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.
I’ve been traveling lately. A lot. Much more than usual. Three countries in two weeks. Eight flights. More shitty airport food than I care to remember.
It’s one reason you haven’t heard from me lately. The other fifty have to do with varying degrees of slothiness, jet lag, and a profound lack of inspiration.
Anyway, one trip was a two-week motorcycle ride through southern Italy. Rome to Sicily.
The other, two days after my return from Italy, was a journey to Tofino, a town on the wild western coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. From LA it takes a plane, a ferry, lots of coffee, and four-plus hours (depending on the weather and road conditions) of driving to get there. To say it’s all worth it is an understatement, so I will not do it that disservice. Just suffice it to say—WOW.
All of this to say, for both it was the journey, not the ultimate destination that captivated me and made me practically pee my pants with delight. Don’t get me wrong, Sicily and all of the cites and towns we visited were amazing and I blow another zipper just remembering the food. But it was the ride each day through the countryside to get there and then exploring the island and making memories with the fabulous people in our group that was—bellisimo!
The same goes for Tofino.
So I was reminded, as I often am, not to rush through things.
Here’s a short excerpt from my self-talk with that part of me that knows more wise shit than I ever will:
Them: Remember, LIFE is the journey. Me: What?! Them:You heard us! Me:I know, but that always gets me. Them: We know. Maybe, eventually, you’ll remember it.
Here’s the thing: If I were only interested in getting to Sicily, I could have flown directly there, had dinner, taken a selfie, and flown home. Same with Tofino (although the scuttlebutt says that flight is so harrowing you need to carry a change of underwear in your purse). So never mind.
The point is, LIFE is the journey!
Slow down.
Take it all in.
Be grateful.
Have fun.
“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 phone was ringing. That’s odd, I thought, trying to clear away that cotton candy that inhabits your brain after you’ve just fallen asleep.
Only minutes earlier I’d turned off the light after struggling to stay awake while reading my latest self-help book, “The Road Less Traveled.”
It has to be late, I mumbled, rolling on my side to get a look at the time on the digital clock radio next to the bed. It was half past eleven.
Now it is my experience that NO good news is EVER on the other end of a phone that rings after eleven. Ever!
Either that person is drunk and dialing, picking a fight about something that happened a week ago, telling you that someone is sick—or there’s been an accident.
This call ended up kicking all of those things to the curb.
“Janet, sorry, are you awake? I know it’s late.” It was my friend Rita (not her real name).
Rita is one of the “herd”, as we were called. We were given that moniker because of the level of noise that entered a room wherever we showed up, and because there were always seven of us. Seven teenage girls attached at the hip through all four years of Catholic high school.
I’m sure you can imagine.
We shared everything teenage girls share—all the firsts.
First periods, first cigarettes, first joint, first drunk/sick night, first loves and all the trouble, chaos and complications that boyfriends bring to a young girl’s life.
Now we were in our late twenties. Everyone was pairing up, I was the first, already married and divorced, Rita, the smart, choosy one, was the last. Several of us had left LA, but the following weekend there would be a reunion of sorts.
Rita was getting married.
“Yeah, sure, no problem, I’m awake…what’s up?” I sat up in bed.
“I think Marco’s cheating on me” she started to cry.
“What? Noooooo.” I said, lighting a cigarette. I was up now, sitting on the edge of the bed. This was in the days before mobile phones, although I did have a fifteen-foot cord on my yellow push button telephone – so I could wander.
She was crying harder now, rustling papers in the background.
Still groggy, the cigarette was getting me high, had I heard correctly? “What are you talking about? What happened?” I asked. The rustling stopped.
“A woman called me yesterday claiming that she and Marco are in love! That they have been for a long time…she knew my name.” she spit out that last part like she’d bitten into a lemon. I could hear in her voice she was getting mad.
“Oh. My. God.” I replied while frantically searching my drawers for an ashtray, but deciding to settle on a potted plant.
