therapy moments

I'm not proud of some of my parenting. I can be lazy; I'm not a tiger mother who pushes the children to excel (Iris would have a lot more awards and honors to put on her high school applications if I'd tiger mothered her. "I am my own tiger mother," she remarked primly last year). The worst part of being my child is that I struggle with depression, and I know there is a toll this takes on Iris and Lolz. There's also the embarrassment (poor Lolz had to cringe when I picked her up at school this month sporting crazy-beautiful green and blue extensions and braids I'd acquired for Burning Man). 

The Sober Husband and I often remark upon things which happen in our home which could make good discussion topics for future therapy. But while I am far from perfect and am creating plenty of Therapy Topics, I am also amaze me no end, given my new insights as a parent myself, at how so many of my own Therapy Topics come from my parents attacking me for things a normal parent would have been proud of:

Having a gym membership and working out: my parents thought that was the stupidest idea possible and harangued me endlessly about it. Evidently I should have just found chores to do around the house for exercise; anything else was immoral. My sister kept saying that she and my mother knew the only reason I did it was to try to pick up guys. Even though I said, "If that was the case, I'd have quit a long time ago. I haven't had a single date from it", I had to keep hearing that.

 Having a reasonable number of sequential relationships in college: my parents were high school sweethearts and married young. Evidently doing anything else means you're a damned skank. "You're like a butterfly! You need to stop it. You're going to get AIDS."

 Being proud of having won a National Merit Scholarship: my father said, "You think you're so special. Well, there's someone like this in every town. You'll find out when you go to college that you are just ordinary."

Settling down with a special boyfriend (my first husband): my father told me, "He's too tall." (He was 6'4"). My father told my ex, "You know, you can do better than her."

Going to a movie with a friend: "You left your sister at home all alone! You should be ashamed! Your poor sister!" My sister was older than me, a 20 year-old college student.

 My sister got into a traffic accident: "It was all your fault. I hope you learned that the passenger has a responsibility to the driver." This is worse because I'd gotten out of the hospital the day before with meningitis, was still in a lot of pain and on heavy narcotics. That leads nicely to ...

being so sick with meningitis that I needed to go to a hospital.  "Obviously you have no faith, or you'd be healed by now."

 My mother had a weird way of running me down to other people and being proud of it. I worked at a jewelry store as a teen, and she ostentatiously thanked my boss in front of me for helping me pick up accessories to wear to my graduation from high school: "Thanks for finding her what to get. You know she would have gotten something awful on her own (theatrical shudder). You know her taste." 

My first fiance told me once he said to her, "Wow, she made me the most amazing lasagna last night," and he was freaked out when she laughed mockingly and said, "You're going to get sick of that. It's the only thing she knows how to cook."

 As a parent myself, I can't understand this at all.  Most parents like it if their child excels at something and want their child to be fabulous. Mine seemed hell-bent on proving that I was inferior and squashing whatever confidence I'd managed to cobble together. Is it a wonder as an adult I finally limped into therapy?

Halloween!

It's almost October, which means we're almost into Halloween season. I love Halloween dearly. It's a big holiday in San Francisco, and my love for it seems almost tame here, compared to the people who go over the top creating haunted houses, laser cut jack-o'lanterns, and so on. But my enthusiasm doesn't get a big enough buy in. Today Lola and I were seduced by the upscale Halloween decorations at our neighborhood Pottery Barn. Lola loved the "antique mercury pumpkin objects" but overall was a bit of a damper on her mother's enthusiasms. "I think we only need one of those claw hands," she said as I gathered up two metal skeleton arms. "Arms come in pairs, Lola!" She said the same about the metal lanterns with cunning vampire bats worked into the front. "I think just one." Up at the cash register Lola looked disapprovingly at our spoils (aside from the "antique mercury pumpkin object" she'd chosen, which she caressed protectively). "Lolz, Halloween comes every year, so you can reuse the things for it and get more every year. And just think! By the time I die, you'll inherit such a collection of Halloween décor!" The gay man waiting next to us for more martini glasses to be brought to him broke out in a snorting laugh, which he then quelled as he gazed, embarrassed to be caught eavesdropping, into the middle distance.

