Survival

Yesterday, while awaiting the impending tropical storm Irene, I began rereading a book called Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why. It is a fascinating and well-written book by journalist and author Laurence Gonzales, which compellingly combines neuroscience with stories of people of every stripe embroiled in great battles for survival. As the title suggests, the book explores what it takes to survive such challenges as being lost at sea or in the wilderness, natural disasters, and accidents- who lives, who dies, and what decides it? I won't reveal too much of Gonzales' findings here, for I highly recommend reading this book and think it makes much more interesting reading if you approach it with curiosity and innocence. I do, however, want to touch a bit on what reading Deep Survival is bringing up in me, for while it largely relates to surviving extraordinary, life-or-death experiences, the same mechanisms seem to allow us to get through the challenges of life intact, and to enjoy a long and fulfilling life.

We are constantly confronted with experiences and environments that don't match the images our minds are projecting onto them, that defy our "mental map" and the resulting expectations associated with it. We are challenged to adapt to the realities at hand (a changing environment, an evolving concept, shifting perspectives) in the face of our disappointment or fear and sometimes this can be a difficult thing to accomplish. This applies not only to physical challenges but to emotional or mental ones as well. What allows "elite performers" to survive high-intensity challenges is the same thing that allows we regular folk to survive the heartbreak of loss or the disappointment of failure, or to successfully transition into new environments. Adaptation. When we fail to adapt to the realities of life, we bring unnecessary harm and pain upon ourselves and we challenge our very survival.  

I am embarking on a new life path and I am scared. Elite performers and survivors aren't devoid of fear, in fact they allow a healthy dose of fear to simultaneously sober and motivate them as they take gigantic risks. I find that I am almost overwhelmed with anxiety when I pull back and look at the enormity of the task I am about to undertake: two years of full-time school while co-parenting a young teen and working at the family business, all the while attempting to maintain a web of intimate relationships. I have seen others take on similar challenges and watched as they depleted themselves of every resource. I wonder, "Who do I think I am to believe I can do it any more smoothly, or even do it at all?" Mostly, I just wonder how the hell I'm going to find that much energy to perform to my own high standards on every front. I think that the answer is, "I'm not." Something's got to give. I'm in transition and life isn't what it was just a week ago, nor is it how it's going to be next week. I have to be in the present to attend to the decisions and take the necessary actions which will allow me to begin school next week. If I go too far out, get too far ahead of myself, my confidence gets shaky and I am enveloped in anxiety. 

What reading Deep Survival has done for me is to illuminate something very basic: survivors adapt. They don't hold tight to a fixed mental image of a situation while the reality stares them in the face. They get with the reality at hand and take action to survive within it, attending to small tasks which will keep them alive (like a shipwreck survivor spending an entire day catching and eating a fish while floating on the open sea) without allowing themselves to be overwhelmed by the enormity of the situation they are facing. If I can keep my mind focused on what needs my attention in any given moment and not be overly concerned with the complex set of demands I am facing, I have at a shot at not only surviving this transition but thriving within it. It's just one moment, one day, one task at a time. 

I'm a survivor.

Questioning My Sanity

Classes haven't even started and I'm already procrastinating. I finally logged into my school email account today and was horrified by the number of messages awaiting me. Important information here, people! Who knew? Right now, instead of filling out my overdue medical forms, I'm eating green olives marinated in garlic and lemon juice, and writing this. I'm setting the bar high. Each morning this week, I've felt fall in the air as I greeted the day and a feeling of doom has settled in my gut that not even these delectable green olives can assuage. People, I'm scared. I keep thinking, "What have I done? What was I thinking? What have I gotten myself into?"

But, then I go to work and poke holes in cupcakes, filling them with vegan cream and topping them with smooth chocolate ganache and I remember. No matter how much I appreciate what those humble cakes have done for me, I'm most ready to bid them adieu. Really! I've got a callous on my right index finger from poking holes in cupcakes, a little reminder that I am on the right path. Star told me recently (making me cry), "You've earned this. You've paid your dues. You deserve this more than anyone I know."

School. I really love school- the structure, the challenge, the synergy, the constant stream of information, the irrelevant tangents made by professors during lectures. Actually, that part annoys me to no end, but the rest is delightful. I'm taking these next two years as a kind of large, living crossword puzzle designed to stimulate massive synapsis growth and reverse the effects of what feels like middle-age dementia. My brain feels dried out and crusty, desperately in need of an energizing zap of ideas and concepts. I'm terrifically excited. And, shhhh, don't tell anyone, I'm terrified.

