is: 70 – 180 mm H20, his reading was over 400 and the fluid was thick and black, like oil. As the story goes, it was right about this point in the evening where he flat-lined. After they brought him back, they wrote TERMINAL on his chart, pumped him full of morphine and wheeled him into a room to die.
It was during this time that Raphael remembers a foggy, all-white environment, no walls, ceiling or floor. He could see all sides at once. The best thing was, he was out of pain, his head no longer hurt.
He was looking at three beds which contained three Raphael’s.
The Raphael on the right was saying: I am suffering, why would I stay in this bed, I want to go where it’s peaceful. Where there’s no pain. Pointing at a bright white tunnel.
He represented the physical self.
The Raphael in the bed on the left said: Go ahead and go! Quit complaining. That’s fine, it really affects no one except those that are left behind. He represented the intellectual self.
The Raphael in the middle was the observer. He just listened to the two others arguing. He just WAS. No attachment. He represented the soul.
That white tunnel was the path home. It was a silent, pain-free, deliciously peaceful place where he wanted to stay forever. But they started his heart and brought him back.
That night a female doctor very much like Dr. House from TV, took a look at his chart. She specialized in ONLY terminal cases. Since it was a teaching hospital, she was allowed to literally throw everything in her extensive medical arsenal at these patients, searching for a cure. It was equal parts medicine, alchemy, and wishful thinking. After she did everything she could, she just handed it over to a higher power. Her success rate was 3%. I know, calm down, they were terminal cases after all.
It was the fight of his life and he was on the ropes. At that point, his size was the only thing saving him.
By that time the hospital had reported their diagnosis of bacterial meningitis to the CDC. Thirteen people from his flight to Houston had come down with it, four had died. Raphael’s brother was told to get his whole young family tested. It was a stressful, scary time.
I remember hearing it on the news. It struck me because one of the women who died was my age at the time, 43. Shit. I have to get on a plane in five days, I worried.
Since he was away, I had no idea he was even sick. We only had our one blind date, with a promise of a second on December 28th. He never called. He never showed. I called twice, which was only mildly pathetic, and both times his cellphone went right to message. So I left for New Year’s Eve in Miami. When I didn’t hear from him by the end of the first week of January I told my friends, “Frenchy better be abducted by aliens or dead by the side of the road, because those are the only two excuses I’ll accept.”
Yikes! We still laugh about that.
His medical file is as thick as a phone book with the lists of drugs and scans his doctor administered that first night. There is even a straight jacket included. She did say he put up a hell of a fight to live. Apparently so.
By the middle of the second day of her treatment, he was slightly improved. She determined he would live, but he’d be a vegetable from the cerebral fluid pressure and its horrible condition.
No brain could ever recover from that.
His family, his siblings, who were all now at the hospital, looked at each other to determine who would care for him and for how many months.
A couple of days later, with the determined doctor holding one hand, one of his sisters holding the other, he woke up. Just like that.
Startled, the doctor shooed everyone out of the room and started asking him questions, which he answered…perfectly…in detail. Not just, What’s your name? But since he’s an architect, and French, she quizzed him on the architectural intricacies of the Pompidou Centre, even speaking French with him. It was evident he could see her, he could hear her, and he was still his whip-smart self. THAT she could never explain. She considered him a miracle. Everyone at the hospital did. Honestly.
Finally, he asked what day it was. When he found out it was January, he said, “I have to call Janet.” For those standing around him, some doubt set in, because no one had heard of any Janet. They thought he had an imaginary friend. Uh oh, brain damage.
Nope, apparently, infatuation survives near death. I love that part of the story. It’s like a movie.
He remembers dying as easy, with nothing to fear.
He recalls that he had a decision to make, and either way everything was going to be okay.
Afterword, all the outpouring of love, together with the morphine, broke open his heart—and he was a changed man.
Luckily, he decided to stay and give me a second date, and for that, I am forever grateful.
“I work 8 hours, I sleep 8 hours, that leaves 8 hours left for…what?”
I was listening to a podcast today and this “old saying” stopped me in my tracks.
Well, the big, juicy melted piece of gum I stepped in while I was listening and traversing the parking lot at Target actually DID stop me in my tracks. A stop so dead—I walked right out of my shoe.
I kid you not.
Seeing that we are deep into December, I had to park so far away that the actual Target store was just a speck on the horizon. I’m sure someone left their gum, like a bread crumb, to mark the trail back to their car so…I can’t really be mad, can I? But enough about my glamourous life.
Back to the saying. You know, the myth that implies that there are more than enough hours in a day.
You work eight hours. Stop laughing.
I know we’re smack dab in the middle of the holidays and what with shopping and wrapping and all—the Elves up at the North Pole have a shorter work day. And better benefits. And terrific catering. Nevermind.
So… you work.
Anyhow, you sleep eight hours. But seriously, who does? I’m lucky to get seven. This morning I woke up at 3 am because I thought I saw an orange glow down the hall and knew for sure the tree was on fire. It wasn’t.
Too late, adrenaline rushes don’t keep regular office hours.
Then I couldn’t remember all of the reindeer names or get that damn song out of my head.
I lay there wondering where on earth my pine nut cookie recipe went and the next thing I knew it was 4am and all I could think about was how good coffee would taste with a pine nut cookie—so I got up and made some. Coffee. Not the cookies. I’m still at a loss.
