Brand New Sour Milk

Festive Egg Squares and Dirty Laundry

2012-01-21T11:47:00.007-06:00

"I don't tend to do things like wash my dad's back. My brother and I don't do that. It's a boundary we try to keep."

The nurse looked back at me with neutral, blinking eyes.

"Oh. I guess I never thought about that."

I am at my parent's house, watching over the nurses and watching over my dad. I've slept here for the past four nights and have found a new appreciation for my mom's role, which I call, "CEO of The Nurses."

I selfishly feel ill at ease because I cannot get my dad to smile today. He wants me to be with him, yet I am far from delighting him. I was all bundled up – Winter coat, scarf, hat, gloves, boots – ready to leave and go meet my boyfriend at the gym. But upon saying goodbye to my dad, I could tell something was wrong.

"Dad. Are you OK?"
(Shakes his head "No.")

"Is it something physical?"
(Shakes his head "No.")

"Is it something mental?"
(Shakes his head "Yes.")

"Are you sad?"
(Shakes his head "Yes.")

"Is it because I am leaving?"
(Shakes his head "Yes.")

"Do you want me to stay and we read more out of the Duluth book?"
(Shakes his head "Yes.")

I've been reading stories to my Dad out of a book about Duluth. I discovered that the nurses are reading the stories to him, too. There is something comforting about the stories. It's like a non-threatening balm in knowing that we are not going to encounter any death, sex, violence, or depression. I hate it when I am going along, reading a book to my dad, and I get to some passage that I just cannot bear to read aloud to him. It might be something about a person feeling trapped and unable to run (try being completely paralyzed), or it might also be something that I never would have wanted to read aloud to my dad, like basically anything with a trace of sexual innuendo.

While my mom has been away, it has been a strange sensation to think about "needing to get home" in the same sense as one might need to get home for their small children or family pets. Each day this week, I have wondered about when my dad will fall asleep and when he will wake and I've tried to coincide opportunities to read to him.

When I cannot bring any delight to my dad, it only adds to my feelings of failing at playing my proper role in this unit of related human beings. I feel as though I am pushing further and further to the outskirts of familiarity with my family. I do not know if that is my own doing or if it is the fallout of exceptionally unique circumstances. Whatever it is that is pushing me, I feel as though one or two more shoves to the edge could completely throw me outside the invisible lines of the family circle and I can see myself tumbling into an emotional abyss of estrangement and pathos. Which brings us to Christmas.

The Christmas season for me was like a business trip to Atlanta. I just wanted to get through it.

There were so many family crises going on at the same time that it was almost comical. The one moment in time that sticks out in my mind as coming the closest to celebrating the birth of the Savior was during the late morning on Christmas day.

I arrived at my mom's house, and everything just looked spectacular. All of the Christmas ornaments twinkled from the brittle Winter sun, and my mom had a fresh coat of lipstick on with a warm motherly smile. Everything felt calm and familiar in a 1990s kind of way.

It was just the two of us. My dad was sleeping and the nurse on duty was a sweet, quiet woman from Ethiopia. Despite the chaos of life, my mom held fast to a Christmas tradition that goes back years and years. She got up early (or stayed up really late) and she diced and sliced onions, celery, tomatoes, mushrooms, cheese, pork... She cracked eggs and baked and baked until out came the annual Festive Egg Squares.

This is a dish that is good but not necessarily mind-blowing amazing. Still, we all really like it, especially with a dollop of sour cream on top. We always get the name wrong, accidentally calling it things like "Egg Bake" or "Egg Surprise" to which my mom jokingly pleads, "It's Festive Egg Squares!"

Like a military commander determined to win the war despite losing consecutive battles, my mom made those damn eggs like it was her calling. And I loved her fiercely for it. I felt the invisible swirling cloud of family chaos lift as my mom and I sat in the sun-drenched dining room, eating Festive Egg Squares on Christmas Day.

But happiness and calm don't stay around too long in this house, and it went away pretty much as quickly as it came. I was visiting my parent's house a week or two later, and I ended up in an unfortunate battle over something pretty stupid. I got critiqued by an outside family member for bringing my laundry over to my parent's house. This is something I have done forever. Sometimes I do the laundry myself, but, mostly, my mom does it. LET IT BE KNOWN, here in this naked, public blog, that I, a 31-year-old grown woman, get my laundry done by my mother.

Anyway, it was a stupid fight with, unfortunately disproportionate fallout. I feel a familiar urge to run away and hide in the cul-de-sac. I've been indulging visions of moving to Shanghai or simply driving to Iowa. But I have a history of running away, and I know that it only makes things worse.

I think that everyone in my family in general is just super strained and worn out.

When religious people say that God only dishes out what each person can handle, well... God must have considered my family to be Titans. No, Olympians.

It's funny. I originally started this blog so I could complain about trite yet annoying things in life, such as how I inadvertently purchased spoiled milk from the grocery store (yes, brand new sour milk actually happened). Then I naturally spilled into the realm of lonely business traveler, then lonely single girl. But it was not until cancer crept in to my family circle when all bets were off and I allowed myself to write about anything and everything, including hospitals, old people, smoking, anger and death.

Now, I am at a loss. I have been conflicted about this blog as well as conflicted about my entire family for quite some time because I no longer fit the Brand New Sour Milk mold.

I no longer fit the Brand New Sour Milk mold because, well, I am... happy.

Yeah, I'm happy, dammit.

I have an amazing companion and we do tons of fun things. My mind is alive and open to the world. I devour books (which still takes me a few weeks, but I feel like I am devouring them), I listen to music, I delight in home cooked food. I go to art galleries and unusual events put on by my creative friends. I got my hair highlighted (I had fallen months behind).

It's like, I am doing cool shit and I do not have time to sit down with this blog and wax poetic about all the sad things we go through in life.

I've heard before that when your inner energy does not match the energy of the people surrounding you, you tend to find yourself in different locations. I see how this is true. I do not feel comfortable carrying my happiness on my sleeve because this is not a time when others can feel very happy for my happiness. And it sounds spoiled and self-centered (doesn't it?) to want others to acknowledge my newfound happiness.

I remember a time when I used to sleep until 3:00 PM in the afternoon. Everyday. I would go sit on my parent's deck, still wearing my pajamas, and I would smoke, and smoke, and smoke cigarettes. I would look at this one particular tree in their backyard, and I distinctly remember watching it change through the seasons – green, gold & orange, bare to sticks, covered in snow, then soggy wet with tiny green buds. My thought that entire time was, "I wonder if I will still be sitting out here on my parents deck smoking cigarettes the next time that tree changes." I saw that tree change over two dozen times. It just kept changing, but I just stayed the same.

Stuck.

But I am no longer stuck.
I am flourishing.
But I am flourishing in a harsh environment.

I am like an exotic sea plant flowering peacefully next to a hot, volcanic geyser piercing the ocean floor.

Sure, it is nice to be happy. But I want to be surrounded by other happy people too. On January 9th, 2012, I think I may have been given a potential chance.

A baby was born into my family, Samuel Wesley Andersen.

Sam is my nephew.

See, this is why my mom is gone. She is off visiting Baby Sam in the Pacific Northwest. My mom is getting her feet wet as Grandma Mary. Each time I talk to my mom, her voice is dazed in starry-like wonder. Sam is so good, Sam is so cute, Sam is so small, just like a football.

I need to get myself out of the Midwest and I need to go meet this Sam. Despite photos that, to me, look just like an infant version of my brother, Sam is not real to me yet. But he will be. I can only imagine the tears that will flow and the smiles that will widen the first time I get to hold Baby Sam.

Hopefully, soon with time, Sam can teach us all how to be happy, joyous, and festive again.

Back to Milk

2011-10-26T01:06:00.002-05:00

I hadn't planned on drinking the second mini carton of milk, but it was just sitting there on the table and I needed something in my hand.

It was late, I was upset, and the milk reminded me of the comfort from a childhood school lunch line. The carton of milk was sitting next to an identical empty carton of milk and a half-eaten slice of chocolate cake. The two milks and piece of cake sat on a cheap wooden table in the middle of my "junior suite" in a business hotel less than a mile from the airport.

Everything about the junior suite hotel room was effortlessly convenient and utterly impersonal... Everything except for those little, seemingly vulnerable, out-dated-looking cartons of milk.

I pulled open the waxy cardboard nozzle, and the luke-warmish creamy taste mixed with the slightly fuzzy texture of the spout pushed me over into it. I started to cry.

Familiarities. Cycles. Looping back to the beginning after reaching a false finish. These are the positive or negative promises of life. My dad used to say it like this, "The only thing you can count on in life is change." I am not sure who was first quoted saying that famous saying, and I am too tired and milk-drowsy to look it up, but you can bet that whether it was an army general, a president, an author, or a janitor, they knew that their sunny days would eventually turn shitty and their shitty days would turn back to sun.

I shuffled into the bathroom, clad in a scratchy hotel robe. I looked at my jumble of cosmetics and rolled my eyes at all of it. I had a flight in less than eight hours and I hadn't even told my team what time we should meet. There were logistical elements, like returning the rental car, meeting in-coming clients, and hitting the ground running in the next city. But all I wanted to do was sullenly sip on that little carton of warm milk. It was crazy to even be drinking the stuff. My life had been all about almond milk for months now (it actually has more calcium than dairy).

I did one of those dramatic things that girls do every once in awhile. I sat on the cold tile bathroom floor and slumped over to cry.

Like a tired and confused kid, I drank my milk and considered things with an air of self-pity.

I thought about this week's return to business travel and how it was endangering my recent sense of life-satisfaction and overall serenity.

Airports, airplanes, strangers, hotel beds – these are all things that I enjoy. These are things that have interesting and exotic scents. These are things that make you feel like you are going places in life.

But sometimes in life, you want to be right here. Not there. Not the next city. I liked what here was beginning to feel like, and now my here requires a Do Not Disturb sign. Here is a grey treadmill at 7:00 AM, an endless supply of Complimentary Spring Water bottles and daily-refreshed boxes of Kleenex folded like little Japanese fans.

Jon Kabat-Zinn tells us that wherever we go, there we Are. But, what if what we Are is tenuous at best? What if what we are relies on a delicate balance of friends, family, grocery stores and guitars? (These are all things you can't really take with you on business trips.)

Strip away the friends, the groceries, the cats, the familiar-floppy-home pillows and scented candles and you get... Valet parking. Courtesy wake-up calls. Baggage claim. Geometric carpet.

I am forced to find myself amidst the business traveler camouflage; forced to unearth me and my green bike bag from the brown, black and navy blue polyester pant suits.

I'm tired and lost tonight. Tomorrow I might purchase a magazine at the airport. I will look out the airplane window, waiting for the silver fuselage to puncture the morning cloud-cover. I will continue to search, looking inside my chest cavity for something comforting, something that is familiar and reminds me of... Me.

For tonight, (which is actually early tomorrow), that comfort comes from a soggy, little carton of school-lunch-line milk. That comfort also comes from writing to you.

Drink up. Be brave. Get in bed and try to sleep. You can pack your suitcase in the morning.

The Alphabet Board

2011-08-20T22:29:00.000-05:00

IS THE MACHINE WORKING

That was the first sentence I saw my dad spell with his alphabet board. My mom worked with him, patiently asking: "Is it Red? Blue? – Blue? Ok, F?...G?...H?...I? – I? Alright, next letter. Red? Blue? Orange? Green? – Green? Ok, P?...Q?...R?...S? – S? Ok, is the word, IS? Alright, next word..."

I had learned of my dad's new mode of communication a week prior to this, when I was sitting in a cafe in Tel Aviv, Israel, reading my emails. There was an email from my mom titled "A Breakthrough" and at the time it occurred to me how rare it was for 1.) My mother to write a group email and 2.) for her to use such a bold title. I remember shaking as I read each sentence in this email, tears spontaneously rolling down my cheeks as I learned:

Dear Family,
After watching The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, I decided to Google "Locked-in Syndrome." I found and watched a You Tube video that showed a young woman who could not speak, and she was choosing letters from an 8 x 11 inch colored alphabet board. So, I decided to make one just like it and see if it would work with Chuck. We have tried alphabet boards with him before, but I thought that the colors might be more enticing.

Each row of five capital letters is a different color (red, blue, orange, green, purple). Chuck nods at the correct row as the color is spoken. Then he nods at the letter in that row that he wants.

In the last hour, he has spelled the following sentences:
To nurse Janet: "I have something heavy on my stomach. Also tell Mary."

To me: "Tell me if you know who has been calling this morning. Can you help me make a phone call this afternoon?"

To me: "Last evening I had a strange experience. I was walking."
When I asked him if it was a dream, he shrugged his shoulders and smiled.

I read, and re-read the sentences that my dad had spelled. I could not stop reading them. It was strange how the wording actually sounded very Dad to me, in his way of speaking proper, thoughtful English.

Reading the sentences my dad had written was like discovering messages in a bottle from passengers of a sunken ship... A ship that had sunk over two years ago.

Last month marked the two-year anniversary of my dad's painful journey locked in a motionless body with a rare disease called Critical Illness Polyneuropathy. This wildly cruel condition somehow came as a by-product of surgery to remove a small cancerous tumor. Cancer is a word that, with all due respect, sounds like a common cold in my world. At least with cancer, there are doctors who know what they are doing. At least with cancer, there are fundraisers and ribbons and support walks. At least with cancer, you get to unite with other patients and families who understand what you are going through.

But what my dad has is strange and rare. What my dad has makes neurologists scratch their heads and consult each other. Perhaps it is not fair to call our experience with cancer and its after-effects a journey, because sometimes it feels like we are going no where. It is one thing to be physically stable and it is another thing to be physically improving. I feel that my dad is stuck somewhere between these two states. He certainly is stable, he certainly is getting better, and he is noticeably starting to move more and more, even if just in the changes of his lip and tongue movements or his growing ability to shrug his shoulders. But my dad is still very much paralyzed and very much a quadriplegic.

There is now this one very different thing, though, and had you asked me last summer or even the summer before what it would be like to "hear" my dad speak through the use of a rainbow-colored alphabet board, I don't know if I'd have been wise enough then to know that the idea, although exhilarating, would also sound terrifying.

Within the short span of a month, The Alphabet Board has changed things. My dad now has the ability to give specific feedback regarding his physical needs. He can now tell a nurse to add a pillow under his head and he can express that his breathing is not feeling right. When I saw him spell: IS THE MACHINE ON, I got the chills because I knew what that meant. I knew that my dad, who breathes through a tracheotomy and a ventilator, must have been having trouble with his breathing.

I remember that, at first, I did not want to spell with my dad. In fact, I was afraid of it. I was afraid of what he would say to me because I wondered if he might be disappointed. I knew (and still know) that I am disappointed in myself. I'm disappointed that I have not cracked the code, have not had the breakthrough moment of communication and delight that would set the tone for hours, days, and months, of in-depth communication and connectedness that I have been waiting to regain with my dad ever since July 31, 2009. That was the day my dad went silent.

My dad still doesn't talk, but now, in a way he does "talk." And oh, does he have things to say.

In some ways, The Alphabet Board has shot my dad straight to the top. He has gone from the silent no-opinion patient to the All-Encompassing Chief of Staff, able to comment good, bad or ugly on the care he receives. Now – Let it be known that my dad has the most fantastic care I could ask for, and for that, we feel very fortunate. It is a miracle to go from visiting my dad in a downtown nursing home to visiting him in my suburban childhood home (the former TV room, actually).

But when I say good, bad or ugly, I don't think it should come as a surprise that in some ways, perhaps in many ways, my dad is downright angry. Only now in this past month has he had the ability to specifically express certain feelings of resentment, and I don't think he'd be too upset if I told you he has even spelled out a few F-bombs here and there.

It is painful beyond belief when he spells things like:

IF I AM STILL HERE TOMORROW, WILL YOU SPEND SOME REAL TIME WITH ME

Or even things like:

NEVERMIND JUST FORGET IT

But, on the flipside, there is a moment of complete elation when I come home from a business trip to see my dad spell:

HOW WAS YOUR WEEK

and then experience the warmth of his smile as I start from the very beginning, describing the make and model of the airplane I flew on, the city I was in, the hotel, the project, etc.

Using The Alphabet Board is pretty easy. First, you make sure you are holding it up so he can see it. My mom put the same alphabet on both sides so that as you are holding it, you can see what he is seeing. You hold a notepad and write out the letters as he spells them. Sometimes it is confusing because you don't realize that he has finished one word and is beginning another. On more than one occasion, I have mistakenly told my dad, "No, dad, that word doesn't exist" only to realize that he is not spelling ICANT but rather, I CAN'T.

My very best night of spelling with my dad was my first one. I had willed up the courage to use The Board with him but I was nervous as he lay there, so sharp and attentive. We started to spell, and the thrill of guessing certain words before he was finished spelling them was addictive. My mom, being a teacher and lifelong librarian, is particularly good at this. My dad might start with WH – and you know that he is spelling "WHEN" or "WHY." But, on the first night of spelling with him, I jumped the gun a few times, and I guessed words that were completely wrong and not what he was intending to spell. Each time I would do this, I involuntarily slapped my forehead and yelled at myself. Pretty soon I said,

"Dad, I am like, the worst contestant on Wheel of Fortune, aren't I? It's like I keep saying, 'I'd like to solve the puzzle please' with only one or two letters in place and then I get it completely wrong!'"

With this, he laughed, and I started laughing too. His eyes were shining and he looked like... my dad. If I had heard his voice, he might have had that silent, scratchy laugh that he gets when he is laughing really hard. It is the laugh that I have inherited from him.

___________________________________________________

In writing so candidly about my dad, I run the risk of offending him as well as my family. But I also have things to gain, like giving my dad a voice and giving myself an outlet for my pain. Somehow the idea of complete strangers maybe reading about this bizarre experience helps me feel less alone, because lately alone is how I feel about this situation.

My mom is of a different generation and age, where ladies know to ask about the health of each other's husbands. Women of a certain age become the wise observers and victims of heart attacks, car accidents and (multiple) divorces, so they know what to do when a chronic, never-ending tragedy strikes. Women like my mom's friends know that they should take my mom out to dinner just because. They know that they should sneak miniature bottles of wine into a rehab center or hospital just because. They are women who have experienced life, so they just know.

In all technical terms, I am a woman of a certain age, too. An age where my peers are getting married, buying houses and having kids. But the one thing that is very, very uncommon for women of my age is to have parents who are in desperate need. Rarely do I hear one of my peers discuss their concerns over the health of a dad or the psychological well-being of a mom. No, women of my age are still just too goddamn young to really get it.

So, as you might have guessed, I'm not getting any miniature bottles of wine.

Tonight has been a difficult night for me, because I have learned that my dad has had a particularly angry, sad day and he has been spelling some poignant, hurtful things. I cannot say that I blame him. But tonight, after talking to my weary (yet always strong) mom and after having my own little woe-is-me cry, I am caught feeling conflicted about what to do next with The Alphabet Board.

I want to connect with my dad. I want to somehow convince him that we are in this together. I want him to feel less alone. But I also feel scared. I feel scared for him and sometimes scared of him. I'm scared of the reality of vulnerable parents, and scared of the reality of, well, a shitty reality. What do you tell your dad when you don't know what happens next?

How do you comfort your father when you still want comfort from him?

Sometimes I imagine sentences that my dad might spell to me and I think about how they would make me feel. I don't know if I could handle it if he said something hurtful, but that is not what I really think about. No, like the child that I will always be to him, I imagine sentences that he has said to me in the first 28 years of my life, and I picture the scene where I would slowly write out the letters and then smile in delight if he spelled:

I AM PROUD OF YOU

RUNSKY (his nickname for me)

I LOVE YOU

Priorities

2011-06-28T01:29:00.000-05:00

I walked by my dad's room tonight and his nurse was reading to him. She was reading out of The Catcher in the Rye.

I stood back in the hallway so that he could not really see me. I watched his eyes as he looked up at his nurse. She was touching his arm on and off to give emphasis to certain phrases. My dad's expression was concentrated yet serene. He was listening to the story.

It was a peaceful moment between patient and nurse, a moment of intellect and quiet beauty shared between two human beings.

And it made me jealous as hell.

For a moment I lost all gratitude for our brilliant nurse, and I stood there fuming at the fact that I was working on a report for my job while this girl got paid to hang out with my dad. Earlier in the day, I heard the electronic voice of my dad's DynaVox eye gaze software. The nurse was practicing with my dad, assisting him on the long journey toward learning a new form of communication while trapped inside a motionless and voiceless body. This DynaVox practice made me jealous, too. I wanted to ditch my work emails and go practice communication with my dad.

But communication with my dad has been tough, because I am never here. I cannot completely blame that on work or travel or even his medical state. It is just life that gets in the way. When things were more dire and my dad lived in the hospital, rehabilitation center and nursing home, I connected with him more. I sacrificed most of my own life priorities and focused exclusively on his. There were times when my dad and I connected then. Times when, despite all the medications, tubes, tests, and terrors, I could look into my dad's eyes and feel like I was helping him. Those were the times when I felt like we completely understood each other.

We all speak delicately to my dad, because in a world as unimaginably uncomfortable as his, times of serenity are sacred. When a person is not able to speak, you tend to talk in the same manner that you would speak to a young child. And no matter how creative or confident you are, it is virtually impossible to maintain a one-sided conversation. A pair of piercing blue eyes stares back, and that can intimidate even the most seasoned conversationalists. In this I am, of course, speaking of myself.

My dad used to come to me and talk about the ups and downs of life, and I know that he felt guilty about the potential of over-sharing with his kid. I remember my dad telling me that it was the same for him with his own parents. They would have in-depth conversations with him about life issues far beyond his years. It was his skill for listening that drew them in and his knack for synthesizing data that kept them hooked. I think just as my dad was a child-sounding board for his parents, I was the same for him.

This is part of what makes the current scenario so cruel. To have my dad right there, looking at me, and me feeling too tongue-tied and scared to break into a new form of one-sided conversing. For the nurses, it is different. They have only known him this way. They are able to create special bonds and inside-jokes that only exist in the world of half silence. They are able to do this freely, but I am still holding on to the memory of my dad's voice.

It is a late night of working for me. I am so exhausted and so desperate for some upcoming extended rest. A phone call from a friend shook me up, because I was told the infamous words, "Cheer up." I've been told that before in life, but it takes on a different meaning now, when I am carrying the invisible load of my dad on my shoulders. I carry him everywhere. I carry him onto airplanes and I carry him into meetings. I carry him with me at weddings where fathers and daughters walk down the aisle and do father-daughter dances.

My mom came into the living room to check on me. Since returning from India, I've received an extra dose of love and care from those who see how tired I am.

"How's it going?" she said, with the interest and care that only a mother could conjure up for her kid's millionth PowerPoint presentation.

"Fine. But I was told to cheer up and it made me feel like I'm a downer. Am I?" I asked.

