Lynn Rankin-Esquer's Blog, page 2

Goodbye My Golden Friend – Comments given (with shaking hands and breaks for tears) on June 14, 2024 in celebration of Tracey Whitstone Ratté (1964-2024)

Hiking the Dish with Tracey

I live in Palo Alto California and there is an area there that is called the Dish. It is a set of hills above Stanford’s campus with a humongous satellite dish on top, with a walking trail through it. The grasses of the hills are green during the winter but they dry out and turn gold in the summer.  Long graceful stretches of hills of a beautiful gold set against the blue sky of summer. It makes something squiggle inside me, looking at the blond grasses waving in the wind against a deep blue sky.

I recently drove by the hills and it made me remember Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s quote from The Little Prince.

“You see the wheat fields over there? I don’t eat bread. For me, wheat is of no use whatever. Wheat fields say nothing to me. Which is sad. But you have hair the color of gold. So it will be wonderful, once you’ve tamed me! The wheat, which is golden, will remind me of you. And I’ll love the sound of the wind in the wheat…”

And I thought of Tracey. And how now I love those grasses even more, because they remind me of her golden hair. The sound of the wind in the wheat is now Tracey for me. The gold grasses of the Dish are now Tracey for me.

Tracey and I haven’t lived near each other for over forty years. We had long stretches of time where we weren’t in contact. We weren’t intentionally out of contact, we just . . . were living life in different places.

Funny thing though, how often we were living in the same places at different times. We both started in Pennsylvania but then we both ended up living in North Carolina and the San Francisco bay area, always at different times. We are drawn to similar places, similar vibrations if I can get a little woo-woo here. Well, I’m going to get even more woo-woo here before it’s all said and done.

No matter how long we were out of contact with each other, if either of us called the other it was like no time had gone by at all. It turned out that we were on very similar spiritual paths, who could know? Butler girls considering Zen and getting our chakras aligned and laughing at ourselves while we tilted our heads sideways, like hmm maybe this actually fits?

Maybe we were the lucky ones, in Junior High the two non-Catholics at a Catholic school, allowed to not participate in religion classes (for how insanely strict those nuns were, it seems very progressive to allow students to attend Catholic school and be exempted from religion class!). Maybe that started an early questioning in both of us, an early permission to question religion. If you can be enrolled in a Catholic school and not be forced to learn the Catholic religion, maybe anything could be questioned. Maybe any belief could be respected. Seems very out of step with the place and times but that was the feeling. And so Tracey and I bonded over our non-Catholic status and both set out on a journey to find a spiritual authenticity.

And it turns out that Tracey and I both have a strong streak of California girl in us. She got there first and brought back reports from the front lines. Us Yinzers were talking about this last night after dinner, how Tracey brought California cool back to Butler every fall after spending the summer there with her father. We all got a little second hand brush with a beachy coolness.

When Tracey ended up living in Los Gatos, I came to visit her and was hooked. It was so beautiful I couldn’t believe people got to live there. And when it was time to find an internship as part of finishing my graduate degree I applied to one in Palo Alto, remembering the beauty of that area. I applied to that internship, that area, because Tracey had shown me how beautiful it was.

So Tracey is what brought me to California, which completely suits me. And that is what led me to meeting my husband. And that is what led me to living NEAR THE OCEAN. Something this western Pennsylvania girl could not fully even imagine is possible. Growing up in Western Pennsylvania the ocean was a very exotic thing. Maybe if your family saved up you could go to Ocean City NJ every year for a week. But to live near the ocean? Unbelievable. I still can’t get over it.  I can be at the ocean any day, any time I want. I’ve lived here for thirty years and it still amazes me to be near the ocean.

And I have Tracey to thank for that. Or maybe Bill. Yes, let’s take it back to Bill, Tracey’s dad. I don’t know how or why he ended up in Santa Cruz, but I thank him for it. Nick, maybe you can fill me in on how he chose that if he ever talked about it. And while you are at it, I’d love to hear the Cadillac story if you remember it. The one where your dad had Doug driving the Cadillac somewhere at 14 and he understandably scratched it up and then somehow a new one appeared??