what it was like to work with me at Burning Man

I made a homemade card for my friend J. who was severely injured in a fire only two weeks after getting married in a cathedral he built himself at Burning Man. It depicts the morning when poor J. was faced with a crew consisting only of your humble narrator and the Louise to her Thelma, the long-suffering N. Enjoy!

the cathedral

This is the cathedral I went out early to help build this year at Burning Man, with J., our slaving and slavedriving foreman (now recuperating in a burns unit from an unrelated accident), silhouetted by the sunset in the doorway on a scissor lift.  The photo was taken by a member of the Lost Penguin camp.

appreciating the banal in life

This week I woke up one morning and, as is my wont, checked my email and Facebook before getting ready to drive the children to school.  I learned that in the middle of the night my friends' warehouse had burned down.  They had jumped out of a second floor to safety, throwing their two dogs down (tragically their other two dogs were not reachable and died in the fire).  Both my friends were in the hospital.

These are friends who are in the peak of life, just married a couple of weeks ago at Burning Man (it is the groom who built the cathedral, with the paltry assistance my friend N. and I could offer).  Now one is facing a couple of months in a burn unit, having already had two surgeries and with the prospect of many more.  The other one has just been released but is in a wheelchair.  They are homeless and have lost most of their possessions.

The Sober Husband and I resolved to check our smoke detector's batteries.  We have only the one working, upstairs.  We renewed our perennial squabble over having one on the ground floor.  I offered to try one out in the living room.   Long ago I took the controversial move of disabling the one near our kitchen, as it went off every single time I cooked, mistaking steam for smoke.  I don't even burn things, but that damn smoke detector was convinced I was a menace, and I couldn't have it screaming at me when I was trying to make dinner.  The dented ceiling still bears witness to the days when I'd jab up at the fire detector with a broom, angrily trying to silence that damn thing.  The smoke detector in the bedroom I have nothing but fond feelings for, however, and I'd be willing to try forming a relationship with another well-behaved, better-positioned one.

This week has been a dull one for me.  Lola spent a day home ill from school.  I've had a couple of unpleasant social encounters lately that have left me holing up at home, associating only with the children most days.  But rather than feel disgruntled, I'm happy to have the luxury to be in my home with my pets and children.  I'm not in a burn ward facing rounds of skin grafts.  I'm not having to replace all my things.  I'm lucky.

I went to a bookstore and bought a replacement copy of the book my friend was reading when her home was burnt down and added it to a bag of yuppie food treats to give her a break from the hospital fare, and I dropped it off for her at SF General without seeing her (she was tired, and I didn't want to bother her with having to make conversation).  If my house ever burns down, that's what I'd want done for me personally:  bring me whatever book I was in the middle of and some decent food.  The surviving dogs have already been taken in by other friends.

"What are you going to do for J.?" asked Iris.  Unfortunately I can't send food to my other friend, as the burn ward has very strict rules allowing only cards to be sent to patients (burn victims are at great risk of infection, and who knows what germs could be lurking in a bag of upscale food).  "I'm going to draw him a homemade card," I said, "with him thinking, 'I need some real #(&@ carpenters' while N. and I are trying to build the cathedral."

Check your smoke detectors' batteries, everyone.

bruised but unbowed

I ran off to Burning Man this year and came limping home a few days earlier than planned to recover in the bosom of my loving family.   My psychiatrist was taken aback from this.  "Usually you don't want to come back from Burning Man, and you gain energy from it," he mused.

I nodded.  "Not this year."

So what happened?  First I went early in order to work on my theme camp's highly ambitious building, the Jerk Church Cathedral.  Skilled members of the camp had drawn up plans for a three story Gothic building; we had done the fundraising; the pieces had been cut and painted in the Bay Area already.  I was excited about this, thinking that it would be a lot of fun being with the artists and workers creating the event, learning valuable carpentry skills while watching the city arise around us and undoubtedly celebrating every night, long before the regular attendees arrived.  I negotiated a deal with the shrewd Iris where I was allowed to leave town before her birthday, eager to head out to the dust.