My mom looked at me and got a little teary eyed. She proceeded to release one of her spontaneous and inspiring, out-of-nowhere pep talks that could only come from a woman who has been through as much as she has. I listened to her and felt the instant relief that is so rare in life, the kind of relief that can only come when you are lucky enough to receive the perfect set of words for the occasion at hand. I had my blog open when she said it, and I was tempted to take notes. But what I do remember verbatim made me feel less critical of myself. What my mom told me was this:

You know, one thing you have to remember is that this is really, really hard. We are doing an extraordinary job in a very difficult, on-going situation. This might be inspiring for some people and it may have affected their lives in a positive way. But there is nothing good in it for us. The fact that we get up everyday, we tell jokes and we go about our day, that's amazing. Because no one will ever know what it's actually like.

I stopped feeling jealous of my dad's nurse about five minutes after the reading encounter. I'd gone into his room and made my usual surface-level chit chat.

"So. You two are reading The Catcher in the Rye?" When I heard the sound of my voice, I was embarrassed at the obvious envy placed in the statement. Reading was my thing to do with my dad. But I had stopped the ritual, months and months ago, when his temperament and emotional state became entirely unpredictable.

My dad looked straight at me through half shut eyes. He was obviously sleepy, yet aware of me standing before him in the present moment. He probably knew. He probably knew what his daughter was feeling. He probably could see how a 29-year-old nurse could be threatening to his 30-year-old daughter, as though there might actually be some competition for the "Chuck's daughter" position.

I do know that no one can compete with me. I do know that, no matter what, I am Chuck's one and only daughter. I am deeply, entirely grateful for his exceptional nursing team. I continuously acknowledge the fortunate luxury to have these women and men to look after my dad in the comfort of our own home. It is a gift to have someone like his nurse who understands him enough to know that reading to him matters.

__________________________________________

I just walked outside and I looked up at the night sky. The stars are out. I watched a satellite slide by, efficiently circling the Earth. On days when work and responsibilities take over, I notice nature more. It grounds me to watch leaves move in the breeze. I am lulled by the sound of sprinklers and lawn mowers.

Tonight, I will not judge myself for having compromised priorities.

No matter who you are, and regardless of your individual responsibilities, sometimes you just have to ease the pressure off yourself a bit. We guilt ourselves for not spending enough time with our parents, our children and our significant others. We feel bad about living far away or about living close and not taking advantage of it. We lament over not getting enough exercise and we obsess about eating the wrong foods or not eating enough of the right ones. We fret over unknown futures and underdeveloped finances.

We debate over our next hairstyle.

Someday I hope to learn how to detach, even for a few minutes. The weight of maintaining the Self is tiring. I think it might be one of those things where the less you try the easier it becomes. But until then, the responsibility of looking after one's life priorities can be exhausting.

I'm not going to worry about my dad right now. I'm not going to marinate in guilt over the fact that it is coming up on two years and I still have not developed an effective new relationship, complete with extracurricular books and in-depth communication. In time, it will come.

At least for right now, my dad and I can still look at each other's faces and smile from time to time.

The Smell of Hope: Haves and Have Nots in India

2011-06-20T13:16:00.002-05:00

From eighteen stories above the slums of Mumbai, I sat looking down at an endless chain of red and white tail and headlights while eating spaghetti Bolognese by myself. Three different waiters tended to my table like concerned pre-school teachers, frequently checking if Miss Susan was alright.

I'd asked for a piece of paper and a pen and received a piece of paper, a pen and a newspaper in return. I had no phone, no iPad, no leather zippy case with important papers inside. Perhaps these waiters were perplexed with the image of a lone business traveler who wasn't maximizing her time and instead simply eating while at dinner.

I hadn't planned to eat alone, but only twenty minutes prior, my colleague's family had unexpectedly Skyped her just as we were leaving to take the elevator to the restaurant in our hotel. As soon as that Skype phone rang, I accepted my fate. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, I knew I would be left behind to contemplate my role as second best. So, I took myself to dinner instead.

Perched at my eighteenth floor table for one, I sat underneath an airconditioning duct which left me cold and confused after spending twelve hours in the sweltering, soupy heat that exists below the soft cool cloud of the Westin hotel. But I felt too cold, and also awkward; over-pampered like a figurehead emperor with no clothes.

I'm here in India doing market research for a food packaging company. Riding through the streets of Delhi and Mumbai, I've been obsessed with capturing the perfect photo – The one photo that will encapsulate the indescribable contradiction that is India. Bouncing and winding, whizzing past countless photojournalist money shots, I've been too slow to capture most of what I've seen.

It is very difficult to capture this country in photos. India is a contradiction in it's bold juxtaposition of elements that simply do not go together until seen with the naked eye. Like ice cream and pickles, you cannot quite understand the strange harmonies of India until you see them first-hand. And to try to capture them on camera is quite nearly impossible. India will only show you her gems when she feels like it, and that's normally when you set your camera down. The images that taunt and haunt my mind are centered around color.

World-weary, mud-streaked, tin-roofed grey shacks with a pinkish-orange-watermelon sari-clad woman swishing past
Unabashedly cozy interiors made of cinderblocks painted turquoise and illuminated by acid lemon-lime fluorescent light bulbs
A tan, black-fly eaten dog naps while a rusty red bus blows its horn
An old man in white selling his mangoes and lychees to woman covered in black from head to toe (expect for her eyes)

To me, this is India. It's the color wheel gone haywire, making up twenty-first century Van Goghs and Monets and selling them for ten rupees a piece.

In the Mumbai-based Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, the author could not have prepared me better than with this:

"The first thing I noticed about Bombay, on that first day, was the smell of the different air... I know now that it's the sweet, sweating smell of hope, which is the opposite of hate; and it's the sour, stifled smell of greed, which is the opposite of love. It's the smell of gods, demons, empires, and civilisations in resurrection and decay... It smells of the stir and sleep and waste of sixty million animals, more than half of them humans and rats. It smells of heartbreak, and the struggle to live... It smells of ten thousand restaurants, five thousand temples, shrines, churches, and mosques, and of a hundred bazaars devoted exclusively to perfumes, spices, incense and freshly cut flowers... The worst good smell in the world."

One day in Delhi, we got out of the van to go do an interview. As I was putting on my backback with all my video camera equipment, I spotted a boy. He was intently looking down at a handfull of potato chip wrappers, counting them, sorting them, and considering them from all different angles. All the wrappers were the same – small green foil packs.

"What is he doing?" I asked our interpreter.

"Ah, yes. He is collecting. Because, you see, in India, you can get one rupee per empty potato chip wrapper, so this boy is collecting them in order to make a profit."

I felt as though I couldn't move. My feet, clad in brand new REI sandals, were like lead in the mud-dried street. I could not stop looking at this boy. He was so serious, so thoughtful, so mature in his task. I discreetly took this picture, and thank goodness he never looked up. I needed to capture him but I did not want him to know that I was taking his image away with me. I only felt respect for his potato chip wrapper counting, and I did not want him to somehow think otherwise.

As we walked through the dark cement hallway of the interview participant's home, my head was spinning still thinking about that boy. Here we were, in India, doing research on food packaging – something that I used to affectionately call decorated trash when I first got into the business of food package design – and this young boy was an ultimate end-user of this business chain without even getting to eat the potato chips. Well, that was something I assumed. Maybe (I hope) he actually did get the chance to eat the chips, but instead I had more of a notion that he had fished these wrappers out of the trash.

But going through trash in India is a commonplace task, and quite clever in a way. Although we do this in the United States to a certain extent, Indians are expert at finding new uses and values out of everything, whether it is earning a rupee per empty potato chip wrapper, making a game out of a discarding tire, or recycling old car parts to fix a three-wheeler taxi.

When I came out of the interview, there were suddenly several children in the street, intent on playing a game that looked like an ancient form of cricket.

"See, the boy throws the ball, and if he knocks down all the piled up stones, the others have to stack them back up before he runs to them." Our interpreter smiled at me with knowing eyes. "Inventive kids, these children are."

The children. Next to the colors of India, what I notice most often are the children. They are fearless and cunning, often gathering in small societies of their own to discuss unknown topics while hanging onto dirty metal fence posts. They often look serious yet relaxed, embodying the calm optimism that is the backbone of India.

The driving. Ask anyone who travels the world and they will tell you that India is home to some of the craziest drivers on the planet. But once you accept that the vehicles here defy the laws of physics in their ability to twist and bend around motorbikes, cows and humans, you discover that the level of road rage and traffic angst is far, far less than that in more developed cities. I reflect back to three weeks ago when I was working in LA. We were stopped at a traffic light in the heart of Hollywood. Two men in giant SUVs got so heated up with road rage at each other that I screamed to my co-worker to "Just DRIVE and get away from these guys - they probably have guns!" This while in India, I actually feel more safe with my duct-taped seat belt.

See, the thing I'm learning from India is that the world is not only contradictory, it's backwards. India is teaching me that sometimes you have more in life by having not.

If you did a litmus test of overall sentiment, I am certain that the citizens of Delhi and Mumbai are more confident and assured than the citizens of Los Angeles and New York.

So, which side do I find myself on, the Haves or the Have Nots? I think what it comes down to is what we all know deep down – there is no technical requirements for either position, except that it all depends on how you see it.

I've been seeing it Have Not for most of my life. If you read my blog, you certainly should know this by now. However, I am an optimistic pessimist. This makes me OK in the eyes of both the glass-half-empty and glass-half-full people. At least I hope that is the truth.

In the spirit of the opposites, contradictions, and backwards learnings of India, I've come to my own up-side-down discovery.

I've had to go around the world just to learn that I want to be home.

Now there's an India-ism.

For those of my generation who also enjoyed Alanis Morrissette, you can grin in understanding at how I had her "Thank U" lyrics in my head upon boarding the flight from Paris to Delhi. "Thank you India... Thank you blah blah.." It just kept playing over and over in my head. I am not going to spend precious time Googling the meaning behind her lyrics in that song, but I like to think that she, along with countless other lucky Westerners, had the chance to come here and get bent back into shape. To smell the stench of hope and to laugh at the easiness of it.

And let's remember that finding hope is easy. Every single human being has the choice to choose hope, no matter if he is living in a blue tarp on the sidewalk or if she is sitting in a high-rise hotel, feeling lonely as hell. It's just that our phones, iPads, and leather zippy cases get in the way of that hope.

If you asked her for advice, India would look you in the eye, laugh roll her eyes. She'd shake her head, blurring the bright reds and golds of her bindi and earrings. She'd put a knowing hand on your shoulder, take a deep, cleansing breath, and tell you,

"Janu, pay attention. Sometimes in life you have more by having not."

Records Have Heartbeats at the End of Them and June Beetles Have Hard-Shelled Backs

2011-05-04T00:12:00.000-05:00

If you allow a record to continue playing past the last song, you'll notice a rhythmic heartbeat sound.

It goes ba-boom scratch scratch scratch, ba-boom scratch scratch scratch, ba-boom scratch scratch scratch, ba-boom scratch scratch scratch...

I'm sitting on my couch, and I've decided not to flip the record that I just played. I'm not sure if this is bad for the needle to just skip unendingly at the end of this record, but the sound is so soft and rhythmic, I can't see how it could be a problem.

I'm so tired and I also am feeling helpless. I feel helpless because the man at the Bryant Hardware store sold me a flathead screwdriver yesterday instead of a Phillips screwdriver. The reason I needed a screwdriver was because I have to put new license plates on my car. April was my month for getting new tabs, and the people at the Department of Motor Vehicles office surprised me by giving me brand new plates. They said it happens every seven years. I had "Get new tabs" on my To Do list for the entire month of April. The day that I went to get them, I did not get the feeling of satisfaction in X-ing out the box and crossing out the To Do (I do both) because finishing the tabs task only created another: "Get a screwdriver."

It was when I worked for a Fortune 100 company that I learned about drawing boxes next to To Do items and then utilizing a two-part process (first X-ing out the box, then crossing out the To Do). I had accidentally peered at the notebook of a much older, wiser and savvier colleague. Discovering the Box/To Do-X-and-cross-off technique was on a par with learning how to drive stick for me. It took a while to put it into practice, but once I got the hang of it, it became an utterly useful and effective skill.

It looks like this:

❒ Get a screwdriver

You can imagine, I'm sure, that if that box had a red 'X' through it and if the "Get a screwdriver" were crossed out in red as well, you'd feel like you had fucking accomplished something.

Well, I don't have a screwdriver, and it's May now, so I legally should not be driving my car. I tried to change my license plates with the flathead screwdriver, but a friend of mine oh-so-helpfully pointed out, "I WOULDN'T DO THAT IF I WERE YOU, YOU'LL STRIP THE SCREWS," which only made me feel worse.

While riding my bike to work today, I fantasized about walking into that hardware store and talking to the man who sold me the flathead screwdriver. It would be a scene like in the movie Falling Down. I would be Michael Douglas (obvis.) and I would go completely ape shit on the nice hardware store guy. I would spell out what a shitty thing it was for him to sell me the wrong screwdriver when I had even specifically designated my intended use.

(Flashback to the hardware store: The cheerful bells on the door jangle as I enter in and skip up to the counter. "So. I need to change my license plates, and, being an Uptown girl, my only tools are a pair of scissors and five wine bottle openers." (Laughing and smiling from me, this was back when things were easy and good.) "I think I need a screwdriver for license plates?"... The hardware store man laughed and was even jovial with me as I told him I intended to come back one day and buy one of those full-set tool kits for girls. He so confidently handed me the flathead screwdriver that I did not even pause to wonder if it was, in fact, the proper tool.)

Here's what would make Hardware Store man feel really, really bad. Right now it's 11:00 PM at night, and I'm listening to the heartbeat skip at the end of a finished record; the ultimate soundtrack of lonely desperation, if you ask me. I really need to go to Walgreens because I am out of one of my meds and I can completely feel the wrath of it. I'm sitting on my couch, crying my eyes out, trying to figure out how to get to the goddamn pharmacy to get a Bipolar medication when my car is now officially illegal to drive. "Just get in your stupid car and drive the five minutes to get your meds and buy a new screwdriver at Walgreens! Change your license plates there in the parking lot before you drive home!" you might say. But, with my luck, I will get pulled over, I will be crying and the cop will see this. The level of complication in the events of this evening will skyrocket, and this will be just the start of Scene Two in my personal remake of the movie Falling Down.

So, here I am, stuck.

I called a friend tonight, and I awkwardly asked for help. It didn't go too well. I should have been more direct, but it was hard for me to do that because it is humiliating to explain mental illness to people. Sure, everyone has their off nights, but for some of us, we get so stuck, we get completely paralyzed.

When I used to get paralyzed, I would call my dad, because he is of the same ilk and I wouldn't have to explain anything to him. If I needed to have him come get me in the middle of the night to eat slices of coconut cream pie at the 24-hour Perkins while draining two metal carafes of black coffee, just to talk about some pansy shit like, existential anxiety or something, he was my man. I realize that most dads are not like mine. Most dads are more manly. But my dad gets me. He knows just how to fix things. Isn't it ironic that he cannot come save me these days because he himself is now paralyzed. Literally.

So, my To Do list item goes un-X'ed and un-crossed-off, and here I sit, alone on my couch, feeling so tired, yet so unable to rest because I am a smart, high-functioning Bipolar patient and I know that I cannot go one more night without this medication. So, what I'm going to have to do is get up and drive myself to Walgreens, illegally and by myself, even though all I really wanted tonight was to have someone come save me. I wanted to have someone come take care of me without my having to ask.

We each have varying degrees of neediness. We each have that sensitive longing for someone to just TAKE OVER and steer for us sometimes. Some of us convince ourselves that we like to get through it on our own and others of us roll over like the June beetle and wiggle our hair-thin legs in the hair until a peaceful youth has the decency to come along and gently roll us right-side-up off our hard-shelled backs. I am the latter. I am the June beetle. I am sensitive and I want to be taken care of, but I am also one tough bugger. I get rolled over onto my hard-shelled back without even asking for trouble, and I have to wait it out until some form of help comes along.

But sometimes, like tonight, no one is around to roll me up off my back. Sometimes, you just hang upside-down and you go, "Well, this sucks."

I make my To Do lists and I try to get stuff done. I try to move forward and I hope by the grace of God that I am able to 'X' things out and then cross them off.

So, with that,
❒ Go take care of myself, right now.

Alright, FINE. Let's go, Susan. Get in that illegal car of yours. It's time to go get your meds and a fucking Phillips screwdriver.

I Know You, I've Seen Your Profile.

2011-04-21T19:26:00.002-05:00

It was my third night staying late at the office, my little silver Jetta once again the lone car sitting in the parking lot. I was in the middle of working on a 200-slide PowerPoint when my friend, Dajana, sent me a a picture of a cat. I thought it was hilarious and immediately opened my facebook page to place it on my wall.

But when I opened up my facebook, I was distracted by a picture in the lower right corner of a man and a woman holding a baby. They were family friends from long ago, and this baby they were holding, I guessed, was their grandchild. Facebook wanted to know if I wanted to be friends with these people.

Instead, I went to their daughter's page. We'll call her Ashley. Until seeing the photo of her parents, I had not known Ashley had had a baby. I started clicking through her photos. There were some cute ones of the baby wearing one of those bath towels with the animal hood. Then, I kept clicking...

There is Ashley, toasting wine with her beaming parents, her husband, her sibling, her grandparents... This one is with Ashley in a hospital bed, IV still in and baby just born... Oh, here is a good one of Ashley super pregnant, standing in front of the school where she got her Masters degree... Now this picture shows graduation from said graduate school... Photo of big dog, husband and Ashley... a medley of photos of other people's weddings (once one falls, they all do)... photos of the big dog as a smaller puppy... ...The honeymoon in South Africa... Photos of Ashley's wedding... Oh my gosh, back to college dorm pics... beer pong...

In less than ten minutes, I had gone backwards in the entire adult life of this girl.

I realized that I had been crouched forward, my face no less than ten inches from my computer screen. I'd been analyzing each and every photo, at some point snidely commenting aloud, "Perfect family, perfect lives."

Whoa. Was I falling prey to the oldest trick in the facebook book? The profiling of people's profiles, deciding that I knew their hopes, their joys and sorrows simply through the images they uploaded to the Internet?

Yes.

I went downstairs for a bathroom break. I ran to the bathroom because our office is full of windows and it's scary at night.

Back at my desk, I opened the picture of the cat that Dajana sent. I looked at my own facebook profile and sighed with something I'd realized the other day – the fact that the last three posts on my wall were pictures of my cats. Holy fuck, did I really do three posts about cats in a row?

Yes.

But then, in a moment of egotistical self-soothing, I opened up my pictures and saw that I mostly had images from the travel that I do for my job. I have pictures from China, Russia, Brazil, and all over the USA. But I don't have baby pictures. I don't have wedding or honeymoon photos. I don't have beer pong photos, which actually stings the worst because I have never actually played beer pong. I'll only admit that here so my secret is safe with a few scattered readers. Otherwise, I lie and say I've played. I went to a small, private liberal arts college where I lived in the Art Studio. If you are out there, and you read this, please, invite me over to play beer pong. (But do so discretely.)

My point about the photos is something we all know but I had to remind myself of it tonight.

We are not our facebook profiles. We are not what we tweet about. In an age where we are living to social network instead of social networking to live, we need to periodically remind ourselves that the crap we put out on the Internet – it's not us.

Sure, our cyberselves are manifestations of our behaviors, patterns and decisions, but they aren't babies. They aren't weddings or honeymoons in South Africa. They aren't research trips to China and Russia.

Our cyberselves are just digital zeros and ones.

So, no, I don't instantly know the past decade of Ashley's life. I may think I do, but that's just a trick of the Internet. If I really want to know what's up, I gotta do it the old fashioned way and talk to the girl.

And since we are not the Internet, I'm not going to worry about looking like a crazy cat lady with cat pictures on my profile. Because I'm not. I don't even like cats that much, but I like putting pictures of them on my facebook profile because I think they are funny. Seriously, I do.

No Lol here.

Russian Hospitality

2011-02-18T03:31:00.001-06:00

The first time I came to Russia for work was 13 months ago in January. Exiting the doors of Pulkovo II International airport, I had my first taste of the freezing, damp air of St. Petersburg. I could not stop coughing. It felt like a metal glove had reached deep down into my lungs and made a fist while my pink insides stuck together like a hot tongue to an icy pole.

It did not matter that I was equipped with the warmest North Face Parka, gloves and boots. It did not matter that I was wearing state-of-the-art REI long underwear. It did not matter that I am a native Minnesotan with practically 100% Norwegian blood pulsing through me.

The Russian Cold was the first thing I remember.

On that first trip, I had the opportunity to work in St. Petersburg and Moscow for three weeks with my close friend and co-worker, Sara. Sara was pregnant at the time, and I still have vivid memories of her sending the poor roomservice boys back to the kitchen because they had, in fact, brought the bright yellow mustard when Sara had specifically requested the darker, grainier kind that looks more like Grey Poupon.

Had someone told me back then that, in a years' time, my passport would fill with visas and I would visit Russia five times, I would have spilled my own borscht. (I ate a lot of borscht my first few times here.) Today, as I look back on my travels, I feel transient and out-of-place. It does not feel like I am sitting at a hotel desk in Moscow. It just feels like I am on another business trip in another regular city.

The chance to visit a foreign city multiple times offers one the advantage of building up cultural experience via repetitive exposure. There is no guarantee, however, that the conclusions drawn upon cultural experience are accurate as they are only tied to individual perception. But that is all any of us has to go on, right? The cultural fabric of our own lives is all we can use as a backdrop from which to compare new and different cultural experiences. That being said, these were the first things I noticed during my beginning trips to Russia (I believe Sara would concur):

In Russia, people wrap their suitcases in clear plastic
In Russia, they are always cleaning the floors
In Russia, all the hallways in apartment buildings are painted green
In Russia, people do not smile at each other
In Russia, people have big stuffed animals in their apartments, even adults
In Russia, every household owns a cat
In Russia, everybody smokes
In Russia, the traffic is terrifyingly bad

So, these were some of my initial observations. Because this was my maiden voyage to the Motherland, you could call some of these observations stereotypes because I was only paying attention to the things that I initially thought would be true. It would be similar to saying:

In the United States, everyone is fat
In the United States, all the buildings are huge
In the United States, the people are ignorant about their own history and culture

etc, etc...

Once I got past this (that is to say, once I had traveled to Russia multiple times), I was able to notice nuances that had previously been hidden to me.

For our job, we have the unique advantage of seeing a slice of real Russian lives because of what we do. We go into people's homes and interview them about their lives, their habits, their hopes and dreams and the products they use. Before my first time doing this, I was warned that Russian women think it is a big deal to be interviewed in their homes and may dress up for the occasion. As researchers, we actually like to see people in their native environments, so I was initially frustrated when, for example, one woman opened her door wearing a green velvet evening gown and silver high heels that looked like Barbie slippers.