And that makes me think about how intertwined our lives really kind of are. I’m sure we would all like to think we invented ourselves anew. Transcended our parents and everything we rejected about their generation. But now I get it, we don’t escape and it’s good we don’t. It seems a good time to honor the influences of our parents. My mother taught Tracey a lot about cooking. If I’m recalling correctly, Tracey’s mom was not super interested in cooking and Tracey was, so she learned a lot from my mom. And then Tracey’s dad was the butterfly wing flap that brought me to live in California. He came here, Tracey came here, I came here after Tracey. I’ve been here for 30 years. Did I mention I live near the ocean? Butler peeps, can you even believe it??

Back to the wooo-woo bit. When I found out Tracey passed over I went to work on writing something for Fletcher and Charlotte. And right as I finished, I looked out my window and saw a rainbow. And it lasted for almost a half an hour! I have seen a bunch of rainbows since Tracey passed and I have felt her presence in each of them. Double rainbows. Long lasting rainbows. Moving rainbows. I watched a rainbow move off the ocean in Half Moon Bay and travel clear inland and up the hill I was staying on. I am convinced that Tracey is communicating in rainbows.

 She’s pretty powerful, that Tracey. I feel that she’s around. Not all the time but sometimes. I imagine she’s got a lot she’s doing over there in the Everywhere. Obviously she’s relishing time with Preston. And Bill and Audrey and Doug and Pam and everyone else that went before her. But I also feel like, being Tracey, she immediately found some things she could improve on, even in heaven, and so she’s getting that shit done. Like she’s feng shui-ing heaven. I can’t imagine that Tracey would ever stop getting shit done. I kind of imagine she’s getting shit done for all of us now, like she doesn’t have to stop to rest, she’s just on it 24-7. But I could be wrong, maybe she’s resting. She got a lot done here on earth. Maybe she’s taking a break. That’s what I’d be doing. No, she’s definitely not taking a break, she’s definitely getting stuff done. In fact, I have the feeling she is circulating, right here, right now, making sure we all are having a good time at this event. Making sure we are all getting what we need.

And what I’d like to give to Tracey right now is this. We are good. And when we are not good we have each other because you brought us together. So, you can rest. You gave it all and it was more than enough. You were more than enough. you brought a joy and a delight that I think you were not able to fathom while you were in physical form. Know this, you were loved, fully and completely. You mattered, fully and completely. You are still here with us, fully and completely. We love you and that doesn’t have to end. Your presence in this world brought so much delight to so many people. With hands pressed together in prayer, we thank you and bid you rest and ease. Or improving heaven, whatever works for you.

Just two of the many rainbows I’ve seen since Tracey passed.

Weebles Wobble But They Don’t Fall Down: I Think I Found My Brand

The whole idea of having a ‘brand’ has always kind of bothered me. It sounds so self-promotional, and it also feels potentially limiting. If I’m this then I can’t also be all that. Or so it seemed. But I’ve come to see that a true brand is just an accurate reflection of what a person cares about, what they want to offer the world. It, ideally, is who you are.

Weebles were (are) a toy made in the 1970’s, a weighted egg-shaped figure using the laws of physics to wobble but always come back upright, even if turned on their side or upside down.

THIS IS MY BRAND: Finding your way back upright.

This is what I loved about being a therapist, a psychology professor, a mentor. Helping people find their core and gradually weight it enough to be able to return to upright, over and over (because life knocks you sideways over and over).

And this is what I love about being a writer. And a reader.

When I’m reading a novel I will go on the deepest of trauma rides with a Weeble character because I know that character will not just entertain me (they have to do that too), they will bring me through wiser and stronger than ever by the end. Even better if they can do it with some humor along the way.

I have an insatiable appetite for books and series in which the main character is a Weeble (isn’t it the best to find a book you love and then discover it is part of a series??). S/he can live in Victorian times (Veronica Speedwell) or current New Jersey (Stephanie Plum) or 1970’s Laos (Dr. Siri). S/he can be young (Claudia Kincaid) or on the older side (Mrs. Pollifax). She can be a she (Kinsey Milhone) or a he (any Dick Francis main character). The commonality is that I feel like I am in capable hands, that this character may (hopefully will) drag me through the mud but will come upright, probably many times during the book. I want to be entertained while knowing I’m not going to be left stranded.

I have some Weebles in my real life too and it makes all the difference in life to have someone who you know will not let the wheels come off. No matter what. And we’ve been through some stuff with each other. People dying too young, divorces, kids losing their way. You can be a Weeble and then you can have your times where you lean on a Weeble. Sharing the hard stuff with a Weeble doesn’t mean you deny the hard stuff. It actually gives you the freedom to experience it all. You can allow yourself to hit the depths because you know while you are doing it your Weeble (inner or outer) won’t let you stay down there forever.