“That’s bullshit, he loves YOU, you’re getting married in less than a week…” She interrupted, her voice agitated, almost yelling, “She told me to check the phone bill for her number. Janet, it’s on here over sixty times just this month, the same with last month and as far back as I…”
“Hold on a second, where is Marco?” They’d been living together since the engagement, but he had a job that took him out-of-town two weeks of every month, so the rest of the herd didn’t really know him all that well.
“He’s in Atlanta until tomorrow night.”
“Did you call him? What did he say?” This I had to hear.
“Of course, the minute I hung up with her.”
“And?…” I was dying to hear his explanation.
“Well he denied it, said she’s a girl from work, that she’s super needy, really insecure and kinda crazy. He explained that her number’s on the bill because he’s her supervisor and they have to talk about work problems. I mean I know things have been super stressful at the office lately, with all the layoffs and personnel changes.” She was quiet for a minute. “He started accusing ME of having cold feet!”
That didn’t sound right, but I stayed on script. “Okay, well let’s see—she’s just a kook from work and he’ll set her straight honey.” I lit a cigarette with a cigarette, something I never did, but this situation called for it.
“That’s what I thought, but she called again tonight, I just got off the phone with her and called you!” Her voice took on a desperate edge.
“Shit.” My blood went ice-cold.
There was a sweater in a pile of folded laundry that was waiting patiently on the chair to be put away. I pulled it on, switching the receiver from hand to hand, turned on the light, and started pacing, wandering the room.
“She’s been here! At MY house! They’ve been here together! She described the condo and she even described me! She’s seen me, she waits for me to leave! Get this – she says that I’m the girl he marries and has children with— but she’s the girl he loves. Fucking bitch!” That sent a jolt of whatthefuckery throughout my entire body. Rita NEVER used the “F-word.”
He was feeding my friend a crap sandwich. And that other woman! It sounded like the asshole was dishing out crap all over the place.
I was speechless. She continued. “She said he’s Latin and that it’s a cultural thing.” She started crying again. “They laugh at me, she says they laugh about how unsuspecting I am, that I think I’m going to get married and ride off into the sunset…they laugh at me, Janet.” As I listened to her sobs, tears filled my eyes and I started to sniffle so I pressed the receiver to my chest so she couldn’t hear me.
After a long time I thought of something to say, “What does she want from you?”
Rita cleared her throat, her exhausted voice barely a whisper.
“She wants me to walk away, to break things off, otherwise at the wedding, when they ask who objects—she’s going to stand up and tell everyone the truth.”
“That’s bullshit!” I yelled. “That only happens on soap operas!” my voice was so loud it actually startled me.
“Janet, what should I do? He’s just going to deny it. So what if she IS just a crazy girl from work, she’s still going to ruin my wedding!”
“Maybe when Marco comes home, you guys have a heart to heart. He has to figure this mess out… I don’t know, maybe postpone things…” Rita jumped in, she was bordering on hysterical. “I can’t call off the wedding! I just wrote the balance check for the hall! This morning was the final fitting on my dress!”
“Okay, I know, listen.” My tone was firm.
“If he’s cheating on you, you sure as hell are NOT going through with this wedding! I don’t care how much money is lost and how embarrassing it is. People will just have to get over themselves.”
Crickets.
“You know I’m right. I’ll help you. I can call people and…” She interrupted me. “I’m tired, I have to go. I’m sure when Marco comes home this will all get settled.”
Her voice turned Stepford.
“I’m sorry I called you so late, you’re right, it’s probably nothing.” What was happening? I never said that. I never said it was nothing. “Goodnight.” The line went dead.
I couldn’t sleep the rest of the night, struggling with whether I should share it with anyone else. If this whole thing didn’t blow up before then, the rest of the herd would be in town by the end of the week so I decided it was best to just zip it.
The next time I saw Rita was at the rehearsal. I was singing Ave Maria and One Hand One Heart from West Side Story at the ceremony, so we did a run through. Rita looked beautiful and happy, all smiles. Even when I searched her eyes while saying our goodbyes after the rehearsal dinner, there was no hint that anything was amiss. Marco sat beaming, surrounded by relatives and friends from out-of-town.
So okay. They’d worked it out. It was one just of those late night calls that you just chalk up to nerves and forget it ever happened.