But I must admit, the Russian home visits became something ritualistic for me. Don't get me wrong, they were never easy. I am terrified of the small, rickety elevators (although I have been told on more than one occasion that they are actually quite reliable, solid Soviet construction – something which I have come to half believe.) Setting up my camera equipment was sometimes a challenge in small kitchens (albeit, no worse than setting up equipment in New York City.) Despite some of these factors, as I said, the home visits became ritualistic. They became... cozy.

The daily ritual of the Russian ethnography was like a ballet; Climb into the warm car, listen to Russian radio (which is an awesome mix of songs you would never think you might hear back to back), fight through traffic, drive around tall Soviet style apartment buildings looking for small apartment numbers, go up the little elevator or trudge the flights of concrete steps, enter the warmth of a Russian apartment, met by coffee with lemons, tea, cookies, cats and frequent cigarette breaks... Like I said, it was a beautiful little ritual.

Partly because of my current research topic and partly out of personal interest, on this trip I have been doing a lot of thinking about what makes me, an American woman, different from the Russian women I know and continue to meet.

In my experience, there is a spectrum that ranges from mild hostility to solemn respect between Russian and American women. There are some habits we do very differently and there are other habits we wish we could adopt of one another.

Russian women of today take exquisite pride in how they care for themselves. I could easily make the argument that Russian women spend more time and care more in how they appear to the outer world that we do. To look well-put together is basic hygiene in Russian culture. In addition, it is more common to hear Russian women say that they are doing this for others as opposed to for themselves. They are staying slim, doing their hair, wearing makeup and perfuming themselves for their husbands, their coworkers and their children.

American women, on the other hand, display a wider range of behaviors and beliefs tied to their physical appearance. Sure, some American women are just as focused, if not more so, on their physical brand. But others display the freedom to forego makeup and wear men's cologne with a tattered plaid shirt because they themselves like it. Seeking secondary approval is just that; it's secondary. Approval of the self comes first. It is much less common to hear an American woman say, "I do it for my husband."

In my mind, there is a feminine mystique possessed by Russian women that is fed by two things: It is the way they look and act in front of me as well as the vague and inaccurate notions I have of iconic things like Russian Mail Order Brides. Russian women are more demure and less loud than American women. Russian women are more expert at attaining the husband/kids/family equation and balancing it effortlessly with a complicated job like engineer or chemical factory manager (I am endlessly impressed with the technical job titles of Russian women. Their jobs titles make our job titles sound soft and fuzzy.) The attributes above are those that I wish I possessed more of.

But I am not mysterious. I am not demure. I am a talkative, funny, dream-big American.

And on that note, I get the sense from my Russian friends and colleagues that they admire the American spirit of independence and exploration. My friends here always patiently listen to me spew out my hopes and dreams, and they do not judge me when the next day I change my mind to something entirely different. My friends here may not smile at each other on the street, but they do smile at me when I am talking to them. They smile when my co-worker, Emily, sings along to American songs on the radio. They silently delight in us trying to learn their difficult language (they try to help us speak it), and they embrace the times when we want to soak up their knowledgeable stories of complicated Russian history. Their reactions to our whimsical behavior make me feel effervescent.

Things get confusing when analyzing gender roles in a cultural context. It is a very subjective topic. So my hypotheses of the differences between Russian and American women will stop here.

Today I feel nostalgic. Today I feel a bit sad. I just ate my last meal in Russia – Eggs Over Easy (which I had to explain to the roomservice boy who told me that it was very interesting new term). Today I feel unsatisfied, like I have only scratched the surface of this huge nation that endlessly enchants and haunts me at the same time. I hear the British accents of the interpreters in my head, I see the intelligent twinkle in the eyes of my younger Russian counterparts.

I remember the time an interpreter gave me a small glass bear – a mishka – when I told her my good friend is nicknamed "Teddy." She told me to try to hold on tight to my mishka. I wrapped the small glass bear in toilet paper and I tucked it inside my shoe for the long flight home. Upon unraveling it a few days later, I spontaneously started to cry while sitting on my living room floor. I missed the warmth that I had received in cold Russia.

There is something so elegant, so blazingly silent – It is the strobe lights pointing up at the mammoth Stalinist architecture, It is the folds in the pink satin ballet slippers at the Mariinsky Theatre – I cannot explain it, you have to taste it for yourself. In the end, the best I can do is call it the magic of Russian hospitality.

Walls

2010-12-27T12:25:00.002-06:00

Source: http://tinyurl.com/3yxarwe

"So what do you do when you start getting sad in remembering?"

"I try not to think about it."

This is a phrase, try not to think about it, that has been administered to me countless times throughout my childhood and into my adult years. It is a phrase that I used to consider to be a bullshit philosophy; bottle up your emotions and decide to deal with them later, knowing that later will never come.

It wasn't until I was in therapy about a year ago, when I had just finished a long, unending rant when I started to reconsider this concept. I went on and on about the doom in my world. My therapist sat, patiently waiting until I had purged myself of what seemed like every single negative thought that had been stinking up my brain for months. When I was done, it was almost like a scene from Good Will Hunting. There was a pause, then she said,

"So. Your family members tell you to try not to think about it. You know, Susan, you may want to consider acquiring this skill. Just a little bit."

It caught me off guard. My therapist was suggesting that I learn how to bottle up my feelings when things got rough. Little did I know that she was absolutely right.

Walls. In the past year-and-half, I've learned how to build them.

Walls protect you. They hold your guts in. They neutralize your emotions when you witness sights and situations you could not have previously stomached. They dull the sharp needles that poke you behind your eyeballs.

When I stand over my dad's hospital bed at our house, my mind tries to play these tricks on me. I'm standing there, and I'm watching my dad sleep. But I squint my eyes and I can see him behind the dugout at the softball field, announcing that I will be pitcher this inning. Then I see him driving a boat down the St. Croix river. Then I see him sitting outside by the fire, legs widely crossed while he's leaning back in his chair, telling me about this crazy flight he had from Minot, MN.

No. Stop it. Don't do that, you stupid brain.

I cannot go there. I cannot let thoughts and memories creep in. If I do this, it can be the middle of a completely ordinary day, and I will start crying.

If I drive by Lake Calhoun, and I allow myself to picture one of my walks with my dad, if I allow myself to go beyond the 30 second mark and I get real deep into a memory of that time when my boyfriend dumped me and my dad forced me out to walk around the Lake. He took a picture of the sunset on his mobile phone then later printed it out on a color copier and wrote a quote on it about God always loving me... If I let myself remember how my dad bought me a hot dog and a Chipwich ice cream sandwich that day and said we should probably eat junk food because it would be good for us...

There are times when I have to pull my car over to the side of the road. That is what happens, if I don't use my walls.

Despite them being completely counter to my personality, I believe in my walls. My walls protect me and they protect my family. They help me stay strong. If I spend time with my dad, and I don't have my walls up, I will not be strong for him. If I am not strong around my dad, he will start to worry about things. He will worry about why everyone is talking about his blood sugar. He will worry about What's Next.

I don't think my dad is worrying about me. No, I think it is at the point where he is consumed with survival and so each day the man I see is actually primarily a human being in a remarkably complex medical state. Secondarily, he is my dad. There are times when he is calm and feeling OK when he can primarily be my dad. I'm not going to sugar coat, these times are rare now. But when he has a dad moment with me, it is extremely powerful. A smile, a wink, an eye roll at my latest business travel saga, that's My Dad.

I'm not suggesting that you build walls. Maybe you are lucky enough that you don't have to. But one thing I am suggesting is that you call your dad. If you can, go over to his house. Give him a hug. Tell him three things that impress you about him, then tell him he's a good dad, just for being one.

You should do that. Now.

Welcome Home, Stranger

2010-12-23T12:16:00.003-06:00

In the space of three months, I've interviewed countless women in multiple countries, achieved Diamond Elite Plus Status on Delta Airlines, and developed a sensible habit of reading my book before bedtime to trick my brain into rest. Permanently stuck on a timezoneless schedule, I've learned to manipulate myself to know how to act like a normal human being. (Now you should eat, now you should focus on work, now is when you should go to bed.)

Months back, I was so stressed out. The luxury of hindsight more accurately would define it as depressed out. I remember looking in the space of time standing between Fall and Winter and not knowing how I would make it out alive. There were so many logistical factors surrounding my life in relation to being away for business travel. Anxiety got the best of me at four in the morning when I would go through questions that had hazy answers.

How will I store my car when it snows? (I live in Uptown. Enough said.)
How will my mom fair by herself while I'm in Russia and my aunt is in China?
How will I entertain a Thanksgiving guest in my dirty, cat-hair-filled apartment?
How will I cope with missing a best friend's wedding while I'm working half a world away?
How will I keep saying goodbye to my quadriplegic father, over and over, without him able to say goodbye back?

I keep it no secret to friends, family, or strangers on the street that I manage a common, chronic mood disorder. I take meds for it, I'm fine, heck, I'm considered "extremely high functioning." To me, it is no different than if I were studious about checking my blood sugar if I had Diabetes. But one of the downfalls of managing an illness that occurs in the mind is that things get complicated when life throws blows at you that would affect anyone in the mind.

It has not been until now, since I've been home for an entire week – the first time in a while! – , that I have been able to look back and put things into perspective. I was beating myself up, angry at my stupid brain for being so despondent and indecisive.

Being away from home for long stretches of time is complicated and sometimes lonely. Coping with a severely handicapped family member is complicated and sometimes lonely.

The interesting part, though, was that the depression never happened while I was away. The only time I started to worry was when the airplane started the descent into Minneapolis.

Sometimes, to get healing, we have to run away. This is something I have always known. When I was a kid and my mom got mad, I would storm up the stairs and SLAM my door. I'd stay locked in my room and make miniature paper books for my Barbie Dolls. When I was in college, and I was behind on my latest painting, I would scamper off to the dorms and do shots of flavored vodka with my roommates. We'd listen to Hip Hop and dress slutty, even though we just stayed in our dorms and danced. When I was in my twenties, I ran away to Canada, and hid there with my cell phone turned off until I knew it was time to go back home.

In a way, business travel for me this year has been a form of running away. New York, Moscow, São Paulo, Miami, London... side trips to Amsterdam and Prague... truly my job has offered me the ultimate escape from a life that I had learned to detest. Travel allowed me to be someone else. I learned new languages, I met new people, I bought new clothes, I ate new food. I reveled in the excitement with co-workers and clients, all of us quietly turning a cold shoulder to the worlds we left behind.

But there was something different about me from the others. When the projects came to an end and the wing tips went up for the flight home, others would silently smile into their phones with excitement while I looked out the window, feeling anxious about what would be waiting at home. Will my mom have had a hard time shoveling the driveway? Will my dad be showing signs of another infection? Will I have zero text messages, zero facebook messages, and will I be leaving on another business trip on the one night that I get invited to do something with friends?

This was how it went. Coming home meant questions with no answers, a stressed out family life, and a vacant apartment with only the promise of a barren refrigerator and two shedding cats.

The cats. I used to be just so into them – using my laser pointer, brushing their fur, and snuggling on the couch. Then, once my new home became my suitcase, my two pet cats became more of a nuisance than anything. Finding people to watch them, cleaning up after them, watching their questioning miniature marble eyes as I shut the door countless times, rushing to the airport with other things on my mind.

Riding on that airplane, stomach knotting up as the familiar geometric farmlands came into view, I longed for that old feeling. It was the old feeling, when life was normal, when I used to get excited to land in Minnesota. I'd be excited to see my boyfriend, excited to go out to eat with my parents, and excited to see my friends. Somehow, all of that changed a year-and-a-half ago when my dad got cancer. It changed me. It changed us. It changed everything.

Until now.

Something is different. Something is lighter. My dad is still in the same condition, that has not changed. I'm still a single thirty year old, that has not changed. I still have two cats who shed, that has not changed. But something is definitely different.

I'm starting to like being home again.

Last night, I stood in my kitchen, slicing bell peppers, cucumber, tomatoes and onions. I put together a salad with mixed greens, roasted chicken, olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette. I watched a Netflix movie and brushed knots out of Vinny's fur. I cleaned the bathroom and did the dishes. Before getting into bed, I took my pajamas out of a chest of drawers. All the while, my expensive business traveler suitcase with the bright, shiny new Diamond Elite Plus Status plastic tag was stored away in my front hall closet. It was a night of doing regular, normal, stay-at-home things. And I loved every minute of it.

Tonight, December 23, 2010 is my Christmas Eve. We are celebrating the big party a day early so that tomorrow, on the real Chrsitmas Eve, we can be at home with my dad, by his bed, hopefully singing a few off-key Christmas carols (actually, they better not be off-key cause my dad's a musician and he's got perfect pitch. He may not be able to sing, be he certainly can HEAR us). So tomorrow, we make a new, different Christmas. We adapt. It's not like it used to be. It's completely different. But adaptation is a necessary trait if you want to survive.

It's actually one of the things we humans do best. We pack up our stuff, move to higher ground, and call it a new home. Sure, it's different. It's not the same as the past. But it is what we make of it.

I'm home.

Small Times in the Big Apple

2010-10-25T23:40:00.001-05:00

Lower East Side
Photo by Emily Grace Sauer

"I don't know if you're gonna like this or not, but it's a place where you spend a lot of your time..."

Emily told me this as I unwrapped the birthday present she gave me. Seeing as how I had given her a used Xikar lighter and Dunhill cigarette case for her thirtieth, the possibilities for my gift were endless.

I opened the package to reveal this. It is a photo Emily took with a Holga when she was along on one of our NYC trips last fall. I knew this was New York the moment I read the eloquent graffiti text. This is quite possibly one of the best pictures I have ever seen.

When Emily and Co. were with us in New York last fall, I watched in wonderment as non-business travelers made the best out of a normal business trip. They conquered New York, finding more Big Apple fun in four days than I have found in four years. But that doesn't mean I am a bad traveler. It just means that when I'm here for work, I am not a tourist.

Business travel is truly one of those grass is always greener situations. It's just never as cool as it sounds. In fact, some of the things that I have learned to cherish are things pleasure travelers completely overlook. And the things pleasure travelers like I could probably give two shits about.

For example,

I like airports with efficient security.
I like Airbus airplanes (more than Boeing airplanes).
I like hotels without revolving doors.
I like 24-hour hotel room service.
I like 24-hour hotel gyms.
I like unusually large hotel swimming pools.
I like amply stocked mini bars WITHOUT the touch sensor lasers that charge you if you move an item (not good to find out after you have picked up each candy bar in deciding which one to eat.)

I like working toward Diamond Medallion status on Delta NOT because of the free miles but because I can say I have flown around the circumference of the Earth five times. This year.

It's lame, but also kind of dorky cool.

There are many things I love about having the opportunity to travel for my job, but it's true that I have a hard time seeing places through the eyes of a tourist if I am living out of a suitcase.

Today Johnny, our driver from the Dominican Republic yells at me.

"Susi! Look, Statue of Liberty!"

"Yes, that's great Johnny, but I have my eyes closed because I'm carsick right now."

"Susi, Look!"

"Okay, yep, I saw it. There she is. Thanks Johnny" – (he is so sweet to always be working to make a tourist out of me) – Oh no, I'm gonna be sick..."

I almost threw up in front of my boss. But I held it together when she informed me that if she watched me throw up, she would probably throw up too.

Just another Manic Monday.

So, there is this one thing I find interesting about the people I meet in New York. No matter what background, no matter if they are research participants, cab drivers or clients, they are so incredibly proud to invite you to explore their city.

I used to joke about this with Sara. We'd have just finished six hours of interviewing and criss-crossing five boroughs when a sweet woman would go into detail about where we should go eat and then see a show. We would smile and nod, smile and nod, nod, nod, then upon bidding farewell collapse into the back seat of the car contemplating what we would each order from room service once we got into our pajamas.

And the next morning, instead of dishing about cosmopolitans and NYC men, we'd be all,

"I watched Avatar last night."

"Huh. I rented Couples Retreat but fell asleep."

I have a hard time believing the truth in this business traveler reality when, as a kid, I would get a present from my dad each time he would come home from traveling on Fridays. For a number of years, he was a traveling business consultant, and all that meant to me was that he was up early and stressed on Monday mornings, rushing to eat cereal wearing a tie and crisp white shirt. Then at the end of the week he would mysteriously walk in the door, wearing a beige trench coat and smelling like leather and cold air. He would drop his suitcase and pull out some small exotic thing.

It did not occur to me how he acquired these treasures until as an adult I traveled with my clients who, as parents, would hurriedly purchase small airport trinkets for their children.

So, no. I do not take the Staten Island Ferry or get tickets to The Late Show (only today did I realize that The Late Show is right around the corner from my hotel.) But that does not mean that I do not know or love New York.

For me, New York is Johnny, our driver (the happiest driver you'll ever meet).
For me, New York is bumpy landings into LaGuardia Airport, where it always looks like you'll end up in the water.
For me, New York is a packed Sheraton hotel lobby, filled with Asian flight attendants and Model U.N. high school students.
For me, New York is quiet dinners with my co-workers and boss, swapping stories about the workday over a bottle of wine.
For me, New York is a soft white bed, made this morning by the hard-working room service staff.
For me, New York is a fat slice of Brooklyn pizza, when I've promised myself I'd eat healthier on this trip.

For me, New York is staying up late in my hotel room, writing about my life as a business traveler.

In the Fog of Frustration

2010-10-20T23:33:00.002-05:00

Once, on a flight home from LA, I sat next to a woman who had been legally blinded by a botched eye procedure.

She was a writer who had become well-known in the craft community for her books on beading. I remember thinking how bizarre it was to become well-known for a book on beading. But she was also involved in writing screenplays and she created jewelry for Hollywood actresses.

I later learned that my co-worker had witnessed the woman in line waiting to board the plane. Someone had complained that the woman cut in line, to which she yelled something like, "Hey! I'm fucking leagally blind, OK?"

(Back to the plane...) At some point in the conversation, I opened up to the woman about the past year of my life. I told her about my dad's cancer and later paralysis. I told her how the experience completely unraveled my world view and damaged my sense of self. The woman shook her head and muttered something about the tragic mess of our healthcare system.

The woman described how deeply she had suffered from her condition. She spoke of falling into a depression so thick that there were multiple days when she could not rise from her bed. My ears perked up and I oh so subtly encouraged her to reveal more juicy details about just how bad her life became. (One thing I have learned in the past fifteen months is that misery does indeed love company.) Noticing this, the woman turned to me in her seat and announced something so profound that I couldn't even understand it at the time.

"You know what? The hardest thing in life is not sadness. It's not even depression. It's frustration. Prolonged frustration will kill you."

My reaction to this was along the lines of, Wow, this is one angry woman, but I have had months to let the comment soak in and become true for me too. When you are stuck in a tail spin of a situation, and there is no foreseeable future of getting out of that situation, what starts as shock, sadness, anger and grief eventually boils down to a simmering frustration that clings to your shoulders like a cold wet towel.

Every human being hits adversity at some point. If you plan on living a full life, you will at some point hit a rock bottom experience. Perhaps you already have. These are the times when you absolutely never, ever think life will be the same again. For whatever reason, I've been given several of these experiences in my twenties. Experiences when I was convinced that the fun was over for good and the rest would just be a stumbling struggle until total defeat.

It is that time in between, the time between the initial shock of crisis and the sense of relief in recovery where the frustration happens. You get stuck in the fog of frustration when you cannot see how things could possibly improve. It's when you lose your confidence, creativity and hope. It's when you give up on Team You. And when you get to this point, it completely sucks. Not liking yourself is not a place where you want to be.

I would take disapproval of the masses to gain approval of myself.

Nobody told me me that my father's pain would become my own pain. I didn't know that his paralysis would creep inside my body too, making me doubt my decisions, my abilities, and my future. It's one of the after-shocks of an unexpected loss. A stone thrown into water makes many, many ripples.

Eventually the brain does something weird where it fogs out just enough of the hurt to leave you in a vague cloud of frustration. I get frustrated that I can't make decisions. I get frustrated that I can't sleep, I get frustrated that I can't make a joke.

I get frustrated that I am worse at everything.

But then sometimes I remember. I remember what a strange journey this has been. I remember the nights at the hospitals. I remember the beeping and the bright lights. I remember the fact that our family TV room is now a miniature hospital room, complete with ventilator, feeding tubes, and a vast array of life-saving equipment. I remember that this has been going on for nearly a year and a half.

Maybe it's normal that I am only functioning at seventy-five percent.

I walk into that room and look down at my dad, sleeping soundly. I see his birthday balloons swaying above his bed and I watch the low light glinting off the silvery letters that say CHUCK. I observe the omni-present nurse (whichever one is on shift that night) and I feel a sense of total unfamiliarity. I do not know this place, I do not know this man and I do not know myself, standing above him.

Then, in an instant, my mind snaps back. Oh, there's dad, breathing through his trach, and the nurse is Tammy, who has just heated up her coffee. My dad looks comfortable and peaceful. His numbers are good. Night Dad, I love you.

I walk away from the room, say goodbye to my mom and step outside. The air is slightly chilly and I smell the cozy scent of a fire burning at a neighbor's house. I remember how my dad and I used to look at cozy houses at night. I look up at the stars. The night is clear so I can see everything up there. I think about how long it has been since I've been camping. I think about how I don't do much of anything except travel for work. Do I even have hobbies anymore?

I feel like kind of a loser.

I wish I could talk to my dad. He always made me feel better about myself. I know I can talk to him but I can't talk to him. It is actually pretty difficult to talk with a person who cannot talk back. I am sorry that I cannot do a better job of talking to my dad the way I used to. He is right there and I just get stage fright trying to carry on a conversation that is one-sided. But I selfishly want our talks to be the way they used to be. I want his advice. I want to know what he was thinking about when he turned 30. I want him to help me get through this fog.

I know that ultimately I am the one who has to fix it. I have to find my own way out of the fog. Do I take up Buddhism? Do I start meditating? Do I grow herbs out of a Dixie cup on my kitchen counter? I do not know.

What does not kill you eventually makes you stronger but in the meantime makes you frustrated as hell.

Look Up.

2010-09-10T02:54:00.012-05:00

"Every time you come to New York, it's jus' work, work, work."

Johnny, our driver, looked back at us in the rearview mirror and frowned as he transported us to the location for our next interview in Manhattan.

"We got time! You wanna see Empire State Building? I show you Empire State Building. You wanna go see NYU? I show you NYC. What you wanna do? We do it."

We had just come from Brooklyn, and I had been deep in thought as I stared out at the Hudson River, thinking about how driving along a highway next to a river in New York City was just like driving along a highway next to a river in Moscow. I started thinking about how major cities all over the world are similar because they are often near water. Then I started thinking about how people in different cities all over the world are often similar and maybe it is because people are made up of water too.

Except for Joan Rivers.

Earlier in the day, Johnny asked us if we wanted to go see Ground Zero. My co-worker and I fumbled out inconclusive answers. Johnny took us to Ground Zero the last time we were here, and I was not sure how to react. Visiting a space that is swarming with cops, ROAD CLOSED signs and confusing one-way streets does not match the eerie, silent grey landscape I watched on CNN nine years ago. When you go to Ground Zero now, you see lots of bustling construction going on. You see fences wrapped with colorful computer-generated images of architectural ingenuity that promise a dignified future life for that sacred space.

