Elissa Stein's Blog, page 2

social

I used to blog all the time. I had this blog I had a blog dedicated to my kidney donation. I wrote a lot. It helped me process and feel and sharing helped me and sometimes it helped others who reached out to let me know they understood what I was going through and then social media showed up and all the writing I had done I transferred there. It was lovely to have a community and an audience and get likes and comments in real time in a more confined space and I loved all that but I also realized that social media can be addictive and negative and I’d spend time wondering if anyone would respond or care about what I was writing about or see the real me as opposed to my online persona. I never imagined I would let go of social media, but I could feel it’s toxicity and realized I needed to step away for a moment. 
That moment has grown into weeks. Honestly, I don’t really miss it. There are plenty of times I think that I would like to share but then I think share with whom? Maybe it’s enough to own my things for myself, and not need to share out so loud and so often. There is something so performative about sharing online and that is neither good nor bad, but maybe not sharing and just being is a better fit for right now. 

disappointment

I thought I found a puppy. I thought I found exactly who I wanted. He even had the name of my dear dear dear friend, who left a couple of years ago. Signs galore. 
Whats the ven diagram between signs and expectations? At the moment, I am pondering what to let go of, what doesn’t serve me, what really hurts. 
I miss Gracie so much. It’s been eight months since she left and it’s been so quiet and empty here. I’ve been waiting for her to send me someone I asked her to when I left the emergency room after saying goodbye to her for the last time I thought she knew when I would be ready. Maybe I’m just not ready yet. Maybe I’ll never be ready. Maybe there’s been too much loss over the last stretch and my heart isn’t ready to fill up again. And that is so sad. But it is what it is. 

mahjong

Yesterday I got a package in the mail. In it was my mom‘s Mahjong set. Playing was truly her happy place and I knew when she was able to, she was OK the last few years before she died. She got to be social. She got to entertain. She got to think and strategize and serve desserts
Back in the way - way back - she played twice a week. She baked delicious things that we couldn’t taste until the mahjong ladies dug in first. Every Monday night and Thursday afternoon that she hosted I’d hear the clacking of tiles and chattering of women as our house filled up with cigarette smoke. You couldn’t ask people not to smoke in your house. And the day the new mahjong card came out? Thrilling in her world. 
As she got older and sicker and got lost in dementia or whatever else was causing her mental struggles, being able to play was a very big deal. The game came to her every week because she couldn’t travel anymore. Every time she played, we would talk about what desserts she was serving, who was there, and what they talked about. Even when she’d say she wasn’t up for it, after she played she was delighted. Exhausted and wiped out, but happy. 
Inside one of the bags of tiles I found her latest mahjong cards: 2020 and 2021, in almost perfect condition. She never played in 2022 - she spent much of that year in the hospital before she died in June. A bit of concrete evidence of her much longer journey. Tearful moment. 
I need to find a box to keep everything in. Hers must have fallen apart. I need to find a place to store everything. And I need to figure out if I want to learn to play and continue her joyful, friend filled tradition. 

holidays

The title of this should be holidays and hosting. Or even just hosting. I like hosting but I also can be somewhat exhausted by it and at times resentful. It’s the getting ready and that’s a lot if you want to do a good job. It’s the during which is hard as you need to juggle so many different things while entertaining at the same time. And it’s the clean up when you’re already burnt out from the first two steps and you know how much there still is to do. 
Hoping in 2024 I’m invited to more things so I can show up, enjoy, and then leave. 

birthdays

Yesterday was my mom’s birthday. She would have been 88 only she died a year and a half ago after miracle upon miracle that she was still here. 
Today I unpacked boxes of her things I had sent from her house in Florida, which has been for sale for week or so. Crystal vases from our house in Massapequa. Cookbooks with her notes scribbled in the margins. Serving pieces and bakeware and wine glasses and my bat mitzvah album - these treasured items of hers that had been with her for so many years that now need a new home. I had to scramble to find space for the cake plate and statues - my living room feels more stuffed instead of spacious - but it feels good to have pieces that she used and loved close by for me to hold onto. 
I don’t hear her voice the way I used to. I don’t sob so hard I can’t breathe the way I did after she died, although when unpacking photos of me, my sister, and my brother who died a few months ago, I bent over and wailed for a few minutes. The grief mingles with the memories and that’s where I’m floating right now. And it’s ok. 

discomfort

Tonight I discovered a pop up collection of stands just off Union Square market filled with Asian food and a wide variety of all sorts of unrelated items, from hand crafted lamps and an array of fake pearl jewelry, to crochet animal and scary mini carpets from Tibet, all staffed by young people selling their wares enthusiastically. 
One block print artist had a piece on display called: comfort in the discomfort. She called it her life’s motto and said it so calmly and casually, almost happily. That’s always been my life’s motto although for me it’s been all about negativity and self destructive tendencies. I couldn’t wrap my head around hearing those words with a positive or even neutral twist. Much of my life was spent in struggle and I alway felt that familiarity of the pain was better than letting go and perhaps discovering things that were even worse. Comfort in the discomfort. Summarized my eating disorder for sure. I mentioned that to the artist and she looked so surprised that my connection with those words held such pain. 
I wanted to support and thought about buying a print but my goal is to find comfort in what is, not comfort in what makes life harder for me. And that was kind of cool to realize - I don’t feel comfortable with that as my life motto anymore. 

