Every year around the holidays in elementary school, each homeroom class would "adopt" a family for 100 Neediest Cases. We'd bring clothes and toys and food and LOTS of stuff for our family. I remember in 2nd grade we donated this red, white, and blue plaid suit that had been my dad's--my mom was so excited to get rid of that thing! I don't remember much about it, except for flashes of color and fabric and the memory that it was hideous.....ah, holiday generosity.
Yesterday, I sat down to look through the paper, and on the front page they had a little blurb about 100 Neediest Cases--it's still going on. My adult brain started pondering and doing some math, though. Surely, if every class in every grade in our one elementary school had one family, there must be more than 100 cases. What are the criteria to determine who is "neediest"? We don't really even use the term "needy" anymore, in favor of terms like "underprivileged." What must it be like for a family to be deemed among St. Louis's neediest? Are they proud? Ashamed? Encouraged?
As I've come face to face with my own neediness these past few months in big and small ways, I honestly would be a bit relieved if I got the label of "needy." I wouldn't have to ask for help but could readily accept donations. When I would receive help, I would instantly know my inability to repay favors and generous gestures. I usually don't feel the need to put on a front and be happy and cheery when I'm not, but I do fear that in the unlikely event that I ever need to burst into tears in public that I won't feel the freedom to do that. But if I were labeled as needy, like literally wearing a big sign on my clothes that said "NEEDY." "GRIEF ISSUES." "HELP HER," then I could somehow receive global permission to exist in whatever state.
Why this antagonism toward neediness in self and culture?? We don't want to be the needy girlfriend, the high-maintenance friend. We rotate the friends we ask for rides to the airport or "bother" for favors. But when it comes down to it, aren't we all needy? Like really needy? We have the option, the "privilege" perhaps, to hide it and mask it in any number of ways. Neediness only becomes more apparent in the absence of stuff and medical insurance. And even with my gaping wounds of needs, would I really even qualify for the 1000 Neediest Cases in St. Louis, much less 100 Neediest? Not to minimize my own neediness--believe me, I know it well--but rather to emphasize how incredibly needy we all are. So this holiday season, I am grateful for the needs that are met and grateful for the opportunity to recognize my needs.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Monday, December 17, 2007
Christmas Caroling
We just completed the 20th Annual Scarborough Christmas Caroling expedition this evening. It's a tradition my mom started to cheer up a friend of hers whose husband was in prison during the holidays. There's an organization here called the St. Louis Christmas Caroling Association that provides cans and songsheets to carolers who collect money which goes to local children's charities. So we pass out flyers in the neighborhood and tell people to leave their porch lights on if they'd like a serenade. I haven't been in several years--it's always the Monday before Christmas, unless that Monday is Christmas Eve, like this year--but I remember years when it was FREEZING and years when we only had us singing and years when we'd have 3 different caroling parties--one for me, one for my brother, and one for the grownups. One particular year, in 6th grade, I got to have my own party, and in my desperate desire to be popular and not exclude anyone, I invited the entire 6th grade, which consisted of 92 people. About 30 people showed up. And then it became the big news that the newly dating Aaron Lang and Melissa Hurley were going to have their first kiss at my party, which I found fairly devestating, but I don't think Aaron even came and the drama died down. How do I even remember this stuff?
Anyway, we had an amazing turn out this year....3 kids (who are always good for taking the cans for money door to door) and maybe 15 adults. One of the biggest groups I can remember. I guess it being the first memorial Christmas caroling really brings out the crowds. We always come back to the house for food and warm beverages. Mom used to put on an amazing spread with mini-cheesecakes made from scratch. We made do with the 2 hours between our arrival home from the airport and the arrival of people for pre-caroling pizza. And dad located the stacks of extra songsheets from all the previous years, which were needed with all the extra people.
One of our dear neighbors said, "When you used to come to the door when the boys [now 18 and 14] were little, I would make sure they came and listened, because I wanted them to think it was like this in every part of the world." That was mom, making the world the kind of place where everyone wanted to be.
I was singing some Christmas carols yesterday, and couldn't get through The First Noel, because I got choked up. You see, I love to sing harmonies, especially on Christmas carols, but it was my mom that first taught me to sing the alto harmony to "Joy to the World" in preparation for Christmas caroling when I was about 10 years old. My mom would also sing these pretty descants to The First Noel and to We Three Kings. So I was worried that I wouldn't be able to sing, but the joy of everyone gathering, of braving the cold together and singing and laughing with friends and neighbors new and old overtook any feelings of sadness.
And I'm sitting next to a fresh Christmas tree with bubble lights adorning its boughs. Does it get much better than this?
