Dialogue in Several Voices

You don't know everything.

Well, duh. Tell me something I don't know.


You don't know everything.

That's not news.

You think you do.

(Pause.) I've never said that.  I make mistakes.  I know that.  I do things I shouldn't do. I don't think I know everything.

You think you know how things should be.

How things should be?  In a way, doesn't everyone? Peace and love and everyone getting along and being with a person they love and doing jobs they want to do and food and health care, well, all of that, sound trite but aren't they really the answer? To how things should be?


You think you know how to get there. What will make people happy.  How to make people happy. 

Oh, come on.  I've always been very proud of my humility.

And you love to help.

What's wrong with that?  Isn't helping good?

On the off chance you know what you're doing?

I suppose, but....

Oh, humility.

I'll tell you a story.  Once upon a time, half a lifetime ago to a human, eons to a fruit fly, and nothing to a rock, there was a young girl. Teens her own age described her as *different* and a little weird. For an adult--which you  were supposed to be at the time--she seemed...disconnected.  As though we were alien life forms that she visited, finding us *different* and a little weird. She lived in a Star Trek world, scored by the Beatles, and embraced--one way or another--by Spock.

By the way and somewhat as an aside, speaking to "you" is tiring and a little confusing; remember this is a story and it's about you, but I am telling and it is also then about me. A first person P.O.V is easier. The pronouns become simpler.

Her younger sister was my oldest son's junior high girlfriend at the time.  She encouraged--almost begged me--to ask her sister to sit for my four kids. Which of course I did.

It was easy to bond over the Beatles and Star Trek.  And it became evident very quickly that she was a broken winged bird with a sad sad story.  The details are important, of course, for her life, but beside the point for the story.


I adopted her.  Oh, not legally and she still lived at home with the little sister, the dad, and the alcoholic mother--who happened to be another broken winged bird with a sad sad story. They fed her, clothed her, paid the bills, and took the brunt of her intense mood swings and terrible silences.

She was happy at our house.  Not effervescent happy, but ...happy.  In fact, she liked it so much that I just recently learned she told  her little sister to stay away:  "It's MY place now."

The church ladies (and, yes, I was one of them) took that sister under our wings.

Wait a minute--what was wrong with that?  If anyone needed  love and support, that poor child did.

No question, yep, she needed love and she needed support.  Couldn't get even a late night infomercial attorney to argue against that. .But--well--OK, define love. Start with that.

Caring for someone, delighting in them. Thinking of them before you think of yourself--you know, the whole love thy neighbor as thyself thing.  Caring. Trying to do right by them.  You know, love.

Warm feelings?  Needed?  Helping.

Yeah.  Warm feelings.  Caring.  Trying to help.  You know she didn't wear a bra because no one ever took her shopping for one.  

Poor baby.

Yeah, poor baby.  I know you're being sarcastic, but she was a poor baby, and a poor child, and lonely, broken, confused, angry.  She needed helping.

Did anything you did, collectively, individually, church ladies, you or me--did anything we ever did really help?

She got a bra.  

Now you're being sarcastic. Did she ever get what she needed?  Oh, and by-the-by and just wondering--who ever got the younger sister a bra? Back to the older sister, though.  Did she ever get what she needed? 

I don't know--no, probably not, no.  But we--I--tried . Really. Truly.

(Speaking in a gentler tone.)  I know.  You, they, I, we--all tried very very hard to help, to give her what she needed.  But--what did she need?

(Long silence.)  I...don't...know...I guess.  Love?  

How can you give someone what they need if you don't know what they need?  And, even  if you do know, how do you know you can provide it?  I mean I might know you need a heart transplant but that doesn't mean--

Finish the story.  I don't like the ending--never have--and I don't like the post script either, so you might as well get it over with.

OK, we'll skip all the middle part, the mother dies, the getting married, moving away--all of that.  Well and some pretty bizarre behavior.

Skip to the phone call.  I know that's where you're going, so just go.

The phone rings.  After years, that voice, her voice.  From the past, well, once the past, but now in thepresent, the right now.. 

I can hear it in her voice, something is terribly, terribly, horribly wrong.

And she called you.

I'm here.  At a hospital.  They think I'm crazy. My therapist, my husband (she called him by name but I won't).  They're trying to put me in the hospital.  They think I'm crazy.  Am I?  Do you think I'm crazy?  I'm not crazy am I?  Not enough to have to be locked up, am I?  Tell me what I should do, should I...?  I'm scared, but I don't think I'm crazy...?

She really didn't want to be crazy, did she?  And she called you.  When the chips were done and she needed someone--

Shut up.  I know what you're going to say.

Because you said it, which means that--

I said it.  You said it.  We said it.She didn't want to be crazy, which is, you know, a pejorative word for mentally ill   And she did not want to be that.  