The world is filled with a thousand ways to numb, to avoid, because some of the emotions are just so hard. We all numb and avoid, to some extent. But like the quote goes, ‘the only way through is to go through’ and if you have a Weeble in your life, you can do it. Like Odysseus strapped to the mast so he could hear the Sirens’ songs. He knew he wouldn’t be strong enough to resist them himself, knew they’d take him down but he wanted the experience, he wanted to feel the feelings, so he gave himself over to his inner Weeble and instructed the crew to put wax in their ears and ignore his cries until they were well past danger.

Reading fiction (and, I would argue, even non-fiction) is first and foremost about being entertained. That is my biggest goal as a writer but I’m finding that the brand of entertainment I want to offer is of the Weeble variety.

A good author gives you the confidence to strap yourself to the mast and experience it all, knowing you’re going to get back to the real world safely. And on the way, gloriously, you got to hear the Sirens.

Postscript: My latest Weeble creation, Izzy Bishop, is in the last stage of editing. Keep an eye out for the first book in my Order Out of Chaos mystery series, in the hopefully not too distant future. If you want to be on the notification list let me know at my email address (or click below): lynn@lynnrankinesquer.com

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Let’s Pretend Karma is Real

Let’s pretend for a moment that karma is real (Who knows? But let’s do a little experiment). And that your every good thought or feeling or act towards someone gets added to your bucket. And when your bucket is full, the karma flows back onto you. Wouldn’t you want to start, right now, filling your bucket? Find a way to be happy for a teammate who is in the game and experiencing the thing you want? Grab the old lady’s grocery cart along with yours when you put it back? What if you being happy for someone else’s good fortune brings good fortune closer to you? And what if wishing good fortune for someone you don’t even like gets you double credit? How might today feel different? The worst thing that could happen is that you’d be nice to others, that you’d be happy for people, maybe taste a little shared joy. The best is that you would have drawn that kind of happiness closer to yourself.

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Opening Day of College Baseball – Time to Armor Up

I’ve been watching baseball in a very committed way for almost thirty years now (when I said “I do” to my husband it turned out I was saying “I do” to baseball). Lucky for me I enjoy it. Except when I hate it. Which happens every season at some point. At which time I decide to quit watching.

I quit three times last year, a new record. Coincidentally my son became a college baseball player last year. The stakes shot way up. Now it isn’t just my mortgage riding on the game, it is my son’s heart.

This year I’m going to try something new. I’m going to get out ahead of it. This time I’m going to Evoshield my heart. This year I will hold back some emotion, like setting a limit for how much money you are willing to lose in Vegas. I will leave myself enough to get home.

A few reminders that I think will help me get through:

This is not my circus, these are not my monkeys (I mean one of them is my monkey but I’m no longer his Ringmaster so . . .).  I will go to be entertained and then I will leave. I don’t have to live in the caravan, I don’t have to be part of the postmortem analyzing of the show, I don’t have to chase the monkeys who got out of their cages.

I am going to find the right amount of engagement, where it is enough to be fun, enough of a thrill like riding a rollercoaster, and then I am going to get off the coaster. That was fun, now I’m done. The coaches and players need to stay focused and engaged. They live on the circus grounds, at least most of the time. I don’t.

I’m going to apply my psychology skills – I’m going to remember how we all need to balance the need for stimulation and the need to manage that stimulation and calm down. I will find my window of tolerance. Too little stimulation and life is boring and meaningless. Too much and the body feels tense and overwhelmed, the brain won’t shut off its babbling about dire consequences coming. This is possible. People find their windows of tolerance all the time (maybe not sports fans, but hey I could be one of the first).

I’m going to remember this isn’t about my life at all. I have lots of things I enjoy that are under my control. Things like writing and running and pickleball and the weather (I honestly feel like I have more control over the weather than baseball).

I can do it, right?

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The Brightest Light in the Galaxy – In Memory of Tracey Whitstone Ratté

There are so many things I don’t know. For one, why someone with such radiance and love as my friend Tracey Whitstone Ratté would not make it to at least her 90’s, if not beyond. She passed away earlier this month from cancer at age 59. Fifty nine.  The world needs people like her to stick around a good long time. And don’t get me started on all those assholes who are still alive. I don’t get it. So I’m going to shrink it down to some things I do know.