Anyway, we had an amazing turn out this year....3 kids (who are always good for taking the cans for money door to door) and maybe 15 adults. One of the biggest groups I can remember. I guess it being the first memorial Christmas caroling really brings out the crowds. We always come back to the house for food and warm beverages. Mom used to put on an amazing spread with mini-cheesecakes made from scratch. We made do with the 2 hours between our arrival home from the airport and the arrival of people for pre-caroling pizza. And dad located the stacks of extra songsheets from all the previous years, which were needed with all the extra people.
One of our dear neighbors said, "When you used to come to the door when the boys [now 18 and 14] were little, I would make sure they came and listened, because I wanted them to think it was like this in every part of the world." That was mom, making the world the kind of place where everyone wanted to be.
I was singing some Christmas carols yesterday, and couldn't get through The First Noel, because I got choked up. You see, I love to sing harmonies, especially on Christmas carols, but it was my mom that first taught me to sing the alto harmony to "Joy to the World" in preparation for Christmas caroling when I was about 10 years old. My mom would also sing these pretty descants to The First Noel and to We Three Kings. So I was worried that I wouldn't be able to sing, but the joy of everyone gathering, of braving the cold together and singing and laughing with friends and neighbors new and old overtook any feelings of sadness.
And I'm sitting next to a fresh Christmas tree with bubble lights adorning its boughs. Does it get much better than this?
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Love-Hate
It's been a hard week being back in Los Angeles. The reality that mom is gone has set in more here and now than it did while I was back home. This makes some sense, but it doesn't completely make sense. And rather than sit here and actually think about my mom being gone, I'm going to analyze how much sense it makes and doesn't make as to the locale and timing of grieving my loss. It makes sense that when I'm back in my everyday environment that the hole in my life would become apparent in a way that it wouldn't were I in an equally familiar though not as current environment (i.e. at home in St. Louis). I can analytically ring-around-the-rosie around myself to basically conclude, yes, I am normal. Yes, I am dealing with this in an appropriate and normal way, even though it makes and doesn't make sense. Whew, I'm OK. And at the end of the ring-around-the-rosie, we would all fall down in the face of sheer exhaustion from the over-analysis. Really?!?! Yes, really. All in the beautiful and glorious name of DISTRACTION. I can think about grieving and analyze grieving without actually DOING the grieving.
So I've come upon an analogy. I must grieve the loss of my mom. It's going to happen whether I want it to or not, and for the sake of the emotional health of myself and those around me, it is better that I experience this grief than not. So here I go. I'm going away to a beach house to sit at the edge of this gargantuan ocean of grief and pain. It's a forced vacation--a required sabbatical of sorts, and I have to live at the beach, which wouldn't normally be so bad, except that it's winter, and I think this fictional beach house is somewhere in the northeast, so the wind is cold and cutting, the waves ominous, and the sky an unending gray. And let's be honest, I'm a California girl now, and sand should remain sandy and never mix with snow, because snow and sand mixing just doesn't make sense to me. But I digress from the analogy--getting in touch with my grief means going down to the water. At least getting my toes wet, even though the frigidity of the water could take my breath away. Not to mention the fear of getting swept out to sea and drowning if I lose even a mite of footing in the undertow.
SO, brilliant woman that I am, I find ways to distract myself from a journey down to the water. There's a myriad of obstacle courses and activities on the beach to tease me on my walk down to the water. Or I don't even get down to the sand...I stand on the porch of the beach house and look out at the waves--"Why hello, all-encompassing grief-waves that threaten to swallow me whole. I think I'll go back inside and watch a movie, if that's all right with you." I play ring-around-the-rosie on the sand for HOURS, analyzing and re-analyzing my own behavior and the behavior of others as a way to disengage from actually being present in my behavior. This week brought about the tearing down of a campsite that has been a semi-permanent fixture on the sand the past few months--every woman's favorite distraction--a man. I got verbal confirmation this week of something I knew in my gut to be true--that my feelings for someone were not returned to me. But even in the midst of ill-treatment and confusion, rejection from a man is familiar. Losing my mom is not. So I would literally camp out in thought patterns that have been familiar to me since I first liked Benny Lam in kindergarten and got him a Skeletor action figure for his birthday and he didn't like me back. This campsite is well-used. It has a firepit and lots of trash all around. But this week, the wind just blew it all away and there is no obstacle, no distraction, between the water and me. This is a baptism I could do without, though, so I'm scrambling to find something to fill the space.