So…You sleep.
But you guys, that still leaves at least several, maybe four, hours left to do whatever you want.
My friend says those hours are reserved for worrying.
Yikes.
My hubby says traffic on the 101 freeway chews up his spare time. Jeepers, people.
What about eating?
Sex? Anybody?
Holiday merriment?
I decided to paint with a broad brush. “I work 8 hours, I sleep 8 hours, that leaves 8 hours left for… FUN!”
That sounds downright illegal, doesn’t it? Fun? Really? And for eight hours? Oh, sweet Jesus, help me!
But fun can be anything, right?
A glass of pink champagne for no reason?
Maybe it’s staying up after everybody else goes to bed to binge watch Netflix.
What about going out to lunch and catching up with an old friend?
Today, my friend Kim and I played hookie and went to see a movie—in the middle of the day!
How would you complete that sentence? Gimme some hints, I’d love to know.
“It’s not happiness that brings us gratitude, it’s gratitude that brings us happiness.”
As you all know by now, I’m currently in the midst of a gratitude storm because I truly believe in its mystical, darn right spooky, transformational power.
And I’ve gotta tell ya, this storm’s a real doozy. A virtual Thank You Tornado that feeds on itself. My hubby and I got swept up and are well on our way to filling our gratitude jar with slips of paper listing our blessings, big and small.
Besides the usual: family, friends, health, our dog, here are a few of mine—maybe (pretty please), you’ll share yours?
Thank you, chocolate chips. You make everything better. You jooj up cake batter, make banana bread exceptional, and I’m pretty sure no one would have ever heard of Toll House if it weren’t for you.
Thank you, sunrise. I know it’s cliche to be grateful for a sunrise or sunset, but this morning it was so spectacular with its periwinkle blue sky flecked with peach and rose-colored clouds I can’t help myself. Besides, when the Universe shows off in such a magnificent way—It feels rude to act indifferent.
Thank you, my body. Without you I’d be dead—so there’s that. You wake up every morning raring to go with a beating heart, eyes that see (albeit, with a lot of help from contacts), ears that hear, and feet that complain loudly with every step I take but still walk my three-mile morning hikes for me. Listen, besides taking a beating, you’re just a damn good sport.
Thank you, politics. I can’t even. Every day you make me happy I paid attention in Civics class, and you remind me of the glaringly obvious differences between RIGHT & WRONG.
Thank you, airline travel. Admittedly, you’re a pain in the ass, but the ability to have breakfast in LA and dinner in NY trumps all of that (pun intended).
Thank you, reservations and valets. You make dining out and going to the theater a pleasure. When I try to “wing it” with either of those, I always regret it.
Thank you, indoor plumbing. I have to admit, I take you SO for granted. I can’t imagine doing my business in a dark, cold, smelly outhouse, fighting off spiders and wiping myself with a leaf.
Thank you, metal drinking straws. You make the most ordinary glass of water seem civilized.
Thank you, pumpkin everything that starts showing up this time of year. Yep, I’m one of those people.
Thank you, kisses. Damn, I love ya. But I’m curious, how did you start? Who was the first person to pucker up and plant one? You’ve gotta admit, love and lips is a curious combination and I’ve always wondered.
Thank you, Instagram. I’m a voyeur at heart so getting a peek (although highly curated and orchestrated) into other people’s lives gives me a vicarious thrill.
Thank you, words. Because I get to choose just the right ones to express my never-ending gratitude to my readers all over the world who feel more like friends to me than anything.
Hey guys,
I get texts and emails all year around requesting this post which is consistently in the top five most viewed every year. “Re-post the one about your husband stealing Thanksgiving from your mom!” They’ll write. Or, “What is the name of that one about your husband and his disrespect for the turkey?”
But mostly they request his recipe for the leek bread pudding (which, unfortunately, I am not at liberty to reveal since that recipe resides in his head and that is a neighborhood too dangerous for me to visit!)
Anyhow, I like to wait for the appropriate time of year‚ which is now, to lovingly harass the big guy. So, take a look. If you know him you’re going to smile and if you don’t, well, I think you’ll want to.
Here’s to my big handsome. That French guy who stole my heart — and then hijacked my favorite meal! Cheers!
PS. REAL men always use pink rubber oven mitts!
Carry on & Happy Thanksgiving! xox
JB
It happened over several years, with the subtle finesse we’ve come to expect from the French.
He entered our family just under twenty years ago. He is a gourmand extraordinaire and an accomplished cook in his own right, but he ingratiated himself in the beginning, acting as the sous chef for my mother who is the culinary queen of our family—then slowly, skillfully, and sneakily—He hijacked Thanksgiving.
The only demand he acquiesces to is that it must be an ORGANIC turkey.
“No antibiotics, no hormones…no taste,” he sing-songs sarcastically under his breath as he places the order every year.
I suppose we should be grateful that he hasn’t decided to switch fowl on us yet. Next year it could be pheasant or duck in the center of the table.
See, that’s the thing, we, my siblings and I, we LOVE and crave all year ‘round, my mom’s traditional Thanksgiving feast. The one we ate as kids. The meal whose perfection is so sublime it should never be messed with.
EVER.
Yet…the now reigning chef in our holiday kitchen—the one with the red passport—HE little by little, year after year, has modified each dish so completely that it bears little if any, resemblance to the original.
And my mom doesn’t give a hoot!