So we told her--what? 

That she wasn't.  That of course she had issues and problems and needed help, but of course she wasn't crazy and didn't need to be locked up.

Which amazingly and exactly coincided with what she wanted to hear.  You don't need to be locked up--you don't need, oh, what's that word? Oh, yeah, right--treatment.  I think that's what they call it.

How do you know?  That's what my husband said.  How do you know what she needs? You're not there, you have no idea what's going on.  How can you say anything?  Not your business.

But I love her.  I love her and I, I want to help.

She didn't go in the hospital.

No.

No.  She didn't. At least not that night, not then.

Nice to be needed, isn't it?  And that used to be the end of the story didn't it?  Well, barring the subsequent phones calls of love, reconciliation, gratitude--oh, and the threats to bring a gun and shoot the entire family.

*****

  

  That used to be where the story ended.  Kind of sad, but hopeful too because she did have a therapist and she wasn't all that crazy and...well, you could always figure that maybe someday and somehow it got all better.

And the unicorns were dancing on the front lawn, sparkling in the silvery moonlight, gleaming in the sun. 

Hey. That's sarcasm.

Yeah?  We used to wonder, you and me, how it all turned out.   Turns out nobody really knows, not around here anyway.  All the letters come back to the family--

No one here and not at this address.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Girl at the Front

At the age of 63, I have been promoted to girlhood again. Or demoted--I'm not sure which. But I am now that girl at the front--the one who answers the phone, forwards calls, take messages, greets visitors and clients, offers the coffee....

I'm not putting down the job.  It's necessary and when we lost our receptionist I took over.  It's an architectural firm; I do marketing.  The work of the architects, project managers, and drafters can't be done at the front desk--at least not easily.  And clients pay for their services, not mine.

And it's been an education.  Just learning to answer the phone--okay that was a no brainer--but answering the phone with multiple calls coming in, needing to check with the callee to see if they could/would take the call, transferring calls; I've always been afraid of tasks like that.  There's a lot of jobs that I don't consider beneath me--I think they're beyond me. The thought of a headset, taking orders at a fast food window, AND filling the orders, or waiting tables, remembering orders, serving food, or check-out clerk, the list is very long. I raised four kids, so you would think that multitasking especially while serving food would be second nature, but not so much.

I'm excited that I can now fax, overnight plans and packages, run letters through the postage meter, scan things on the big confusing copier.  For me these are huge achievements, since I've usually been the type standing there staring helplessly at whatever I'm supposed to be operating, making whining noises, wringing my hands (whatever 'wringing' is) and looking around with pleading eyes and pathetic desperation, hoping for a rescuer..  Inept would have a kind description.

But that's not the education I've gotten sitting up here.  The education is--like most things--about people and, in particular, about the difference between being a function and a person. 

The Girl at the Front is, for many people, a pure function.  You can be rude, impatient, and dismissive to her and (apparently) think nothing of it.  I don't get the abuse of people who work in more lightning rod places--we're not repo folks, bill collectors, customer service for really bad products--and thank whatever gods may be that I'm not a telemarketer, but there's enough.  It's apparently my fault if a someone hasn't returned a call or isn't available right now. Plans haven't been approves, permits not granted, and the new puppy pooped on the carpet.

When people come into the lobby it becomes even more interesting.  Many people are quite nice, especially when they don't know where they're going, or need me to call the person they plan to meet.  Some are even shy. I like making people welcome, offering the coffee and water, chatting if they seem to need to talk. However, dismissive is the polite way of describing the behavior of some.  No eye contact.  No thank you.  No hello, no goodbye.I've interacted more personally ordering a hamburger over the intercom.

I'm guessing that for many reading this it's a big oh, well and so what.  Goes with the territory, if I don't like it quit, and deal with it--it's human nature.  And actually I do.  It isn't personal and it sometimes gives me an excellent gauge of clients.  I've always thought you could learn a lot about people by how they treat their "inferiors." And how often they don't realize the power of these supposed inferiors--how fast and untouched do you want your food, how quickly will you get that warm blanket at the hospital--and what might I say to the managers here?

And therein lies the real lesson here.  The firm is Lauterbach & Associates, Architects,  My last name is Lauterbach--ex-wife of the founder--who still works here--mother of the CFO.  I do what I do because it's needed and you pretty much need to put on the big girl panties and do what's needed these days.

But I find it very interesting if I introduce myself.  The Look crosses the person's face as I suddenly transform from function to person.  Possibly even a Person of Some Importance. Big smile then. Effusive pleased to meet you.

It's been, as I said, an education.

Oh, and by the way, when you come into that irritatingly empty  lobby--remind yourself that even The Girl at the Front has to pee occasionally.