In the midst of my time in LA, I received (I say that like it was a gift or something) $90 in parking tickets, and I banged up my roommate's car, which she was so kindly letting me borrow during my stay. Really, I don't think I'm emotionally capable of operating heavy machinery. And then I heard a horrible argument in my apartment building and called the police to come check it out. It was one of those weeks that makes a person hate LA. But on Sunday morning, the sky was clear and I was driving the traffic-less freeways and listening to music, and I remembered that I love it in this chaotic, goopy, too much crammed together mess (I meant LA, but I guess I could also mean my life). I remembered why I love it. Even if it's hard. Even while it's hard. Because I also got to see amazing people (or greet my adoring fans, as I would joke in my more egotistical moments). Some of my customers at Starbucks remembered why I had left and were happy to see me back, even with the bad news. I have made genuine human connections with people across a coffee counter in this huge city, and maybe it shouldn't astound me, but it does. And my coworkers celebrated my return. I think I clocked more time inside of warm re-welcoming embraces than I did, I don't know.....in the bathroom? I really can't think of a decent equivalent. But I had a lot of amazing hugs.
And so maybe there's something in the loving and hating....in that dance between the grieving and the distracting, because that's where the majority of life takes place, not at either end of the continuum but on the ride from one end to the other, and if it's a ride, like a big ol' pendulum tire swing, maybe it gets to be fun even while it's hard. I'd like that. And maybe other people are willing to do the dance with me. Hey, if they're hugging me so much, we might as well start dancing, right?
So I've come upon an analogy. I must grieve the loss of my mom. It's going to happen whether I want it to or not, and for the sake of the emotional health of myself and those around me, it is better that I experience this grief than not. So here I go. I'm going away to a beach house to sit at the edge of this gargantuan ocean of grief and pain. It's a forced vacation--a required sabbatical of sorts, and I have to live at the beach, which wouldn't normally be so bad, except that it's winter, and I think this fictional beach house is somewhere in the northeast, so the wind is cold and cutting, the waves ominous, and the sky an unending gray. And let's be honest, I'm a California girl now, and sand should remain sandy and never mix with snow, because snow and sand mixing just doesn't make sense to me. But I digress from the analogy--getting in touch with my grief means going down to the water. At least getting my toes wet, even though the frigidity of the water could take my breath away. Not to mention the fear of getting swept out to sea and drowning if I lose even a mite of footing in the undertow.
SO, brilliant woman that I am, I find ways to distract myself from a journey down to the water. There's a myriad of obstacle courses and activities on the beach to tease me on my walk down to the water. Or I don't even get down to the sand...I stand on the porch of the beach house and look out at the waves--"Why hello, all-encompassing grief-waves that threaten to swallow me whole. I think I'll go back inside and watch a movie, if that's all right with you." I play ring-around-the-rosie on the sand for HOURS, analyzing and re-analyzing my own behavior and the behavior of others as a way to disengage from actually being present in my behavior. This week brought about the tearing down of a campsite that has been a semi-permanent fixture on the sand the past few months--every woman's favorite distraction--a man. I got verbal confirmation this week of something I knew in my gut to be true--that my feelings for someone were not returned to me. But even in the midst of ill-treatment and confusion, rejection from a man is familiar. Losing my mom is not. So I would literally camp out in thought patterns that have been familiar to me since I first liked Benny Lam in kindergarten and got him a Skeletor action figure for his birthday and he didn't like me back. This campsite is well-used. It has a firepit and lots of trash all around. But this week, the wind just blew it all away and there is no obstacle, no distraction, between the water and me. This is a baptism I could do without, though, so I'm scrambling to find something to fill the space.
In the midst of my time in LA, I received (I say that like it was a gift or something) $90 in parking tickets, and I banged up my roommate's car, which she was so kindly letting me borrow during my stay. Really, I don't think I'm emotionally capable of operating heavy machinery. And then I heard a horrible argument in my apartment building and called the police to come check it out. It was one of those weeks that makes a person hate LA. But on Sunday morning, the sky was clear and I was driving the traffic-less freeways and listening to music, and I remembered that I love it in this chaotic, goopy, too much crammed together mess (I meant LA, but I guess I could also mean my life). I remembered why I love it. Even if it's hard. Even while it's hard. Because I also got to see amazing people (or greet my adoring fans, as I would joke in my more egotistical moments). Some of my customers at Starbucks remembered why I had left and were happy to see me back, even with the bad news. I have made genuine human connections with people across a coffee counter in this huge city, and maybe it shouldn't astound me, but it does. And my coworkers celebrated my return. I think I clocked more time inside of warm re-welcoming embraces than I did, I don't know.....in the bathroom? I really can't think of a decent equivalent. But I had a lot of amazing hugs.