She’s just so thrilled that someone has taken over the culinary heavy lifting, along with the fact that I finally found a husband—and he’s French—that she sits back and happily eats what she is served; doling out the compliments like Tic-Tacs at a cigar shop.
Benedict Arnold.
This European guy feels no sense of urgency—he doesn’t start the turkey until late morning.
I remember waking up as a child, the entire house already heavily scented with the aroma of a turkey that had been in the oven for hours. Now, I sit and watch the Thanksgiving parade, eyeing him suspiciously as he lingers over his coffee and Sudoku.
You can’t rush the French—about anything, most especially cooking—it shows disrespect and they just won’t stand for it.
And yet…he shows the old hen no respect. He’s rude to her, slathering her with butter and olive oil and then flinging her, breast down, legs in the air (the turkey, not my mother) into a 500-degree oven for the first twenty minutes.
His mashed potatoes are loaded with creme Fraiche, truffle salt, and a pound of butter…yet oddly enough—not a single calorie. Oh, the French.
His vegetable of choice is the brussel sprout. The recipe is so elaborate, with all of the shredded bacon and Gruyère in a balsamic reduction that he’s only allowed to make them every other year. That allows us to have the green beans in mushroom soup with the dried onion rings on top for the alternating years. He would never deign to eat that slop. We, on the other hand, squeal with delight in gleeful anticipation of this mushy mess of soupy goodness while his face assumes that pinched look of French disapproval.
But maybe the worst atrocity against the holiday is the stuffing—or lack thereof. He was raised in France. They don’t know from stuffing. They have bread pudding.
This year he is repeating the mushroom and leek bread pudding that he served last Thanksgiving. It really is delicious, don’t get me wrong, it’s just not my mom’s stuffing and it doesn’t go well with gravy—if you can imagine that.
As long as we’re talking gravy. His gravy is ridiculously smooth and savory, I’ll hand him that. No one can figure out how he does it and I still haven’t caught him in the act of making it. I’m convinced it is delivered to the back door by Trappist monks just before we sit down to eat.
He doesn’t care much for cranberry sauce so my mom still makes hers, which is not that crap in the can. Hers has chunks of real berries, more like a chutney and…oh I’m sorry, I drooled.
Yams and sweet potatoes are not his things either (he insists they’re baby food) so he’s given us the okay to make my mom’s killer Sweet Potato Casserole. It is heart-stoppingly delicious. I die a little every time I taste it. Like the French say, La petite mort— it is THAT good.
Then there was the year he decided no pumpkin pie. Instead, he whipped up a pumpkin-ish, cheese-cakey, soufflé sort of thing—and a Tarte Tartan.
It’s been ten years, and I’m just getting over it.
His last act of hijackery is the fact that he does not deliver to the table a perfectly browned bird ready to be carved.
Nope, no Norman Rockwell moment at our house.
Instead, with knives so sharp they can slice a tomato, he carves the turkey up in the kitchen like a skilled butcher, arranging it artistically by sections on a white platter; placing the drumsticks on the sides like exclamation points. I’ve actually come to appreciate the expediency of serving the bird this way.
White meat on the left, dark meat on the right. Voila!
But this is a day about giving thanks and although He has hijacked this most American of meals, I must admit that we are lucky and ever so grateful to have this Frenchman in our family.
Every. Single. Year. He takes us on another culinary adventure, expanding our palates by spending weeks shopping, hours chopping and delivering to our family such a carefully thought out and meticulously prepared and delicious feast.
I have readers who request some of these holiday posts throughout the year. Even in July. From as far away as Brunei.
Seems we are all united by the one simple fact that family is family wherever you live.
And Americans have not cornered the market on dysfunction.
And neurosis speaks every language and crosses every border.
Oh, and by-the-way, that obnoxious cousin in the last sentence? Seems he may have had the gift of clairvoyance. Carry on, xox
Thanksgiving in the U.S. can be brutal. I blame it on social media and the unrealistic Norman Rockwellian expectations we place on each other. Unfortunately, what in our imagination looks warm and fuzzy, can quickly turn cold and prickly.
Even though everyone at the table is somehow related, dinner etiquette can morph into a kind of blood sport. Back-handed compliments and thinly veiled sarcasm abound and it’s just not Thanksgiving unless someone leaves the table in tears.
Add tons of carbohydrates, loads of judgment, a dash of shame, with a pumpkin pie chaser and voila – Hilarity ensues!
NO. No it doesn’t.
When you put together people who only find themselves sitting in the same room once a year there isn’t enough alcohol on the planet to keep you in that loving place.
It can turn into a real numb-fest.
The carbs numb you down.
So do the booze,
The sugar,
The football,
Even the ridged potato chips smothered with delicious sour cream onion dip. THAT is my numbing agent of choice.
Yes, you heard me. It all numbs us down, making us compliant enough to smile and remain civil so that everyone lives to see another holiday.
But let’s all try to remember, shall we, that almost everyone had the highest of intentions when they pulled up in the driveway.
And each year can be a fresh start. We talk all about gratitude that day, but I think it’s a good idea to start with acceptance.
When we can make acceptance the first course, it helps us all to remember that everyone is just doing the best they can and it makes the rest of the day play out differently.
My family is loving, relatively sane, and really quite civil —now. I think that’s because we’re all so damn old. The last time we served crazy for Thanksgiving was during the Reagan
Administration.