Tracey had a stunning ability for design. She took a couple swaths of material and a discarded stone pillar and made an apartment look like it belonged in Paris.

Tracy had effortless style. She was an influencer before there was such a thing. She bought a pair of slouchy boots in high school that I thought were the coolest ever. I bought my own pair (a different color so as not to be a complete copy-cat) and wore them for several years, despite buying them a size too small (that’s all they had left, and I had to have them). I never quite pulled the looks off like her (since I was, after all, copying a one of a kind) and I’m pretty sure those boots are responsible for my bunions but it was a small price to pay to approximate Tracey’s coolness.

Tracey could make any mundane thing a giggle-fest. Like cruising Main Street in Butler in a 1980’s Cutlass Supreme looking for action when no action was to be had. Still fun. Or when I came to NC for Thanksgiving with my family a couple of years ago and we went to Homegoods to find placemats to match the fabulous new table runner she had bought for her Thanksgiving dinner. We ended up on our knees digging through the wildly disorganized piles on the very back of the bottom shelves, laughing so hard that two different sets of women came around the corner to find us. One of them longingly said ‘I want what you guys are having.’ That was Tracey, making anything so fun it was like she was carbonated.

Tracey was an innovator. As a holistic nutritionist she realized people needed a healthy substitute for the meal supplement products on the market (which contain all sorts of not so healthy additives etc) and she created SMOOP, full of all the nutrients and none of the additives. Smoothie-soup! And of course it is unbelievably tasty.

Tracey had an unflinching ability to face hard things. To wade right in, get the therapy, consider the options, do the hard work on herself and then on relationships with others. Tracey was brave. I originally wrote ‘fearless’ but that isn’t correct. She had fears, we all do. She, unlike many people, marched straight towards them.

This bravery is part of what made her a true friend. She wasn’t scared of anything about me, was accepting and supportive, an alchemist turning pain to wisdom and laughter. When we were together or talked on the phone, I didn’t feel like her attention was anywhere but with me. I felt seen and known by Tracey, and isn’t that what we are all looking for in relationships? To be seen, and known and loved for all the parts of you? She was the best at that. Her presence has always been a gift.

By pure Divine intervention I ended up at Tracey’s bedside in what turned out to be the last week of her life. I’ve known her since childhood, she helped get me through the particularly rocky teen years. We were in each other’s weddings. We had hit the empty nest together. And here we were in what seemed pretty clear was the end.

As we sat together, her body so weakened, her spirit still the most ethereal of anyone I’ve seen on this earth, we talked about silly stuff and meaningful stuff and said the things you don’t want to left unsaid. It was all the feelings, turned up to 100.

You know what we didn’t do? We didn’t gossip. We didn’t have time for that kind of bullshit. We didn’t complain about taxes or politics. We reminisced and we said ‘I love you’ and we soaked in each other’s presence.

I commented on how remarkable the friends and family she had around her were. Round the clock love and attention to her every possible need. Coconut oil for her lips, a diffuser for humidity and good smells, someone always present to hold her hand or get her a drink of water.

And Tracey said she didn’t quite understand it.

She wasn’t being falsely humble. She was kind of bewildered that people had rallied so intensely and lovingly on her behalf. I’ve been thinking about that a lot – how can someone who lights up the world not know she lights up the world?

I look around at my family and friends and see how much each one brings to me, to the world. Could they not know? I look at myself (cringe, feels so egotistical to even try), might I be a light too?

Maybe it is time for us all to appreciate our own light. Take a little satisfaction in what we bring to this world. It won’t turn you into a narcissist (if you were going to be one you are one already).

Would that be such an awful thing? To appreciate that someone felt cared about or seen by you? 

I’m going to believe that Tracey left this world realizing that she lit up the lives of many people, and that the reverberations of her light will be felt for decades. In her honor I’m going to tell more people what a light they are to me and I’m going to consider that I might be a little bit of a light for others. Because part of the light that shines through me is from Tracey.

Tracey is worth every tear I am shedding, every one. I’m not done crying and I’m certainly not done with our friendship, but I am taking this moment in time to say to her, with my ragged, blown open heart, thank you for being my friend. It’s been a better life because of you.

Merry Christmas to Me: Beyond Cat Pee and Surly Tree Lot Employees

I pulled into the Christmas tree lot determined to enjoy my holiday decorating. No matter that no one in the family was available to come with me. That time worked for me. I like doing stuff by myself. And I was going to put the cat-peed-all-over-the-decoration-boxes debacle behind me. So my clothes ended up smelling like a San Francisco parking lot stairwell, I had changed into clean clothes and decided my holiday spirit would not be deterred.