The next morning, up in the choir loft, after Rita’s entrance in her big, flowing, white gown, I watched from above, scanning the crowd. Marco’s family and friends on the right and Rita’s giant Irish Catholic family on the left – and a mystery woman dressed all in black wearing an enormous hat and standing in the back.
Who was that? I bent waaaay over the ledge to try to catch a glimpse of her face, but short of doing a half gainer with a twist off that balcony – it wasn’t going to happen.
All black. To a wedding? Really bitch? My heart was pounding. Was this the “other woman” all set to ruin Rita’s special day?
I was helpless to do anything. It was time for the Ave Maria. The minute the song was over, the last note still reverberating, riding the incredible church acoustics, I ran back to the ledge, searching for the stranger in black – but she was gone.
I wish this story had a fairy tale ending…
As it turns out Marco did have another woman. Several actually. He let it be known right after Rita told him he was going to have a son. They tried to play happy family for a while, but I think the marriage lasted all of three years.
It’s been about thirty years and Rita hasn’t had a serious relationship since. She’s never been able to let herself trust a man again.
She got the big white dress – but at what price?
The thing that Rita really lost was the trust of her own internal navigation system. She stopped trusting herself. She’d known in her gut what was going on, even when he denied it, but she thought she was too far in to get out. She wanted to save face, to be married, only to be divorced a few years later, as a single mother.
We all do things we know in our hearts are doomed to fail. We stay in situations that we know aren’t right, because we’re deeply invested. But there can be a way out, there’s always way out.
Gut check – intuition – rumors – lies – denials. WE KNOW.
If it feels bad – it probably is.
Have you ever found yourself in a similar situation? It’s not just about weddings. Did you get out? How did you do it?
Carry on,
xox
22 October 2019/
by jbertolus/
in Uncategorized/
Comments Off on The Big White Dress—But At What Price? 2014 REPRISE
Okay, so, we’re headed back to Italy on Monday for a motorcycle ride from Rome to Sicily and that means I’m fantasizing about losing weight on gelato and getting my ass pinched by deliciously lascivious Italian men.
Wish me luck! Ciao!
xox
We just returned from a week in Paris and my brain is addled from jet lag and partaking in too much rich food because, Paris. It feels like if churros and beignets had a baby—and then covered it in Nutella. Yeah, like that. So…
1. Plaid does not exist as a wardrobe staple outside of the US. Well, except for Scotland and kilts of course, but I’ve always considered them to be a centuries-long practical joke gone awry.
2. Whatever shoes you pack— they’re wrong. And since sneakers are like wearing a Kick me, I’m the worst kind of touristsign on your feet, you will never be comfortable. The women there have it all figured out. Me? Not so much. Mine are either too fancy or not fancy enough — too pointy, too dated, too blistery, or too…what is the word I’m looking for here…slutty, to be taken seriously or worn with any confidence outside the U.S.
3. Whatever shoes you finally DO decide to wear will be eaten alive by the cobblestones and the street grates. Europe is a death camp for shoes. One pair of mine didn’t make it out alive—and the rest have PTSD.
4. Their local “Pharmacies” are equivalent to the best Sephora you could ever imagine! Like the flagship store in Manhattan, only it’s been condensed down into a space the size of a broom closet. Besides that, when you’re walking around they’re every few feet, like a Seven/Eleven, and the flashing neon green cross has hypnotic qualities, I swear to god. It lures me in with the promise of blister guards and laxatives, and the next thing I know I’ve spent 150 euro on some French eye cream that promises me that I will have hot-monkey-sex every night if I apply it regularly—to my eyes—let’s be clear. At least that’s what I THINK the small print says. Nevertheless, I fall for it every time.
5. The toilet paper is atrocious. It is ridiculously thin and so rough you can file down a chipped nail or take some home and use it to sand down that one bad spot on the corner of the dining room table that keeps snagging your sweaters. And don’t get me started on the size of the beds.