Gone are the caustic comments lobbed across the table by a perpetually inebriated uncle that he meant to be funny—but weren’t. And the long, squirmy, uncomfortable silences that followed.
Everyone, even Aunt Barb, who’s worn a wig for the past twenty-five years has stopped criticizing my hair. I’m fifty freakin’ seven Barb! It’s gray with some purple fringe—let it go!
My dad used to insist that we get dressed up. You know, jacket and tie, skirt and (gulp) pantyhose were mandatory. But since he’s been gone for a decade, elastic reigns supreme. These days style is sacrificed for comfort. Think sweatpants thinly disguised as dress pants.
To add insult to injury, this year, I intend to give up the fight—the Spanx stay at home.
Hey you! You picky eaters! Stop your complaining. If somethings not Non-GMO, gluten-free, free-range, antibiotic and hormone-free, vegetarian or vegan. Please, just be polite and eat what won’t kill you—or feed it to the dog and stick with the crudités.
So…let’s all practice forgiveness, humor, acceptance and gratitude; choosing to operate from the heart remembering the true intention of this day. Being with family.
Now take a deep breath, put on your best holiday smile, and listen with loving acceptance as your well-intentioned cousin explains to you all the reasons why Hillary will never be President.
“Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.”
I am by nature, one of the most optimist people you will ever have the good fortune, or misfortune to meet, depending on your mood.
After being around for this long, I’ve developed the faith that things are always working out for me. (And when I say me I mean my husband, my family, those I love, my dog and my country—just to be clear.)
But, and I can say this from years of personal experience, a deep reservoir of doubt runs just under the surface of us optimists. We have a profound and abiding respect for it and unless you cohabitate with us or secretly videotape our most private moments (sicko), you will most likely never see it overtake us. Because we are extremely skilled at keeping it under wraps.
For many, it can be a struggle. Yet, at the end of the day, their cork always bobs to the top, their glass remains half-full and the sun comes up the next morning. Pessimistic curmudgeons never fight with themselves this way.
One half of them says things suck—and the other half agrees.
Sometimes I envy them.
Many describe their doubt as an adversary they meet on the battlefield. They fight it tooth and nail. I was taught by a wise so-and-so along the way, I can’t remember who, that if you come face to face with your doubt—play devil’s advocate.
So I learned to stage a doubt and faith debate.
Instead of silencing my doubt or smothering it with chocolate sauce and salted peanuts and scarfing it down at midnight by the light of the refrigerator — I let it have its say.
When Doubt takes the podium he is disgusting—puffed up with hot air, bloated with confidence. He brings flow-charts. He quotes statistics. You have to hand it to him, he comes loaded with evidence and everything he points to has a basis in fact. He produces pictures and movies to remind you of past failures. When he thinks he has you on the ropes, he brings out a panel of experts who can back him up.
Don’t you fucking hate panels of experts?
If you’re like me I can only listen to his bullshit for so long before I start to argue—and that’s when the debate begins.
He can recite from memory an article he read or a study that was done which PROVES my dreams will never succeed. “I don’t believe that!” I interrupt. Then I site the exceptions, because if there are exceptions, well, then his theory sucks. I name big names, important names. Names we’d all recognize.
He sweats like a pig and drinks water while he feigns ignorance.
“Look around you”, he demands, his face turning the color of eggplant, “There is SO MUCH EVIDENCE. Nobody’s happy in their job, nobody likes what they do, what you hope to accomplish is impossible! Besides that, people are miserable. And they’re fat.” He stuffs half a Reuben with extra sauerkraut into his mouth between jabs.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I step away from my podium for full effect. I have bare feet because, number one, it grounds me, and number two, it’s against the rules and this throws Doubt for a loop. Doubt is most definitely a rule follower.
While he wavers, I state my case. “While I cannot argue that there are those who may feel this way; when I look beyond all the flotsam, I see hope. And possibility. There have always been people like me—like most of the people I know—who despite all of the cautionary tales still run into the arena.”
Doubt shakes his head in exasperation. There is mustard on his chin.
“It’s easier to be scared and quit. Believe me. I know. But as more and more of us poke holes in your lousy logic, it deflates… like a flaccid balloon. And everybody knows you can’t win an argument with a flaccid balloon.”
“Wrong!” he bends low and hisses air into his mic. “Wrooooong.” His eyes are squinted closed as he all but disappears behind his podium. He knows I’m right.
Doubt had his say and the more I argued for my crazy, optimistic, why-the-hell-not way of life, the more I stood flat-footed in my conviction—the more I started believing it.
Someone once said, “Faith is the act of believing what you cannot yet see.”
I think it was Bill Murray or some other saint who said that which makes sense because you’d have to be able to perform a miracle, like a brain swap, to maintain faith and optimism in this day and age. But then I think about living in the middle ages with no indoor plumbing and only porridge to eat and I feel a sudden wave of gratitude for exactly where I’m standing.