It was a pleasantly cool day in Northern California and I arrived with full awareness of how much a tree is going to cost. I would not let the cost dampen my holiday spirits. I stopped at the little checkout trailer and dropped off my base from last year so that I could take home a tree already in a new base. And then I wandered into the rows of trees, inhaling the intoxicating smell of freshly cut fir. Yep, I did it, I had gotten back into the holiday mood. I decided I might even forgive the cat.

I ended up at the very back of the smallish lot, found my perfect eight foot tree and went looking for a helper to carry it to the front.

As I wandered back towards the front of the lot I noticed that the employees in matching tree lot T-shirts were all on the  . . . mature side. Where were all the college or high school kids? Ahh, it was a Tuesday and just after Thanksgiving. The kids were all in school.

A sixty-something woman in one of the T-shirts asked if I need help.

I said, “Yes, I found one, down at the other end!”

She sighed and slumped, “Down at the end? Oh great, a big one,” she said like it was anything but great.

We went down, I showed it to her, she said, hopefully, “are you having it delivered?”

“No, taking it with me,” I said.

This time a sigh that was more of a blowing out of all her oxygen. “Well then, okay. I might have to rest carrying this one, give me some time.” She pulled the price tag off and handed it to me.  “Here’s the ticket, you can go pay while I figure this out.”

I felt guilty, like was she old and infirm enough that this was a struggle? If so, why was she working here?

I paid, and she eventually trudged up with the tree. She dropped the tree in front of me. “I’m going to need a break before taking this to the car.” She leaned over and rested her hands on her thighs, breathing hard.

“I can help carry it,” I said.

“Yes, that would help,” she nodded emphatically.

So I helped carry it to the car. By which I mean I mostly carried it to the car.

With the tree lying on the ground beside the car she slowly leaned over and rested one hand on her knee and with the other put some string around base. Some grunts and more heavy breathing.

“I can help lift it onto the car,” I told her, feeling increasingly guilty about the labor she was forced to do.

She said, “that would be good, my balance isn’t so great these days.”

Before we lifted the tree I ask her how it should be positioned. “With the stand hanging over front, sticking out enough to not hit the window,” she said.

I did most of the lifting to get it up. She stood looking at it and pointed. “It should be more in middle but I can’t reach up there.”

I opened my car door and stood on the running board and positioned the tree in the middle.

She fiddled with strings on either side for what felt like at least twenty minutes. I spent the time debating whether to tip her. I realized that the only reason she must have been doing this job was because she needed this job. I felt bad that she had to do a job she had no physical ability to do.

Then another older guy in knee brace and matching T-shirt came by. “That’s not attached right in front,” he told her. He adjusted something.

She finally finished her fiddling.

I tipped her. I couldn’t help it, despite doing so much of the work myself. Despite being made to feel guilty that I purchased a sort of large tree. Guilty for asking anything of her at all, really.

I pulled slowly out of the lot, giggling at the absurd way I had just gotten my tree. It was like buying a tree from Saturday Night Live’s Debbie Downer.

Within a quarter mile, going super slow, the tree started slipping sideways, the base hanging over the front windshield swinging back and forth in front of me, string whipping freely in the breeze. I put on my hazards and pulled over as soon as I could. It wasn’t easy because I was in the left lane of a four lane road and there were cars all around me. I finally made it to the right and found a place to pull off safely. The front string was completely undone.

I felt like such a sucker. She gave me the worst customer service, I did her job, and then, insult to injury, I tipped her.

I try so hard to be a kind person, a compassionate person, to look for the Most Generous Interpretation (see French Fries at the Dog Park) and it was Christmas time for crying out loud, but there is a time to stop making excuses for other people. I paid for a service that was done so badly it put me at risk while driving. I was mad at her for doing a bad job and I was mad at her for making me feel bad I was mad at her. I was mad I tipped her.

Then I remembered that some things are an AND situation, not either/or.

I can feel compassion for an older woman working at a job she’s not capable of AND be angry that she did such a shit job at tying on my tree. I don’t have to pick between being a kind person and an angry person. I can be both.

I stepped onto the sideboard and tied my tree tightly to the roof rack reveling in my anger, enjoying it, stoking it, even. It’s not that hard to tie a knot.