So this morning when we drove around Ground Zero, I tried to sense the sacredness of the space. I could see that there was a lot of set-up going on for this Saturday, September 11th. From behind the tinted windows of Johnny's SUV, I angled my neck left and right and then I stood up in my seat to try to really get a good look down into that pit that once held unspeakably scary things like molten steel, human remains and bits of telephone key pads.

But all I saw today was a normal construction site.

Johnny the Driver is originally from the Dominican Republic and he has lived in New York City for eighteen years. Whether it's getting us the best pizza in Brooklyn, hooking us up with faux designer handbags, or taking us to see sights, Johnny courts us around town like a regular tour bus driver. He is the proudest New Yorker I know. He has a thick and relaxed Spanish accent and he is shockingly positive about everything in life. It seems no matter where we go, everybody knows and loves him. I feel like Johnny is one of those types of people who you could slap across the jaw and he might laugh thinking it was a joke.

Yesterday, when we walked out of our first interview, we found Johnny smiling a big smile and holding jumper cables. "I was listening to the radio, and then my battery died!" he said, as though he had just won $10 on a scratch-off lottery game. There were two guys helping him restart his SUV, and the three of them were laughing and joking around. Johnny, of course, knew these guys because everyone knows and loves Johnny.

Because we had so much time between interviews today, I did not have much of an excuse when Johnny proposed that we go see the Empire State Building. Had I ever been inside? No. Did I care very much? Not really. I am a crappy tourist.

"I will go park behind that ice cream truck and you girls go! You go see it!"

My co-worker and I reluctantly slid down from the leather SUV seats and entered the historic mammoth structure from 1931. As soon as we took the escalator to the second floor, I started to regret our decision to go up to the 86th floor observation deck. Ahead of us there was a massive sea of maroon-clad guards wearing friendly bellboy caps. They were operating three security lines that were more thorough than LaGuardia airport.

As one of the women inspected the x-ray of my purse, my Danger Patrol brain started cooking up fantasies of what awful things might be snuck through security. For 1.5 seconds, I tried to use terrorist logic to test the idea of the probability of an attack on the Empire State Building two days before the ninth anniversary of September 11th on a Thursday afternoon. There was not enough symmetry to this imagined plot, though, so I let it go.

We quickly wove through what felt like a football field worth of velvet maroon rope (there was no line) to get to the elevators. At the rows of elevators, I did not like how the bellboy guards put us in an elevator and then operated it with a remote control. "Don't touch the buttons, please," they said, which confused me because, I wondered what would happen if we did touch the buttons?

Riding in the elevator that jumped the floors by tens (20...30...40...) I was reminded that I sometimes get instantly claustrophobic and suddenly hate doing activities with other people. There was a booming automated voice that welcomed hello to us in about 15 different languages. The fact that I had no control in this setting could have started to drive me off course, but instead I kept my cool and observed the other faces in the elevator.

That was the moment I started to get it. These were tourists from all over the world. They had cameras hanging from their necks and smiles on their faces. Going to the top of the Empire State Building was perhaps an odd perk in my workday but it was a huge deal for some of them.

Once we were corralled outside onto the observation deck, my eyes were more open to the people than to the view. You have to be careful not to walk through other people's pictures in a space like that, which actually offers you the opportunity to stare without being rude. There were a lot of couples with their arms around each other, probably in NYC for their honeymoons. This made the inside of my chest twinge a little. There was this huge family (from Italy maybe) with at least three generations posing for a big group shot. This made my chest twinge a lot.

I found a semi-quiet area and stared at the buildings below. There was a college kid who was looking so intently at the street over a thousand feet below that I wondered if he was thinking what it would be like to jump.

When I looked out at Central Park, I smiled when I remembered being inside an apartment over-looking the park earlier in the day. The woman had three cats and they were the equivalent of her family. I felt guilty listening to her talk about her cats in detail like they were people because I mostly obsess over whether or not I should even have my two cats. I don't think I manage them well with my scattered, dramatic, traveling life.

The wind was blowing on the top of the Empire State Building. I took a few pictures with my iPhone. After doing a lap around the observation deck, we decided to head down. The elevator dumped us off into the gift shop, and it struck me how little desire I had to buy anything and that gave me a sense of relief.

We found Johnny waiting in his black SUV.

"Well?! What you think?!"

"It was nice, Johnny. Really, really nice. I'm glad we did it."

Johnny drove us to our next interview that was ten minutes away. He parked the SUV on a massively busy street that did not even seem parkable, yet he found a spot.

"Johnny, seriously. We have worked with you three times in New York and you always find a parking spot. Why is that?"

"Listen. Me? I positive. I always, always positive. I am always happy, and everybody love me."

Johnny's answer caught me by surprise because it was exactly what I was already thinking. Johnny is so fricking positive and that is why his driving always turns out OK was what I was thinking. There is a scene in "The Secret" where a guy talks about parking cars. He is always able to find a parking space up front and he believes it is because he visualizes the space and he knows it will be there.

I will be the first to admit (and talk, and talk, and talk about) the fact that I am frustrated with my recently anxious, glass-half-empty brain. But I suppose one benefit of feeling that way right now is that it makes me a keen observer of those who aren't that way. Now, I can droll out a bunch of booster phrases, like:

"Life is 20 percent what happens to you and 80 percent how you respond to it"
"If you are at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on" (One of my dad's favorites)
"Responsible vs. Response-Able'" (Another good dad one)

Etc., etc.

But you know what? Those phrases are not going to help you (or me) get out of bed in the morning.

This is what I think, right now, at this moment. I think the only way to get it is to feel it and the only way to feel it is to look for it and find it in other people. I ask happy-looking people how they feel so that I can try to see the world through through their eyes. Johnny is happy because he loves his girlfriend, Johnny is happy because he loves New York, and Johnny is happy because of his strong roots in Santo Domingo. Today I tried to feel what it might feel like to be him and I also tried to be happy for him.

Turning thirty soon and having none of the mile-markers I thought I would have (masters degree, married, baby, adult cooking and cleaning skill mastery) just sucks sometimes. Sometimes I get so caught up in what I haven't done that I lose sight of the things I have done.

Maybe I can focus on being happy for others who have achieved those mile-markers and have quiet confidence that whatever is supposed to come my way will come when it will. Maybe, if we want to throw a little Buddha on this, I could say who cares about what I have and haven't done.

I think if you don't want to feel bad, you have to really want to feel better. You have to take a stand and be able to say "Life is a gift and I want to live it!" instead of doing that bullshitting fake happiness trick to protect yourself from all the seemingly genuinely happy people around you at the cocktail party. But, on the other hand, if you feel crappy and you feel like feeling that way, DO IT. Seriously. Just live it up, because it's alright to just be with it.

"Just be with it" was something my aunt told me. She's right. I know I make myself miserable just trying to feel better.

"Just be with it" is kind of a wild idea. It's like just drink the milk, even though it's spoiled. Just drink it. It's still milk and it won't always be this awfully sour. For now, you just gotta look up, tilt back that glass, and drink it on down.

Gigabyte Saturation

2010-09-04T18:19:00.006-05:00

My friend dropped her iPhone in the toilet this week.

Supposedly, if you drop your iPhone in the toilet, you are not supposed to turn it on right away because the electricity running through the phone while it's wet is what damages it. I also learned that if you drop your iPhone in the toilet, iPhone First Aid calls for placing it in a bag of rice for a few days. The rice absorbs the water and then the phone might work again.

I can't think of anything else to write.

______________________________________________

(I actually just spent hours sitting here at a coffee shop writing an entire blog post based on this theme. The above paragraph is all that I really feel is worth while so I deleted the rest. This exercise just made me laugh, which is evidence of progress.)

Detours and Déjà vu

2010-09-01T01:49:00.005-05:00

Type, delete, type, delete. Delete, delete, delete. So this is what it feels like when it becomes too hard to write.

I keep thinking about Minimalism in visual art, and I am wondering if I can get away with Minimalist Writing.

When I was in junior high, I was obsessed with the NYC artist Keith Haring. I read his published journals and was struck by the months when he switched from writing in cohesive paragraphs and instead wrote in a fragmented stream of consciousness style that gave readers only a passing whiff of the inner-workings of his life.

I don't know why he sometimes wrote in fragments. I don't know if he was tired, if he was sick, or if he had done some drugs. But that conceptual, sketchy writing is all I feel capable of right now.

I currently can't get the words out in paragraphs, and a well-balanced story would just be an annoying lie. Wouldn't it be more interesting to read a confusing, conceptual rambling piece than a nice, neat and tidy 500-word funny essay? I sure think so, and you didn't pay to read this anyway.

Well-written 500-word essays are for cheerleaders.

I feel too tired, I feel too rushed, and bringing public exposure to the inner-workings of my psyche seems inevitably lethal.

Is that why the majority of people don't express exactly what's on their mind, or is it that we are all just a little bit hazy until we get a true taste of suffering? Suffering is like truth serum and it deflates the protective cushion that surrounds the brain.

For a little more than a month, I have been suffering, from ambiguous things mostly. Sometimes it's worse, sometimes it's less.

It's usually the most difficult in the mornings.

When you feel sick, you forget what it is like to feel well.

When you feel well, you forget what it is like to feel sick.

This is a picture of the hearse that followed me all the way down 35W North on the first day I used a GPS in town for work. It confused me that the GPS only told me the time of arrival at the destination and not the actual time of the present. A feature like that is disorienting for someone like me who is mostly thinking in the future and in the past but not in the present.

Alright. There, I wrote.

One of those days...

2010-07-20T04:06:00.018-05:00

Hold on, I am waiting for "Clair De Lune" to download off iTunes. I've had it in my head for over a week, and I decided that I cannot write this blog without listening to Debussy on repeat. So I am stalling the kick-off of actual, official blog writing until this song finishes downloading. It's kind of like not being able to go on your run until your iPod is fixed just right. I don't run anymore, but I do remember that whole workout + music necessity.

AND, we are ready.

(...cue the music in headphones...Ah, yes, this is perfect...)

So, friends.

Normally I begin my writing at the beginning. I give the appetizer, then the first course, then the soup, (or salad? - I don't know, the French seem to eat one of those last. Crazy artists.) And after I have fed you a hearty meal, I lead our feast up to some conclusion statement in centered bold letters that makes it sound like I knew what I was going to write before I sat down. But not today.

Today, we shall start with the dessert.

It was a hell of a day. A day of how can I be so young and already so tired of this shitty life day. I will tell you the details later when I work my way backwards, but, the point of the story, the moral, if you will, is that it was one of those days where for 18 hours everything just looks ugly and in the 19th hour it still looks ugly, but somehow, through some divine strange chemistry of the right movie, the right moment, the right random, celestially inspired unexpected insight,

Everything is shitty, but in the end, it still looks lovely. This must be one of those moments when God, or Buddha, or whatever faith flavor of the week I believe in looks down at me and smiles a proud smile.

Because I am a human being. So, ever so imperfect. And it amazes me how caught up I get in finding every little self-imperfection to the point of invisible sparks flying out my ears. We all do this. And by doing this, we miss the entire fucking point. Let me explain...

Life. Imperfect, stinky, broke, overweight, divorced, pining-for-the-unrequired-not-gonna-get-it, rotten best-laid-plans produce in the refridgerator life is so perfectly imperfect that it is just ab-so-fricken-lutely stunningly beautiful.

Do you get it? Probably not. Because most of us never do. At least not on a regular basis. It is only times like this, (times that I believe I bullshittedly called "Portholes of Reason" in my college entrance essay) where something enlivens us. Something reminds us. It calls us back to our innate nature as these incredible beings and we REMEMBER. We remember wherever it was we were before the clutter happened. And when each of us is blessed with these moments, we suddenly feel light. We feel invincable. We are able to look at the farce that is each of our insignificant earthly lives and just...

Laugh.

I took this picture tonight (see above) sitting outside the LAX Westin and I laughed so hard at myself. There I was, half clad in pajama top and jeans bottoms, no bra or make-up on, trying to take an ironic picture for you, my lovely reader, just to capture the hilarity of this sad little palm tree in the middle of a smoggy airport layover hotel where pilots cheat on their wives and little children worsen their daddy's ulcer at the concrete pool.

As I sat there, practically falling off the bench, and smoking a deliciously naughty-but-I-don't-care-right-now cigarette, a shuttle bus dropped off a bunch of stressed travelers coming from the airport. It's midnight and they have just flown into LA. They are tired and dirty. A man walks by and I feel so cleanly empty and Buddha-buoyant. I look at him and I am delighted to be able to give him a small simple gift.

I smile at him.

He tentatively smiles back while righting his suitcase. He looks unsure, because, who smiles?... Who genuinely smiles at a complete unsolicited stranger for no reason these days?

I am not ashamed to admit to the superficial inspiration for my unexpected enlightenment this evening. So simple, really. After a really bad day, I watched a Hollywood movie in my lone hotel room. I'll tell you what it was - you've probably seen it - it was the movie It's Complicated with Alec Baldwin and Meryl Streep.

That was all it took. I watched one random movie and it was like a lightbulb had gone off. All of a sudden tonight, it was:

Be nice to the roomservice operator just for fun
Tip the guy at the door
Hey, taking showers is kind of relaxing, like a waterpark
Actually get your work done before playing – it's not that hard!

Just all these basic insights that just started flowing in because I was able to think clearly and see beyond the normal chaotic bullshit.

It had nothing to do with this particular movie. (However, it is an entertaining flick and you should watch it.) The catalyst could have been anything. The point is, I want to remind you that your very own shit-pot could turn upside-down into a silly raining dirt parade if you are lucky enough to get a chance moment like I did tonight. Some people (not me, but some people) can create these elated moments at will via meditation, yoga, philanthropy or climbing a mountain. Lofty shit like that. But I am not that advanced yet. I am only human. So for me, I watched a movie tonight and my brain got enough of a window to see the light for one night.

Don't get me wrong, the feeling will fade. It always does. These insights we human beings get are fleeting and far between. I think that is why people write books and create art. They are inspired to capture whatever divine knowledge that has been momentarily bestowed upon them and they want to capture it before slipping into another comatic love affair with quiet tense dinners at family chain restaurants and taking the dog to the vet to get tube socks removed from his intestinal tract. I mean, truly, the hilarity of the things we humans think up to pass the time of our 80 odd years on this earth. It is just too funny sometimes.

And I am totally included! I am a hilarious mess, I tell you. You want me to prove it, ok, I will. That's why I wrote this thing backward. So that you could see how fleeting the divine everything-is-gonna-be-alright inspiration truly is.

Here we go.

_________________________________

4:00 AM

When I awoke yesterday morning – (this gets complicated if it was this morning or yesterday morning because I am already hitting another AM while working a 14-hour day, watching a movie, and writing a blog post, but, oh well, small detail) –

4:00 AM

I awoke from a fake sleep on my couch. It was fake because truly I was just waking and sleeping waking and sleeping waking and sleeping to the sound of my iPhone alarm that was set to go off at 2:45 AM and I just kept hitting that simple touch-screen snooze button until I was no longer sure of whether it was sleep or just junk-napping, where the dreams are perverse in their confusing interuptedness. Where I was dreaming I was sleeping, like a dream within a dream, and the only defining feature was that I was (in my junky sleep) laying in a lawn chair dozing while staring up at a hilltop where a middle-aged woman was peering down at me. She stared at me with this intensity that was scary, as though a stare alone could be the entire subject of an Alfred Hitchock movie.

"The Stare"

I don't know, it probably is a real movie somewhere out there but I am too fatigued to Google it up like I normally do in efforts for diligent writing

(I will Google Hitchock's name to make sure I spelled it correctly and, just for kicks, I will keep the original spelled where it was because I am almost certain it is wrong. Let's see... – ah, yes, Hitchcock, – of course, and it's even phonetic, but of course my sloppy spelling gets the letters mixed up. And now you get a glimpse into my rough draft Bad Speller World. SO HONEST this writer is. I also love to begin sentences with "And" and I know that this is wrong, so leave me alone, Mom.)

Scene Two:
We have left 4:00 AM, we have made it through the intensely angry morning in which thoughts about my job just eat me up inside to the point where I thought about the phrase "voices in her head" and wondered if the way it really feels for schizophrenics (yes, of course I had to spell check that) is not to actually hear voices but just to think very hard about things until they seem like real dialogs in the mind. Or to feel so unfathomably down about oneself that the inner voice in all of us that says, "You are wrong. You are bad. You have failed" becomes too great to bear. Hence, "hearing" voices.

I don't know. I am not schizophrenic.

And that feels good to declare one malformation that I do not possess.

So, we have passed the waking 4:00 AM, we have introduced the angry mindset, and in Scene Three I pull myself together and shower, pack, and work on my PowerPoint like such a diligent and calm adult that my anger starts to reside.

I drive early to the airport. I make it through the flight to the West Coast and I make it all the way to driving the buzzing bee highways of Los Angeles in a large white Chrystler mini van (what was Hertz thinking?) and I start to unravel again but this time, instead of anger, it is bone crushing fatigue.

It's not the physical tired kind of fatigue. (You know me. Look at these post times, I write like a bat in a cave.) No, this was an inner I-feel-so-goddamn-sorry-for-myself fatigue.

This was a...

My quadriplegic dad just moved home and still isn't OK
Errr!, more newborn baby pics and "Other People's Weddings" photo albums on Facebook...
I am probably 30 (maybe 40?) pounds over-weight. And I don't ever care too much...
Why do I have to find my own directions? (somebody HELP ME?) I can barely stay on the road!
It's hard to interview people who are broke when I'M BROKE TOO
POOR ME

... Type of Fatigue.

Now. We all have our own levels of self-pity. You might look at my self-pity and say that's nothing I just had a lion bite my leg off and there's no tourniquet in sight, or, you might say Wow, and I was mad about that episode of The Bachlorette last night, but –

The point is, it doesn't matter. All of our POOR ME moments are all relative and there is no need to compete, people. No one really trumps my dad who has been cataclysmically wracked by a year of cancer, and that is a private joke between me and my dad. We WIN in the Pity Department. I guess the philosophy behind this is that if you are laughing at yourself, it is not the same as when people are laughing at you. No, I don't go around saying, "Well, you only had three months of chemo and now you are fine" or "You only lost ONE boob. Common."

No. I don't do that. Your tragedy counts just as much as mine does, so don't belittle your own struggles in life. Every "cancer" in life counts, be it spilled hot coffee, the break-up of you and your girlfriend (from five years ago!), or the death of your too-young-to-die mother.

It all counts. And it all stings. But, the tail-end of the giddiness in me tonight just wants you to be able to be happy. If not on a regular basis, then in spurts from time to time. You are only human. You are doing the best that you can do.

And now I am catching up with myself. I am making my way to the beginning to tie it back to the end.

________________________________

It's love, People.

It's love for our stupid plight.

It's love and laughter at the banality and the hellish daily grind.

Yes, Sartre was right. Hell is other people.

But perhaps the ultimate 'other people hell' is actually our own psyches, just tripping our weary souls day in, day out, just muckin' it all up.

So, DO THIS –

Stand up. Stretch your arms above your head. Give yourself one of those awkward self-help hugs. You might be too fat or too arthritic to actually do this, but that is even better.

Just laugh it off. It's perfect. It's human.

Now, Go find some human tragedy to laugh at. Just try to find something.

Don't be mad at me when I tell you this, but... Go sit on a bench alone and make up one private joke about this ridiculously disaterousl oil spill. You wanna stay MAD? Fine. But that's not helping yourself.

Or if you happen to get rear-ended in a traffic accident today, just be crazy and flash a genuinely empathetic grin to the bad driver.

Just do it. Just for a few seconds. Then you can let the misty veil of human misery settle back into place.

But for this moment in time, just shurg it off while no one is looking. It's okay. I give you permission to interrupt the sermon and let off a Whoopee Cushion fart at the back of the funeral parlor of your life.

It's all you can do. Life's a mess.

Start to find the beauty in the ugliness on the days when you have the energy

and then you will begin to radiate love.

What I've Been Missing: I Felt it in a Dream

2010-07-12T07:20:00.001-05:00

I am not fully awake yet, but I am forcing myself to write.

I'm sitting at the table in my apartment, eyes half open, pajamas and slippers on, trying to convince myself that what I felt was real.

This was not a nightmare. This was a thinking dream. It had to do with my family. There are a few scenes and scenarios, but there is only one important theme:

My dream reminded me of what it felt like to talk with my dad. It reminded me of our intellectual connection. When I woke up, I realized what I have been missing, which is basically my brain partner. Recognizing this deficit helps explain other irritating behavior I have been witnessing in myself this year.

I may be groggy in this early morning writing session, but I am having a substantial aha! moment.

For the next six paragraphs, I am going to have to detail the abstract, meaningless details of this dream. I'm sorry.

The prelude to this dream dealt with two men – Eddie Vedder from pearl Jam and then his good friend who was kind of a mountain backpacker granola type. I was at some outdoor arena with them and I was supposed to be dating Eddie Vedder, but then when I was alone with his backpacker friend, he hit on me and complimented my hiking boots, which made me develop a crush on him.

The real dream started at, of all places, a check casher office. (This is not too surprising as I have been doing some financial research for my job which has involved talking to people who go to currency exchanges.) However, I was not really at this place but only there in my mind. Where I really was was in front of my parents and my brother, trying to describe to them a place where we had stored some family games. Eventually we figured out that they were not at a real check casher office but at a play-house type one on some of my mom's land. The check cashier facade also was painted with a flower garden scene, but perhaps that is besides the point.

Next, it was just before bedtime, and my mom and I were watching my brother exchange CDs in the stereo. He was taking some out and putting some in. I told him that there were some at the check casher too. In my dream, I thought about how practical my brother was in exchanging the CDs for ones he had not yet heard. Then my brother got tired and decided to go to bed. I think his wife was there.

Now, here is the main scene. It is as weird as the previous scenes. For some reason, I was going to sleep in my parent's bed with them. But before we went to sleep, the three of us were in a library reading about cavemen and geology. I came to a certain page in a magazine where I concentrated for a long time on the way we sleep in beds – tossing and turning then laying on our backs – and I charted out how both my mom and dad slept. When they started discussing all the magazines on geology, cavemen, and evolution, I got excited to show them the page where I diagrammed out how each of them sleep.

The problem was, that when I went to look for this particular page in the magazines, I couldn't find it. I kept paging and paging. My dad opened up an article and in a scholarly way explained how the main points are important to read at the beginning. But I just kept looking for this particular page in a magazine. Both of my parents were initially intrigued that I had mapped the way they slept, but soon they became frustrated that I could not find what I was looking for.

Eventually, they wanted me to give up. So I explained to them that I had been paging through so many magazines in the library that I could not remember in which one that I had my eureka moment about sleeping. My mom and dad seemed to ease up on me when I made this point, and the three of us decided that this was some kind of lesson for when I am writing papers in grad school – that I should mark my books so that I do not miss the important places that I want to reference.