“The Crane Wife” is a story from Japanese folklore. In the story, there is a crane who tricks a man into thinking she is a woman so she can marry him. She loves him but knows that he will not love her if she is a crane so she spends every night plucking out all of her feathers with her beak. She hopes that he will not see what she really is: a bird who must be cared for, a bird capable of flight, a creature, with creature needs. Every morning, the crane-wife is exhausted, but she is a woman again. To keep becoming a woman is so much self-erasing work. She never sleeps. She plucks out all her feathers, one by one.This is a story we can all relate too, right? Who hasn’t tried to be something they’re not in order to get someone’s love or approval?It was sent to me by one of the miraculous women I’ve had the profound privilege to mentor the past few months. When I took on that task, I was certain it would be a sacred energy exchange—that the wisdom would flow both ways—and boy, was I right! I invite you to take the time to read this women’s beautifully written story of self-discovery—and then do what I did—email it to everyone you love.Carry on,
xox
Ten days earlier I had cried and I had yelled and I had packed up my dog and driven away from the upstate New York house with two willow trees I had bought with my fiancé.
Ten days later and I didn’t want to do anything I was supposed to do.
*
I went to Texas to study the whooping crane because I was researching a novel. In my novel there were biologists doing field research about birds and I had no idea what field research actually looked like and so the scientists in my novel draft did things like shuffle around great stacks of papers and frown. The good people of the Earthwatch organization assured me I was welcome on the trip and would get to participate in “real science” during my time on the gulf. But as I waited to be picked up by my team in Corpus Christi, I was nervous—I imagined everyone else would be a scientist or a birder and have daunting binoculars.
The biologist running the trip rolled up in a large white van with a boat hitch and the words BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES stenciled across the side. Jeff was forty-ish, and wore sunglasses and a backward baseball cap. He had a winter beard and a neon-green cast on his left arm. He’d broken his arm playing hockey with his sons a week before. The first thing Jeff said was, “We’ll head back to camp, but I hope you don’t mind we run by the liquor store first.” I felt more optimistic about my suitability for science.
*
Not long before I’d called off my engagement it was Christmas.
The woman who was supposed to be my mother-in-law was a wildly talented quilter and made stockings with Beatrix Potter characters on them for every family member. The previous Christmas she had asked me what character I wanted to be (my fiancé was Benjamin Bunny). I agonized over the decision. It felt important, like whichever character I chose would represent my role in this new family. I chose Squirrel Nutkin, a squirrel with a blazing red tail—an epic, adventuresome figure who ultimately loses his tail as the price for his daring and pride.
I arrived in Ohio that Christmas and looked to the banister to see where my squirrel had found his place. Instead, I found a mouse. A mouse in a pink dress and apron. A mouse holding a broom and dustpan, serious about sweeping. A mouse named Hunca Munca. The woman who was supposed to become my mother-in-law said, “I was going to do the squirrel but then I thought, that just isn’t CJ. This is CJ.”
What she was offering was so nice. She was so nice. I thanked her and felt ungrateful for having wanted a stocking, but not this stocking. Who was I to be choosy? To say that this nice thing she was offering wasn’t a thing I wanted?
When I looked at that mouse with her broom, I wondered which one of us was wrong about who I was.
*
The whooping crane is one of the oldest living bird species on earth. Our expedition was housed at an old fish camp on the Gulf Coast next to the Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, where three hundred of the only six hundred whooping cranes left in the world spend their winters. Our trip was a data-collecting expedition to study behavior and gather data about the resources available to the cranes at Aransas.
The ladies bunkhouse was small and smelled woody and the rows of single beds were made up with quilts. Lindsay, the only other scientist, was a grad student in her early twenties from Wisconsin who loved birds so much that when she told you about them she made the shapes of their necks and beaks with her hands—a pantomime of bird life. Jan, another participant, was a retired geophysicist who had worked for oil companies and now taught high school chemistry. Jan was extremely fit and extremely tan and extremely competent. Jan was not a lifelong birder. She was a woman who had spent two years nursing her mother and her best friend through cancer. They had both recently died and she had lost herself in caring for them, she said. She wanted a week to be herself. Not a teacher or a mother or a wife. This trip was the thing she was giving herself after their passing.
At five o’clock there was a knock on the bunk door and a very old man walked in, followed by Jeff.
“Is it time for cocktail hour?” Warren asked.
Warren was an eighty-four-year-old bachelor from Minnesota. He could not do most of the physical activities required by the trip, but had been on ninety-five Earthwatch expeditions, including this one once before. Warren liked birds okay. What Warren really loved was cocktail hour.
When he came for cocktail hour that first night, his thin, silver hair was damp from the shower and he smelled of shampoo. He was wearing a fresh collared shirt and carrying a bottle of impossibly good scotch.
Jeff took in Warren and Jan and me. “This is a weird group,” Jeff said.
“I like it,” Lindsay said.
*
In the year leading up to calling off my wedding, I often cried or yelled or reasoned or pleaded with my fiancé to tell me that he loved me. To be nice to me. To notice things about how I was living.
One particular time, I had put on a favorite red dress for a wedding. I exploded from the bathroom to show him. He stared at his phone. I wanted him to tell me I looked nice, so I shimmied and squeezed his shoulders and said, “You look nice! Tell me I look nice!” He said, “I told you that you looked nice when you wore that dress last summer. It’s reasonable to assume I still think you look nice in it now.”
Another time he gave me a birthday card with a sticky note inside that said BIRTHDAY. After giving it to me, he explained that because he hadn’t written in it, the card was still in good condition. He took off the sticky and put the unblemished card into our filing cabinet.
I need you to know: I hated that I needed more than this from him. There is nothing more humiliating to me than my own desires. Nothing that makes me hate myself more than being burdensome and less than self-sufficient. I did not want to feel like the kind of nagging woman who might exist in a sit-com.