The reality was that when my friend N. and I arrived at night, earlier rains had caused the organizers to shut down the gates.  We spent over three hours sitting in our cars, and we had to sneakily pee by the side of the parked traffic (luckily not getting a stiff fee for it, as this year the BLM ticketed several Burning Man workers for peeing in the wild).  We pulled in after midnight and threw up our tents and crawled into them.

In the morning we put up our shade shelter and unpacked a bit, setting up what was supposed to be our home for the next ten days.  We were nowhere near done when we were informed that we were already late for our work shift.  J., the lead carpenter, was fuming.  No one had shown up to work.  No one.  N. and I were the sole crew, and we were, to put it mildly, "underskilled."  The sun blazed down, and we worked under the directions of an increasingly tightly wound foreman.  By the time we went to bed, we were exhausted.  "J, you're running a fat camp," said N. the next day.

Virtually everyone failed to show up for their volunteer shifts.  N. and I worked every day and every night.  Some more skilled people did come by.  One extremely talented carpenter got fired from his paid position building the Burning Man base and spent the morning working with us, as well as drinking my beer and telling N. and me his problems, but sadly for us he was rehired by Burning Man at lunchtime.

By the weekend more skilled people had arrived, so N. and I were demoted from the slightly more interesting tasks we'd been doing (we'd learned to wield an impact driver and to assemble the support structures, but we were back to carrying things, holding things, picking up things, fetching ice for J.'s cooler, and so on).  The sun still blazed down.  We were steadily acquiring a variety of small injuries:  blisters, a burn on my thumb shaped just like a wishbone, bruises.  The worst little injury occurred when we finally felt we could take a break from construction to finish setting up our own camp, and a fiberglass pole shattered in my thumb, leaving long, painful shards blocking the joint.  A friend volunteered to excavate this and cut most of it out with an very much not sterile knife.  I exhibited the gory shards to everyone, who were all suitably disgusted and impressed (I still have fiberglass shards visible in that thumb today).  A rash on the tops of my legs began to intensify and became scary.  I had several atrial fibrillation attacks.  My body was clearly unhappy.

On Sunday night the gates opened for regular attendees.  Exhausted by a day of construction under the hot sun, we Jerks were sleeping when we were awakened around three a.m. by a man shouting over an amplified sound system. "IT'S MY FIRST TIME DJ'ING AT BURNING MAN!"  Hours of terrible, distorted dubstep ensued.  Everyone looked homicidal the next morning as we went back to building.

Monday the deadline pressure was high:  we needed to finish the cathedral for a wedding the next day.  A bored girl said loudly to her friend as she passed, "They are always working on that thing!" in a Valley girl accent, and we took to repeating that to each other.  "Oh my God, they are always working on that thing!"  Lots of people were on hand, and we finally finished up in the middle of the night.

The cathedral was stunning when it was done.  The wedding was moving and delightful, two well-suited people getting married in a beautiful church one of them had built for the occasion.  Then the congratulatory drinking began, and the groom told me that he and one of his attendees were going to fight over at the infamous Thunderdome.  "I want to fight at Thunderdome," I said artlessly, and he cut me off, sneering.  "You couldn't handle it.  One blow to the head, and you'd be out.  Concussion!"

"I have a big head," I said challengingly.  I hate being told that there is something I can't do, and a six foot-tall lesbian who works a blue collar job jumped on the chance.  "I'll fight you," she said.  I agreed to this in the heat of the moment, and we all hopped on an art car which had been arranged to carry the wedding party over to the Thunderdome festively.

While we watched the groom and his attendant fight, the groom still in his wedding suit, I had second thoughts.  "This skirt is really expensive," I said.  "I should come back another day, when I'm dressed for it."  "Just lose the skirt," said my insistent campmate.

"I should have some kind of handicap," I said, looking at my larger, stronger companion.  "Let's just agree not to hit each other in the face.  That's our moneymaker: the face."  She agreed.