It was at this moment when I sort of woke up. I kept my eyes shut because I knew it was early morning, and I wanted to just stay in the wake of this dream in order to hold onto the feeling it gave me. The feeling was this:

The dream reminded me of my often intimidated awe of my father and his mysterious intellectual brainpower. We used to get into these talks where we would chat up all of life and death and everything in between. My dad would reference psychologists and philosophers off the top of his head, and he would push my thinking skills like a professor. But then I would say something and my dad would get quiet, tilt his head, and then show my point of view deep respect by saying something like, "Now. That's an interesting point we should ponder..."

Ponder is a total Dad word, by the way.

My dad and I would have these talks pretty frequently. They were sometimes in the car, sometimes in my apartment, and sometimes over a piece of pie. Sometimes they were at my parent's house with my dad sitting in his special thinking chair in his bedroom. Sometimes it was when we were walking our dog, Kodi. The main features of these talks were that they were exclusive to the two of us and they never, ever had a conclusion. We usually just got yelled at by my mom to go to bed, or one of us got so tired that we had to give up.

My dad would always say: "Well, Runsk, To Be Continued.." And it always was.

Perhaps the third most important feature about these talks was that they made me feel special. I felt like my dad thought I was really smart, and I got a total kick out of saying something from Freshman Interpersonal Communication 101 that would just knock his socks off. It was truly thrilling to impress my father.

And thus, we bring ourselves to present day 6:59 AM where I am slightly struggling to map out the feeling I had in this dream. Basically, it felt like deja vu. It felt like, "Oh YEAH, I forgot that I have been missing this!" It felt like, "No WONDER..."

I have been frustrated with myself lately how I chase after attention from boys who don't want me and I chronically run back to cigarettes that are out to get me. I am not taking good care of myself. I'm pudgy and acting middle-aged. This morning I am connecting the absence of my Intellectual Dad Talks with this ineffective behavior I am displaying and I am drawing the conclusion that it is time to force my dad back into some intellectual banter.

Is this possible to do one-way?

My dad does not have the ability to speak, but he does have the brainpower there. I know he does. Is there a way, an evolution of sorts, that I can get my dad to be intellectual with me again?

I must find a way. I am obviously jonesing for it. Perhaps it will require viewing a documentary together, or maybe listening to classical music.

Point is, if I was willing to crawl out of bed and write this incoherent post for the sole purpose of capturing the feeling I had after this dream, it must be important for me to reconnect my brain to my dad's brain. And it just so happens that my dad is coming home on Wednesday. He will live at my parent's house again, with full–time equipment and care.

Perhaps that will be the start of our journey back to the Dad/Daughter Intellectual Connection.

Lost in Commuterville

2010-07-06T23:45:00.009-05:00

One thing I can tell you for sure is that it is pretty rare to hear people having sex through the walls of hotel rooms.

For the most part, you cannot hear anything. Sometimes in the morning you hear the news blabbing away on your neighbor's television set, and it reminds you of the smell of burnt coffee and crisp white collars. It gives you a groaning chill, like a school night hangover.

Mostly what you hear is the sound of the fake air being pumped into the room and the tap tap tapping of your emails going out to the world. You pause at the sound of a foreign alarm clock and it makes you wonder why this beep is more palatable than your own.

All of your calls and texts to home go through this filter that fucks them up, so nobody can ever seem to say the right thing. This is because you are lost in Commuterville and no one is able to understand what that means.

The towels are scratchy and the white fluff ruins your black t-shirt. Your forehead is cold and sweaty as you wait for the valet to find your car.

You drink lots of water out of glass glasses with industrial-strength parallelogram ice cubes.

Your shoulders ache. Your stomach is sore. You are always just a little bit hung over from the night before. You smile a lot even though you are not happy. You watch hotel movies that you normally would not select.

You scoff at steak and red wine while feeling homesick for homemade cereal and sandwiches.

Everything is just a little bit backwards in Commuterville.

It's where you make friends out of strangers.
It's where you use products in miniature packages.
It's where you know the make and model of different aircrafts.
It's where you get upgraded to First Class just to sit down sooner.

It's where you lose who you are.

It's where you soar above the clouds quietly peering at private sunsets.

And The Rocket's Red Glare

2010-07-04T22:41:00.000-05:00

BOOM BOOM... BOOM–POP–BOOM!!!

If I imagine really hard, I can pretend that I am in a bunker hiding from dropping bombs as opposed to hiding in my apartment as fireworks blast off outside on the Fourth of July.

I just got off the phone with my mom who was at the nursing home with my dad.

"Mom, drive home, Okay?"

"I know. I know. I want to get out of here before the downtown fireworks are over."

"I just watched the PBS Capitol Fourth Special. I can't wait until this day is over."

"I know. I watched the New York fireworks. And the Boston fireworks. Dad's heart rate was really low tonight. OK, I am leaving to avoid the traffic."

Ah, holidays. If you are not yet a part of the elite crowd that hates them, one day (if you are unlucky enough) you just might be.

I never understood this as a child. I picked up on the grumpiness of certain adults around Christmas and Valentine's Day, Halloween and Thanksgiving. What was the big deal, I always wondered. Are these adults fun haters?

It wasn't until this holiday, this Fourth of July, that I was able to come full circle in a year of holidays marred by my dad's cancer. I remember last Fall thinking:

Oh, God, his birthday will be so sad.
What about my birthday after his? Will we skip it?
What ever will we do during Thanksgiving?
Holy shit, if he's still sick by Christmas, that is going to suck...

And so on and so forth. What you cannot picture at the time of anticipation leading up to the holiday is that you actually will make it through, awkward as it might seem. But now that a year has rolled round and we are embarking on the second lap at making the best of the holidays, how should I approach the years to come?

It is tough to know what is proper, but this is what I have figured out:

Cancer or no cancer, paralyzed Father or not, this Fourth of July is the last miserable holiday I will spend alone hating other people with normal lives. I will not be cowering in fear of the Grand Finale fireworks come next summer.

I am already mapping out positive changes. For example, this year when I turn 30, I am having a big Brazilian party at my place. And when turkey time comes, I am inviting as many foreigners as I can find to my Aunt's house for the big meal. (I used to bring foreign exchange students to Thanksgiving when I was in High School. It gave the holiday more meaning somehow.) I will start planning something crazy to do on Christmas, like dressing up as Santa and taking little kids sledding.

A tragedy in my life does not make me a social outcast. I have every right to celebrate the holidays and enjoy the memories exactly as you with your perfect lives do.

I'll step back. I know you don't have perfect lives. I am not that dumb. But I also know that you probably don't have a gaping hole in your family. You probably have a pretty normal life. Let's face it – it's just not that common in our young and privileged world to be wondering about death day in, day out.

Today is the start.

It is my own celebration.

An Independence Day from my Pain.

A goal to separate gratitude from grief and giddiness from guilt.

A step forward into normalcy.

The beginning of a new life.

push... fight... flight.

2010-06-28T02:32:00.000-05:00

"You are like the boy who cried wolf."

My mom told me this as we were driving to the suburbs at 1:00 AM in the morning.

"What?"

"You, with your facebook and your blogs and your texts... it's like you tell everybody everything so people just don't even know when you actually need help."

The events of the night would beg to differ with her analysis. Only an hour earlier, my door was pounded down by no less than five Minneapolis police officers. The head of the team was wearing a SWAT vest.

Holy Shit. Was my first thought. I wish I weren't burning incense was my second.

"Hello. Are you Susan Andersen? We got a concerned message from a friend of yours. She said you sent an upsetting text. There are some people very worried about you who are on their way over here right now."

Shit. I should have known better. There are very few circumstances in the life of a diagnosed Bipolar person when reaching out for help actually equals the kind of peaceful help the heart is seeking. No, instead it is the fucking SWAT brigade, threatening to take me to Hennepin and put me in a hold if I actually follow through on bolting like I'd threatened in the text.

Two of the officers came into my apartment. Run-ins with authority in the past have taught me to remain very calm and passive. One of the officers asked me if I am taking my medication. I offered to show it to him. The one with the SWAT vest, the only woman of the group, sat down in my living room and asked me what is going on.

I sat there, staring at her, and had a deja vu moment of crossing the border into Canada six years ago at 5:00 AM in the morning. A similar looking woman in a bullet-proof vest had asked me to step out of my vehicle and come into the immigration office. I had to sit down and chit chat with her about what the hell I was doing crossing the US/Canadian border with high heels on at 5:00 AM in the morning. She was very nice, actually. Her name was Erika and her partner's name was Duane. The funny thing was, I actually explained my intentions to them – that I was looking to relocate in Quebec and find a job. Start a new life."Oh, really, eh? Well then, the first thing you'll need to do is visit the immigration office in Montreal." Then she gave me some more advice about starting my new life in Canada and flagged me on my way.

Canadians. You gotta love 'em.

So, I thought of that distant memory as I sat facing this intimidating cop. She had a bright yellow stun gun on her left hip and a very large hand gun on her right. I was having a tough time knowing where to begin with the question, "What's going wrong in your life?" so I just started crying. "My dad is really screwed up from cancer" was the first thing that came out of my mouth..."and my job is all screwed up... So, yeah, I was getting ready to run away to Canada."

It was then that my friend Dana and her father showed up. I was internally noting that this situation should be feeling weirder than it actually did. It was not until Dana said, "Your mom is on her way over" that the Oh Shit Factor set in.

See, this is the trouble. When you are a part of a family unit that is in crisis, you are like survivors from a sinking ship just trying to get by in a rubber raft. No one can really lose it because you are all losing it collectively. I knew this, I know all this, and that's why when I hit my kill switch this weekend, the allure of simply taking my VW North looked extremely attractive.

When people say, "I am about to lose it," or, "I am going to have a nervous breakdown," what they don't know is that it is not all that glamourous. There really isn't much to offer in life when you throw in the towel. I know this because I have done it. So sometimes, the option to take flight is quite logical.

When June 11th rolled around, it was like the commemorative One Year Anniversary of September 11th for my family. It was one year ago on June 11th when my dad found out he had cancer. If I had known then what I know now about the shit we'd be dragged through... Well, let's just say I'd of had that job and new life in Quebec by about September of last year.

There are auxiliary complications that are making my life almost unlivable. But, if you read my writing and if I am The Boy Who Cried Wolf that my mother claims I am, I suppose you already know that.

Here's the thing. I don't write for you. I don't write for her. I don't write for anyone but myself. If you like reading about my life, that's great. If you don't, just ignore it as you would any other piece of Social Media crap out there. Why do I publish it in a blog? Because, you may not have experience with this, but there is nothing more freeing than airing out your dirty thoughts to the world. It is perhaps the most cathartic thing I can think of. And in the past, when I have written questionable posts, such as "Hotel Vertigo" or "Nightmare Journeys," I wake up terrified that I exposed myself, only to find that at least one other lonely soul out there was uber appreciative of my candor.

Transparency. I think you have to have it if you are going to attempt to create anything of any value. Tonight I was in a bad way and I wrote what most assuredly will embarrass my ego tomorrow. But it is Truth. It is Transparent. It is Real.

There is this song by the band Keane. It's called A Bad Dream. I've been listening to it on repeat while pounding out this post. I listen to it when I fly and I relate to the lyrics like the song was written for me.

Why do I have to fly

over every town up and down the line?

I'll die in the clouds above

and you that I defend, I do not love.

I wake up, it's a bad dream,

No one on my side,

I was fighting

But I just feel too tired

to be fighting,

guess I'm not the fighting kind.

Where will I meet my fate?

Baby I'm a man, I was born to hate.

And when will I meet my end?

In a better time you could be my friend.

I wake up, it's a bad dream,

No one on my side,

I was fighting

But I just feel too tired

to be fighting,

guess I'm not the fighting kind.

Wouldn't mind it

if you were by my side

But you're long gone,

yeah you're long gone now.

Where do we go?

I don't even know,

My strange old face,

And I'm thinking about those days,

And I'm thinking about those days.

Hm. I just love that song.

Anyway, I am not sure what else to say. Writing about this night feels extremely juvenile. Hell, maybe I am To Boy Who Cried Wolf. But, in the end, what did he really want anyway? Attention? A better tomorrow? I don't know.

Sometimes I am not even sure what it is that I want. A better tomorrow would be nice. Some peace and quiet and acknowledgment would be nice. Maybe some pinky movement from my Dad.

Uh. Probably a millions dollars would do it. Before, or after taxes, either way.

Year One

2010-06-24T17:15:00.001-05:00

http://www.vimeo.com/12836370

What's Your Name

2010-06-20T19:20:00.001-05:00

I'm not entirely proud of this, but one of the things I do at the nursing home when things start getting to me is I go outside and smoke with the people I call my Wheelchair Buddies. These are good guys. Nursing home regulars who are full of stories and treat me like like royalty.

Today is Father's Day. My mom left to do errands and my dad started crying when they put him in his wheelchair. "Are you in pain?... Is it your breathing?... Are you just plain frustrated?" It can be difficult to pinpoint what is wrong sometimes. My ultimate fear is not that he is feeling depressed, but that something is snagged or poking him.

Eventually, my dad falls fast asleep, and I go outside to see who's smokin'. There is a bus stop hut with chairs inside it for the smokers. It's quite cozy, actually.

Today the patio is deserted except for one of my buddies who is always quiet. I am not even sure if he can talk. But when I come outside, he typically wheels over to me slowly and then parks himself about 20 feet away to observe. I don't mind it. I am sure that I am an odd spectacle when I breeze in with my lip gloss and flashy Nike high top sneakers.

But today he rolls nearer to me and grunts. I look up to see that he is displaying a crushed cigarette box in his hand.

"Oh. You want a cigarette? Um, but I'm, not supposed to give them out" (This is displayed on a sign nearby)..."Okay, well, what the hell."

I reach out to hand the man a cigarette and he juts his head for us to relocate in the Smokers Bus Stop Hut. I shuffle in behind him and hand him a Camel Light. He grunts at me again.

"Oh, you need a light. Ok, here."

As well sit there, silently smoking our cigs, I note that this man is smoking the living shit out of this one cigarette like it's a joint, and then I feel bad. I am sure I totally was not supposed to feed him nicotine. He probably keeps that ancient crushed cigarette box as a prop to fool young gals like me.

He smokes his cigarette almost past the filter, then accidentally drops it onto his lap.

Shit.

"Hey, careful there! –"

I caution as he reacts in slow motion to the smoking artifact in his lap. This is turning out to be too stressful for me. I note that there is a fire extinguisher and a fire blanket in the smoker's hut. Probably issued by the Fire Marshall, I bet. You better believe that one of these dudes have inadvertently lit themselves on fire at some point.

I walk out and sit myself on the bench.

"I'm going to sit here now, alright?"

Geeze, I spend a lot of time talking to myself at this place. And then, sure enough, my wheelchair buddy slowly inches his way over to me. He plants himself about 10 feet in front of me and just stares. He makes a delightful sighing sound as if to say, "What a nice Sunday afternoon." I smile.

"What's your name?"

He points to his chest and grunts.

"Yes, you."

Then, oh-so-slowly, like a mime making sure the audience understands his act, the man reaches into his canvas knapsack to produce something. It takes him forever, and soon I am wondering if I should just go over there and pull out whatever the item is. Maybe it's a name tag or something.

But I resist the urge to rush and wait while he slowly unfolds a flowered piece of paper. I instinctually start to choke up, wondering what it is the mute man is about to share with me.

It is a birthday card, folded and unfolded countless times. He unfolds it with the speed of a slug and then looks up at me. I apprehensively walk over to his chair and peer over his shoulder at the old card in his hands. It reads:

God is smiling today because it is your Birthday!

I love you very much. God Bless you richly, Terry

I start backing up with my hand to my chest, holding in the countless hypothetical scenarios swarming in my head that might explain the reason why this lone man has been carrying this card with him for so long.

He looks at me with a glint of pride in his eye. I turn my head to the side and nod, suddenly feeling the heavy weight of the human condition. I smile at him and quickly walk away. I can see his reflection in the glass entrance to the nursing home. His head is cocked to one side, as if wondering if he had done something to upset me. It certainly wasn't that he said anything wrong.

I take the annoyingly safe elevator back to my dad's floor. With my arms crossed around me, I try to rid myself of the image of the man in the wheelchair. I never want my dad to be him, showing an old birthday card to a complete stranger. Hell, I don't want to end up being him either.

One cannot always count on the kindness of strangers.

It's Not What I Would Have Predicted

2010-06-19T17:22:00.000-05:00

As I drove to the nursing home this afternoon, I noticed lots of cars and balloons lining the streets in my childhood neighborhood. It is June, and therefore that time again: High School graduation parties.

The most vivid memories I have from my high school graduation are of being surprised at the number of friends who came to my party (we had really good sheet cake), and then the shock and horror of realizing that I, an honor student, had spelled "Congratulations" wrong on each and every one of my thank you cards.

Thank you for the lovely gift.

Congradulations on your graduation.

Love, Susan

Shit. It took me at least two weeks to live that one down. Worse yet, I believe it was my brother who pointed out the humiliating mistake.

I graduated from high school a decade plus one year ago. At that time, I was just coming out of what would later be identified as a Bipolar Depression, one that began in the fall when I came down with terrible cystic acne, and one that did not completely resolve itself until I took up binge drinking and had the time of my life my Freshman year at college.

In June of 1999, I knew that I would be attending my parent's alma mater, Macalester College. I knew that I would be working as a waitress at my favorite restaurant. I knew that I would be losing my virginity to my boyfriend Dan after smoking pot at the Beta Band concert at The Quest. A girl has gotta plan certain things.

When I went to college, I knew I would major in Studio Art. When else in my life would I get rewarded for painting? I knew I would study abroad in Italy and England, and I knew that I would go into design management for a major corporation.

But that's pretty much where the predicting stopped. When I was 22, I somehow lost the script for the upcoming events in my life. I did not predict becoming severely mentally ill, I did not predict losing my job and running away to Canada, I did not predict gaining 30 pounds after becoming a Bipolar pharmaceutical experiment, I did not predict having to crawl my way back to success over a period of five years, I did not predict having major abdominal surgery, and most importantly, I did not predict coping with cancer and a quadriplegic father before the age of 30.

One of the things I have learned from this year-long experience is that there are some things in life that you never, ever adjust to. In my morbid pondering, I have often wondered if the parents of my brother's friend ever got over his suicide, or if the coworker who lost her baby in the end of the second trimester was ever able to conceive of conceiving again.

You hear people say, "I never got over his death" or "I will never forget the pain and agony of miscarriage," but you don't understand the concept of never forgetting until something you wish you could forget happens to you.

Usually it is when I am away when the thoughts creep in. I will be driving or playing my guitar, getting off a flight, or just eating a piece of chocolate. It dawns on me that my dad is altered forever and the first thing that strikes me is that I did not plan for this. And then there is the slow firing of reluctant neurons, synapses in the brain that, try as they might, cannot rewire to picture daddy as a fully mute and handicapped man.

My mind and my heart just won't accept it.

I have no lesson. No conclusion. No witty quip to end this post. As I sit here listening to Dad's breathing machine on the Eve of Father's Day, I tell you that there are some things in life that you cannot predict, no matter how sickly deep your imagination can dig.

These are the curses that life can bring, and the metallic taste never fully leaves your mouth.

The Hole in Me, The Hole in You.

2010-06-14T06:59:00.001-05:00

Doughnuts.

Some people say that the reason they have holes in them is so they are able to cook fully and not become too doughy in the middle. Another theory goes that there was once a sea captain named Hanson Gregory who had difficulty eating his fried cake on a stormy night. He speared his fried cake through one of the spokes of his ship's wheel, which allowed him to get a better grip on it. After that stormy night, Captain Gregory instructed the galley cook to continue cooking his fried cakes with a hole in the middle for more manageable eating while steering the ship.

There are most likely dozens of other reasons, folklore and functional, as to why doughnuts are made with a hole in the center. Doughnuts find their strength through what might initially look like weakness. How can the absence of something that WE WANT (a.k.a. warm, doughy goodness) be an asset? This hole, this absence of material, this vacant space is what makes the doughnut uniquely delightful and adored.

Just like a doughnut, I've got a hole in me. You've got a hole in you, too. I'm not talking about those holes, get your head out of the gutter. These are metaphorical holes.

Unlike doughnut holes, human holes are initially hard to spot. And their function is never as basic as something like providing a better grip for chowing down.

Human holes do not have the charming facade that the middle spaces in fried cake batter possess. Human holes appear to be deficits, deficiencies, deformities and demons that require patience and wisdom to appreciate.

Even though these holes sound like crap in comparison to the cute little spaces in Doughnuts, I am going to argue that these human holes are just as handy as the hole in Captain Gregory's fried cake. Thus, our lives do not blossom by our strengths but by our weaknesses.

Human Strengths = Sprinkles, Frosting, Peanuts, Coconut Shreds, etc.

We are not defined by our sprinkles and frosting. Instead, lives are formed around the spaces that lack, the spaces that are not filled. The unfulfilled spaces.

Lack of money defines a life

Lack of love defines a life

Lack of control defines a life

Lack of health

Lack of security, food, freedom...

I am defined by the lacking holes in me. You are defined by the lacking holes in you.

(Once I put music to this, look for it on You Tube. I'm gonna make this into a nursery school song like Ring Around the Rosy so that children get a sugar-coated version of the miserable state of the human condition drilled into their soft curly heads good and early.)

If you think about it, the intrinsic need for "survival" (which now be can translated into responding to your alarm clock and getting up to go to the office for a paycheck but was once upon a time chasing a Wooly Mamouth through the woods while wearing a leather g-string and waving a sharpened stick overhead) is essentially avoiding the lack of essentials we need to continue life.

Once the hierarchy of needs are attained, we humans move onto loftier goals like passion, success and... fun.

All the while, we are driven by the things we want that we do not possess. It's the lucky hopes in playing the lottery. It's the thrill (and agony) of chasing after the love of your life who is always just out of reach. It's the drive to climb the corporate ladder for the corner office or the freedom of a boss-less life.

As frustrating as the struggle to attain these human desires may be, at the end of the day, it is what makes us go. If I had the money, if I had the love, if I had the freedom... (hold on, let me just close my eyes for two seconds to picture what that would feel like)... Okay,

If I had the money, the love, the freedom, I would have absolutely no need to create.

If I had what I wanted, I would lose this drive to suck up life, swish it around in my mouth, and then regurgitate it out to you at 4:00 AM in the morning on a Sunday night. I only write when I am emotionally vomiting on the inside as a result of one of my pesky holes. You will not see me whip out my laptop while lounging off the coast of Brazil in the arms of a strong, handsome fisherman who only speaks Portuguese.