These were small things, and I told myself it was stupid to feel disappointed by them. I had arrived in my thirties believing that to need things from others made you weak. I think this is true for lots of people but I think it is especially true for women. When men desire things they are “passionate.” When they feel they have not received something they need they are “deprived,” or even “emasculated,” and given permission for all sorts of behavior. But when a woman needs she is needy. She is meant to contain within her own self everything necessary to be happy.
That I wanted someone to articulate that they loved me, that they saw me, was a personal failing and I tried to overcome it.
When I found out that he’d slept with our mutual friend a few weeks after we’d first started seeing each other, he told me we hadn’t officially been dating yet so I shouldn’t mind. I decided he was right. When I found out that he’d kissed another girl on New Year’s Eve months after that, he said that we hadn’t officially discussed monogamy yet, and so I shouldn’t mind. I decided he was right.
I asked to discuss monogamy and, in an effort to be the sort of cool girl who does not have so many inconvenient needs, I said that I didn’t need it. He said he thought we should be monogamous.
*
Here is what I learned once I began studying whooping cranes: only a small part of studying them has anything to do with the birds. Instead, we counted berries. Counted crabs. Measured water salinity. Stood in the mud. Measured the speed of the wind.
It turns out, if you want to save a species, you don’t spend your time staring at the bird you want to save. You look at the things it relies on to live instead. You ask if there is enough to eat and drink. You ask if there is a safe place to sleep. Is there enough here to survive?
Wading through the muck of the Aransas Reserve I understood that every chance for food matters. Every pool of drinkable water matters. Every wolfberry dangling from a twig, in Texas, in January, matters. The difference between sustaining life and not having enough was that small.
If there were a kind of rehab for people ashamed to have needs, maybe this was it. You will go to the gulf. You will count every wolfberry. You will measure the depth of each puddle.
*
More than once I’d said to my fiancé, How am I supposed to know you love me if you’re never affectionate or say nice things or say that you love me.
He reminded me that he’d said “I love you” once or twice before. Why couldn’t I just know that he did in perpetuity?
I told him this was like us going on a hiking trip and him telling me he had water in his backpack but not ever giving it to me and then wondering why I was still thirsty.
He told me water wasn’t like love, and he was right.
There are worse things than not receiving love. There are sadder stories than this. There are species going extinct, and a planet warming. I told myself: who are you to complain, you with these frivolous extracurricular needs?
*
On the gulf, I lost myself in the work. I watched the cranes through binoculars and recorded their behavior patterns and I loved their long necks and splashes of red. The cranes looked elegant and ferocious as they contorted their bodies to preen themselves. From the outside, they did not look like a species fighting to survive.
In the mornings we made each other sandwiches and in the evenings we laughed and lent each other fresh socks. We gave each other space in the bathroom. Forgave each other for telling the same stories over and over again. We helped Warren when he had trouble walking. What I am saying is that we took care of each other. What I am saying is we took pleasure in doing so. It’s hard to confess, but the week after I called off my wedding, the week I spent dirty and tired on the gulf, I was happy.
On our way out of the reserve, we often saw wild pigs, black and pink bristly mothers and their young, scurrying through the scrub and rolling in the dust among the cacti. In the van each night, we made bets on how many wild pigs we might see on our drive home.
One night, halfway through the trip, I bet reasonably. We usually saw four, I hoped for five, but I bet three because I figured it was the most that could be expected.
Warren bet wildly, optimistically, too high.
“Twenty pigs,” Warren said. He rested his interlaced fingers on his soft chest.
We laughed and slapped the vinyl van seats at this boldness.
But the thing is, we saw twenty pigs on the drive home that night. And in the thick of our celebrations, I realized how sad it was that I’d bet so low. That I wouldn’t even let myself imagine receiving as much as I’d hoped for.
*
What I learned to do, in my relationship with my fiancé, was to survive on less. At what should have been the breaking point but wasn’t, I learned that he had cheated on me. The woman he’d been sleeping with was a friend of his I’d initially wanted to be friends with, too, but who did not seem to like me, and who he’d gaslit me into being jealous of, and then gaslit me into feeling crazy for being jealous of.
The full course of the gaslighting took a year, so by the time I truly found out what had happened, the infidelity was already a year in the past.
It was new news to me but old news to my fiancé.
Logically, he said, it doesn’t matter anymore.
It had happened a year ago. Why was I getting worked up over ancient history?
I did the mental gymnastics required.
I convinced myself that I was a logical woman who could consider this information about having been cheated on, about his not wearing a condom, and I could separate it from the current reality of our life together.
Why did I need to know that we’d been monogamous? Why did I need to have and discuss inconvenient feelings about this ancient history?
I would not be a woman who needed these things, I decided.
I would need less. And less.
I got very good at this.
*
“The Crane Wife” is a story from Japanese folklore. I found a copy in the reserve’s gift shop among the baseball caps and bumper stickers that said GIVE A WHOOP. In the story, there is a crane who tricks a man into thinking she is a woman so she can marry him. She loves him, but knows that he will not love her if she is a crane so she spends every night plucking out all of her feathers with her beak. She hopes that he will not see what she really is: a bird who must be cared for, a bird capable of flight, a creature, with creature needs. Every morning, the crane-wife is exhausted, but she is a woman again. To keep becoming a woman is so much self-erasing work. She never sleeps. She plucks out all her feathers, one by one.