The groom's fight was short and weak.  Soon we were being hustled in and strapped in.  At Thunderdome, the two fighters are armed with pugil sticks (bats with a protective padding around one end) and launched at each other by bungee cords.  I normally do not like losing control over where my body is, but the adrenaline and endorphins took over.  They launched us at each other, and we came out fighting viciously, me in my underpants, crashing together and injuring all of our four collective knees.  They pulled us apart from each other, with us struggling to get more blows in, and then relaunched us at each other again, and we hit and hit at each other.  Finally they pulled us apart again, with us once more struggling to get more blows in.  "Relax, you won," the people on my side said as they disconnected me.  I gave a victory strut and flashed the crowd, and the very professional Thunderdome people pulled me off to the side.  "You're bleeding, you should see the medic," one said.  I hadn't noticed that I had a nosebleed.  "Give me your beer," I demanded to someone, and I rinsed the blood off my face with beer.  "No medic," I said posturingly.

"That was great," said one of my campmates wonderingly. "I would pay to see that kind of thing."

My opponent refused to accept that I had won.  To this day she is posting on Facebook arguing that she was unfairly "trumped by tits," refusing to take the point that I didn't flash anyone until AFTER my victory had been declared.  This is clearly seen on the video which my intrepid friend N. took, trampling many strangers to get a good angle, but still, my opponent won't admit that she lost.  The next morning she went to the medical tent to get a wrist brace and her knees bandaged, and I gave her some ibuprofen.

As for me, my left knee is still a bit wonky, and I still have some bruises from the many I sustained. over my thighs, shoulder and back.  For over a week after the fight, both of my knees were in constant agony.   It was horrendous trying to change position in bed, let alone ride a bike and run around Burning Man.

The final straw came when a rather innocuous mole-sort of growth on my neck, which I'd had for over a decade, began to bleed uncontrollably.  "You're bleeding," everyone who saw me informed me.  "I know," I said crossly.  It's too dry and hot at Burning Man for a bandaid to adhere (indeed I was having trouble with the multiple blisters on my feet, putting moleskin on several times a day over a base layer of stinging liquid bandaid).

"I can't take it," I said to N.  "Everyone's telling me I'm bleeding.  I gotta go home."  My knees, my bruises, my mangled hands, my atrial fibrillations, my rash, and this annoying blood dripping down my throat:  it was just all too much.  "I think I am getting too old for this."

The easy-going N. agreed, and on the spur of the moment we threw all of our dusty belongings into our cars and drove away.  The children and husband were thrilled to see me four days ahead of plan.  Carrying some of my luggage into the house, a bag swung and struck me on the left knee, drawing blood, and I let out a howl.  I showed them my knees.  "You should have seen the other person," I said.  If you're going to come crawling home a physical wreck, at least you should be able to brag of a mighty victory won in your underpants over a larger, stronger opponent.

working, working, working out of a funk

The month of July was a very hard month for me.  It felt like I fell into a funk out of the blue, but talking things over with my psychiatrist, I was able to identify a number of uncontrollable stresses which had all struck at the same time.  My funk wasn't the random act of craziness it might have appeared to be, say, to a sane bystanding husband.

It is pathetic to be a middle-aged person who lives in a nice house in a beautiful city with a husband, cats, parrots, and vivacious children who is depressed.  Very, very pathetic.  I have been working to pull myself out of that funk, with extreme exercise when I am healthy (I seem to pick up viruses like clockwork), antidepressants, and avoiding stressful situations when I can.

During the worst of the funk, while I was trying to keep myself out of the darker abysses, I saw one of those extra annoying posts on Facebook.  A friend wrote about an amazing vacation day filled with adventures, love, and decadent desserts, capping it up with, "I love my life!"  At the time I was devoting myself to keeping my head out of the oven, metaphorically speaking (my beloved Aga is a lifegiver, not a machine of death).  Usually I'm not prey to the Facebook my-life-sucks-compared-to-yours demon, but it hit me that day, and it hit hard.  I fretted about how I don't go on vacations, I don't travel, I deny myself fattening foods, I budget, I have no life comparatively.  Not wanting to slide down into the abyss, I gave myself a shake. I told myself that I needed to stay off Facebook if I was going to let it upset me.