I created this entire blog a year and a half ago in an attempt to impress a boy. Oh, ya, sure, I SAY that the reason was because I was raging after drinking spoiled milk that I had just purchased from the grocery store. That story is, of course, true, but let's be honest about what motivates people to sit down and create shit. Michelangelo didn't even like painting, but agreed to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel so that he would win the extremely lucrative contract to sculpt 40 statues for Pope Julius II's tomb. Even geniuses gotta chase the greenbacks.

My goal in writing through these holes (– and this is no news for you, I know, I know, but lemme just hear myself say it – ) is that I am trying to do some good old fashioned self-soothing to fill the hole up. Yes, I know that my entire thesis here is to embrace the fact that our biggest challenges fuel the forward movement of our lives, but, you gotta ease the pain, Man! I mean, some of us smoke, some of us drink, some of us go into a vegetative television coma, but none of these methods work as well as giving yourself a good workout at whatever it is that you do best.

For me, I write.

I am not saying that I am defined by writing about my life in a blog. I am saying that I am defined by the shit that leads me to write because...otherwise... I would have no need to write! It's the shitty stuff that leads to the success.

Shit = Success

So, no, we are not defined by our strengths (our sprinkles). We are defined by the areas we lack because our holes are what bring out our sugary greatness.

One Week With Pierced Nips

2010-06-09T12:30:00.010-05:00

I'm not sure why I did it. If you ask me now, it was a good experience, but if you asked me then, I'd tell you it was induced torture.

I survived one week with pierced nipples.

It all started on the Friday before Memorial Weekend. We were sitting outside smoking at work (i.e. being bad employees) when I glanced over at Emily's punctured ears and announced,

"I'm getting something pierced today."

I was suddenly the focus of attention. The other Emily put out her cigarette and offered up some previously unknown information.

"You should get your nipple pierced. We all did it Freshman year of college. It doesn't hurt."

This, of course, lead to me walking Emily behind the building for a sneak peak at her left nipple. Sure enough, there it was. A silver, glinting barbell spliced through the tip of her nipple.

"See?"

Hmm Mm, yes, I see.

Being the mover and shaker that I am, I immediately went inside the office to call Saint Sabrina's Parlor in Purgatory in Uptown. As I waited on hold to speak with the piercing specialist, Derek, I skimmed though a few Google sites and learned that I would still be able to breast feed my phantom baby with pierced nips. I would not, however, be able to have any "mouths or foreign objects near the piercing site(s) for at least four months" and would need to "soak the nipples in shot glasses filled with sea salt and water." Oh.

In my life as a Super Consumer, I've learned that all thought and reason go out the window when you really, really want something. Did I consider the fact that I would not be able to go swimming for several months with the piercings? No. Did I ponder if this was the right procedure for someone like me who has not pierced well in the past and is particularly sensitive in that area? Not really.

It was at this point when Derek got on the phone. The soothing tone of his voice told me that yes, this was the thing to do.

"Should I be scared?"

"No, not scared. But nervousness is completely normal."

(Derek sounded kind of hot.)

"So, let's go over your credentials... How long have you been piercing?"

"I've been piercing for fifteen years."

"And how often do you perform nipple piercings?"

"All the time."

OK, I was convinced. It was time. We scheduled an appointment for 6:00 PM. I decided I was going to get both nipples pierced because I like symmetry... That was the first in a line of several faulty choices.

"D – I've got a piercing appointment in Uptown at six. You are coming with me for support. I also want you to take documentary photography?"

"What!? What are you getting pierced?" (...she inquired in her slight Croatian accent...)

"My NIPS!"

"Your nipples? Oh my god, Susan. You are crazy."

(If I had a quarter for each time a person has told me I am crazy, I would be a rich woman. Especially around 1999, 2000, and 2004.)

The first thing we did was drive home so that I could get my credit card and more cigarettes. I did not want to show up empty handed. Then we drove down Hennepin and arrived early at St. Sabrinas. After signing the documents, I paced around in my flowing purple cotton dress, subconsciously holding my chest while I viewed the glass cases of sparkly metal and gemstone jewelry. Dajana diligently and silently snapped documentation photos of the scene. I found a case with green barbells.

"D, what would you think if I got green piercings? You know how green is my color?" (I was starting to feel cold and shaky, the same feeling I got while waiting to be rolled into the operating room for surgery.)

"Totally! Get green, dude."

I heard footsteps down the stairs and looked up to see a lanky guy with green ear plugs, small silver nose piercings, and glasses that made his eyes look twice as big as they should be.

"You must be Susan, hel-lo, I'm Derek, are we ready for this?"

"Oooo. Um, yeah. I am nervous. Take good care of me!"

"We'll take good care of you. Why don't we head on upstairs."

I introduced Dajana as my documentarian and Derek was cool with that. We walked into the piercing room that had the faint likeness of a gynecologist office, except for the fact that the walls were lined with huge photos of pierced body parts and the overhead lights had playful plastic barbell jewelry in them. It reminded me of the butterflies on the ceiling at my dentist.

"First, what music do you want to listen to?"

I liked Derek. Unlike me, he was so completely chill. I suppose that is a prerequisite for slicing metal through things like, oh, women's genitalia.

The first thing I found a bit awkward was knowing when to disrobe. D had been snapping shots like National Geographic until I slipped off the straps of my dress and exposed my bare breasts.

"Um. Do you want me to like, keep taking pictures?"

"Yes, totally D, we gotta get this all documented!"

The journalist in me did not want to miss one, bloody shot. That was the second mistake in a series of choices I made.

Derek washed and washed his hands with the seriousness of a surgeon before donning bright blue latex gloves. Then he got a pen and I shuffled toward him.

Now, the intimacy of having a complete stranger mark up your boobs is something to marvel. It was exciting and strange. I felt very naughty. All novelty left the building, though, as soon as he instructed me to hop up onto the table. My instincts clamped my thigh muscles tight, fearing the invisible foot stirrups that were not on the table.

This part felt similar to being at the chiropractor, when you are at the complete mercy of the back cracker and you have no idea when the pops are coming. Derek first placed forceps on my left nipple. They were cold and pinchy and unrelenting.

Next, he told me to take a deep breath though the nose and exhale it out through the mouth. Again, inhale through the nose, and "then on the exhale you will feel the needle go in.."

"Whhheewwww.....YOUCH..!?..!" Fuck!..."

The sensation with like nothing I had ever experienced. The pressure was immense. The tightness was excruciating.

"I am now putting in the barbell..."

As Derek screwed the bright green metal barbell into my left nipple, I began to sweat and get incresingly dizzy.

"Holy FUCK, that was awful."

"Wow" was all that D said.

The second time of anything is always more difficult than the first. The Beginners Luck has run out and you now know the shit that is coming for you. As Derek moved to the other side of the table to clamp my right nipple, I was starting to feel less like a rock star and more like a total freak. But I had to be cool for Dajana. And I didn't want just one pierced nipple. To me, that seemed bush league.

I had read in the Google posts that by the time you move to the second nipple, the endorphins surging through your veins are supposed to saturate your body with power and vigor. I had also read that, by the second piercing, your pain receptors in the brain and your sensitive nerve endings in your breasts now fully understand that they are under attack, so they decide to fight back. For me, the latter was truth.

I am not a screamer. I usually take things in stride and keep my voice at about a level five. But when that needle pierced through the right nipple, I yelled like a man in combat.

Once both barbells were in, I tried to sit up. I looked at Derek and he was casually chatting with Dajana. Problem was, I couldn't hear them. All I heard was a rushing sound in my head.

"HEY. I can't HEAR."

"Okay, let's lay ya back down. Do you want the fan on?"

I was very hot, actually. These were the first signs of shock. I've never passed out and now I was seeing what the entryway to Pass-out-ville looked like.

"Give me a sucker, please."

St. Sabrina's has these red suckers that look and taste just like the ones you get as a kid after the doctor's office.

I was feeling disoriented and weak, all the while trying to remain cool and calm for Dajana's sake. Derek was cool as a cucumber as he called down to the front desk for some chilled bottles of water. Then he wet some paper towels and put them on my forehead and upper chest. Everything felt tight and violated. I tried to keep chatting and playing Cool Susan, but truthfully, I felt like shit.

"Hey, let's have your friend run across the street to the gas station to get you something, OK? Have you eaten?"

No. I had not. All I did was shove a few stale Oreos into my mouth at my desk before departing for this little adventure. That was my third bad choice of the day.

Dajana came back with orange juice and Ritz crackers. The three of us sat in the room with the lights off while I was careful not to let crumbs fall onto my nipples. We sat there chatting as though out for Thursday night beers. Each time I tried to sit up, I lost 75% of my auditory function. Derek told us how he went to school for electrical engineering and then starting getting piercings during college. He spoke briefly and vaguely of his genital piercings, and that took my mind off of the situation for a moment.

That was right about when I looked down to see that my right nipple was bleeding.

"Oh. God."

"No, no, it's fine..."

said Derek as he started to mop up the situation. I was really struggling at that point and asked if he could please just tape a piece of gauze to each nipple so that I could pull my dress back up.

"You know, half a panty liner works well if you experience any spotting in the next week. Just stick them in your bra."

Oh, sweet jesus, I had no idea of the commitment that lay ahead.

I was eventually able to sit up and slowly walk down the stairs. I held my chest with protective instinct, and the people downstairs all smiled with knowing wisdom. I bid Derek adieu (not knowing that I would see him again in less than a week), and Dajana walked me outside.

D was quiet. I realized that this experience was one that caused her pause. She had texted everyone we know, so the congratulatory messages started rolling in:

You are my fricken HERO!

OMG, Suz, that is so HOT.

Can't wait to see them, Sweetie!

And so forth.

Dajana took me to Chipotle to get some food in my belly. I started to feel woozy while standing in line so I went outside to sit down. I ate about 1/8 of my burrito and was done. Next she took me home and I curled up on the couch in my sleeping bag. I fell into a strange slumber.

The next morning, I diligently mixed my sea salt solution in a coffee cup then poured it into two shot glasses. I suctioned the shot glasses to my nipples and leaned back on the couch to watch a gourmet cooking show.

The piercings looked good, I must say. The night before, much to the annoyance and/or chagrin of my friends, D and I texted out a full frontal shot of my new green metal nips.

But now that I was alone, I was feeling that this new body art was not matching my brand. I'd gone to Victoria's Secret to get two new bras, and they were both already spotted with blood on the inside. My mom does my laundry (lame, I know, but I wouldn't lie to you) and I was starting to think through plausible cover stories for why there is crusted red blood in the nipple area of my two new bras. Bug bites?

The rest of the week went downhill. I was unusually depressed and I had a negative meeting with the bosses at work. Each night I would lay on my back with the palms of my hands crossed, covering my boobs. My cats would come up and try to snuggle and I would shoo them away.

Then, on Wednesday night, I got an idea. What if I had the piercings taken out? What if I undid this misery all together? But that would mean that someone would have to touch my nipples and I was protecting them like a North Korean solider. I laid awake all night thinking about this. I thought about how this would save me four to six months of healing. I thought about how I would be able to go swimming now. I thought about how my boobs could get some action instead of being in the witness protection program.

Having made my decision, the next day at lunch, I stole Jessica and we drove to St. Sabrina's. I was so worried about the potential pain of the barbell removal, that the entire drive there I Googled things like 'How to be brave' and 'Dealing with nervousness at the thought of pain' on my iPhone.

I had an appointment scheduled with Derek, and I was feeling the shame of having him take these beautifully crafted nipple piercings out. But Derek skipped down the steps (after a long wait from two girls who passed out before me – one who got her nose pierced and one who watched) and he had no blame, no interrogation, no judgement.

The three of us entered the gyno room once again and Jess stood next to me with graceful support. Derek soothed my nerves with his chillaxed demanor and he was very gentle while unscrewing the barbells.

If getting your nipples pierced by a stranger is odd and exciting, getting your nipples unpierced by that same stranger is comforting and therapeutic. I was very tempted to ask this stranger out on a date.

Once they were out, I felt like I had been released from the shackles of body art. I had been released from tiny nipple handcuffs.

Now that I am healed and back to the way God made me, I am super grateful for the experience. It reminded me of what we go through in the effort for notoriety, hipness, and beauty. It made me think through the tattoo I am planning to get in honor of my dad. I really need to think through that, I think, because one cannot get untattoo oneself. Body art is an expression of the inner self. It is armor to protect against the outer world.

My boobs have healed well. No scars, with the exception of a stained Victoria's Secret silk bra. I am thrilled to be done with the experience, most likely never to be pierced again. If you are thinking about getting your nipples pierced, I will tell you that it DOES look pretty awesome. But you need to consider the level of sensitivity in those nips. Maybe test them out by having someone bite down on the tips really, really hard. And maybe expose yourself to a complete stranger and have him put on latex gloves. Put warm water in two shot glasses and put them on your chest. See how you feel about that.

At least try to simulate the nipple piercing situation before you go ahead and commit to the real thing.

Your nips will thank me for it.

Dear God

2010-05-26T15:03:00.001-05:00

Hi God,

It's me, Susan. I am sitting here at the nursing home with my dad. He is sick with pneumonia and some other stuff. If you ask me, he looks pretty normal, and he nodded "Yes" when I asked him if he is doing OK.

But, God, I am not so sure about things. I am worried. I am not sure how my dad is feeling on the inside. Today, I went in the basement, looking for stuff. I wanted to find some Dad artifacts and our basement is full of them. I found a Power Ball ticket and I also found a fake million dollar bill. I found some early school pictures of my mom and, I also found a letter.

It was a letter that my dad wrote to my brother in 1994 when Paul was at the Air Force Academy. My dad had the greatest advice in this letter and I cherish the luck to have discovered it. I read the letter to my brother, my mother, my best friend and, my dad. I just finished reading it to him and I am not sure what he thought.

The letter was about tough times. In it, my dad wrote about Camus and Rock Bottom experiences. When I read the sentence about "being dragged across a dry creek bed on your face," I could not help but compare that to the experience my father is currently enduring.

My Dad also wrote:

A bulldog wins because it can hang on
If you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on
I can do things through him who strengthenth me
Underneath are the Everlasting Arms
Remember that there is help from Prayer
Remember to set the test date ahead in your head
Remember that it's OK to call the learnings in this note uninformed and bull shit
Remember, I am very proud of you and that I know you have the power to do well in your courses
Remember that you have to help me put the lights on the trees at Thanksgiving
Remember, Speed, I love you and, remember the after-burners! (This last one if kind of a family inside joke)

God, I just don't know what to do. I don't know how to help my dad. He looks like he is in agony, God. Do you know what to do? Can you help him? I am not sure what else to say or ask of you.

Thanks for listening. Amen.

Sincerely,

Susan

What Happened When I Died – The Story of Neri and Fernando de Noronha

2010-05-19T01:04:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I think that I was not made for this world. I am either a crumpled mess or a star shining too bright. Either way, it wears me out.

I recently had the opportunity of a lifetime to leave this world and go to a new one. I visited an island off the coast of Brazil where I did not experience the dichotomy of too much or too little. On this island, I found my groove. The days flowed as they should, and my blood finally pumped through my veins with the normalcy that usually I run in circles to achieve.

Fernando de Noronha.

A protected and perfect marine eco-habitat and hour off the coast of Recife, Brazil. When the airplane touches down on the one, curvy runway, the vacationing Brazilians clap and cheer for the start of a new life. I later learn that they are actually clapping for the pilot if he/she has not bumped the landing. It's a Brazilian tradition.

On that aquamarine flight from the mainland to the island, I felt a physical, mental and emotional shedding of layers of cruddy anxiety and rage. The pieces of human misery shredded off my shoulders and back like flecks of dried dirt, and the remainder of that shit busted off my enslaved soul the second the wheels touched down on Noronha.

My bungalo at Pousada de Maravilha had a private deck with a bed. The view was so spectacular that I kept comparing it to level seven of a Mario Brothers video game. Strange mountains, strange lizards, strange turquoise water – the mere glance behind one's shoulder and it was easy to whisper, "Damn, God, you've done well on this one."

I had no idea how much peace my inner core would find during these four magical days. I had no idea that I would cry at night while looking up at the velvet sky poked with a million pricks of sparkles.

When a place is so beautiful that you cry, this is the evidence that we all came from a place before arriving on this Earth. The place we come from before we are born is so much more beautiful, so much profound, that when we soak up the essence of the mountains, the sea, and the sky, our souls are reminded of where we once reigned and we feel a longing to transcend the hell that can be our time on Earth.

Nerivado Paulo Da Silva was a guide on our dive boat. He took us snorkling, made us fish, and taught me how to samba. He opened his heart and treated me better than I remember any man treating me in my adult life. He spoke no English and I spoke no Portuguese. Yet we shared jokes, passion, and knowing looks.

Neri called me the other day. The expanse between Brazil and the States was crackly. I typed out in English what I wanted to tell him in Portuguese, then translated it on Google Translate. He listened patiently, adding, "Si...si... si, Susi."

He spoke back to me, and without recognizing one word of Portuguese, I understood the meaning. Sometimes it's all in the intonation.

And then,
"I LAV YOO SUSI, OKEY? OKEY...SUSI? I LAV YOO."

I could barely respond. My few words of Portuguese slipped my head. All I could think of was, "Si, Neri, si." And then I swallowed a bitter gulp, remembering Neri's bright orange house with the white picket fence. The hard-shelled crab that he scurried out of the kitchen. The motorbike with the two helmets - one for Neri, one for Susan. The fresh lobster in the shell, the 80 degree quiet breezes, and the whispered words of adoration in my ear while a strand of my hair is brushed aside my cheek.

I do not feel like I was made for this world. I chase after love, capture it, and then fuck it up. The hustle and bustle and complex sarcasms are too much for an already rocky mind.

But not on Noronha. Noronha is where I samba. Noronha is where I swim alongside turtles, eels, rays, and parrot fish. Noronha is where I sleep under the stars.

It is where a man with curly, long dark eye lashes, scars from shark bites and skin diving, and a pure heart lavs me for who I am, exactly how I am. Crumpled mess or bright star.

It was so entirely good to die for awhile, even if it only lasted four magical days.

Airport Opera

2010-05-03T00:33:00.001-05:00

Good evening, please take a red plush seat, the show is about to begin. This is a tragedy and a love story and a story that (I warn you) spans 30 hours. Please sit back and relax, the opera is about to begin.

Among the places that inspire melancholic lust, for me, the airport is at the top. Yesterday I experienced the longest span of travel in my life. I crossed 6,000 miles in three airplanes. The thoughts and emotions I experienced in the spaces between were intense and of the utmost blogworthyness in nature. So, I want to share with you, my reader friend. I want to take you on a journey of the Airport Opera.

Make sure you remember your itinerary, because I didn't. I don't want you to have to open your laptop while waiting in a sweaty check-in line. And so... we begin.

ACT I: Duty Free

Dimitri the taxi driver was at the Russian Radisson at 4:45 AM. He was there to pick up the two American girls, Susan and Emily. Emily was ready, but Susan was not. I was shaking out an unpackable camera backpack screaming, "Mother Fucker, Mother Fucker, Mother Fucker!!!" as I was unable to get all my items contained in my baggage for 20 days and two opposite climates.

Emerging the hotel at 5:15 AM, I slumped into the front seat of Dimitri's mini van and cooed my gratefulness at his loyal patience. Dimitri had diligently driven me and my research team around the chaotic streets of Moscow and waited while I sat for 2-hour spans in tiny Russian apartments, interviewing people about their acne.

Once we were off, I exhaled a ragged breath and started the process of saying goodbye to Emily. Together for eight incredible days, I was having a hard time letting go of my beautiful co-worker and friend. She was off to JFK and then onto Minnesota, while I was on my way to far off Brazil.

At the airport, the separation was swift. They would not let Emily stay with me as her flight was at a later time. A hasty hug and a meaningful, "I love you, be safe, kid" and then I was off through the grey customs lines and security check points.

Once inside, I found Gate 14. Air France to Paris, easy enough. I had an excruciating hour to waste. As is common when embarking on mind-boggling travel, I was feeling emotional. I decided to do the natural feminine solution and try a bit of shopping.

The Duty Free shop had the same allure as they do round the world. Bright lights, soft perfume, and delicate women dressed in suits. I had the silly idea that it was time I initiate myself into the Chanel brand by purchasing myself a tube of lipstick. Somehow, I intuitively knew that a fresh shade of lip color would hold me up through this exhausted state of endless transit.

I walked over to the wall of Chanel cosmetics. There were at least half a dozen shades of creamy pink lipstick. I at least knew that I wanted something pink.

A platinum blond elderly saleswoman walks by.

"Pajal-sta (please), could you help me select the right shade of lipstick?"

She looks at me and assesses my grey North Face fleece and backpack. Her eyes brush over a crusty zit on my chin. A drop of sweat rolls down my eyebrow and into my eyelashes. I am hoping that the experienced shop woman can give me this much needed girly moment, as I am already deeply missing Emily and feeling deliriously alone. Please, Shop Woman, let's do some retail therapy together?

"NO. I cannot do dis. You Chooz ALONE."

Oh.

Perhaps she could see the neediness in my face and did not want to be a part of helping an American girl at 6:00 AM in the morning. Alright, push forward, just do it, just pick a color. Rouge Coco creme hydratant is no less than 25 Euros. So, the color better be right.

I start drawing small lines of pink on the top of my hand... Gardenia, Soft Mink, Sugar... they all look relatively the same to me. Sweat is dripping down my face and I practically feel like I am shop lifting, but I am buying this Chanel lipstick, dammit. I don't care what Olga thinks of me.

Gardenia, No. 13 gets the final pick. I am hoping this lipstick will change my life. At the cash register, the woman seals it in a plastic bag and purses her lips, almost as though saying to herself, "Dis alone will not help your unkempt American looks."

Whatever.

I walk into the dingy bathroom and rip open the plastic bag that, because it's duty free, I'm pretty sure you are supposed to keep shut for the duration of your travel. I don't care, I need this.

Perhaps it's sleep-deprived delirium, or maybe just decades of genius branding, but I swear that the moment that over-priced Chanel lipstick hits my lips, it is the sexiest, most luxurious sensation ever. The shade is perfect. It is creamy and slightly luminous. I instantly look ten times more put together. Ten times more believable as a world business traveler. Ten times more affluent.

Thank you, Coco Chanel, you saved my dignity as a woman.

ACT II: Smoker's Machine

I quit smoking on 09/19/09. On 04/24/10, the day I landed on Russian soil, I started again. Don't ask me why, because it is personal, but I do not regret the decision. It's a temporary habit that I allowed back into my list of hobbies, like an ex-boyfriend who you decide it's OK to take out for dinner and a movie.

Thank God I started smoking again in Russia. Act II brings us to the tragedy of this piece. After the hype of the lipstick had ended, a deep loneliness set in.

U free?

I text Steve in Canada. Steve is out for dinner with friends. Next I call Mom, and receive her cell phone voicemail. I try brother Paul in Portland, still, no go. I call Aunt Susan, and even she is unavailable. What gives, I thought I would maybe wake her up. It is about 9:00 PM back home, but I am getting confused and thinking that it is their morning as well as it is mine. I'm dizzy and a little panicky as I continue to reach answering machines. In my second voicemail to my mother, I begin to cry unexpectedly.