Broken Hallelujah

 Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah.

It's been used in everything from Shrek to House and sung by everyone except my next door neighbor's niece's cousin-by-marriage's brother-in-law.

At least I don't think he did.

.Overused, cliche, cheap meme to suggest depth and poignancy?  Maybe.  But I think it's love.

When you--when I--fall in love, anything, everything is an excuse to talk about the loved one.  Air?  Did I mention He breathes air?  Milk?  Too easy with a new baby. Shoes?  My grandson takes his shoes off when he comes in the house. "Gotta hand it to you...."  My grand daughter has two. Hands, I mean.  Love is physical, visceral, the longing to taste a name on your lips, to bring them into every moment and space you occupy.

Poetry, music, a voice, the line of a dancer, beauty in all its guises is the same.  The song plays you, the words write you.

Love  You can love a piece of  music with the same yearning to possess and be possessed as any other love..

Jeff Beck's Hallelujah plays my heart, grieves and elates me.  When Cohen sings, I whisper the words with my lips and in my mind: it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah...And even though/It all went wrong/I'll stand before the Lord of Song/With nothing on my lips but Hallelujah.

I hold my lover close, trace the curve of his cheek, the line of his shoulder, play my fingers down his spine, my body bends to his.  Love is not a victory march/It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah. I know this.  I listen to him breathe, listen as I listened to my children, standing by their beds. Breathe, breathing with them, one breath follow another.

Please.

All breath stops.  It's a simple bare boned fact. They leave us, we leave them. Fact.

You always disappoint the ones you love.  Not every day, not all the time, but as inevitably as rain will come, you will hurt the ones you love. You can't unring the bell, if you rip your tongue out, the words can't be unsaid, 3:00 AM tears, and a thousand nights of kneeling on broken glass will not change one moment.

And--why should I even bother to say it?--the ones you love will disappoint you, hurt you, rip your heart out and samba on it with a partner.

The world itself will break your heart.

The poem on paper will never be what you wrote in your mind and the music you play will never be what you heard

And yet. And yet...there is the poem, a lover's touch, the baby's diaper may stink, but there is the intoxicating scent of baby, the soft gloriousness of a baby's skin.  The sunrise over Haleakala  flames with colors even if you're shivering in a jacket that isn't as warm as you thought and you the coffee's lukewarm and tastes like bad instant and the rock you're sitting on is cold--and besides rock is, well, hard as rock.

The is-ness of it all. 

Pirouettes and pratfalls.

And so  Hallelujah with every breath.

Imperfect and imperfectly. A song that sings me.

Because There's a blaze of light in every word/It doesn't matter which you heard/The holy or the broken Hallelujah.

I sleep next to my lover, hold a grandchild, my old dog slips away with one breath, then none all at the gift of the veterinarian's needle. I'll stand before the Lord of Song/With nothing on my lips but Hallelujah.

It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.


What else is there?  Hallelujah.


Imperfect. Flawed and failed.

Hallelujah.

Me and Oral Roberts

Heal!! He laid on hands, this intense, florid man, sweating and teary eyed.  The man, woman, or child kneeling at his feet--if they weren't on a stretcher or in a wheel chair--frequently were crying too.  Their stories had been told, their need for healing proclaimed to the heavens and the congregation--along with us out in television land.
Oral Roberts seemed to wrest miracles from Jesus; the physical effort was evident .  Nothing gentle about this.

And nothing quiet about the healings either.  Rejoicing swept the congregation, the newly healed and Oral Roberts praised Jesus--and cried.  Faith healings take place in in an ocean surge of waves, and spray, and salt.
I was eight and this was the 50's in North Carolina.  We weren't always regular churchgoers but my mother was raised Baptist, Jesus was always watching us, and she read a chapter from the Bible to me every night.
I also lived in a world where grownups never lied and people were to be trusted.
My mother's health was fragile.  She had bronchiectisis (a lung condition somewhat like cystic fibrosis) which regularly put her in the hospital about once a year.She nearly died having me and "was never the same."  When my dad was gone--he was a Marine--I would slip into her room at night to check to be sure she was breathing.
So I wrote to Oral Roberts to ask him to pray for my mother to be healed.  As far as I could tell, he never failed on TV and his prayers had to be just as effective at a distance.  As I mailed the letter, I imagined my family's surprise and joy.  I didn't want thanks--I just wanted my mom to live and figured that the Reverend Robert's prayers seemed to have a power my night time Our father who art's and God blesses didn't.
My theology was weak and so was my critical thinking--but I was eight. Not stupid, just ignorant and a bit naive.
I did get a letter back.  There was a generic  paragraph promising prayers for me and my loved one.  They would lift us up to the Lord or something like that.
The rest of the letter was a two paragraph plea for money.  I don't think it was explicitly said but my eight year old self found it pretty implicit that this money would make the prayers much, much, much more effective.
I was disappointed but not devastated.  More like the dawning of Santa is your mom and dad, that growing awareness of the limitations of sleighs and realities of life.
I wish I'd written to thank him.
Some facts, like chicken pox, are best taught/caught young.