6. Oh, hello, as it turns out, I’m lactose intolerant in Europe. I’m just one gelato away from spending the night in the bathroom. Which comes in handy because without it—I don’t poop in Europe. It’s like the food is so clean my body doesn’t produce any waste… right, anyway, I’m as regular as rain in the States so this always surprises me…in a bloaty kind of way.
7. There is no such thing as a cold drink. Or ice. But I’ve never stopped asking! I keep waiting for our obsession with tall, cold drinks to catch on, but alas, water, wine, even beer is served at room temperature and you had better get used to it ‘cause it ain’t changin’ anytime soon.
8. The sun is wonky. In the summer it stays up waaaayy past my bedtime, and it’s pitch-dark until almost 9am in the winter. It’s fucked up! Which leads me to…
9. I never pay one lick of attention to my circadian rhythm. Ever. I live in the perpetual light-box that is LA, so mine stays regulated all-year-round. But between the weird hours of daylight, the nine-hour time difference, and the mutant jet lag—my circadian ain’t got no rhythm. It’s like the fifth Pip, the one who couldn’t dance; and no amount of sunlight, exercise, sleep, or wildly expensive, overpromising eye cream can make it better. It just takes time.
10. Speaking of time—that place is old. I mean really, really, old. The stone is ancient and worn smooth. The wood is cracked and bent like my feet, and if the walls could talk they’d tell the tales of a thousand other starry-eyed visitors who walked the streets, drank the wine, cavorted, laughed, and ate more cheese than any human has the right to eat— and they loved. You can’t help but fall in love with Europe. There’s just something about it. It might be the color of the light or the air…I think it’s in the water.
“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.
Last week I was a giant welt—with arms and legs; carrying a smart handbag. Living on Benadryl.
“I read there’s microscopic mosquitos who’ve shown up in the US for the first time,” my husband warned me after the fact. He has a tendency to do that. To warn me about the shark sighting after my leg’s been bitten off. Stuff like that. Anyway…
“They’re so tiny you can’t see or hear ’em. You never even know they’re biting you until it’s too…” he could see the look on my face so he stopped himself. He knows that look means his death is imminent.
But how rude is that? Not my husband’s misguided whatever, I mean the mosquito! I count on the buzz to warn me. “Incoming!” I’ll announce, which is code at our house to run for cover. Or to turn your head because a kiss is coming, which can make for a confusing couple of seconds, but that’s another story altogether.
All of this welty madness reminded me of this post from back in 2015 when mosquitos had the common decency to announce themselves. To at least make it a fair fight.
Fuck you microscopic mosquito. You suck! (See what I did there?)
Carry on, xox
Thank you gluttonous mosquito for turning my Saturday night into your own private all-you-can-eat buffet.
We are lucky enough in So Cal to escape summers of swarming mosquitos and bugs in general; we traded them for earthquakes, epic traffic jams and no NFL football team, so yep, I still think we’re ahead.
There is only one of you, you persistent little shit, I can tell by your distinctive, stuttering, high-pitched whine (you might want to get that checked out). I have no idea how you got into the house seeing that it’s been as hot as the surface of Mars these past few weeks and no door or window has been open for more than the three seconds it takes to exit or enter our seventy-five degree, humidity-free sanctuary.
It was the doggie door wasn’t it? Well, you’re resourceful, I’ll give you that.
I apologize for trying to kill you, swinging wildly in the dark every time you dive-bombed my left shoulder. I’m a pacifist at heart. Really.
I carry spiders outside for crying out loud —because spiders have the good sense to hang out up on the ceiling and they leave my left shoulder alone. Besides, spiders are fellow artists, spinning their stunning webs all over the property. What beautiful thing have you created lately, besides this humongous welt on my back?
Still, I have to thank you. You taught me patience and you made me appreciate my little family.
First the patience…okay, well, that was about as long as that lasted.
I have exactly zero tolerance for a mosquito that has no self-control and can’t realize when it’s full. You served yourself at my shoulder four times, my knee (I don’t even want to know how you got under and out of the covers)—and my pinkie. Seriously?
You, my friend, need to practice some portion control!