How the hell does anyone hold it all together while they're in school? Parenting, job, health and fitness, some semblance of a social life, personal hygiene? My mom went back to school full-time when I was a kid while she worked a couple of jobs and things didn't go so well, really. I've watched women much stronger and wonder-womanly than I fall to pieces in the face of what I'm about to take on and, yeah, I'm a little unsure of how I'm gonna pull it off, but I'm guessing I'll need a lot of hugs.

The Call

Today, we got "the call" from Rain's overnight camp. Star called me afterward and we had a long talk, as most parents would upon receiving word that their child was choosing not to participate in camp activities and was behaving in a disruptive manner. My first question was, "Oh shit, what did he do?" But by the end of our conversation, I realized that what Rain had "done" was less important (as his infractions seem very minor) than the fact that we had gotten the call in the first place. It is said that idle hands are the devil's workshop and I want to ask, "Why is anyone allowing my son to be so idle?"

On drop-off day, as we helped Rain get set up in his cabin, Star and I saw immediately that there would most likely be problems with his cabin assignment, as he was obviously the oldest in his cabin. Rain is a sophisticated only child who grew up in his parents' cafes, surrounded by adults. He has traveled a fair amount, lived on both coasts, and seen the difficult realities of life up close. While he is still a child, he is no babe in arms. He has always, always most closely resembled a cross between Lenny Bruce and Bambi- equal parts scathing, dead-on, witty social commentary and too-long legs skittering wildly across glittering ice, big eyes wide open and awestruck. Because he missed the cut-off for starting public school by a day, Rain has always been the oldest in his class, which meant that every-other year he would be a full two years older than half of his class. While his actual peers (the kids his age to whom he is naturally drawn and relates, all of his closest friends) are about to start high school, Rain will enter 8th grade this fall, a chasm too great to ignore. For Rain's entire life, we have watched as systems have continually failed to serve him- unwilling to place him with his peers unless he shows that he's "doing the work," unwilling to accept that it's only when placed with his peers that he will "do the work." This camp session seems to be unfolding in a similar fashion and I want to know, Who is going to step up and show my son that they care enough about him to engage him in the program, instead of allowing him to opt out of activities or loiter and cause trouble? If I'm getting the phone call, who's not doing their job?

On that first day, I went to the camp director and asked, "Is Rain married to that cabin, or can something be done to accommodate him more appropriately?" I explained, yet again, that Rain functions better when placed with kids either a year or two older than he, rather than with kids either his own age or younger. When placed with younger kids, Rain backslides, seems to regress, goofs off, acts out, turns into a disruptive presence. But with older kids, he strives to keep pace and participates fully, because he wants to be accepted by his peers and because there's just no opportunity to goof off- he's too busy! Boredom is a great motivator of negative energy. I told the director, " It's not going to go well leaving him in that cabin with those little boys." I warned him, and I read his response as a willingness to accept responsibility for the situation and recognize and address the problem before Rain could show it to him. As with people of any age, if Rain's acting out, it's a sign that something's wrong, as well as a sign that we adults have some work to do to help him. When Rain is met for who he is, as a full person regardless of his age, and he is shown that he matters, that his individual needs are important, he will jump through every hoop, write every paper, do all the chores required, even go on that most heinous hike. He will perform to his very best when he observes that he is valued. By leaving him in that cabin, forcing him, once again, to be the "mentor" to younger kids (as he has been constantly called upon to do his entire school career), he was told that his needs did not matter. And, if he doesn't matter to camp, why should camp matter to him?

The camp director is going to call me tomorrow and I have some things to say from which I believe he can benefit. Most immediately, I want to remind him, without being didactic, that his job as a director is to direct. Most often, with kids (as we parents know), that means a whole lot of re-directing: noticing where a young person's energy is going and re-directing it to a healthier, more productive place when its careening off into negative territory. We parents start doing this from the get-go! If this director doesn't see himself as as sort of Meta Dad to 150 kids, we're all in trouble. Frankly, if the director is calling us (and my son is not huffing glue, smoking pot in the woods, beating up or bullying other kids, painting swastikas, or self-harming), it makes me wonder if he is the right guy for the job! Who's in charge? You or my almost-14-year-old? Whoever it is that is allowing Rain to opt out of participating in the camp program is doing him a terrible disservice.