And so maybe there's something in the loving and hating....in that dance between the grieving and the distracting, because that's where the majority of life takes place, not at either end of the continuum but on the ride from one end to the other, and if it's a ride, like a big ol' pendulum tire swing, maybe it gets to be fun even while it's hard. I'd like that. And maybe other people are willing to do the dance with me. Hey, if they're hugging me so much, we might as well start dancing, right?
Thursday, December 13, 2007
A Free Day
It's amazing to me how quickly being back in LA my life has come to resemble an LA life again--filling up with activities exciting and mundane and leaving little time and space for solitude which I desperately crave right now. Life has only gotten heavier in the past week. It's been full of great fun and great conversations and wonderful friends, too, but the low, steady murmur of mourning underneath it all only grows in volume and intensity. For awhile in the car on Monday afternoon I was holding myself, because I literally wasn't sure if I would stay in one piece otherwise.
I am day by day losing methods and energy to flee from the inevitable void of pain. I know I need to be there for a time, but I'm afraid that it will swallow me whole and not return me the same person. I won't be the same person. I shouldn't be, and I hope to not be. My mom has been a very present force my whole life and now she's gone. That changes a person. I guess I fear the melancholy, the seriousness and deep processing I am so prone to.
So today I'm not working and I'm going to take myself on a little play date. I'm going to LACMA (the LA County Museum of Art, which is featuring an incredible Dali exhibit). I'm going to the beach. I'm going to bring one of my favorite books and a journal and a sketchpad (though I am SO not a sketcher), and maybe somewhere, somehow in the midst of today, I will have the courage to be still.
I am day by day losing methods and energy to flee from the inevitable void of pain. I know I need to be there for a time, but I'm afraid that it will swallow me whole and not return me the same person. I won't be the same person. I shouldn't be, and I hope to not be. My mom has been a very present force my whole life and now she's gone. That changes a person. I guess I fear the melancholy, the seriousness and deep processing I am so prone to.
So today I'm not working and I'm going to take myself on a little play date. I'm going to LACMA (the LA County Museum of Art, which is featuring an incredible Dali exhibit). I'm going to the beach. I'm going to bring one of my favorite books and a journal and a sketchpad (though I am SO not a sketcher), and maybe somewhere, somehow in the midst of today, I will have the courage to be still.
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Birthdays and such
It was a really eventful weekend. I went to a movie with a friend on Friday night. We went to see "Lars and the Real Girl" which was laugh out loud funny and innocently charming. I really like going to the movies, I realized. And it was only $8! The $13 or $14 price tag in LA keeps me from going most of the time. And I tend to like artsy independendent flicks which most people steer clear of. Of course I saw previews for more films I want to see--Juno and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly to name a few.
Then Saturday night my dad and I went to the St. Louis Blues hockey game. He has a split season with a guy from work. They played the archrival Chicago Blackhawks--all the St. Louis-Chicago sports rivalries are so fun! I was born after a Blues hockey game. We would alternate going on season tickets growing up, even on school nights as a really special treat. This was also the night of the Mizzou/Oklahoma Big 12 football match up, which they showed on the jumbotron screens at intermission and afterward. Sadly, having been up for work at 6am that morning and having been out to see the movie the night before, I was falling asleep watching the Mizzou game, which they were losing anyway. Boo hoo. I definitely became a fan of theirs after Michigan bit it this season--from one block M to another, I suppose.
Then Sunday, my parents also have season tickets to the Repertory Theatre in St. Louis, a professional company that does plays and musicals through the winter months. My dad gave me the tickets to "Kiss Me, Kate" so that I could take an old friend from high school and growing up together at church who just lost her mom in July. We had a great time--the show was wonderful--just very well done, and then we got Ted Drewes Frozen Custard (a St. Louis classic on the old Route 66) and drove around looking at Christmas lights in South city. Too fun. One of the actors on stage was someone I grew up seeing at the Muny in St. Louis, where we also had season tickets growing up. The Muny is a huge outdoor theater that seats about 15,000 that puts on a different musical every week for 8 weeks in the summer. One of the standard supporting actors, who eventually would play leading roles like Daddy Warbucks and the like is an older gentleman named Joneal Joplin. I've seen him on the stage for at least 20 years, and I would guess he's about 70. He always gives such a solid, delightful performance, so I went up to him afterward and told him how much I'd appreciated seeing him, after being away from town for 10 years. I told him he was a St. Louis institution, which in my mind, he is. He seemed to appreciate. And now, making coffee for Jodie Foster and Elizabeth Reasor and Kristin Chenoweth, talking to Joneal Joplin isn't nearly as intimidating.