returning

I’m somewhere in the middle of my Saturn returning - every 29.5 years Saturn completes a lap around the sun and it can be a time of huge change and upheaval and all sorts of stuff. 29.5 was remarkably dramatic and then I forgot all about this phenomenon until the past year plus has been fraught with loss and change and stress and an astrologer gasped at my chart in June and exclaimed things would be hard, like really super challenging hard until January. 
Yeah. It’s been hard. 
I lost my mom, my puppy, my brother. My business slowed down - lowest performing season in years. My mom’s house is being sold. Unlikely I’ll be at my brother’s again. Friends have disappeared. There were health things and emotional things. My things and other people’s things. I’ve grieved and sobbed and cracked for so long I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to not burst into tears multiple times a day. 
Too often I see the world in black-and-white without all the variations, focusing on the negative which is totally channeling my mother. But over the past stretch I’ve also traveled more than I have in years. Found new people to do fabulous things with. Changed my style, learned to sew better, found different ways of helping families find solid schools, welcomed a kid back home, podcast regularly. Downs and ups. Heartache and joy. Pain and thrills. Sigh. Working on letting it flow and being as ok as I can through it all. 

leavings

As I was leaving my mom’s house this morning someone said this would likely be the last time I was there. It had already been a morning and that was the icing on an emotional and tear filled stretch. 
I’d woken up to find after yesterday’s frantic delve into figuring what of my mom’s things to keep that there was even more to process - a stack of files including lawyer bills from my parent’s divorce, medical info and doctor reports that slammed the past smack into the present, photos and memorabilia, hate mail from my grandmother. Yeah, that was a thing. There were dark and painful stretches both in my growing up and being a grown up. Things that I haven’t quite figured out how to shine a light on so they can’t sabotage me anymore. Work in progress. 
And then I stripped the bed for the last time. Did a last load of laundry. Kissed my stepfather goodbye. Drove passed the pool I swam in countless times. Glanced at the palm trees and remembered all the neighbors I’d met who left in one way or another over the years. I remembered how my mom would come pick my up at the airport. Where the Starbucks was. The snack shop I’d been in countless times to waste time. The trip my brother and I crossed paths at the gate when we were tag teaming being with my mom in the hospital. Likely this was my last time there too. 
Endings are endings. There’s a deep sadness, a not wanting to let go, of already missing what was without knowing what will be. I know endings bring beginnings but it’s all still too raw to imagine what those might be. For now I’m just feeling and working on being ok with not knowing exactly what all these feelings are. 

clearing

This morning my stepdad announced he was selling his house and I needed to decide what of my mom’s stuff I wanted by the time I leave tomorrow morning. 
Insert significant head smack and also deja vu feelings here. 
After my mom’s funeral, a year and a half ago, he told me we had to have her closet cleaned out that day, her clothes and shoes and paperwork dealt with - traces of her gone so things could be painted and freshened up. It was a mad scramble of grief bordering on panic as we frantically made decisions in split seconds that should have taken time and thoughtfulness. I have no idea what we let go it all happened so fast. And here I am again. 
I found my brother’s bar mitzvah album. He isn’t here to tell or send it to. Autograph album’s of my mom from 1947. Cards I’d send her dating back from the 90s. Print outs of photos I’d emailed from years back. Cookbooks with her favorite recipes smudged on ingredient drenched and dried pages. Chip and drip platters from the 70s. 5 spring form pans for cheesecake. Unopened brioche tins. More sealed decks of playing cards than I could count. Extra mah johnng tiles. Pack upon pack of themed cocktail napkins. Plowing through piles and boxes, I didn’t feel my mom close. She isn’t here anymore, her house an empty shell of what it was. It’s remarkable that a person who was so often bed bound could quietly (actually not so quietly) be such a presence even as she slept days aware and appeared only intermittently. 
I salvaged serving pieces and a cake plate, sculptures she wanted me to have and photos I couldn’t say no to and am letting go of the rest. I think it feels good to find some clearing although honestly I’m not sure what I’m feeling at the moment and I’m working on just being in it and not needing to figure it all out. 

meatless

I’ve been a vegetarian for just about 40 years. The last time I eat meat (chicken) someone served me a dish and asked me to let them know if it was still bloody. In that moment I fundamentally changed how I ate and never looked back. 
Back in the day it wasn’t so easy to be vegetarian. The world, or at least the world I ate in, focused on meat eaters. Steamed vegetables and a plate of plain pasta was what most restaurants could offer me when I somewhat embarrassingly announced my diet was different than everyone else at the table. I remember being on a cruise, the actual Love Boat in fact, and they were so unprepared for my request that every day the head chef presented me with a special menu because I was the only vegetarian on board. But, time passed and things changed. Meatless options became easier to find as more people changed their way of eating. Instead of feeling marginalized, my eating choices because more mainstream and it’s been a minute since I felt self conscious about how I eat. Until today. 
Set the stage: dinner in Florida. 4:45 start time at a seafood restaurant I was assured would have plenty of options for me. Before I got through the appetizer section which had not a single option for me, I knew this place was old school and, much to my surprise, those uncomfortable, needing to apologize for how I ate feelings bubbled up a bit. I didn’t want to go back to a bland plate of zucchini with white rice on the side. Instead I special requested asparagus sautéed with garlic and a baked potato. Slightly more personality than choices I’d been given in the past but I will certainly appreciate being back at restaurants with plenty of things for me to consider.