When my child acts like a monster, I look at my own choices closely to see what I've done to create that monster. Nine times out of ten, it's pretty clear. When infanticide seems like the only option and my son clearly has too much power, the holding of which frightens him terribly and causes him to behave uncharacteristically poorly, I remember that I contributed to the situation at hand and ask myself what I am going to do to change it. How am I going to help that monster revert back to it's human form? This is the duty with which the director of Rain's camp is currently charged and, as Rain's Mom, it is my job to remind him of it.

Simple Tests

In his poem entitled "The Testing Tree," which he penned as an octogenarian, Stanley Kunitz writes of himself as a boy carefully choosing stones of just the right weight and size and aiming them at a tree whose might and constancy defines his place in the world and challenges and informs his notion of manhood. Recounting a recurring dream, which symbolizes the relentlessness of change, he calls up his long-dead mother and images of war. Finally, he closes, summing: "In a murderous time, the heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking. It is necessary to go through dark and deeper dark and to not turn. I am looking for the trail. Where is my testing tree? Give me back my stones!"

I think of this poem often, particularly when I realize that the child I once was still lives within me and is more accessible than I sometimes remember. I tend to over-complicate things with mental gyrations, feeling challenged by the interconnectedness of everything. Sometimes it's hard to make a move, knowing that the ripples cast will span out well beyond the bounds of my perception. Dark times come, difficult things happen, and we wish to be returned to a time when tests were simply defined: can I hit this ancient oak tree, with every throw, at fifty paces? Making bargains with the tree: If I hit this one, I'll be kinder to my mother, more helpful to my sisters. Feeling the weight of the stones in your pocket but not knowing that this is the only weight you carry. The innocence, the simplicity, the honesty of childhood becomes a beacon as the body grows burdensome and the mind softens and everything intertwines with everything else. The wide-open, unquestionable courage of childhood calls to me, like Kunitz hears the trail, that tree, those stones. I don't want to go back. I want to stand here, in this time, imbued with the courage and clarity I felt sitting on the uppermost branch of the sycamore tree at the end of my driveway, watching the world unfold below me but knowing even then that I was a part of it all.

Back To School

I tested out of high school at the end of my junior year, when I was seventeen years old. I immediately enrolled in junior college, but when classes started I looked around and found myself surrounded by the people I had just succeeded in escaping from- it was just like high school, but with a smoker's lounge. I had already been working for three years, so I quit junior college, thinking that I would go back to it later, and began to work full-time. I didn't know then that "later" would be decades.

People warned me. They told me to stick it out in school and get my education while I was young because the working world has a way of swallowing you whole and never spitting you out. I didn't listen. I sacrificed myself at the altar of manual labor and for 32 years I've been a food service professional. I'm a hard worker. I don't really know what to do with myself if I'm not working hard. And, school never really felt like particularly hard work. Restaurants? Now, that's some hard work! School? That's my playground.

When I was thirty-seven, I went back to school at a two-year college just north of my home. I entered with an interest in Early Childhood Education, but quickly switched my major to Liberal Arts English, which allowed me to exercise the full scope of my nerd-superhero skills. Yes, I'm one of those people who actually enjoys reading the classics and writing critical essays about what I've read. I know, get a life. There is really nothing more exciting to me than receiving a particularly challenging assignment; I feel a great sense of purpose fill me up. I know, really, get a freakin' life!

When I was four credits shy of completing my B.A. and transferring to a four-year college, my marriage came to an abrupt end. Needing to prioritize my use of limited resources, I deferred acceptance to school and moved west to get my head and heart together. Two years later, I returned to Western Massachusetts and went right back to work in the family business, baking and selling vegan pastries. More than three years have passed since my return and I have loved every moment I have given to the cafe- it reflects my love and care in myriad ways both great and small. I am deeply gratified by its success. And, I am ready for my second career, one that doesn't require I stand at a table for eight to ten hours a day, poking my index finger into cupcakes.

