A Torn Leaf

I have lived through interesting times more than once in my life, and I seem to be pulling out of the most recent iteration. Last spring I lost my job, the one I counted on for health insurance and retirement benefits, the one that covered my mortgage payment, the one that fed my kids. My employer was heading in new directions, and I didn't seem to be a match for any of them. The good news was that I'd always been a saver, and I was vested; in other words, I wasn't broke.

Image by Teece Aronin

What followed were the tough adjustments you might imagine one would experience after something like that, but some great things came, too. I had experience as a resume writer and career coach, so I knew my skills, knew how to articulate and market them and could craft my own resume. I had never lost my passion for that work, so it wasn't long before I was networking in that direction and returning to my roots of writing resumes and coaching people on their next steps. 

Another benefit of that work experience was that I knew what to expect emotionally, and the words I once used to comfort, encourage and empower unemployed people came wafting back to save me. I was relieved to find the words helped, and that I hadn't been feeding people a lot of patronizing poo back in those days. 

I became a list-maker. I made lists of things that would keep me sane. One was a list of things to remember when I wasn't feeling strong; the other was a list of things to look forward to once the kids and I were back on our feet.

Currently, the first list looks like this:

• You actually have a normal life and a bright future.
• You know what to do and are wise; any mistakes you make are human and understandable.
• You're not unemployed; you're self-employed, looking for a great new opportunity, and building a new business.
• When you feel down you should clean your room, buy blankets, buy towels, buy good winter clothes, buy boots, buy silverware, clean the kitchen, read something informative, read sappy novels, remove one obstacle, set a reward, go for a walk, go for a drive, review your lists for when you're on your feet.

My lists for when the finances are better are of things that probably wouldn't cheer up anybody but me, like replacing the flower boxes on the house and painting the front door and the shutters. 

As to my first list, I don't advocate spending as a means of self-medicating. It just happened that we needed more blankets, we needed more silverware and we needed more towels. I wanted to know that although a storm was coming, we had everything we needed to stay warm and dry and feel safe. I wanted to know that we could even go out and play in that storm. I shopped for most of those things at thrift stores. My motto: You scratch my back, Goodwill, and I'll scratch yours.

One thing about storms, though, is that they take little pieces of you with them; a few hairs from your head, a few skin cells off your face, a few beliefs you once held sacred. I choose to look at it this way, that it's less of me to take care of, to fuss over, or to think about. It's less ego to get in the way. I tell myself that each storm leaves me a little more streamlined. And I remind myself that whatever has weathered a storm has a beauty the untouched and pristine among us just can't have.

Like a torn leaf or a chipped demitasse. 

Soul Flier

How could you have grown up so fast, when the day you were born, you, grown up, seemed a million years away? 

Syd and me when she was about 13.
Photo credit: Jon Aronin

How did you get so capable, because when you were two, you needed me for everything? 

How could you have needed me for everything, then barged ahead anyway, my pigheaded angel-face, convinced that you needed me for nothing? 

And how did you get so strong, my fairy warrior princess, when there was a time that you worried about everything?

Remember that day on the bed? You said you were so afraid to die. I tried to think what could have made you that anxious. Then, you spoke of stresses from school, your parents' divorce, and unreliable friends. You cried about missing your grandma, leaving your childhood, losing your home, and growing old. 

No wonder you were frightened; you'd worried yourself full circle to confront your own mortality. And we went around and around and around, I trying to comfort you and you still not comforted.

Then I, a discontented agnostic, struggling to believe, said the last thing I could think of that might help, that after I died, I would watch over you, and that when you died, I would watch then, too, and fly down from Heaven just in time to catch your soul, that I would hold it tight against me and pilot it to Heaven. 

So far, my help hadn't helped, so I braced for your scoff. 

But you said, "You promise?"

And I said, "I promise."

Giving Christmas the Old Heave-Ho-Ho-Ho

Those of us who celebrate Christmas are coming down to the final turn with just eight days left until the big day. Or the big show. Or the “really big shoe” as Ed Sullivan used to say. More appropos might be “the really big stocking.” At this point, however, many of us are ready to give Christmas “the really big boot.”

Until December 26, a lot of us will be losing it a little, and some of us have been losing it for quite a while already. About a week ago I looked down at my hands and realized that when I removed my nail polish the night before, I had overlooked my right thumb. Its nail coated in chipped “Santa Suit Red,” the thumb gazed balefully at me, pleading, “Don’t leave me this way.”