Over time I pulled myself out of the worst of that funk, and my psychiatrist congratulated me on my self care and improvement.  Then I read another update from that same friend, sharing that the friend had been fired for seeking accommodation at work for severe depression .... before the "I love my life!" post.  That person was vacationing and adventuring to fill up free time from having been fired.  I was stunned.  How ironic that this person's cheering-the-self-up to cope with depression had triggered and worsened my own.  I wondered:  do the depressed owe one another a duty not to post life-gloating updates?  Or do I owe the world a duty not to post "I'm in a funk" updates, which I have been guilty of in dark moments?  In any event, Facebook is not for the fragile.  

scholasticism meets "King of the Hill"

The children and I were unwinding one late evening, watching a couple of "King of the Hill" episodes.  I was exhausted from a grueling workout earlier in the day; the children were tired as well.

Their father entered the room, ignoring our enrapt viewing, and asked Iris some questions about a potential new humanities teacher for her school whom she had met.  His voice booming, he asked, "Does anyone know what 'humanities' is?"  A couple of us, trying to quiet him down, offered definitions, but he would not be bought off.  His voice ever louder, he proclaimed, "Humanities is a rejection of scholasticism!"  He laughed at his own wit.  Everyone else gazed raptly at the cartoon Texans, intensely beaming out "be quiet and leave us with our lowbrow entertainment" thought rays.

the joys of being thinner

Recently the Sober Husband gave me an impromptu piggyback ride.  I haven't had a piggyback ride from anyone since I was in college, and it was charming, despite the intended squashing of my joy from a certain child, who said, "Did you just squeal?  Seriously?" to me.   Certainly this would never have happened when I was significantly larger, and it was delightful.

Clothes shopping has also been much more delightful.  I tried on a corset dress at a funky boutique on Haight Street, just pulled off the rack at a store which doesn't carry particularly large sizes, and heard those most delicious of words from the salesman:  "You could go down a size, if you want."  

Shoes are also more fun.  I've taken to wearing stilettos whenever there is the slightest excuse.  I previously was under the impression that the reason I couldn't bear to wear insanely high heels was due to my advancing age, but it turned out that once I dropped some weight, my aging feet were game, just like in my twenties.   

As well as judging the squealing, the children are not so enthused about their mother nimbly darting about in corset dresses and stiletto shoes.  Clearly it is not age appropriate.  "Since I'm not employed, I could dress like that every day," I confided to one, who cast me a side eye and sighed heavily.  

we will stay until the end

Recently I heard about an experimental theatre performance taking place on the beach.  A number of plays will be staged in one evening, with the participants meeting outdoors and being led around to the plays.  The performers are from New York, flying out for this event, and I'm not sure if they realize how chilly it is going to be at night on a beach in San Francisco during our "summer."  I signed us up to attend, though, as we all love the theatre.  Bonus:  Iris can get extra credit at her school for attending plays over the summer.

Reminding the Sober Husband about this outing, I said, "Of course, we can leave early if it sucks."  But! Lola has never forgotten the one blissful evening she saw an experimental theatre troupe and did not like this crazy talk of slipping out.  "We are staying until the end.  Even if it is terrible.  We will stay until everything is done.  We will see everything there is to see.  Even if it is terrible," decreed the little theatre devotee.    She went on in this rather repetitive vein for some time, with relish.  "If someone has a heart attack, too bad; we stay!"  I began to wonder if she hoped this performance would tank.

playing ping pong with Iris and Lola

We spent last week on our annual trip to Camp Mather, the rustic cabins in the Sierras owned by SF Rec and Parks.  No internet access, no cellphone coverage, no televisions, no cats -- just hours and hours of fresh air and sunlight with the family.

