Confessions of a Depressive Optimist

Found, while cleaning. MySpace mention indicative of early 2000s (2006 at the latest).

I’m combing through boxes and came across a lot of old writing- some scribbled onto napkins and paper towels, some cursive on lined paper/backs of receipts, some typed and printed,

This gem stood out. Call me Cassandra.

“I wonder what will be born from a society that’s obsessed with commentary (ironic pause). It used to be some what of a goal to escape judgment or commentary, to breeze by without anybody noticing or commenting on our existence. We now thrive on comments. I can’t log onto MySpace (2021 addition: LOLOLOLOLOLOL) without finding at least one friend fishing for comment s (new pics! Please comment!) and I have to admit, my heart sings a little when I see someone has stopped by to comment on me.”

Okay, (2021 voice), this is too much. Fifteen years later comment culture has eaten us alive. We developed an entire vocabulary around thirsty behavior. Then 2020 moved our entire lives online and y’all don’t need my thoughts on that because you lived it too. But wow, early-2000-self, you saw it coming.

“But what will come from this self-obsessed falsely inflated sense of importance? We’ve seen cell phones separate and alienate people (2021 addition: and connect and amplify historically silenced and excluded voices), and with iPods and DVD players in the car, a family can go on a long trip without having to acknowledge each other’s presence at all.

“It frightens me, to say the least.

“We inhabit a world where you have a million friends but nobody to talk to. Where if nobody saw it, it didn’t happen. And if nobody snapped a picture of it, it doesn’t matter.

“And religion, which used to be a place for sanctuary and acceptance (and also torture, war, and the like) has turned into another petty political machine.”

So, yeah, I guess I’ve always been like this. I just used to express it privately and now we live in a broadcast culture. So… here you have it.

Be gentle with yourself and each other today. Humaning is hard. Xox

Earth pores

Sometimes, when I get overwhelmed, I like to picture the planet. It’s been 20 years since I took Earth Science so cut me some slack on my visualization.

But I picture the core, all molten and intense, and the mantle, and crust. And there we are, all life, just sitting on the skin of the earth, like the forest we see after tanking off a pore strip, all life, just on the outermost layer, covered with the protection of atmosphere, spinning and hurdling through an expanding universe.

And suddenly things are the right size again.

A Child who Notices

When you have a child who Notices, it takes longer to do everything because there are flowers to smell and shadows to chase and rainbows in puddles.

When you have a child who Notices, you learn to leave a little earlier and that arriving late isn’t an emergency.

Or you live in a constant state of frenzied chaos. (Or both…)

When you have a Child who Notices, your neighbors all learn her name.

The Child who Notices every dog, cat, and squirrel on the block.

The Child who Notices every puddle, drain, and piece of litter.

The Child who Notices your haircut and the dog’s new collar.

The Child who Notices the Things we’re Trained to Ignore.

Who asks if the people sleeping under the overpass are camping. Who demands to know what happened to their homes.

The Child who Notices points out the big empty houses downtown, “They could live there! With us!”

Some may call the child Distracted because she Notices Everything.

Too Many Things

Today I tried to do Too Many Things.

I remembered to Mail the Card but smeared tikka Masala on the envelope.

The other card could not be addressed, though written and sealed, will likely sit on my counter being buried by Important Mail until I clean again, am horrified to discover the Unsent Card, and put it on top of the Important Mail to remind me to Get the Address.

I saw the people and got the kid, but did not have a snack so came back to the house in time to Not Know Where the Other Thing is, before “finally” going to the park.

Where things were great until they weren’t. Like it is with kids. All was well until it wasn’t, and then it WASN’T so we are Home Now.

And I think if I’d tried to do less today, I would have done better.

One card mailed and the child delivered and retrieved from school? I should throw myself a parade.

Guts

We have 22 feet of small intestine. I don’t think we appreciate that enough. 22 FEET. I am more guts than anything else. I am basically guts tucked into a cavity with limbs, connected to a brain. We all are.

Clearly I’ve been reviewing my physiology notes.

But seriously, our small intestine is under appreciated. It’s what really runs the digestive show, not the stomach. The stomach is just the blender that dumps into the intestine, where all the nutrients are actually absorbed.

It’s so strange to think about how little we think about how our bodies work. How much we don’t really know or understand. About our own bodies?! It makes me kinda mad,

So from our guts, it goes into our blood, then to our liver and then out and about (brain, heart, etc).

For some reason (insert lots of sarcasm here), I always pictured mouth-stomach -ass-thighs.

When really it’s mouth (stomach)-guts-blood-heart-brain-body.

From one set of guts to yours, LC.

First Impressions in 2021: Parent Teacher Conference on Zoom

I’ve learned a lot about first impressions, in the year of our plague, 2021.

A) I’m usually Wrong in my assessment

B) Tone is hard to read in text

C) There’s no point in pre-stressing over might-be issues

Historically, I don’t have the best track record with first impressions– that is, what I first notice about other people, my first read on them. (I have no control over what other people’s impressions are of me– I’ve always been afraid to find out, so I pretend it’s not important).