I wondered: Do other women fail to take the polish off some of their nails? The next morning, a coworker flashed the backs of her hands at me. Seven nails had the polish removed and three did not. Most definitely an observer of Christmas, I thought.

On Christmas Eve, years ago, one of my gal pals was coping with her first Christmas as the single mother of a toddler. Blowing her bangs out of her eyes, nose dusted with flour, she was baking cookies, wrapping gifts, screwing toy ovens together and bathing her child - all simultaneously thanks to the six temporary arms single mothers grow during the holidays. When a friend phoned to invite her to a Christmas Eve church service, my friend exclaimed, “I just don’t have time for Jesus tonight!” If Mary had said that on the first Christmas Eve, Christmas, as we know it, would have even more baked goods in it.

Maybe it’s because my children are older now, but I am much calmer these days at Christmastime. Gone is the pressure from telling a four-year-old that I was sorry, but the present he wanted was too expensive, only to have him say, “Don’t worry, Mama - Santa can get it for me.” Long past is the night I rocked my daughter in my arms, both of us in tears because I failed to understand that she didn't "really want the truth about Santa."

Today, my children are nearly grown, so if they suggest I make cheesecake this year, they won't be too disappointed when I lovingly point them to the kitchen, and if I do happen to be a little frazzled, text them the link to a fudge recipe.  

Eyes on the Skies

I am trying so hard to reduce my unhealthy stressors and be a better practitioner of mindfulness. In the course of the last five years, my marriage fell apart, I had to relocate with my kids in order to get re-established, I've moved three times, and my mother died. The last move and my mother's death happened within the past six months.  

"I look to the skies not to see the stars, but to watch for the

shoe about to drop." Moonlight Skinny-dip. Available on 

products in the phylliswalter store's Colorful Mod collection: 

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I've been stuck on vibrate for years and am wondering how to dislodge the battery in my vibrator. 

My fight-or-flight instinct is hyper-vigilant. I look to the skies not to see the stars but to watch for the shoe about to drop. I've been dealing with chronic stress for a while, and finally it's easing up. But there's still that wary unease that any minute now a brick is going to plunge through the ceiling. That sense of artificial doom has got to stop. It's probably not accurate and it's definitely not healthy.  

Hence: my quest for mindfulness. 

Being mindful means slowing down and not careening off in every direction as if a Roman candle were strapped to your backside. It means doing one thing at a time and not multi-tasking, because the science is showing us that multi-tasking probably makes us less productive. It means not just eating the apple but looking at the apple, smelling the apple and chewing the apple - thoughtfully instead of swallowing it whole as if you were a horse. It means being kind to yourself, being kind to others and spending as much of your life as possible on your own little patch of peace. 

It means breathing with purpose and presence. It means meditating knowing you haven't failed just because your mind wanders. 

I'm not there yet, but I'm getting there. My freak-outs over lost keys, lost files, lost credit cards, and cell phones dropped in the toilet are far fewer now because I'm no longer locked in a constant struggle to outrun myself because now it's just semi-constant. 

Last week I attended a seminar on mindfulness presented by a truly gifted instructor. At one point she passed out individual serving size boxes of raisins to each of us participants and told us to take one raisin out of the box. Then she told us to examine our raisins carefully, to notice the different surfaces and textures that make up one little raisin. Then we held our raisins to our noses and inhaled. After inhaling, we held our raisins to our ears and rolled them back and forth between finger and thumb and were surprised to hear our raisins making sounds. Next, we popped our raisins into our mouths and felt them with our tongues, rolled them around our mouths and sucked out a bit of the flavor. 

At last, we were told we could eat our raisins. 

We bit down on our raisins, chewed them thoroughly and swallowed. My neighbor, L was at the same seminar sitting right next to me. She leaned in and whispered:

"So, what were you thinking when you finally got to eat the raisin?" 

"That I felt guilty eating something I'd gotten to know so well," I whispered back. 

And honestly, I wasn't entirely joking. There was a tiny part of me that expected the raisin to scream, "NOOOooooo!" as it slid down my throat. I have always had a cattywampas view of things, and I know that. In the case of the raisin, it meant I haven't yet nailed mindfulness. 