At one point the Sober Husband agreed to indulge me in a game of badminton, and the badminton-loathing children decided to play ping pong instead.  There are several ping pong tables, scattered throughout the trees near the mess hall, out of sight from the badminton court, which is in a sort of valley behind the general store.  We played badminton for a long time, getting a good workout, eventually joined by our offspring, who said nothing about their ping pong match.

The next day Lola reported to me what happened.  "So we were playing ping pong, and I got tired of picking up the balls.  So the next time one went out, I didn't pick it up.  And Iris said, 'Lucy, get the ball,' and I said I was tired of it.  So she looked at me like this [commanding gaze], and I looked at her like this [one eyebrow lifted].  And we waited.  Then Iris had to go to the bathroom, and she said she expected when she returned to see the ping pong ball had been picked up, and I looked around and found another one.  So when she got back, she said, 'I see you picked up the ball', and I showed her that ball was still on the ground.  Then we played until that ball went on the ground, and then neither of us would pick it up.  So we were staring at each other.  Then Phil (a family friend) walked by, and he gave us a ball.  So we played until THAT ball went on the ground.  And then we decided to go watch you play badminton."

We saw Phil and his family later, and I told Lola to tell the full story to them. Afterward, Phil said reflectively, "In my version of that, I was much more active.   I was like a hero."  

"Instead, you were a pawn in the Iris-Lola conflict," I said.  

the bartender has cut me off

Today I took some foster kittens in to get booster shots.

"I want to keep this one," I artlessly confided to the head of my rescue.

"Well, I'm sure you can't," she said dismissively.

the exciting prospect

I have a milestone birthday looming in a year and a half, and I mentioned it today as we were all walking to the car together.  "What should we do for it?"

"Have a big party," said Iris.

"No, go on a trip.  Go to Greece!" said the Sober Husband.

Lola interrupted.  "I have just one question for you.  What do you want done with your body?"

"Oh, Lola.  Do you have to ask that in such a cheery voice?"  So nice to know that Lola is cheered by thoughts of disposal of my corpse.

hair

Before taking little Lola to school, I said, "Brush your hair!"

"Hair doesn't need to be brushed," said Lola defiantly.  She explained that in olden times, people did not brush your hair.  "It is not necessary."  After brushing aside some objections from her mother, Lola continued.  Hair is happier unbrushed, she feels.

The next day the topic was revived.  Lola was undeterred.  "Hair will live on if it isn't brushed!  Well, actually, it's dead."  She intends to write an article about how unnecessary it is to brush hair for the next issue of the children's newspaper for which she toils.  (That will follow her current opus, on the state of cancer research, and prior articles intended to introduce hipsters to new music and convince her father to let her start farming chickens).

how he remembers

Yesterday I went for a walk with the Sober Husband, to get some exercise and also have a chance to talk to him without distractions.  Among other things, I reminded him, "You do know that Mother's Day is this weekend, right?"

"There was an ad for it on Reddit, so I do know," he said, proud of himself.

"See, online advertising does work!"

"No!  I didn't see the ad.  It was blocked.  A bunch of guys were posting about it, thanking Reddit for reminding them.  I saw that."

Thank God for Reddit!

the glamorous life

Over the next few months, thirteen year-old Iris will be flying to New York for a conference, backpacking in the Yosemite back country, and attending the prestigious Shakespeare festival in Ashland, Oregon.   Next year she'll be traveling to Japan for two weeks.

Meanwhile her mother's plans are to sit around the house surfing the internet, accompanied by a rotating selection of feral cats.

Lola

THIS IS LOLA

The play I recently went to, The Great Big Also, was very good.  Before it started, though, I had low expectations. The last play I went to at that place had been quite boring. The actors read their lines sitting in chairs and straight off the script. 

I read the program, and it seemed pretty good, so I still thought it would be read in chairs off scripts but with a good subject. But yes, I still thought it wouldn't be very good.

I went in, and they asked me if I would leave everything behind for a new life. I said no. I couldn't leave Zorro (my cat) behind. And I like my life.

They split us off into different rooms. I went into one at a corner. The thing is, the rooms were separated with paper. The walls were just paper, with some doors cut out. 