*
One night on the gulf, we bought a sack of oysters off a passing fishing boat. We’d spent so long on the water that day I felt like I was still bobbing up and down in the current as I sat in my camp chair. We ate the oysters and drank. Jan took the shucking knife away from me because it kept slipping into my palm. Feral cats trolled the shucked shells and pleaded with us for scraps.
Jeff was playing with the sighting scope we used to watch the birds, and I asked, “What are you looking for in the middle of the night?” He gestured me over and when I looked through the sight the moon swam up close.
I think I was afraid that if I called off my wedding I was going to ruin myself. That doing it would disfigure the story of my life in some irredeemable way. I had experienced worse things than this, but none threatened my American understanding of a life as much as a called-off wedding did. What I understood on the other side of my decision, on the gulf, was that there was no such thing as ruining yourself. There are ways to be wounded and ways to survive those wounds, but no one can survive denying their own needs. To be a crane-wife is unsustainable.
I had never seen the moon so up-close before. What struck me most was how battered she looked. How textured and pocked by impacts. There was a whole story written on her face—her face, which from a distance looked perfect.
*
It’s easy to say that I left my fiancé because he cheated on me. It’s harder to explain the truth. The truth is that I didn’t leave him when I found out. Not even for one night.
I found out about the cheating before we got engaged and I still said yes when he proposed in the park on a day we were meant to be celebrating a job I’d just gotten that morning. Said yes even though I’d told him I was politically opposed to the diamonds he’d convinced me were necessary. Said yes even though he turned our proposal into a joke by making a Bachelor reference and giving me a rose. I am ashamed of all of this.
He hadn’t said one specific thing about me or us during the proposal, and on the long trail walk out of the park I felt robbed of the kind of special declaration I’d hoped a proposal would entail, and, in spite of hating myself for wanting this, hating myself more for fishing for it, I asked him, “Why do you love me? Why do you think we should get married? Really?”
He said he wanted to be with me because I wasn’t annoying or needy. Because I liked beer. Because I was low-maintenance.
I didn’t say anything. A little further down the road he added that he thought I’d make a good mother.
This wasn’t what I hoped he would say. But it was what was being offered. And who was I to want more?
I didn’t leave when he said that the woman he had cheated on me with had told him over the phone that she thought it was unfair that I didn’t want them to be friends anymore, and could they still?
I didn’t leave when he wanted to invite her to our wedding. Or when, after I said she could not come to our wedding, he got frustrated and asked what he was supposed to do when his mother and his friends asked why she wasn’t there.
Reader, I almost married him.
*
Even now I hear the words as shameful: Thirsty. Needy. The worst things a woman can be. Some days I still tell myself to take what is offered, because if it isn’t enough, it is I who wants too much. I am ashamed to be writing about this instead of writing about the whooping cranes, or literal famines, or any of the truer needs of the world.
But what I want to tell you is that I left my fiancé when it was almost too late. And I tell people the story of being cheated on because that story is simple. People know how it goes. But it’s harder to tell the story of how I convinced myself I didn’t need what was necessary to survive. How I convinced myself it was my lack of needs that made me worthy of love.
*
After cocktail hour one night, in the cabin’s kitchen, I told Lindsay about how I’d blown up my life the week before. I told her because I’d just received a voice mail saying I could get a partial refund for my high-necked wedding gown. The refund would be partial because they had already made the base of the dress but had not done any of the beadwork yet. They said the pieces of the dress could still be unstitched and used for something else. I had caught them just in time.
I told Lindsay because she was beautiful and kind and patient and loved good things like birds and I wondered what she would say back to me. What would every good person I knew say to me when I told them that the wedding to which they’d RSVP’d was off and that the life I’d been building for three years was going to be unstitched and repurposed?
Lindsay said it was brave not to do a thing just because everyone expected you to do it.
Jeff was sitting outside in front of the cabin with Warren as Lindsay and I talked, tilting the sighting scope so it pointed toward the moon. The screen door was open and I knew he’d heard me, but he never said anything about my confession.
What he did do was let me drive the boat.
The next day it was just him and me and Lindsay on the water. We were cruising fast and loud. “You drive,” Jeff shouted over the motor. Lindsay grinned and nodded. I had never driven a boat before. “What do I do?” I shouted. Jeff shrugged. I took the wheel. We cruised past small islands, families of pink roseate spoonbills, garbage tankers swarmed by seagulls, fields of grass and wolfberries, and I realized it was not that remarkable for a person to understand what another person needed.
CJHauser teaches creative writing at Colgate University. Her novel, Family of Origin, is published by Doubleday.
This is dedicated to my rebels. You know who you are. xox
“You can just stop with the damn smoke blowing thing!” Me ~ to my Shaman.
I once had a shaman. I highly recommend it.
Mine appeared out of nowhere, like a questionable smell, and actually moved in with me back in the winter of 1993.
With his bald head, Australian accent, and wild, Rasputian eyes, I call him my “pocket shaman” since he was barely shoulder height — and for just shy of a year he literally went everywhere with me.
If I want to sleep at night I don’t think about that time of my life. The memories remain dark, murky, and mysterious. Definitely NOT a place that’s safe to go without a weapon…or a guide…or as fate would have it—a shaman.