But Om wasn't built in a day. One sign that I'm beginning to master and internalize mindfulness is that I'm now seeing how it can apply to other people's struggles. 

My son, Jon is working hard to prioritize his homework and chores. We were talking about it last night.

"Have you ever heard of something called mindfulness?" I asked him.

"Yes," he said.

"Wow, I'm impressed, Jon. Where did you learn about that?"

He looked at me, a little perplexed. "From you," he said. 

"I talked to you about mindfulness?" I asked.

"Sure. Don't you remember?"

"No." 

Anyway, I'm working to keep my eyes on the skies, not because I'm watching out for shoes, but because I'm falling in love with stars.

Four Chairs and a Chat

I've been experiencing too much of the bad stress lately. You know how there's good and bad stress? Good stress is things like studying for the bar exam and wondering how you'll spend the six-figure income you'd be earning if you pass. Bad stress is the kind you get when your dog tries to retrieve her frisbee from your neighbors' roof using a ladder she stole from their garage and then falls through the roof.  

My backyard, with one chair for me, one for my relaxed self,
one for my stressed self - and one for my dog.
Image: Teece Aronin.

And yes, I know I said dog and not something more believable like kid, but if you know my dog, you know it's more believable that she'd do something like that before my kids would. 

Yesterday I took someone's advice, got up early and sat in the backyard with my morning coffee. I decided that I would strive for an enhanced sense of mindfulness. 

I have four retro-style metal chairs in the backyard and a little metal table. I had wanted chairs like those for years because they remind me of my childhood, but I've barely sat in them twice. Why? Because I've been too busy with the things that stress me out. 

So yesterday I made a cup of coffee, snatched a peach from the fruit bowl and walked with my dog into the back yard. I put the coffee and the peach on the table and sat, eyeing them warily as if they might explode. 

I had planned to leave my phone in the house, but couldn't bring myself to do it. I might get an idea for a column and want to make some notes, I told myself. That was partly true, but the other part was that I couldn't imagine myself just sitting in my chair with nothing to focus on but coffee and a peach - but I had underestimated their power. 

I inhaled the coffee. The aroma and the steam made their way to my nose and immediately helped me unwind. Then I took a sip of the coffee. It was delicious. And when I bit into the peach all I could think of was the Shel Silverstein poem about the farmer who grew a gold and bejeweled garden, but dreamed of "one real peach."

Sitting back in the chair, I wasn't fully relaxed, but felt better than expected. I'd say I was about half relaxed and half stressed-out. I started hearing things. 

"What are those sounds?" my stressed self asked. 

"Those are birds," explained my relaxed self.

"But the sounds they make . . . " said stressed self, a little afraid.

"That's called birdsong," explained relaxed self. "It's okay; it's just the birds calling to each other. It can't hurt you."

"And what is that feeling on my face?" asked stressed self.

"That's the breeze," replied relaxed self. "You loved it as a kid. Remember?" 

"Oh, yes, vaguely," murmured stressed self. 

Then stressed self's eyes darted toward the family dog leaping and playing near the garden.  

"Oh, no - that thing," cried stressed self, pointing. "Look how close it is to the tomatoes!"

"She's a good 20 feet from the tomatoes," cooed relaxed self. "And she's enjoying herself. Here, let's call her over."

The dog came running at the sound of her name.

"Aw, Hope," sighed relaxed self, "I love you so much. Go on," relaxed self said to stressed self, "pet her. See? Just like I am."

So, stressed self petted the dog, and felt calmer. 

By the time I came back in the house, I was a new woman, and an optimistic, energetic tone was set for the rest of the day. I spent good, solid time with my kids, time during which I wasn't distracted by the things that stress me, and later in the day I made a pizza with peppers and herbs I picked from pots on my own front porch. I even baked chocolate chip cookies. They were store-bought and came from a freezer case, but they tasted just as good and looked just as homey on the plate. Just as important, they pleased the kids as much as any mess I might have mixed up in a bowl.

I tried the backyard thing again today and loved it all over again. 

I wonder what tomorrow will bring, the first time I try it on a workday.  And I wonder how I'll compensate once winter comes. 

Maybe I can bring the table and chairs inside and set them next to a picture of themselves from this summer. 

Or maybe not. 