It was very good. I can't really explain it, that's the thing, but I really liked it. 

Then I left and it was over.

Before I left, at one point they came in groups of one or two, explaining different things they did. The first one that came to my group talked about NASA space blankets and how they can be used ("Prevent hypothermia! Help to start fires! They can even make a lean-to!"). The next people that came talked about some sort of "Remember When" charades. It's just charades, but to remember good stuff about the past. And the last group I got was two people talking about "If something is missing from the room, you can say it and everyone will get that feeling." One family member said that they wanted to say intelligence was missing from the room but they didn't. The first example was loyalty. Then, eventually, one of the two tried to say cooperation but in the middle started to cough. That repeated while the first one was flushed and trying to keep the thing going. 

That caused almost everyone to start to cough and do weird stuff.

My favorite part was at the beginning, when everyone was getting to their rooms, and people were just talking with whatever crazy people was in their rooms. It was nice.

The end.

Lola experiences perfection

At Iris's school, the end of the seventh grade is largely about the theatre.  The students study and stage Shakespeare, and they spend much of their time learning about drama.  Actors have been brought in to work with them (Iris reported, in tones of great disgust, that before the actors arrived, the students were cautioned to be kind and polite to them, as actors are very sensitive).

The students are encouraged to attend as many plays as possible, with academic credit given, and we've been attempting to rise to this occasion.  So far we've taken Iris to five plays, with another one coming up in a few days.

Over the weekend we went to an experimental theatre piece, "The Great Big Also", by a company called Mugwumpin.  I knew it would be interactive, but none of us were quite prepared for how it unfolded.  (If you are in San Francisco and enjoy experimental theatre and trust Lola's judgment, stop reading to avoid spoilers and just go buy your tickets).   The lobby had been subtly staged.  Most of the audience members didn't really interact with the things in the lobby, but we did.  It appeared to be the living quarters of the group called "the New Settlers", and I suspected some of the performance would take place out there.

The performers came through the lobby occasionally, doing different things, and they would take small groups of people back into the theatre occasionally.  Finally a cast member came to us and asked us if we were ready.  She took the four of us and an unknown man back, checking if we were ready to spend 80 minutes with her, and asked us if we would be willing to leave our civilization for a new one.  I said maybe, the stranger said yes, and the Sober Husband and children said firmly no.  She appeared to be taking us on a tour of the facilities, but the first thing she did was to get rid of me:  she turned to me and asked me to stay in a small cubicle, where I could take a stool from a pile.  "Don't worry, it won't always be like this," she said, leaving with my family and the stranger.  The Sober Husband asked me if I was okay being left, and I, who like to go with the flow in these circumstances, said yes.

I looked around.  The others in my little cubicle (we were in a corner of a structure made of Tyvek) had also been separated from their friends.  We talked.  Things began to happen.  I thought the actor would come back to get me, but she never did.  I regretted parting from my family.  We waited on our little stools, occasionally chatting, and sometimes cast members would pass through or walk past us or speak to the people in neighboring cubicles.  Eventually we realized that this was the show and that it had already begun.

For me the performance was largely overcast by my feeling of anxiety about Lola.  She was the only child at the show (teenaged Iris being the only other minor), and I worried that something would scare her.  I couldn't see her.  I peered into the other three cubicles bordering mine, but none of my family members could be seen.  I imagined they were all together, and this made me feel sorry for myself.  I'd been in a funk that day beforehand, and being isolated from my family made it worse.  I did talk to some fun young women in my zone, but we were joined by an unfriendly man who wouldn't make eye contact.  There was also a dating couple in our tiny zone who were not interacting with anyone else but constantly touching each other, and that made me feel more isolated.

The odd events, dances, speeches, and bits of performance that made up this odd and engaging piece about settlers (cultists?) awaiting an apocalypse went on, and I kept fretting for Lola (I was sure the preternaturally poised Iris was fine).  After nearly an hour, the Tyvek partitions were raised in the air, removing some of the barriers and creating larger pens with more people in them, but I still couldn't see any of the family.  Finally I sneaked out of my zone (I was the only person I saw doing this) and surreptitiously made my way around the barriers until I reached Lola.