I am a kind AND angry woman and I am just fine with that. That was my Christmas present to myself. I can be all the things.

Merry-effing-Christmas.

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French Fries at the Dog Park

Yesterday I took my dog to the park a few blocks from our house. It was a beautiful Northern California fall day, sunny but with a cool breeze, enough trees changing color to feel autumnal but warm enough to require no jacket. Gently invigorating. 

Dash and I wander around the spacious grassy areas surrounding the tennis courts and little league field until he insistently drags me to the part of the park with the fenced in dog park. He eagerly noses up against the fence, whining with longing when three dogs run up and rub snouts with him from inside the enclosure. I rarely take Dash into the dog park because he is a hefty white lab who lives up to his name by dashing at people’s knees and has caused more than one knee injury. My husband forgave him, but Dash did hobble him for a couple of weeks. I live in fear of Dash taking out a senior citizen’s reconstructed knee so we never go in the dog park if there are old people there.

Dash strains at his leash and looks up at me, brown eyes pleading. I look in, there are two adults, a woman in her mid thirties, and an old man sitting on a bench. A bench is good. Dash can do less damage to someone on a bench. I decide to give it a shot and as we enter I yell out a cheerful “watch your knees!” to the woman. She is tall and strong and laughs as she agrees to watch out. I follow up with, “he’s friendly, he just runs too hard at people.”

She gives Dash some pats, then he takes off playing with her two German shepherds and the older man’s dog, a small white ball of fluff. Very quickly Dash loses interest in the dogs and goes sniffing around the old man. “Off,” I say, forcefully pulling Dash away, noticing as I do so that the man is eating from a McDonald’s bag. I throw a ball for Dash which he halfheartedly chases before going back to the man, again and again. As do the other dogs, though not as assertively as Dash. I don’t blame them. The French fries smell divine. I’m a heartbeat away from begging for some myself. It is dinner time, after all.

I apologize to the man every time I pull Dash away.

The man is nice about it, every time, “It’s alright.”

But Dash won’t leave him alone so I snap the leash back on and say goodbye. We leave the dog park and as we are walking away I give in to a torrent of self righteousness. Who brings McDonald’s to the dog park? Of course the dogs are going to go crazy wanting some! That guy is lucky the dogs didn’t rip the bag right out of his hands. Or worse.

As we head down the sidewalk that starts the big loop part of our walk my brain won’t let it go. Why would that man bring a bag of McDonald’s food to the dog park at dinner time?

Four blocks later it hits me.

Maybe he was lonely.

I think back to his face and his repeated assurance that the dogs weren’t bothering him. How he carefully kept the food in the bag, pulling out one nugget or French fry at a time to eat it. How he kept starting new topics of conversation with the other woman there. I think about the stillness in his face, his searching eyes.

Most definitely he was lonely.

I’ve had my seasons of loneliness. I have family members and friends who have as well. I think about the aching quiet of dinner after dinner alone. And I wish I had thought to take my food to a dog park and get a little human (or dog) interaction. It would have helped. I found myself feeling happy for him that he did that. And embarrassed it took me so long to figure it out.  Dash and I spin around and go back to chat with him, but he’s gone.

On the rest of our walk I think about the face of loneliness. How hidden it can be. I wonder how many times my quick judgement of people has made me miss the real truth behind their odd or bad behavior. What if they are struggling, if they are lonely or sad or discouraged with life? What if the behavior I’m so judgmental of is a way of reaching out, however imperfectly offered?

I’m reminded of Dr. Becky’s (author of Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be) idea about MGI – the Most Generous Interpretation of a situation. It is so easy to get angry or defensive when people don’t behave the way we think they should, but looking beyond the behavior to their emotions and their motivations can help us shift our thinking. Give the space for a little grace.

The Most Generous Interpretation of bringing food to the dog park is that a lonely man was hungry, hungry for company as he ate his dinner. He was brave enough to seek it out, and thanks to the woman who stayed (not me), I’d like to believe he found it.

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Once Upon a Balcony

I love to meditate outside early in the morning, before the sun comes up.

So when I signed up for a writing retreat I was delighted to see there was a room with a balcony and I put my request in right away.

I arrive at the retreat, see the balcony and know something special is going on because there is a huge dragonfly sculpture on the balcony and dragonflies are what show up when I need a sign. Too many times to count.