This fall, I will return to school to become a paralegal, a fancy term for a legal assistant. I'm really excited about this and so happy and proud that I had the wisdom, five months ago, to create a space for myself in such an excellent school. When I tell people that I'm going to be a paralegal, their faces go a little blank and I can tell that they are working hard with the idea. I find it curious and funny, because it seems like such a natural thing for me to do, but other people see me more as a creative, artistic, entrepreneurial person than the word paralegal conjures. What some people don't realize is that I am happiest when I am behind the scenes, attending to details, while the front man gets all the attention. Besides, I need to sit down for a while!

A Gift To My Future Self

At Fire & Water, there hung on the wall a manifesto, the final line of which read, "Art is the salvation of the soul." I have always been a creative, expressive person yet have been reluctant to call myself an artist. But, if art is "the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance," and is created by individuals of unusual sensitivity, perceptivity, and communicativeness, then I am, indeed, an artist.

Lately, I've been noticing the role of art in my life more intimately, seeing how the art that I create- the written works, the photographs, the drawings- are like missives I am sending out to the potential future me, to arm myself with the tools I will need to face the challenges life will, no doubt, offer up. I recently wrote a poem which I believed was an offering to a friend who has had a particularly tough year. The very next day, I needed those words of wisdom more than anyone else I know, for I suddenly found myself in emotional dire straights.

Not only does my own art work this way, but the art of others does as well. I remember being with Jesse at Boston Children's Hospital, feeling so weary, so shattered and disoriented, and hearing Star's songs, penned many years previous, with new ears, as though he had just written them. The words seemed to touch on every moment we were living with Jesse, as though visionary Star had sent them ahead of himself so that we would have a way of touching down in the experience and gleaning deeper meaning from it through the songs. The songs encouraged me to slow down and savor every moment with confidence, as if I was following a map that had been sent well in advance of me ever knowing I'd be taking a journey.

And, art is like this. It's the gift we send out across time, in all directions, believing that some day it will help someone, and sometimes (probably most often) that someone is the artist him- or herself. Art has delivered the immaterial part of my being from harm, from ruin, and has brought me joy, communion, and the courage to withstand, and the wisdom to celebrate, the greatest challenges of life. I find it poetic and beautiful that I pinned that manifesto to the wall, as a gift to the world, so many years ago, and it is only now that the full strength of its message has reached me- yet another gift to my future self.

To Help The Helpless

About a week ago, my friend and I were assaulted in a restaurant in Northampton, by a man neither of us knew. He saw us sitting close together, talking intimately, and sexualized our relationship, and then asserted that we had an obligation to satisfy the ideas this gave him. When we protested, he attacked us, verbally and physically. I cannot remember a more frightening encounter with a man. Though my most immediate fear (that he would beat my friend as I watched, powerless to stop him) was averted, the terror he inflicted upon us has hurt me, hurt us both, deeply. And while the overwhelming sense of crisis has quieted, the fright evoked by the experience has lodged in my body and lies so close to the surface that sudden movement, unexpected sound, a raised voice trigger in me an immediate panic response, unfamiliar and unwelcome. I am unusually vigilant in public, hyper-aware of people, quick to swerve off of the path of any man who nears me. I am poised for flight at every moment. I have not slept deeply since the night of the attack and I am tired. I lost a week of work, my body too badly bruised and misaligned to labor physically.

All of this has been terribly hard for me to believe, for me to bear, but the hardest reality of all is that no one attempted to help us. Not one person called the police when I shouted throughout the space, "Call 911! Someone call the police!!" over and over. Their eyes met mine and they walked away. Right here in our little Happy Valley, a very large, raging man attacked two women in a restaurant and no one helped.

There is something seriously wrong with that, people.

Now, I know I'm preaching to the choir here as I am amongst friends, but pass this story far and wide, please friends, to remind one and all that we are in this life together. Have we become so utterly desensitized to violence that we don't know what it means to do the right thing? I am your sister, your daughter, your girlfriend, your lover, your friend, your co-worker, your grandmother, your wife, your neighbor; I am every woman you love or ever will love, every woman you cherish, every woman with whom you have a meaningful connection. When someone hurts me, they hurt us all.

I am not suggesting that anyone ought to have put themselves in grave danger to stop this man. I am reminding that the police are a phone call away, so tell everyone you know: the next time you see two men arguing on the street, tempers rising, or a couple fighting in a car, or a parent slapping a child in the parking lot of the grocery store, make that call. Get help for the momentarily helpless. Don't avert your eyes, or walk on by thinking someone else will help, it's none of your business, not your problem.

Because, it is.