"It's just that, I have 20 hours of flying time, Mom, and I'm like, SO TIRED, and my bags are all packed wrong, and my head hurts."

During this phoning frenzy, I am standing next to an eye sore that I call a "Smokers Machine." They are all over the Moscow airport, and completely offensive, yet a beacon for any smoker. They are these metal structures that you stand around and the vents suck up your cigarette smoke. Russian ladies stand next to me with Boris and Natasha raised eyebrow expressions. They suck on their skinny little Kent cigarettes as I cradle my fat Camel Lights. I look at the Camel Lights box and smile at the familiar happy desert animal. He is my only friend in this little corner.

No one from my family has answered my $3.99 calls. Steve has his own social events in Canada. Emily is stuck behind security lines at the entrance. There is no one else I really want to search for in cellular land besides these people. So I shuffle over to Gate 14 to check on things.

There is a group of the most distinctive looking business gentlemen I have ever seen. About five of them. All wearing three-piece suits with pocket watches and tie leather shoes. One man looks into my eyes, squints, and cocks his head.

"Bonjour?" I offer.

"Bonjour, Madamoiselle. Ça va?"

"Oui! Ça va bien, merci! (liar. I am shitty as ever.)

I walk back to the smokers machine and the business man follows. "FatiGUE" he offers with a sigh.

"Oui, moi aussi, moi Auuu...si."

After a bit of confusion, I learn that he and his colleagues are from Chad, Africa. After this four-hour flight to Paris, he will have a five-hour flight home to Chad. I, on the other hand, will have a 12-hour flight to my non-home in Brazil and then one more four-hour flight to the coastal town of Recife.

He smiles and it appears that he has at least 72 small white teeth. His face crinkles and I realize that I have found a temporary friend. I wonder if he watched me cry earlier? I say a quiet prayer of thanks to my Jr. High French teachers, my French Uncle, my time spent in Paris, and all that helped me be able to converse with that man.

Perhaps it was fate, perhaps it was just an early morning, but no one spoke to me in English that morning. I felt like an untouchable, and the anonymity of waiting for that flight was absolutely agony for a social gal like me.

ACT III: Texting Manifesto

If there is one business traveler faux pas I am guilty of, it is of having a touch of the dramatic, cautious nature that gets one the nickname "Danger Patrol" (or, D.P.) in the office with the other researchers. Every flight I board, I say my Sunday school prayer upon take-off and landing. I also have some superstitions.

After being in an engine failure situation as a child (no big deal in the end, the pilot just turned around after take off and landed back at LAX), I have these little rituals I HAVE to do before flying. I have to call my mom. I have to tell her that I love her and that I will see her soon.

I have to text my favorite people and give them something funny or random. I just have to connect in some way, so that if something were to happen on my flight, my last moments would not be cursing AT&T while trying to get service on my iPhone while plummeting 35,000 feet. It's as though I have to write my final manifesto via text, so that my smartest friends will carry on my legacy while talking at my funeral... "She texted me that it was the loneliest day of travel in her life. She said it was like an Airport Opera."

Other safety rituals: I have to STOP reading and SIT UP straight during take off. I am always prepared to jump a burning airplane, or to assist the fat lady next to me. I am not afraid of flying – I adore it, in fact – but I have this immense, over-indulged respect for it. It's ridiculous. I mean, your chances of dying in a plane crash are one in sixty million. Still, I have my habits...

The sweetest delight of any flight (besides speeding down a runway and taking off) is when the wheels touch the ground and I get to reconnect with my world. I get to turn on my phone and see if anyone has responded to my dramatic, prose-filled texts. After four hours of tossing and turning in my seat, we land in Paris and my phone blinks to life.

I hear the happy "ba da bing!" sound of an iPhone text and I see that indeed, it is from the number one person I wanted to hear from. Just that one text gives me the energy I needs to run to the flight for Sao Paulo. I slap on a little more Rouge Coco and clip my backpack across my hips and chest.

It's a rush through Charles de Gaulle, and I am disappointed because I so wanted to buy myself a white Swatch. I weave and bob through the alluring French folk and board the bus to the Brazilian flight.

I am smacked in the face by a new language and a dozen stares as I stand on the bus waiting to drive us across the tarmac to our towering Airbus A330-300. I smile (the universal language that gets you by) and quietly reapply just a touch more pink lipstick, ready to be whisked off to my next career adventure.

EPILOGUE

I flew Air France like a true superstar. I spoke French with the lovely flight attendant all 12 hours. I ate salmon, fois gras, drank champagne, and cried artistic tears while viewing Michael Jackson's This is it.

The final flight on TAM airlines was turbulent but I did not give a shit. I was sleeping away in seat 3F, having consecutive dreams about the handsome gentleman in seat 2A with the brown sport coat and the salt & pepper wavy hair.

By the time I landed in Brazil, the culture shock was intense. I sweated through my fleece flight suit in about 20 seconds flat. I did not even know how to say "Hello" (I still don't properly) in Portuguese, but everyone was all smiles at the hotel as I raved about the ocean view. No one understood me, so I used a lot of gestures to explain that I had not seen waves like this for a long time. I gestured to ask about sharks. They are notorious here. That was a funny "conversation" but it was helpful to learn that there is a barrier wall that keeps sharks out from the beach. Somehow I caught that only the men get eaten by the sharks because they are the only ones stupid enough to swim past the wall.

In my room, I strip naked immediately and say goodbye to Russian fleece clothing. I pull out my shorts and shake them out as if they are covered in cobwebs. I walk into the living room part of my suite. There is a refrigerator.

I open it up, and cold air blasts my drenched face. "HEY!" I say loudly to myself. My voice echos in the empty tiled room.

"THEY HAVE COCA-COLA!"

Of course they do. But this icy cold Coke is like the bond that seals the 30-hour cycle of lonely travel. I crack open the ice-cold Coke, lean back on the leather couch, and shut my eyes.

Finally, in my mind, I am home.

Russian Nocturne

2010-04-27T17:47:00.002-05:00

Russia is an iron horse standing after centuries of wear and tear.

Russia is a warm bowl of beets and beef, chilled with thick cream.

Russia is a moldy stairwell with a slow miniature elevator for three people, maximum.

Russia is shoes off, slippers at the door and, "Vud you like some tea?"

Russia is slippery streets in Winter, dusty streets in Spring.

Russia is toothy smiles and, "Vud you like an espresso before we leave, par-hapz?"

Russia is men in bright blue overalls working on construction projects.

Russia is dark in Winter and light almost 24 hours in Summer.

Russia is skinny Kent cigarettes and horseradish vodka.

Russia is beef, pickles, and sparkling wine.

Russia is old city buses and beautiful women walking pot-holed streets in 6-inch stilettos.

Russia is The Ballet.

Russia is 11 Time Zones, the largest country on Earth.

Russia is proud, solemn, strong... a Gigantic Mother Land.

Dear Dad,

2010-04-26T17:45:00.002-05:00

It's hard to believe that here I am in Russia again for work. This morning I woke up and I had a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that I have been here twice now while you have been immobilized in a nursing home.

... 'Nursing home'... I never thought I could connect that phrase to your name when I am at this age. I don't think I will ever get used to it. Maybe I am not supposed to.

When I travel for work, I have a chance to get perspective on what our family has gone through in the past nine months. It actually stings more to be further from the flames than when I am next to your bed at home.

One of my close friends is living with me who just recently lost her mom to cancer. We talk a lot about how when something goes wrong with a parent at our age, we are left without the use of a right arm. We both feel the need to hold each other up, although my situation is different from hers. I still have you here, although in an altered form. You are here to listen to me and I can 'hear' you when I look into your eyes.

Sometimes I feel closer to you when I am away. My memory expands and I remember what life was like before cancer came into our lives last June. The memories of walks around Calhoun, chats over coffee, and philosophizing during our 'S'mores Club' become more vivid. The memories are more tangible because they have room to expand away from the day-to-day terrors of keeping you going strong.

When I woke up today, the need to call you and hear your voice was so strong that I was paralyzed much like how you are physically. Here in Russia I felt so alone, like I was the last person in a tribe trying to hold on to traditions of the past. If I could have called you at 6:30 AM, it would have been 9:30 PM your time. If it were the olden days, maybe you would have just finished up a late-night lawn mowing session. Maybe you would have been heating up a Lean Cuisine in the microwave and looking forward to watching David Letterman. Maybe you and mom would have been on your way to a two-dollar movie at the Hopkins Theater. Maybe you would have said,

"Hey, RUNSK! I just cannot believe how clear you sound on the cell phone. The Mom and I are on our way to see a flick but we'd love to chat when it's over. Can we catch you after you eat breakfast?"

I would have been excited that you were taking mom to a movie (getting Cokes and popcorn, of course) and then mom would have gotten on the phone and diligently asked if I've been sleeping and if I am doing a good job interviewing. Mom would have asked if the food here is OK and she would have reminded me to be safe in the streets of St. Petersburg.

I would have hung up the phone, feeling comforted by hearing two happy, healthy parents, and I would have gone out into the day to make you proud.

Dad. I don't know how to find the place where I can reach acceptance with this. I refuse it. This fate was not made for you, my daddy. You continue to be so brave and strong. Your grace at facing this most unusual 'locked in' situation has been beyond inspiring. In the past, you sometimes got grumpy and went for drives around the lake. Sometimes I got to ride with you. You are, hands down, my favorite person to talk to out of anyone I have ever met. You are so deeply intelligent about the human condition, partly from battling your own trials and tribulations. This is why I so, so badly just want to hear your voice. I need your wisdom, your humor, your creativity.

On the days when you hurt, on the days when it is just too much, on the days when I look into your eyes and I know you are in there but you just can't sacrifice the energy to crack a crinkly-eyed smile, I am terrified at how bad it must be. This is because you have always, every time been there for me. Even when you traveled to three cities in one week, you still showed up at every softball game as the worlds greatest coach and lovingly assigned me to play pitcher and first base, just as I always wanted.

And when I have shown you my fear, my anxiety, and my disappointment in life, you have been right there with a poignant story of your own life path to serve as a comfort and confidence booster to me. I am happy, dad, but I also need you right now. The world feels big and I often feel alone in it. We are 'special' in our sensitivity, but as you know, not all people are like us.

You and I have been a lucky dad/daughter combo in our ability to communicate on such a deep level. I am asking you, from thousands of miles away, to institute those communicative powers and send me your Dad Vibes. I need your comfort, your strength, and your protection as my dad.

I have reminded you of this throughout these nine long months - no matter your inability to reach out from inside that still body, you are still my dad as much as ever. I don't know how to properly ask for a boost from you without the awkwardness of speaker phones or small verbal messages from mom. You were always my number one fan with this blog, so that is why I am writing to you here.

I love you so much. You are so much a part of me and I feel you in my heart while I am so far away. I hear your silly dad quips in my head when I walk on the street. I see the old Russian women hunched over in their coats with their big furry hats, and I hear you say,

"What do you think, Runsk, could I pull off that look?"

You are more than this Earthly body and you are bigger than this torturous life-sentence. Miracles are floating above, waiting to be granted to someone in need, and God how I know that I need you. More than ever.

Love, Your Runsky,
Susan

Pulling All-Nighters Club

2010-03-29T21:54:00.027-05:00

"Why do you think it is that I just can't get work done the normal way? Why can't I sit in my office desk chair from nine to five and get it done?"

I asked my therapist this a few weeks ago after practically falling asleep in my counseling session. I was recovering from a string of brutal late nights and all-nighters that were wholly unnecessary. Sitting in the comfortable leather therapy chair while drinking my complimentary tea, I tilted my head this way and that way, wondering if my therapist would say something about time management.

"What you don't account for, Susan, is the creative process. You are someone who embraces the creative process, so THAT'S why you cannot work a normal schedule."

Well... fuck.

If someone had told me back when I was going to summer school art classes that I was laying the groundwork for a future intimate relationship with Vivarin and building the skills that would one day require complex alarm clock games while 'taking a nap' from 2:45 AM to 4:45 AM, then I would have tugged on my mom's arm at the time and demanded enrollment into the Chess Club ASAP.

But, no, I am part of a different club. I am part of a club that, if you too are a member, you have an intimate knowledge the salty acid taste of Nacho Cheese Doritos and Coca-Cola at 3:00 AM on a Sunday night. You know the raw headache that submerges at 5:15 AM and eats away at the very bone of your eye sockets. You know the blurry distinction between clothing and pajamas when the day never actually 'ends.' You are part of the network of lonely, tortured, yet shining souls who scoff at traditional means for meeting deadlines. If this sounds like you, then you, my friend, are part of the Pulling All-Nighters Club.

Friends, I ask – Why do they call it pulling all-nighters? It's actually more of a pushing than a pulling, is it not?

It is more of a pushing, a forcing, a reckoning, a suffering. But not a pulling. Perhaps we will research the etymology of this phrase another time when we are not pulling an all-nighter together.

Pulling all-nighters is a tricky discussion topic. If we are not careful, we can tread into deeply embedded emotional issues. Right beneath the cocky surface of the all-nighters club is a layer of general self-doubt. You push any procrastinator (because that is who we are at our core, right?) into analyzing his reasons for waiting until the last minute resulting in working through the night, and you will find a complex web of excuses, exceptions, voodoo logic and anti-establishment thinking.

But, at the end of the day, why the HELL are we sitting up with our over-worked laptops when the rest of the neighborhood sleeps? Are we too good to follow the established patterns of the working class? Do we require a self-handicap in order to level the playing field so that we are not miles better than those nine to fivers (I am oddly tempted to call them 'Land Dwellers' – no clue why, but let's go with it – almost as though we have gills and they don't)?

Pulling all-nighters is not only an occasional habit. For some, it can become a Pulling All-Nighters (PAL) Lifestyle. How do you know if you are toeing the edge of a PAL Lifestyle? Well, for starters, if you have any 'Incompletes' left over from college and you are nearing your later 20's and beyond, well that is your back-stage pass to PAL Lifestyle territory. Have you been married over one year and you are still considering sending out Thank You notes but you are so past the point of what's considered appropriate that you just avoid the topic?

Yeah. You're in.

When I was in school, pulling all-nighters was an art, literally. I was a studio art major, and it was customary to break into one of the gutter windows of the art studio once the doors were locked past midnight. This was so customary, we decided to screen print it on our annual art t-shirt my Junior year.

Now, seven years out of college and wading my way through the adult work world version of the Pulling All-Nighters Club, I see that there are days when it feels the stakes have gone from a mere paint ball game (i.e. a religion paper due at 10:00 AM) to full-fledged gorilla warfare (i.e. multimedia all-day presentation due to out-of-state client with walk through at 8:00 AM). The emotions are surprisingly similar – in school you are slightly scared of your professor, in the work world you are slightly scared of your boss, and in both worlds, when you start to crash and burn, your bed starts to look like the hottest, hippest party place you have ever seen, yet your are NOT INVITED until your shit gets done.

This might sound snobbish, but one thing I can't stand is when I get into a conversation with a person who thinks he/she is part of the Pulling All-Nighters Club but who is really more just an honorary member. These are the people who are all like, "Yeah, yeah, Skittles and Mountain Dew, TOTALLY" but then you ask them if they prefer Vivarin or NoDoz and they look at you like you just offered up some Cocaine. Probe deeper and find out that these posers once stayed up until 1:00 AM to add on some final sources to their thesis.

The other night I found myself actually Googling "How to pull an all-nighter." I was feeling lonely in my plight and I simply wanted to read of other citizens of my club out there who have been to the Mountain Top and who have seen the light of day and the completion of the task at hand. I started reading 'How To Pull An All-Nighter' on wikiHow and I quickly became offended. The advice made me feel, well, marginalized. The article made it sound like all-nighters should be avoided at all costs. It made it sound like all-nighters are distasteful, unfortunate mistakes that we should learn from in the future. The article made me feel dirty.

Personally, I find comfort in swapping all-nighter war stories with my immediate family. We seem to be a bit vampiresque in our ability to skip the dark wee hours and rock it into the following day (only to eventually crash and burn, of course). We are like the Cullen's family of the Twilight series. (Whoa, did I just reference Twilight?) We sit in the lunchroom and stare at our uneaten food and we are united in our secret weirdness. There is something so comforting when, for example, my brother can top me in his ability to weave a complex night of cat naps, international emailing, and complex spreadsheet work only to shower and make it to the airport with less than 45 minutes to fly three time zones away then change into a suit to begin working straight into the next day. I hear that and I am like, "OK, so I am amongst my people. This is in my blood."

The point my therapist was trying to get at with me is that there is room for embracing the creative, last minute, hyper-focused part of myself that cannot seem to get going until it is the 11th hour.

Deep down, I used to be proud of my work style. Lately, I am ashamed of it. How do you go from being a monkey in the wild (e.g. existing as an art student) to being a monkey at the Zoo (e.g. working in a corporate job)?

I am lucky enough to be in a fringe industry where I get to be one of the 'cool agency kids' versus one of the Fortune 500 employees. I admire those out there who are of my ilk yet pull off the Fortune 500 lifestyle because that is an even greater stretch than what I do. At the large American corporations, you have diligent MBAs arriving at 7:00 AM and departing at 4:30 PM sharp to pick up Jack and Jill from daycare or let Humphrey the Yellow Lab out to take a piss and go for a walk. Something deep down in me knows that this person I describe will never be me.

I spend a lot of time making bullet-pointed lists in my personal journal with minor aspirations such as:

Be in bed by 10:30, read half hour, wake up at 7:00 AM

I can go back years –years–in my handwritten journals and find this particular bullet point multiple times. I have never so much as made this goal a reality for seven consecutive days.

The reason I find it hard to accept myself as an adult in the pulling all-nighters club is because this habit is entirely dysfunctional and detrimental to others. God forbid if you are an all-nighter puller and your partner is not. In fact, I feel guilty to this day for the countless nights I had the lights on in my college dorm room while my roommate slept. Tanya, if you read this blog, I am really sorry and I hope you still have 20/20 vision.

I know I am not cool for having the ability to watch the sunrise and still show up at the office, bleary-eyed. I know that I should not be using Brandnewsourmilk to try to glamorize our little club we are part of (you know who you are). No, I think all I am is just a girl reaching out to you, an All-Nighter Puller, and I am giving you a little blogger fist pump. Because, let's be honest, we are who we are, and there will always be a little All-Nighter in our blood.

Now, off to make another pot of coffee...

Dying Well

2010-03-20T20:34:00.016-05:00

A good leg will fall. A straight back will stoop. A black beard will turn white. A curled pate will grow bald. A fair face will wither. A full eye will wax hollow. But a good heart is the sun and the moon. Or rather the sun and not the moon, for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps its course truly.

– William Shakespeare, Henry V, with slight adaptation by Vice President Walter F. Mondale, eulogy for former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, January 15, 1978

When my mom asked me if I would be willing to accompany her to a Death & Dying class at church, I internally freaked out. First of all, the subject matter sounded panic-attack-inducing and secondly, how could I say no to my mom? Going at it much on her own for about seven months with my dad's chronic illness, my mom asks little and expects even less of others to carry her bone crushing load of grief and duty.

Of course I would accompany her to the special Death & Dying class.

We were back at church and it was my first time to show my face in several months. I kept my head fixed at the red carpet and the old tiles, acting more interested in centuries old flooring than in the caring and curious church-goers who I could tell were writing and crossing out polite intro sentences in their heads to find out, "How's Chuck?" Some church members just put it right out there and said things like, "Wow, I really don't want to ask you, but how's Chuck?" That's always a tough one because it's like, "Wow, your face looks like hell, I don't dare ask you about your bicycle crash, but, HOW WAS IT?"

My penchant for judging the reactions and consoling capabilities of others was soon to vanish, but, more on that later. Let's get back to church.

We were hanging our spring jackets in the coat rack and I was dazed by all the camel hair suit coats. My dad often wore a camel hair suit coat to church and he looked so handsome that I called him 'The Professor'. My mom and I were a little more stooped over than normal, perhaps subconsciously trying to shrink into the crucifixes and cushioned seats in the church lobby. I know for my part, I pretty much just wanted to skip the service, hang out in the church art gallery, get my booklet from the Death & Dying class, and skeedadle.

So, my mom is always able to surprise me with humor at the most unexpected times. We were hanging our jackets and she turned to me unexpectedly and goes, "Now. It's communion today. I HOPE that no one here has read your blog about communion and about how much you like the grape juice and the bread." That made me laugh. It's kind of an honor when my mom references my writing because I know it probably takes a lot of strength for her, a teacher and librarian of 40+ years, not to critique my laissez-faire writing style.

I made it through the church service, but not without crying during communion. I absentmindedly picked up one of the small stubby eraser-less pencils that they keep in the pew so you can sign in and make last minute donations in the mini envelopes. I had started to make a to-do list when it happened. As grief will do, a memory crept up the back of my spine and down my throat as fast as lightening. The memory was of how my dad would always watch me intently when I picked up these pencils and made little drawings. My mom would give a disapproving eye roll, but my dad would beam down on me and would later marvel at how round I could make a cup look or how my hand writing (most likely bubble letters that said 'SUSAN') was perfect.

There is nothing like the artistic approval of an artistic father. It is the ultimate compliment and confidence-booster for a little girl.

Then my dad would lean over and I would hear the soft crinkle of the elbow in his stiff black sport coat crunch as he drew his own little caricature next to mine, complete with his squared-off block hand writing.

Church is such a hard place for me to be. It represents the countless Sundays when my dad stood tall and dapper in his impeccable suits and sang beautiful harmonies to all the hymns. Church represents the stressful guitar and flute practice sessions that my dad and I had before performing flawlessly for the congregation. I would be white knuckling it up until go time, when my dad would look over at me, his silver flute would glisten in my eye as he brought it up to his lips. Before counting the beat, he'd whisper, "Ready, Runsk?"

"READY, Dad."

Well for this, I was not ready. Witnessing a disease repeatedly cripple and torture my Daddy has propelled me and my family into a cycle of grief that keeps on giving. The spaces between the bouts of pain grow wider, yes, and brownish green weeds grow between those spaces of grief, but then BOOM, a fresh stick of dynamite goes off, blowing dirt and roots all over the place and you find yourself crying with raw chest pain, as I am right now as I remember my dad in those damn suits.

Sitting next to my my mom at the Death & Dying class was, well, pretty awkward. It just seemed like we did not fit in. There was this very nice older lady sitting next to me and she smiled at me with her eyes. She did not smile at me with her teeth, but I am not sure if she had hers in. "You two ssshisters?" Ha, No, but that is nice of you. She's my mom. Later she looked at me with this face that had such a serene expression and I felt envious of her obvious comfort with the subject matter. "We didn't get to talk much, did we?" I love that about older people – they make you feel like you have known each other forever. They can almost see by the look on your face as to whether or not you have living grandparents and if you don't (like me) they basically become your rent-a-grandparent for the moment.