So the first morning I wake up and slip outside in the dark and sit on the little gliding bench and stare up at the stars and listen to the river nearby and the wildlife waking up. Lots of wildlife here, birds, squirrels, cats, a bunch of dogs barking and then something that sounds like a coyote. Raw and howling, close enough to give a thrilling sense of danger, far enough to feel safe.

I’m letting my mind do it’s calming thing while I watch the sky starting to just barely lighten and then something flits by near my balcony. Obviously a bird of some kind, a dark shape that moved through my vision too fast to see what kind. And then another one, closer. And then the sky has lightened a smidge more and a dark shape comes flying around the corner of the balcony, cutting across the L shape of the railing.

That felt close enough to make me jump a little and then it came again, zipping around the corner wall and swooping by a foot from my face.

Holy shit, that was a bat!

I wonder if I’m sitting near the entrance to their roost. Maybe I’m blocking them from getting home. I wonder if the next fly by will actually be an attack. I move inside, pulling the screen door shut and sit just on the other side of it on the floor watching for what will happen next. Now that I’m protected I can be curious, and then I think maybe the bat was just curious. Have I heard of actual bat attacks when they are not provoked? I can’t remember.

But what I do remember is a bat in our house when I was a kid.

When I was seven year old, not long after we moved to our new house, a split level 70’s modern wonder, I was woken in the middle of the night by yelling. I opened my bedroom door into the hall with the high vaulted ceiling and my dad yelled to close it as he ran up and down the hall waving a broom. My mom was screaming too. “Get it! get it!”

My brother yelled “What’s going on?!”

My dad again said “Get back in your rooms!”

There was a bat in the house, flying back and forth in our bedroom hallway, scaring the crap out of the entire family.

My dad would be the first to say he was not the man for this task, but he was valiantly trying to protect his family. There were ladders and golf clubs and various ill-fated attempts to guide the bat outside and then more attempts to capture it before someone finally decided the bat had outsmarted us all and the thing to do was let the bat sleep in that corner by the I-beam and let us go back to sleep with our bedroom doors firmly closed. In the morning my mother would call someone with the wherewithal to remove a bat from a house. There’s a whole process and he did it efficiently, said he’d go release it.

In my family (like many, I’m sure), the unfamiliar was coded as frightening. My parents sprayed worry on us like sunscreen, believing it was a protectant, not noticing how worry can shrink a life. Not their fault, their parents did it to them too, in our family anxiety was passed down through the generations like recipes and good silver.

Looking back as someone who has learned a little about managing anxiety, I now have a different perspective. I’ll bet that bat caught in our house was scared shitless, got lost and couldn’t find his way out. I imagine when he finally got released he flew back to his family and was like “You guys are not going to believe the night I just had. I got stuck in some structure and these fuckers were throwing stuff at me and chasing me and I was sure I was going to die. They were nuts! Very aggressive!” And then that bat family passed down fear of humans to their descendants like my family passed down fear of bats.

Maybe we are all just scared creatures and the way through is not to immediately assume the thing you don’t know about is out to get you. Maybe the first reaction should be to keep your mind open, have some curiosity.

I’ve spent a good part of my adult life discovering that I want to expand my life not shrink it.  And have no doubt, fear shrinks you. Doing things despite fear expands you.

So I tell the check out girl I like her tattoo (worry says keep to yourself) and we have a lovely discussion.

And I have a hard but honest conversation with a family member (survived it, expanded).

And I sign up for a writing retreat and, gulp, read my work to other people (useful feedback but the win was in the doing of it).

So this morning on my writing retreat, I went back out in the dark and sat on the little glider, the dragonfly sculpture silently reassuring in the dark. I did some extra calming in my brain and body, and waited for the bat to come back. I was a little bit scared but a lot curious.

And wouldn’t you know it, no bat.

But I have high hopes for tomorrow morning.

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When the Shame Isn’t Your Fault – My Biggest Second Grade Lesson

The first time I remember really being embarrassed was in second grade when Mrs. C admonished me in front of a completely quiet class to finish the silent reading assignment. The whole class looked up from their books to stare at me. Over fifty years ago and I still can feel the rush of heat to my face, the panic at being the center of very unwanted attention. Mrs. C walked towards my desk, her shoulder length brown hair falling forward into her thin face.

I said I had already finished.

She shook her head in disbelief and said, “there is no way you could have finished that already.”

But I had. It turns out reading fast is my superpower, but no one knew it then.