Lola was fine.  She was sitting enrapt on a stool, watching everything she could see.  The Sober Husband was not far from her (I found out later that their rooms were merged when the partitions were raised partway).  I didn't find Iris until the show was nearly over, and she was skeptically gazing from the sidelines.

At the end, I confessed the experience had largely been ruined for me by worrying about Lola and by feeling bereft, that I was the one singled out to be cut off from the group.  I'd have felt less left out if I'd known everyone had been separated and parked in different zones and how happy Lola was. "It was like a party in my room!" said Lola merrily.  Evidently all the hipsters in her cubicle were charmed by the idea of a ten year-old attending this experimental theatre.  "They all wanted to know why I was there, and I said, 'My sister is doing a report on the theatre,'" said Lola.  "I told them all my name.  We talked and talked."  When anything happened, Lola intently absorbed it.

For the next couple of days, we spent a lot of time discussing the performance.  Parts of it were visible to each of us, and we didn't all see the same things.  Lola found everything enchanting about it.  I suggested she might find it inspirational for her own writing, and she strongly demurred.  "It was like perfection, and now I have it in my body," she said dreamily.  If she tried to base something upon it, it wouldn't measure up to the sublime experience she'd had.

I could relate.  When I was much younger, I ate at Fleur de Lys for the first time, experiencing perhaps the world's finest and most expensive vegetarian cooking.  I left feeling I had experienced food at a level I had never imagined, and I stopped cooking for some time.  "I can't make food like that," I said, "so I don't want to try."  My ex-husband complained bitterly that if he'd known what would happen, he'd have never taken me there, but I didn't care.  I had experienced perfection.  And now so has Lola.

too personal

Iris is in the process of applying for a scholarship, which would enable her to go to the private high school of her choice, most expenses paid.  It's a lot of work, this scholarship, and it's been stressful for her.  She's in the last stretch, writing the essays, and I wanted to be helpful.  I remembered that I had been invited to apply for a sort of genius camp as a teen, for the 99.9th percentile of young geniuses, and I didn't have anyone to help me with my essays.  In retrospect I am sure what I turned in was embarrassingly pathetic compared to what the other applicants must have written, applicants from academic families or from private schools where someone would have assisted them with the essays, and I got turned down flat.

Later in life I went on to get a degree in journalism summa cum laude and learn to write essays good enough to get me into graduate programs at Stanford and elsewhere, as well as how to write fabulous legal briefs and motions.  So I offered to Iris that I would be happy to work with her, to read her drafts, and to be a supportive and uncritical reader.

Her response?  "I think I'll get [Teacher] to read them. "  A pause.  "They're kind of personal."

life cycles continue

Today I'm mourning a fellow crazy cat lady and former Modern Primitive who died yesterday at far too young an age, and also some unexpected news arrived about a birth.

The Sober Husband's brother sent him an email announcing that he is now a father of a baby girl. The email gave the name, weight, and length of the baby.... with no mention whatsoever of the nameless mother.  There was an attachment.... of a photo of a bakery. (The brother currently lives in Siberia, where he sells banana bread and teaches English).

 The Sober Husband was actually excited and happy about this.  His brother is the last person who should become a father, I pointed out. He's unstable, and selfish. And what is up with no mention of the mother? Not to mention that this baby was never mentioned before she was born.

Taking the moral high ground, the Sober Husband stated that a baby is always a miracle and always a thing of wonder, and that he for one looked forward to providing as much assistance as he possibly could at a distance.  I bit my tongue.  We took a huge pay cut this year, so that the Sober Husband could take a job at a fledgling start-up which would be more personally rewarding but hugely, hugely less lucrative.  I am always worried about money and fretting over our budget these days.  Any money sent to Siberia comes straight out of my hide.

Birth, death, what does tomorrow hold?  All I know is I'm not coping well with how the cycle of life is unfolding these days.