For all my internal kicking and screaming, the Death & Dying series of classes at my church is doing me some good. Besides now understanding exactly what it means to have 'Organ Donor' checked on my driver's license, I have come across some concepts that have been mightily comforting with regards to not only the life of my father but that of my own.

Respect death. It is our right to die. Death is not something to be feared but to be respected. This is why slasher films (i.e. Scream, Saw, Texas Chainsaw Massacre) are so screwed up because they convince us that death is something to be feared and avoided. Other cultures view death in the same joyful genre as birth.
The Pope (can't remember which one) said that the first thing we should be told the moment we are born is that we are dying
Plan for your death now. It is a gift to your loved ones to decide if you want to have a spaghetti dinner with silly hats or one million white flowers thrown into Lake Calhoun. Just plan it. IT'S GONNA HAPPEN SOMETIME.
Live your life fully now. Ask yourself if you are living your life the way you want to. If you are not, take the baby steps toward how you want to live it. The only thing standing in your way is you.

I had no idea that just as I was starting to formulate some comforting ideas about death that I would be challenged with something harder than comforting myself. I recently came into the situation where it was time to test my skills in comforting someone else.

My very good friend, Jessica, has been one of the few champions who has been with me through the past half year, thick and thin, always knowing the right thing to say, the right thing to do, the right thing not to say and not to do. She is a natural expert at grief herself as she and her family have struggled with her mom's leukemia for the past four years.

She contacted me a few days ago seeking solace after learning that her mom had made the decision to stop her fourth chemo treatment and go home for hospice care. Jessica was at my door, late during the week, and she crumpled into my arms just sobbing. I stood there and held her, knowing, but not fulling knowing the depth of her pain. She came into my apartment, and my friend Dajana and I tried our best to bring comfort to this wounded soul, this crumpled bird with broken wings. It was so hard to hear her say the words.

"She's my mom. I hear her voice on the phone and I am not ready to be without her. I am not ready to let her go."

I went through the very same type of consoling with my friend Farah, whose mother is in the hospital and went through the same ventilator/unconscious thing as my dad. We are such young girls - we are not ready for the trauma of losing our parents yet, right? After months of feeling like an alien freak dealing with my dad's issues, it was such a jolt of unfamiliar responsibility to deal with the same type of tragedy with two of my girlfriends. It scared me that for all the experience that I now have – a death of the same person many times over it seems - that even I struggled with the proper words of comfort for Farah and Jessica.

We held Jessica as she curled up on my couch. We wrapped a down comforter around her and cried with her. We looked at the polaroids of her recent 29th birthday. They revealed a beaming Jess, flanked by brother, sister, and mother on hospital bed, with Jess wearing a tiara and holding a Barbie cake that she baked. Just the way her mother used to make.

We fed Jess orange juice, made her sleep and shower before starting her 13-hour drive back to Arkansas to enter what sounded like the most terrifying life journey yet. I wanted to reach out and give her comfort. I wanted her to be excited about the bird necklace I got her, but I knew that look in her eye. It was the look of grittiness just to get the fuck through it and then come up for air later. I got out my sketch book and Googled mapped all 20 steps back to her home down south. I wrote it all out in big letters and colored every other turn in pink highlighter so that she could decipher the directions in the dark. I kept saying to the girls that I felt like we were in some independent film, especially when Dajana made banana and chocolate crepes.

But this wasn't an independent film. It was Jessica going home to watch her mother die. And there was nothing we could do to change it. We had already responded to the pleas to pray for a miracle. We were past the point of Oprah's Angel Network swooping in to throw cash at the situation. There was nothing we could do.

There was nothing we could do except accept it.

This was not the time for me to wax poetic about the gifts of the journey and the freedom and human right of death because, thing is, death SUCKS for the rest of us, right? Sure, it may be a release for the person who gets to go, but the rest of us have to go find new hobbies and clean the house. Death is like saying farewell to your friend going on vacation to Florida. You might be able to happy for her, but what are YOU going to do?

So, in the end, I think all we can do is focus on how we each go about dying well. How do we make a good death someday and how do we think about it now without sounding suicidal or morbid? Well, I believe that the only way to die well is to live well. That way, it won't matter when it is your own time to go on to the next journey.

There is no way to properly finish this blog entry because it not only deals with my own pain but also the pain of my dear friends. Sometimes I write stuff only to read it later and say, "Who wrote this trite and immature shit?" But, I'm at a loss. Death, just, give it a rest for a while, will you? The truth is, there are no rules. There is no guide book. Others will try to tell us what to do or how to feel, but the truth is that we walk in the valley of the shadow of death alone with whatever maker in which we each individually believe. Alright, but only because you know you love it, I will give you a trite-as-hell send off that I totally don't believe in (but, at least I'm being honest).

Here's to living well, dying well, and being well in this unpredictable experience we call being human.

Soothing Grape Juice Through A Straw

2010-03-02T01:35:00.011-06:00

"Is there anything special you will want for after your surgery?"

I remember my mom asking me this about two years ago. I was about to have major surgery and she was doing her mom thing in preparing my cocoon for when it was over. She wanted to know if there were books, magazines, foods, games or any other means of comfort that I would want while stuck on bed rest for at least two weeks. It would have been easy for me to take advantage of the situation and ask for anything at the time - A Nintendo DS, a new fluffy quilt, or probably even a puppy.

But there was one and only one thing I could think of that I wanted to have on hand after my surgery. And I mystically knew that I needed this one thing in the same way that one knows he needs water after a five-mile run.

"Get me some straws."

"Straws? Like, for drinking?"

"Yes. After my surgery, I will drink everything through those bendy plastic straws."

This was my one and only post-surgery request. I remember feeling surprised by my self-assuredness in this straw prophecy. How could I foresee with such clarity that I would not want to drink my beverages in the common lift-glass-to-face manner?

Sure enough, days later when I was drugged-up and plastered down in my couch, I coveted those straws almost as much as my powerhouse pain meds. The straws she got me were the disposable kind. They were bright white plastic ones with sharp edges and different colored stripes. I remember I would keep using the same straw for several beverages in kind of a ritualistic homage to that particular color. (i.e. "Today will be a red stripe straw day, and I will use this straw for milk, water and hot tea. Tonight I shall unveil my first blue stripe straw, and the first thing I will drink with this blue straw will need to be Coca-Cola. And next, I will use it to drink chocolate milk... Because this is the blue straw.")

So, that was how it went, and I don't know. Maybe it was the morphine, or perhaps is was my MBS (multi-beverage-syndrome) acting up. (MBS sufferers are those people who have to drink multiple types of beverages within one meal in order to eat their food. People with MBS particularly thrive in college cafeterias.)

The only explanation I can give you for my cherished post-surgery straws is that they brought me a deep sense of safety and comfort. No one would have known this except for the little spot inside me that lights up when something suits me perfectly.

Each person has their own 'straws'. They are the small particles of daily living that ease the strain and drain of 21st Century anxiousness. They are adult pacifiers. They are our Self Soothing Solutions (or, SSS)

My mom used to coax us into attending certain church services when there would be communion. We would go to church every Sunday anyway, but since we only had communion once a month, she could use this as extra ammo to show up for God on certain Sunday mornings.

Always tired, and half lulled to sleep by the slow and thick flowing organ music, I remember watching the high ceilings of our church while the ushers walked about with their highly polished silver communion trays. The trays were so ornate and beautiful. They would send dazzling reflections up on to the church ceiling. I would watch these vibrating orbs through my interwoven eye lashes. On more than one occasion, I would need a nudge from my mom when the tray would be passing into my lap.

The first trays always had the bread. Next came the 'wine.' Our church served seated communion, so the 'body' and the 'blood' needed to be portioned out into bite-sized individual servings. The bread was cut into tiny cubes and the 'wine' was served in tiny doll-sized plastic cups. I enjoy miniature things, so the first time I saw these plastic cups it took everything in my power not to collect them from the pews and take them home to wash and reuse.

(This next part will be bordering sacrilegious, but this is my story and I never truncate the truth with you.)

So, the deal is, I loved the taste of communion.

I know communion is supposed to be sacred, but for me it was also a culinary delight. Oh... that... bread. It was so delicious. Like I said, we each only got one little morsel cube, but that little morsel always packed a tasteful yeasty punch and I LOVED the texture and flavor of it. If you look around during communion, most people have their heads bowed and they are concentrating in prayer. I always tried to do this, I really did. But I had a hard time not chewing on my cube of bread, and it was hard to stay sombre when inside all I could think was,

"Oh. Jesus, you DO taste delicious."

I remember being anxious about the 'wine.' I knew that some churches used the real deal and others used impostors. I would be OK with either, but the first time I had communion at this church, the suspense of what they would serve for the blood was killing me.

I watched the beautiful silver orbs dance off the ceiling as the second round of silver trays were passed around. Down the row came the trays carrying dozens of cute-as-can-be little plastic cups of reddish purple stuff. Was it wine? Was it juice? Was it some type of exotic nectar?

As I took that first cup I shared a momentary glance with my mom. Her stern eyes told me, "Don't you dare take that miniature plastic cup home in your purse with you, Susan. This is CHURCH." I nodded with obedient self-control as I raised the mini cup to my lips to taste our 20th-century ritualistic version of the last supper wine.

We were two for two and a Go for the blood. "I LOVE THIS STUFF! What IS this!?"

For both the body and the blood, I was dying to know the brand of the bread and the type of juice selected. The fact that we were only given such small morsels made me covet the food items even more.

The juice had a familiar, yet fantastic flavor. It also conjured up a myriad of honey-colored happy memories. For the time it took me to swallow that small shot of liquid, I felt weightless, stress-free and my mouth was watering for more.

Riding home in the car, I unsnapped my small black velvet purse to check on the miniature plastic cup that I nabbed from the pew when my mom had her back turned.

"Mom? What WAS that stuff that we drank for communion? It tasted so good."

"For communion? That was grape juice, honey."

Grape juice?

Really?

I felt confused about this because I never remembered grape juice to be as amazing as this stuff was. All I knew was that I had discovered my new favorite beverage to add into the MBS mix and that I needed to ask my mom to add this onto her grocery list immediately.

The funny thing, though, is that I always forgot to tell my mom to get grape juice. And each month I was reminded of this when my taste buds were intoxicated by the sip of sweet nectar at communion.

Years later, I am now in charge of my own grocery list. Well, actually, I never make grocery lists, but what I mean is that I am the one in charge of making impulsive purchases at the grocery store.

It was not until recently when it dawned on me that I should try something other than orange juice. I ventured down the juice aisle and found such bizarre things as Pomegranate Banana Mango juice with fiber (fiber in juice?) or Kiwi Lemon Tomato Diet (diet tomato?) Then I came to a part of the shelf that carried a wall of deep purples and reds. This was the grape juice and cranberry section. Just good old, straight forward plain juice.

I bought myself a plastic container of Welch's 100% Concorde Grape Juice. You know, just the good old classic shit. I was so excited to get it home to try it!

Once I got home with all of my groceries, I did my usual routine of eating a bunch of random things at once, mostly in celebration of the fact that I got myself out there to get food for my barren refrigerator.

In the midst of a mouthful of grape tomatoes, blue berries, string cheese and cereal, I poured myself a tall glass of the grape juice. I took a big swig.

Whoa. Grape juice, when swallowed in larger quantities, packs a punch. I mean, that stuff must be so laden with sugar that it could provide half the calories of a meal (extra calories from multiple, unnecessary beverages is one of the biggest complaints from sufferers of MBS, by the way).

Two things - First, I was immediately aware that, as with anything, limitation inspires coveting. Even though I liked the grape juice, it was not nearly as delectable as the few drops I used to get in church. I think this was because I only was allowed to have a small quantity then and that made me crave more.

Second, despite the grape juice not being as awe-inspiring as in the church setting, I immediately knew this was going to become an SSS for me; a Self-Soothing Solution.

They say you should not use food as a comfort, but they are the ones hoarding brownies in the back seats of their mini vans. Food is comfort.

Recently, I came home from a long day at my job, and my apartment was feeling especially empty and also especially dirty. I was tired and I had two semi-unpacked suitcases from two separate business trips crowding my floor. I was feeling sick of my cats and they were feeling sick of me. I turned on the TV, and I felt sick of the Olympics. No, offense, but curling was on.

I shuffled around my apartment, and I felt sick of the books on my shelves. I felt sick of the food in my kitchen. I didn't feel like doing anything or going anywhere. I didn't feel like sleeping.

THIS was a moment when I needed to engage in some self-soothing.

A mentor of mine once taught me about self-soothing. I was at her house for a cooking lesson, and I suddenly admitted to feeling exhausted. She graciously led me to the guest room and encouraged me to take a nap. She surprised me with what she said.

"Good for you. You are learning how to self-soothe."

The first time I heard that phrase, I pictured an adult sucking his thumb. I know that is a silly image, but it is actually somewhat suitable for this concept.

We each need to find our go-tos when times get rough. We need our pacifiers. For me, it is sometimes something as simple as cracking out the ol' surgery straws and sipping on some grape juice. Other times, it is watching a Classic black and white movie. (This has recently become an SSS for me because it reminds me of nothing that is present day.)

It's important to designate the things that will soothe us as individuals on our own and alone because we never know when we will be in a situation where we have nothing but ourselves as a means for comfort.

I chose to write about SSS for silliness but also for seriousness. A week ago, Brand New Sour Milk turned One, and, after a year of blogging, I was ready to kill this project.

I started writing on February 18, 2009 after purchasing a gallon of milk that turned out to be sour. I had no idea that my anger and humor-inspired post would lead to a year of very public writing about a very private subject: Me.

I had no idea that it would lead me to write about my nightmares, the ups and downs of business travel, my failures, and the pain of long term illness.

When February 18th, 2010 rolled around, I could hardly believe that I had written over 50 posts filled with odd-ball photos, swear words, and private thoughts and hopes. My intentions in concluding this blog after one year rested on the fact that after a year of public writing, I felt ready to take the next step. I wanted to keep writing, but thought it was maybe time for a new venue.

So that was what I thought. When I moved in the direction of wrapping up Brand New Sour Milk, however, I found myself getting nostalgic. I looked back at my photos from my solo vacation to Seattle and I teared up over the S'mores night adventures with my dad. It was then that I realized that I cannot leave Brand New Sour Milk, because Brand New Sour Milk is my greatest SSS (Self-Soothing Solution)!

I love the fact that others read what I write, but, at the end of the day, what I write is for me. It is a way to soothe myself through the ups and downs of this strange life, and I am lucky if I can make myself laugh while doing it.

And so, long live Brand New Sour Milk. Here's a grape juice toast to it. I will go into this second year with more victories and sorrows, more swear words and secrets. Perhaps we will clean up the place a bit and re-brand, like so many others do. I don't know, maybe we'll start calling ourselves by the acronym BNSM.

Do you like it? I do.

Tears On A Plane

2010-02-15T17:46:00.028-06:00

I woke up from my mid-flight nap because my seat was moving… by itself.

Sara had accidentally pushed the buttons on my complex business class lie-flat seat and my seat belt was quickly tightening around my hips as I elevated back to an up-right position.

“Ouch! Hey, not your seat controls, yo.”

“I’m so sorry, Suze, I woke you up!”

I didn’t mind being woken up because it’s fun to be awake in business class. It’s a multi-media playground with dozens of still-in-theater movies to watch and newly released music to hear. There are so many choices that it can be difficult to make a movie selection. The flight from Moscow to New York was going to take 10 hours, though, so if I got half way through a dud of a film, I knew I could start another and even another.

Each of these airplane seats has its own TV that pops out of the armrest. The TV has a touch screen menu where you can flip through all the movie, music, and radio station choices. It’s interesting – On these flights I have had no need for my iPod. In fact, I basically pack a book that never gets cracked because the constant flight attendant service, complicated lie flat seats, and endless entertainment options are entirely distracting.

I scanned through the movie titles on my little TV. There were some alien movies and horror movies that I could immediately weed out. There were some movies I had already seen on previous business trips (no, not in the movie theater with buttered popcorn and Coke, as I prefer). I came across a title that looked familiar. It was a movie with Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart called Love Happens. Yeah, it sounds like a total chick flick, right? Well, feeling nostalgic to be leaving the beautiful mystique of Russia behind, I decided to pick the chick flick. Sara decided to watch the Michael Jackson movie, This is It.

Right of the bat, Sara was dancing in her seat to This is It, and I was sitting in my seat with my head rested on my fist, perplexed by Love Happens. You learn by watching the trailer that the movie is about a self-help guru who motivates people through the grief of losing a loved one. His career began when he wrote a self-soothing book to ease himself through the death of his wife. He wrote the book to ease his own pain rather than for the sake of his readers. He did not spend much time thinking about the other people finding comfort in reading about his personal struggle to achieve happiness, but they found their own comfort in his personal experience.

(Hm. Sounds familiar.)

About a half hour into the film, the flight attendants walked by with warm chocolate cookies and hot tea.

(If I have not made it blatantly clear in previous posts, I am so unfathomably grateful to get the privilege to have such nice accommodations when flying internationally for work. I just want to clarify that as I continue to pepper this story with the ever-delightful luxuries in Delta business class. I would never get this opportunity in my personal travels.)

As watched the movie, I enjoyed the flirty dance going on between Jennifer Aniston and Aaron Eckhart, but I was getting a little edgy watching the self-help guru scenes. The film takes place in Seattle and the storyline follows a weeklong workshop with participants coming to terms with their emotional pain in losing loved ones.

This one guy lost his son in a freak accident on a construction site. The loss left the father emotionally paralyzed and he was no longer able to work as a contractor. He could not even walk into a hardware store without completely falling apart. The exercise to aid in healing his grief involved the entire workshop group hand holding him through a trip to Home Depot so that he could get new tools. Aaron Eckhart’s character walked with the man, slowly pushing the bright orange shopping cart down the aisles as the man gingerly picked up a new hammer, a new tool belt, a new level, and dozens more tools needed in order to find his way back to his passion – Building.

By the time the man got to the cash register at Home Depot, the whole self-help group was there supporting him. I started to lose it. My unraveling began with my eyes tingling, but this soon developed into a bit of an unexpected scene.

Sara stopped her dancing and got up out of her seat. She walked up to the galley and grabbed a ginger ale. As she walked back to our seats, Sara stopped short when she saw the mess occurring on my face. I had multiple tears streaming down both cheeks and my nose was completely snotting up. By that time in the movie, Aaron Eckhart’s character was receiving a major embrace from Martin Sheen, who plays the father-in-law of Eckhart’s deceased wife.

Here I was, completely exposed in Business Class, where it’s easy to be intimidated by the uber wealthy and the business elite, and I was completely, audibly sobbing.

Poor Sara silently offered me her can of ginger ale and I nodded my head up and down quickly and then did the International Girl Sign of I’ll Be OK I Just Need To Cry This One Out (head down, shaking ‘no,’ right hand up in a stop sign).

I made it through the end of the movie, then bolted up out of my seat and dashed to the bathroom in my complimentary padded Delta socks. I could not bolt the door fast enough. I was literally choking as I endured a crying spell that felt unexpected, tortuous, and graphic. I was glad that the noise of the engines drowned out the sounds of my extreme sadness.

I stared at myself in the harshly lit airplane bathroom mirror. My face was pocked with red splotches and my eyes were lined with tiny red blood vessels. My nose was raw and my hair was a mess. (Although my hair has often looked like a mess lately, even when everything is all right).

I sat on top of the closed toilet and took a few deep breaths. After taking some moments to think through my messed up state, I was none bit perplexed as to why this breakdown had occurred. Watching a film where ordinary people are struggling with the pain, grief and paralysis from the death of a loved one must have opened up a soft pink wound that had temporarily grown a protective film over it.

I am flying home to the USA to the pain of my dad’s crippled, quadriplegic state. Tonight when I land, I will visit my dad in the nursing home where he moved while I was away, and frankly, I am terrified.

My dad is alive and I am deeply grateful that in this past half year, he has made it through the cancer, the sepsis, and now is enduring through the Critical Illness Polyneuropathy. But that does not ease the pain of what feels like the death of the life we knew before.

One morning in Moscow, I half woke up from a dream and I thought I saw my dad standing by my hotel room desk. I was in one of those weird dreams where you feel like you are awake, but you cannot move. My dad was wearing his favorite striped yellow and blue Polo short, khaki Nautica cargo shoes, and brown leather Docksider shoes. He was tan and his hair was blonde. He was grinning at me, like he had just taken a boat out for a spin on Lake Minnetonka.

In the next moment, I realized where I was and I was so depressed when I thought about my dad lying in his nursing home bed, stiff, scared, and suffering. I thought about his mouth, which has been unforgivingly stuck open with paralysis. Sometimes I think it looks like a silent scream. His hair, normally gleaming gold from the sunshine, is now a dull shade of grey and white wheat.

My dad cannot talk and his facial expression is limited, but we still have this deeply united bond in our communication. I feel so close to him when we cry together. My tears drip on him while he lays looking up at me. His tears form pools on his cheeks, and then it is my job to soak them up with the scratchy hospital tissues.

I wonder if the nursing home will have softer tissues than the hospital did?

My dad comforts me when we cry together. Even though he can’t hug me or comfort me the way he used to, the presence of my dad is still surprisingly Dad-like. He has not lost his ‘parenting power’ with me. I can sit by his bed and ramble on about my young adult life worries, and I can feel comforted by watching his listening navy blue eyes. Of course, these comfort sessions cannot happen in the same venues as they did before. I cannot take my dad to Perkins restaurant and eat slices of banana and coconut cream pie with him while drinking black coffee together. I remember doing this in college with him. He would drive over to my campus in St. Paul, and we would spend hours chatting in a booth at Perkins. Long after the pie and coffee were consumed, I would pluck at napkins and make little paper balls while I listened to my dad’s worldly psychological wisdom.

I have been out of the country for three weeks, and my sense is that it is time for me to step up to the plate and bring a heap of comfort home to my dad and to my mom. I got my dad a music box of St. Basil’s Cathedral by the Kremlin. During this flight, I have pictured myself walking into my dad’s room tonight, and presenting this Russian souvenir to him. Will he look happy? Will he cry? Will I cry? I worry that I will shudder into the kind of breakdown I had on the airplane today.

I think what happens when you experience a major life tragedy is that your conscious cannot hold onto that raw pain 24/7, so sometimes you temporarily forget about it. The pain absorbs into your subconscious, only to resurface at odd moments, like when you are flying home from a business trip and you are watching a seemingly innocent in-flight movie.

If God is gentle, then my dad has the ability to experience this same phenomenon, and sometimes his pain, fear, anger, and hopelessness seep into the background, allowing him a temporary reprieve.

I want to be strong for my dad tonight. I want to walk into that nursing home with an air that says this is only temporary, and we can make the best of it. I hope I can act the part of the jet setting successful daughter, if that is what my dad needs, or I hope I can fall apart and cry on his chest, if that is what my dad can handle.