You Have Successfully Unsubscribed

At times I can be an anxious little kiddo. And often it's life's little stressors that make me vibrate the hardest. Take my email, for instance. No, really, take my email. Please. 

Par Avion; available in the

phylliswalter Flourish Collection. 

redbubble.com/people/phylliswalter

Like millions of others I have a Gmail account. You might use Gmail or Yahoo or Zoho or Lycos or any of the other email service providers whose names sound like Western apparel manufacturers or movie villains; that part isn't important. What's important is that email as a sales tool has run amok and is drowning boatloads of innocent consumers in waves of happy-crappy overload.  

I was getting dozens of emails a day and deleting them was like digging in the sand with a toothpick: the few I managed to get rid of in any one sitting were replaced by dozens more by the end of the day. Suddenly I realized how much stress it was causing. There was something so out-of-control about it. Remember the old adage: Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door? It was like that, but all catty-wompas. They had the mousetraps and I was a mouse - a mouse with a door - and a wallet.  

Of course we all know I was the core of my own problem. I was the one who'd said yes to enough cashiers, or foolishly assumed I could shop online without lingering consequences and messy entanglements. 

I was the one who didn't end the relationship after the first layaway.  

Then, what had been so out-of-control was perfectly under control when it occurred to me to simply snake my way through all the happy-crappy content, all the fine print and all the links and then click on the most powerful word in the entire email: Unsubscribe. 

Even now, looking at that word on my computer monitor gives me chills and I swear I hear a chorus of angels in the distance. 

Why this simple fix didn't occur to me long ago, I have no clue, but once it did, the shackles of my oppressors began snapping like twigs, and I was free in no time.  

Well, not quite.

While I was told I had successfully unsubscribed, in some cases I was also told it could take up to 10 days before that particular company's emails would stop. And some people tell me the emails might just come back - with a vengeance. 

And often I was asked if I had made a mistake. Did I really want to part company with the vehicles to so much material happiness or health and wellness wisdom or improved mental acuity? Yes, I'd say. Yes, I really did. 

Last spring I did a lot of online shopping because I'd just moved from an apartment into a house and I needed a lot of things. And while the things I bought for the house have brought me a lot of pleasure, they haven't changed my life. And reading about sales on dozens of items just like them is no life-changer either. I still have to pay for my kids' braces, I still have to get my tires rotated and I still have a gassy dog who scares herself when she poofs. And I would still have those things to deal with even if I bought more stuff. 

Unsubscribing to all that email felt so good. Whether or not my unsubscribing will stick, we'll have to see. 

But for now, it's been like shooting fish in a barrel - very crafty and very aggressive fish in a barrel.   

Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer - on Purpose!

Holiday Season 2015 is upon us. Yes, Thanksgiving is finished cramming its accidentally-left-in-the-bird-giblets down our throats, the menorahs are back on their shelves and St. Lucia has blown out the candles on her head-wreath. But we’re still looking at Christmas, Kwanzaa and New Year’s – and that’s assuming I haven’t forgotten any. Oh, and Boxing Day, but that's Britain and Canada, so it doesn't really count.

Me, right after getting drummed out of the
elf corps for insisting on wearing black.

Have I forgotten any? Maybe, and this time last year, I’d have been too frazzled to know the difference. This year I’m too tranquil to give a fig.

But whether I stay calm or not, I’ve decided the holidays have been responsible for way too much upset in my life and this year I’m done with that nonsense. This year, I don’t care if Santa falls off the roof and dies; it’s not going to get to me. Even if he lives and sues, I’m staying zen about it all.   

We let the holidays stomp all over us with their big, black, rubber snow boots, and come to think of it, it’s not the holidays' fault; it’s ours. By ours I mean the mothers, the fathers, the grandparents, the retailers, all of us. We either make the holidays hell (retailers and Black Friday shoppers) or we allow our holidays to become hell (normal people and Black Friday shoppers).

Blame it on my baby boomer mentality if you will, but I don't remember Christmas pressure starting so early when I was a kid - I don't think it did, anyway. Or maybe my parents just didn't buy into it so I wasn't aware of it. These days we allow shopping chains to start ho’ing us around in their greedy grips before our jack-o-lanterns are moldy. We start worrying that our homes don’t look like the hotel in White Christmas. If we’re Christian we start resenting our Jewish friends for getting off so easy and if we’re Jewish, we think it would be cool to get more presents for once.