But my first read on someone is almost always wrong.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. But… painfully accurate.

The people I am initially drawn to most are often the most toxic or dangerous (and therefore exciting and interesting). The people I initially overlook tend to be the ones I really appreciate upon knowing better. This is less true with men. My initial read on men is a bit more accurate. I still swing and miss a lot, but my batting average is higher.

This is all to say, I headed into our parent teacher conference CONVINCED that my kid’s teacher was going to be adversarial.

Parenting a kindergartner during the pandemic is really interesting. We also had the privilege of parenting preschoolers during the pandemic, so we’re a real interesting breed of incoming parents.

I have not been into her classroom or allowed past the gate of her campus. All my interactions with her teacher have been over email (See lesson B).

Long story not-so-long, I log onto Zoom bracing myself to be yelled at for having the kid who dances and gets in trouble for singing, and cuts her hair, and is sent to the office, and is basically all your favorite kid characters like Ramona Quimby and Calvin, and Pippi Longstocking, who you love to read about but is exhausting to raise?

And instead, I see a veteran teacher, smiling, talking about how the other kids don’t always know what mine is doing, but she does– she’s dancing the letters as they sing them, she’s exploring acoustics, she’s bouncing to the beat of her own drum. And I see an ally. And I’m so grateful I could cry (and for once am glad I’m not in the classroom but logged in from my kitchen table), so I say thank you and click off to get a glass of water and a snack.

And I think of how sick I’d made myself in anticipation of this meeting. And how silly it was of me to assume the worst out of a public educator. And how proud I am of my girl for being 100% herself. And how lucky I am that her teacher sees and values that too.

From one Laura to Another

This necklace belonged to my great-great aunt Laura (what the L really stands for).

She was the daughter of German immigrants- mother from Prussia, father from Bavaria, he came to the US at 18. But Henrietta came when she was only 2, and spoke with no accent due to her work (as a young girl) as a live-in nanny. Later she worked in a boarding house where she met this German dude Frank.

They had four girls (my great grandmother, Aunt Laura, and

This necklace belonged to my great-great aunt Laura (what the L really stands for).

She was the daughter of German immigrants- mother from Prussia, father from Bavaria, he came to the US at 18. But Henrietta came when she was only 2, and spoke with no accent due to her work (as a young girl) as a live-in nanny. Later she worked in a boarding house where the Frank roomed and ate.

They had four girls (my great grandmother, Aunt Laura, and two who sounded fun and never married), and one boy.

Laura, whose necklace I’m wearing, had one child, a daughter, who as “just a girl,” was seen as unworthy of an education. Well she went on to get her PhD, become a beloved professor, Distinguished Teacher, and Chair of Management at WisconsinState University

In her time, this was unthinkable.

As another Laura and mother of One Girl, I recognize that I cannot imagine the life that will be available to my child.

And I wish I’d remembered to snap a pic before I got in my pjs.

Eh. It doesn’t have to be perfect.

The Return of Color

Sometimes I forget some of the things in my life. Not in an amnesiac way, more like the dusty memory balls from Inside Out.

A dozen years ago while living in Brooklyn, I woke up to a BLAZING whiteness. At first I thought I’d left the curtains open and overslept, then I realized my eyes were still closed. And one of them HURT.

I’d scratched my cornea before so that was on my radar and I knew there was an optometrist near work so I headed out. But the whiteness was relentless and the pain was loud and the optometrist was closed.

I tried to push through but I could not. Haley, my manager, told me to go to the NYC Eye and Ear Hospital on 14th. I took the L. I don’t know how I managed the subway but I didn’t have a choice.

I was so scared, I couldn’t see, it hurt and I was alone. I was texting with a friend, Heather, and her mom called me and stayed on the phone with me so I wasn’t alone.

A course of antibiotic eye drops alternating with steroids every half hour stopped the ulcer on my cornea from expanding and helped it heal. And slowly my near sightedness returned and I could see. I was lucky that the scar is just outside my field of vision. My eyesight was spared.

I’d let that memory get dusty. The vulnerability and fear. The pain and the loneliness. The unknown and then the whiteness faded and in could see color again.

When I say you are a miracle, I mean it. Our bodies are miraculous. Our capacity to heal is extraordinary. I remember the white and the pain and the delight when color came back. And Shelley, praying with me on my flip phone.

A dozen years ago.

This is not a scale

This is a trap.
This is going in Time Out.

It can come out when I no longer imbue it with the power to determine my mood.

I know who I am.
I know how I feel.

Yet time after time I forfeit that power— I hand it over to a number that tells me only my gravitational mass.

I spoke with my brilliant and wonderful therapist who asked me both: a) what I needed to do for my freedom and b) what I was willing to do today.

I hope that one day I will truly be free from external validation. That I will not only know, but trust myself. That a stupid scale won’t have the power to ruin my day.

In the meantime, I can zap the scale of that power by not stepping onto it.

I wish I could say I chucked it in the bin but I wasn’t ready for that. It would’ve been performative of a recovery I haven’t yet unlocked.

So instead I put it in my husband’s trunk. Progress, not perfection.