So it was a great weekend. Then it was my dad's birthday and we went out for such a pleasant dinner with two friends that he and my mom had met on a river cruise in Russia. We had a splendid time. I had amazing scallops, and I think my dad felt aptly celebrated. I sang to him in a scratchy, obnoxiously loud voice through his bedroom door as he was getting ready and I was going to work at 4:30 am.
And, having gone to a friend's band's gig in the city last night, I have now landed myself back in Los Angeles. I knew that when I left that the next time I would be back my mom would be gone. It was different flying in this time. It all seemed so much bigger and more expansive. The reality of mom being gone was settling in more as we descended through low clouds to LAX (that reality actually had been setting in the past few days...it's just been such a long time since I've talked to her, and I really wanted to these past few days, and I couldn't, and I won't be able to, and that was sad). But I'm excited to be back, to see friends, to be back at my Starbucks with my coworkers and customers. But my heart is definitely a little more confused, asking, "Where's home?" I've always appreciated how I've made a home in so many places--in little ways in that when I walk into someone else's house I don't really have a problem opening THEIR fridge--and in the larger ways of find a niche in a great big city or small college town. My time at home has been good, and I was antsy to get back to LA, but maybe I'm just too tired to handle this still, or it's too fresh and I realize the difficult road I have to walk ahead.
So take courage, dear heart. You do not walk this road alone.
Then Saturday night my dad and I went to the St. Louis Blues hockey game. He has a split season with a guy from work. They played the archrival Chicago Blackhawks--all the St. Louis-Chicago sports rivalries are so fun! I was born after a Blues hockey game. We would alternate going on season tickets growing up, even on school nights as a really special treat. This was also the night of the Mizzou/Oklahoma Big 12 football match up, which they showed on the jumbotron screens at intermission and afterward. Sadly, having been up for work at 6am that morning and having been out to see the movie the night before, I was falling asleep watching the Mizzou game, which they were losing anyway. Boo hoo. I definitely became a fan of theirs after Michigan bit it this season--from one block M to another, I suppose.
Then Sunday, my parents also have season tickets to the Repertory Theatre in St. Louis, a professional company that does plays and musicals through the winter months. My dad gave me the tickets to "Kiss Me, Kate" so that I could take an old friend from high school and growing up together at church who just lost her mom in July. We had a great time--the show was wonderful--just very well done, and then we got Ted Drewes Frozen Custard (a St. Louis classic on the old Route 66) and drove around looking at Christmas lights in South city. Too fun. One of the actors on stage was someone I grew up seeing at the Muny in St. Louis, where we also had season tickets growing up. The Muny is a huge outdoor theater that seats about 15,000 that puts on a different musical every week for 8 weeks in the summer. One of the standard supporting actors, who eventually would play leading roles like Daddy Warbucks and the like is an older gentleman named Joneal Joplin. I've seen him on the stage for at least 20 years, and I would guess he's about 70. He always gives such a solid, delightful performance, so I went up to him afterward and told him how much I'd appreciated seeing him, after being away from town for 10 years. I told him he was a St. Louis institution, which in my mind, he is. He seemed to appreciate. And now, making coffee for Jodie Foster and Elizabeth Reasor and Kristin Chenoweth, talking to Joneal Joplin isn't nearly as intimidating.
So it was a great weekend. Then it was my dad's birthday and we went out for such a pleasant dinner with two friends that he and my mom had met on a river cruise in Russia. We had a splendid time. I had amazing scallops, and I think my dad felt aptly celebrated. I sang to him in a scratchy, obnoxiously loud voice through his bedroom door as he was getting ready and I was going to work at 4:30 am.
And, having gone to a friend's band's gig in the city last night, I have now landed myself back in Los Angeles. I knew that when I left that the next time I would be back my mom would be gone. It was different flying in this time. It all seemed so much bigger and more expansive. The reality of mom being gone was settling in more as we descended through low clouds to LAX (that reality actually had been setting in the past few days...it's just been such a long time since I've talked to her, and I really wanted to these past few days, and I couldn't, and I won't be able to, and that was sad). But I'm excited to be back, to see friends, to be back at my Starbucks with my coworkers and customers. But my heart is definitely a little more confused, asking, "Where's home?" I've always appreciated how I've made a home in so many places--in little ways in that when I walk into someone else's house I don't really have a problem opening THEIR fridge--and in the larger ways of find a niche in a great big city or small college town. My time at home has been good, and I was antsy to get back to LA, but maybe I'm just too tired to handle this still, or it's too fresh and I realize the difficult road I have to walk ahead.
So take courage, dear heart. You do not walk this road alone.
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