I heard giggles and whispers around me and dropped my head to my book and started flipping pages, pretending to read, my heart beating so loud and fast I could feel it in my ears. Pound, pound, pound. My face stayed red, this time in anger at the unfairness of it all. I had done the assignment and then quietly waited for everyone else to finish.

Amazing, how easily someone can make you feel ashamed when you have done nothing wrong.

It is many years later. I’m standing outside of a dance studio with the other mothers, staring through the glass at our tiny barely-out-of-toddlerhood girls in their little pink tights and black leotards. It is just a step above herding cats, but the girls are enthusiastic in the way they fling their bodies around trying to do the steps the teacher is showing them. She directs them to march in a circle. Then to gather together in the center of the room and crouch down, folded up into child’s position, head down, pretending to be asleep. Then she gives the command to get back up.

One child does not get up.

My daughter.

My heart starts to race for her. Get up I think, seeing everyone else up and jumping around.

She stays down. Face to the ground.

Every other girl has moved on to the arms in the air move the teacher called for. Then they spin around, again following the teacher’s instruction.

Get up I think again.

She stays down.

Finally, the teacher taps my curled-up daughter on the shoulder, and she looks up and around and I can see it, that same shameful feeling. What did I do wrong? How am I the only one being singled out? Why is everyone staring at me and giggling?

She jumps up, face red.

It feels like I’m back in Mrs. C’s class, only this time it is worse. Far, far worse when it is someone you love feeling shame.

My daughter makes it through the class with a steadily blank face. Even from that young of an age she had decided not to let people see her cry.

In the car she tells me she doesn’t think dance is for her.

I nod. “Worth a try, not for everyone,” I say. “Thank you for giving a shot.”

Not a chance I’d make her go back there. Turns out she’s more of a martial arts gal anyway.

It would not be long after that we discover that she is hearing impaired. That she had been reading lips and making use of other cues to understand what people want of her. That she had no chance of hearing the teacher’s instructions in a loud, echoey dance studio, full of music and clomping girls and many voices and her head down.

Just like no one knew I could read fast, no one knew my daughter was hearing impaired. Understandable mistakes, resulting in understandable embarrassment.

Mrs. C and the dance teacher were just humans doing human things. I can give them a break. But there is a huge space in my heart for the singled out, the unfairly accused, the tender introvert who just wanted to read, the stoic faced little girl who so remarkably navigated a confusing world that it took four years to realize she needed hearing aids.

Postscript: That little girl is currently twenty-one years old, about to graduate college with two majors and a minor, and is kicking ass at Krav Maga (an Israeli martial art).

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Navigating the In Between

To my kids when a new phase of life feels uncomfortable:

Sometimes you end up in a place called The In Between, where one thing has ended or changed and you haven’t yet found your footing in the new place. Maybe it is literally a new place or maybe a relationship ended or maybe you’ve dropped a bad habit or started a good one. Maybe you chose it or maybe it was forced upon you, but either way, things are unfamiliar. Unfamiliar can cause warning lights to flash in our brains.

When discomfort jumps in to ride shotgun he’ll tell you to turn the car back to the Known. He’ll whisper that the fix is to go back to the familiar. But let me urge you to try tolerating uncertainty for a while instead. Maybe even trust the force that brought you here, whether it was your own decision or Life itself that added the plot twist.

Mario Martinez writes about ‘mourning the known misery’ which is when we feel nostalgic for something even if we know it is better left in the past. Mourn if you must, but don’t let the mourning convince you something is necessarily wrong.

Open yourself to the possibility that things might work out. If you chose this change, trust the you that made the decision. If you didn’t choose it, allow space for the idea that there might be something worthwhile ahead. As the song goes, God bless the broken road and all that.

Do you have the patience to wait,
‘Til your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving,
‘Til the right action arises by itself?

                        Lao Tzu

Unmoving can be a very wise choice in the In Between. As Nancy Levin said, honor the space between no longer and not yet. It’s kind of simple, all you have to do here is nothing. Just for the moment don’t move. Don’t rush back. Don’t doubt the decision. Just wait. Let the mud settle. Gather some data on this new place while you wait. Realize that tolerating uncertainty is a superpower that you will use repeatedly in your life. Believe that something New is on its way but it will only arrive if you don’t rush back to the Old. Will the New be better? Who knows? But the Old is done, its time is past.

This is the story of life, finding a way through, not back. And those with the courage to wait out the In Between often find a whole big life waiting on the other side.

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