My friend Mel posted this “Promise of a Shaman” on her Facebook page the other day. I wish I knew who wrote it because I can tell they’ve lived it. Their words bringing every detail of our little dance alllll back to me…
The rituals.
My fear.
His refusal to meet me in my fear.
My rage at that.
His indifference to my rage.
The energy work that I initially scoffed at and then later counted on to save me.
I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that he saved me, my pocket shaman. He saved my sanity—and in turn, he saved my life.
“Be careful what you wish for,” they say. Up until that point I’d never listened to “them” anyway—and I wasn’t about to start.
I was a thirty-five-year-old seeker who’d been seeking since she was seventeen, and was beyond ready to end her seeking and find her enlightenment already!
I wished to know all the secrets of the universe. To have them revealed to me so that I alone could understand them.
“Be careful what you wish for,” my pocket shaman admonished as he sat in front of me with eyes the size of salad plates, seriously questioning the direct, solo route I’d chosen to take. It was not working out well for me. Yet I persisted. He was in favor of a more circuitous path; one that came with rest stops, snacks, and water—in other words—a lot of help along the way.
“Fuck that shit!” I ‘m done waiting! I want it now! I’m in a hurry! I argued.
Then I lost my mind.
Sacred texts suggest that when undertaking the path to enlightenment, it would be wise to apprentice for like a thousand years while following the sage advice of a master, guide, or guru.They say that for a reason, the most obvious one being that the edges of the path are littered with the bones of those who’ve tried to “go it alone”.And if you don’t die, you are doomed to wander the streets of LA or some other place you no longer recognize, barefoot and afraid, babbling incoherently about “going fast, going solo.”
Trust me. I was almost there.Luckily for me, a shaman showed up.
I say thank you to whoever sent him my way. He was exactly what I never knew I needed.
I also say thank you for the experience we went through together. It was most definitely a battle, and he will forever be my primary overseer and James Bond-level-super-duper-gizmo-in-the-toolbox-fighter-of-the-dark-arts-foxhole-buddy.
And even though it took me twenty years to get here I’d also like to say a heartfelt thank you to the universe for scaring the living bejesus out of me, beating me up every which way imaginable—and some you cannot; and for scrambling my brain, rewiring my nervous system, and then spitting me out on the other side with a cadre of “lovely parting gifts”—that took me two decades to discover.
And I say thank you to myself, for being brave enough back then to even make the journey.
So, what is the moral of this story you ask?
That in some instances, good things come in small packages and everybody loves a shaman?
That, in the case of chasing spiritual enlightenment, you’d better put a team together because you are quite LITERALLY playing with fire?
That “they” are right when “they” say, be careful what you wish for because you just may get it—and then have no fucking idea what the hell to do with “it”? —OR—that we don’t say “thank you” nearly enough to that part of ourselves that offers acts of audacious mercy, like conjuring shamans out of thin air at times when we barely have the wherewithal to remember our own names—and that the access code for said mercy should be on page one of the Being Human Handbook?
Hmmmmmm….That’s a hard one. I’ll let you guys decide.
Carry on,
xox
The Promise of a Shaman
If you come to me as a victim I will not support you.
But I will have the courage to walk with you through the pain that you are suffering.
I will put you in the fire, I will undress you, and I will sit you on the earth.
I will bathe you with herbs, I will purge you, and you will vomit the rage and the darkness inside you.
I’ll bang your body with good herbs, and I’ll put you to lay in the grass, face up to the sky.
Then I will blow your crown to clean the old memories that make you repeat the same behavior.
I will blow your forehead to scare away the thoughts that cloud your vision.
I will blow your throat to release the knot that won’t let you talk.
I will blow your heart to scare fear so that it goes far away, where it cannot find you.
I will blow your solar plexus to extinguish the fire of the hell you carry inside, and you will know peace.
I will blow with fire your belly to burn the attachments and the love that was not.
I will blow away the lovers that left you, the children that never came.
I will blow your heart to make you warm, to rekindle your desire to feel, create and start again.
I will blow with force your vagina or your penis, to clean the sexual door to your soul.
I will blow away the garbage that you collected trying to love what did not want to be loved.
I will use the broom, and the sponge, and the rag, and safely clean all the bitterness inside you.
I will blow your hands to destroy the ties that prevent you from creating.
I will blow your feet to dust and erase the footprints memories, so you can never return to that bad place.
I will turn your body, so your face will kiss the earth.
I’ll blow your spine from the root to the neck to increase your strength and help you walk upright.
And I will let you rest.
After this you will cry, and after crying you will sleep,
And you will dream beautiful and meaningful dreams,
and when you wake up I’ll be waiting for you.
I will smile at you, and you will smile back
I will offer you food that you will eat with pleasure, tasting life, and I will thank you.
Because what I’m offering today, was offered to me before when darkness lived within me.
And after I was healed, I felt the darkness leaving, and I cried.
Then we will walk together, and I will show you my garden, and my plants, and I will take you to the fire again.
And will talk together in a single voice with the blessing of the earth.
And we will shout to the forest the desires of your heart.
And the fire will listen and whisper the echo, and we will create hope together.
And the mountains will listen and whisper the echo, and we will create hope together.
And the rivers will listen and whisper the echo, and we will create hope together.
And the wind will listen and whisper the echo, and we will create hope together.
And then we will bow before the fire, and we will call upon all the visible and invisible guardians.