This doesn’t even factor in for Kwanzaa or St. Lucia’s Day. In fact, the real holiday miracle is that the faithful haven't burned the world down at least once by now.  

Boxing Day is the only winter holiday I can think of that doesn’t involve a lot of candle-burning, but still, every year, people beat each other senseless thinking they’re supposed to be boxing like boxers. Or they smack each other stupid with empty, leftover gift boxes. It’s TRUE. (No it's not.) But who really understands British and Canadian holidays besides the British and the Canadians?

Here’s the reality for far too many of us this time of year: Helpless and hopeless, we throw ourselves under the next one-horse open sleigh that comes along. And most people don’t know this, but the song, Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer is based on a true incident which happened in 1947 when a stressed-out grandmother named Iva Haddit threw herself in front of a rogue reindeer at a petting zoo in Minot, North Dakota; all this in an effort to land herself in the hospital until the holidays blew over. That’s true too! (No it's not.)

This year I’m getting on Etsy, buying myself a handmade kerchief and settling my brains for a long winter’s nap. I’ll go down before Christmas and get up in time for Groundhog Day. And if Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow, I’m goin’ back down.

You can call me in time for the summer solstice.    

Emile, Are You There? It's Me, Nellie!

When my marriage ended and the dust finally settled, my kids told me I should try online dating. Inwardly I groaned, but I have to admit, I was curious. It had been nearly 20 years since I'd last dated; my mind, face, body, my very psyche for that matter were different now - in some ways better and in some ways not. What kind of men would I attract? Would I attract any? Who might be out there who would make sense as the other half of a couple with me?

When I met my ex-husband, my weight was a healthy 140 pounds or so and I was in my late thirties. But during my second pregnancy at age 43, I developed gestational diabetes, a condition which resolved itself after the birth of the baby, but which had left my metabolism so wildly out of control, that my weight ballooned to over 250 pounds. Despite consulting an endocrinologist, and doing everything she told me to do, including exercise, the most weight I ever lost at any given time was six pounds - honest: six pounds. And every time I lost those six pounds, they would fly back and wrap themselves around me faster than you can say, "big mama."

I'm sure the life stressors we all cope with were part of the problem, too, and that I sought too much solace at the bottom of a bag of chips, but overall, I tried very hard to eat in a way which should have landed me at a healthy weight but just couldn't seem to succeed.

Eventually, I opted for bariatric surgery and my weight dropped to something somewhere in the chunky range. Then divorce stressors replaced family stressors and I lost about thirty pounds without even meaning to. So when my kids started nudging me towards online dating, I was thinner than I could ever remember being as an adult; about a size eight. But that weight fluctuation had led to a confused self-image, so I often stared in hard-blinking amazement at pictures of the handsome men approaching me on the dating sites I'd chosen. Why were they attracted to me, I wondered. I won't mention the sites by name, but they rhyme with Scratch.com and No Way, Stupid.

But it's funny (and not in the hah-hah way) that I could learn so much about the mysteries of physical attraction at such a late stage of life; sometimes more than I wanted to. Some men who reached out to me online seemed to think the heavens had opened up to deposit me in front of them. Then again, one man I dated struggled with his lack of physical attraction to me while feeling very connected to me "emotionally and intellectually."

Hearing this hurt, so when he finally managed to articulate this concern, I grappled for my dignity, sat up straight in my pen and demurely folded my hooves atop my udder. And it was a herculean effort to limit my weeping to only one set of my six eyes.

Then, one night he and I had dinner with his sister who was chatting me up as we waited for a table. "So you met my brother on Scratch.com?"

"That's right," I smiled.

"I never had any luck on Scratch," she mused.

"Neither did I," I said. 

And then we all laughed and laughed and laughed. I was joking - mostly, but zinging him a little felt good. I have to say, though, that knowing him was very much worth the jab to my ego and he proved himself a wonderful friend. And one of my most honest, damn him.

But really . . . Who can explain it? Who can tell you why? Fools give you reasons; wise men never try. Oh, wait, that was Emile De Becque serenading Nellie Forbush in South Pacific. Some Enchanted Evening was the song. And that was physical attraction the way it should be.

Now, if I could just find my Emile De Becque, I might even be willing to change my name to Nellie Forbush. Then again, maybe just Nellie.