After several hours of hearing your deranged buzz, and feeling you near my face as you flew your little scouting missions, I wanted to scream and pull out all of my hair! Instead, I got up, ran to pee (I didn’t want you to follow me, I was trying to avoid a fish in a barrel situation in the bathroom) and made sure my husband and the boxer-bitch were covered.
My husband is made from very rare and delicate French stock.
His skin is…different from my tough American horsehide—it just is.
It is void of pores and as soft as a baby’s ass, and when bitten it gets as hot, angry and red as Donald Trump’s face when asked the names of foreign Heads of State.
The boxer-bitch is simply too spoiled to bite.
Super cute, but ornery as hell—I know you wouldn’t bite a teenager for the same reasons, but I covered her nubby little butt anyway. As I found my way back to bed, flailing my arms around like a crazed scarecrow, trying to find you in the dark, I was filled with love and appreciation.
I kid you not.
I was thankful I wasn’t in the Amazon with bugs so prolific I was forced to sleep in a bed under a full mosquito net—or in South Africa avoiding deadly black mamba snakes on my way to pee. (With those guys you hit the ground dead in three minutes, so I know my last thought would be: Did I pull up my pants?) I was ever so thankful that I had a tube of Benadryl handy for the itching—and I was thankful there was only one of you. It made me feel better about my odds of hunting you down and killing you.
Thankfully, I fell asleep and we all survived the night.
Since I knew you were fat and happy, and we had formed a relationship, an uneasy truce of sorts—the next morning while it was a bracing 78 degrees at 6 am, I opened all the doors in the bedroom to facilitate your clean getaway.
I’m not particularly proud of what I’m about to say, but I seek solace in the fact that I know at least of few of you have done the same.
So here goes: I park my big-ass station wagon in the parking spaces that are clearly reserved for “compact” cars. And I don’t give a flying fig.
I really don’t.
I’ve wasted enough of my precious life circling the Trader Joe’s parking lot that I’m willing to brave the sideways stares and heckling in order to salvage what little time I have left. And truth be told, nobody’s ever said a word. I even have a little speech prepared, one that informs the self-appointed parking-pain-in-the-ass that as shocking as it may seem, the radius of my car’s chassis is equivalent to that of a Jolt. I have no idea if that’s true and I’ve never had to give the damn speech because nobody cares!
So why do they label them that way if we all disregard their “suggestion”?
It’s for our public safety. Let me explain.
The “compact” spaces are not any shorter than your average space; where they differ is in the width. How do I know that?
Because every time I park my station wagon in a “compact” space’; an angel gets its wings—not really—but close.
Every time I park my vehicle in a space barely three feet wide (they insist it’s nine, but who are they kidding?) I leave a little of my vagina on the stick shift. Seriously.
As hard as I try, I cannot get enough space between my car and the one next to me to be able to open my door wider than my mouth, and I don’t know if you’ve tried lately but I cannot, even if I suck in my stomach, fit my entire body in my mouth. A large apple, maybe—a gigantic piece of pie, sure—a fist? Don’t ask.
But I cannot squeeze my entire personage through a space that small.
I also don’t want the Prius driver next to me to go all passive-aggressive and dent my driver’s side door.
So I park thisclose to their passenger side in the hopes that they have no friends, and I give myself the space on the other side—the Tesla driver’s side—so they can’t ding me.
But that leaves me in a pickle.
I have to climb around in my front seat, arms and legs akimbo, in order to get my entire self OVER the middle console, my purse, the phone holder/car charger gizmo, and the dreaded stick shift in order to climb out my passenger side door.
(As an aside, this can be extremely narrow as well. I usually fast that morning, stretch, and wear my yoga pants.)
My friend Steph transforms herself into a mist. Swear to god, I’ve seen her do it.
So, this bold move across the console is where I generally lose my va-jay-jay. Not because I want to! Because it’s hazard I’m not able to avoid! Have I mentioned I’m 61 and I’m not as bendy as I used to be?
Oh, don’t get your panties in a bunch—it grows back.
And besides that, it’s worth the sacrifice! I rarely have to circle more than once which leaves me more time for all the things in life that really matter. Like jaywalking and running with scissors.