Help! I'm Addicted to K Cups

I like to think I'm a good person and at least a pale shade of green.  My recycling trash container is always much fuller than than the one that contains, well, trash.  I buy recyled, local, organic, advocate for sustainable solutions at the architectural office I work at.  I know what Cradle to Cradle is, unplug electrical things when I can and when they aren't needed....

I really really try to be a good person.

But my partner's daughter gave him a Keurig coffee maker for Christmas.

Now, you first have to understand--we really enjoy coffee and drink it morning, noon, and night.  When we first got together I did have to teach him that grocery store brand ground coffee made into pale brown water is NOT coffee.  I introduced him to the coffee grinder and Trader Joe's Organic, Shade-Grown, Fair Traded Coffee.  (It's the way I salvage my guilt over what I know can be an exploitive, environment destroying, high pesticide product.)

 

And then the Keurig showed up.  And I mocked it--who know what kind of coffee really was in those little plastic K cups?  I mean--PLASTIC?  And they don't recycle.

Then we had the first cup of dark roast.

"OK," we agreed, "Not bad for when you just want a cup.  Or for company."  Quick, easy, flavorful, and kinda fun--all the buttons, the hissing noise, and the pretty blue lights.

Nice on occasion , we agreed.

The first hit was just experimental.  Why would we abandon our old coffee maker which held so many cups and could be programed to have a full pot ready before we got out of bed?
In the next few days we blew through the samples that had come with the Keurig like a politician grabbing face time on TV.  No limits.

Then--the supply was running low.  Panic set in.  Where do you go to get more--who's your connection?
Turns out Costco carries a big box of 80 of Newman's Own for $33.00.

I brought it home.  John added up the cost and gave me THE LOOK.  "Do you realize how much this costs a cup?"  No.  He told me. I just could not keep the number in mind; it always drifted away.

Besides, while not cheaper that making a pot, well, you know, sometimes we didn't actually drink the whole pot  and then we wastefully poured it out. And the Keurig brew is certainly cheaper than Starbucks and their ilk.

I try not to look at the old coffee maker which seems to be lonely and saddened, asking what did I do wrong?  It doesn't seem to be buying, "It's not you, it's me."

I don't even tell myself I can quit anytime.  Turns out we ALWAYS want only one cup.
Really.

We pretend that pile of little plastic cups in the trash does not exist.  And--after all--it is Newman's Own: organic and fair traded.  The Newmans are very environmentally aware you know.

Now I'm wishing we had a Keurig at work.

I know I need help.

Is there a support group out there for me?

We could have coffee.

A Secular Christian?

Secular Jew is an accepted description of a person who identifies as being Jewish but is Jewish in a cultural, nonreligious way.  OK, I do understand that being Jewish is different than being "Christian", since there's a whole tribal identification and--like being mixed race--in a sense you are what the world will name you.

Christians aren't quite the same, though shared experience can create a tribal feeling for sure:  church suppers (just listen to Garrison Keillor), nuns with rulers, bathrobe Christmas pageants, Midnight Mass--. And, since many of the US's immigrants are traditionally Christian, you have the whole food and whatever connected to the holidays. Tamales, stollen, a German pickle, clam chowder, or Taco Bell so mom doesn't have to cook, whatever it is, it is, and hallelujah.

My parents were both from the South though my dad was very evasive about what he actually believed and we weren't constant church goers, I was raised a Protestant Christian.  Jesus watched every minute of my day and was very sad when I did anything wrong.  My mother read a chapter of the Bible to me every night; I said the Lord's Prayer and long list of God blesses kneeling by bed, hands porperly folded, before I went to sleep.

Christmas was magic.  Mary and Joseph, shepherds, Wisemen, and all the friendly beasts clustered around a baby while the angels sang. Every Christmas Eve I searched for the Star as I also watched for Santa and listened for the reindeers' jingling bells.


Peace on Earth and a Charlie Brown Christmas tree.  I won't give up my claim on them.

That I don't believe in Christian tenets anymore in any orthodox or even unorthodox way, I believe deosn't matter--I cling to my right to my heritage.  I collect nativity sets, sing Christmas carols when no one can hear (do unto others), remind myself that each person carries a spark of the divine and when I feed the hungry, clothe those without clothes, I serve whatever is holy in all of us. I should judge not and should remember that if I have two coats I ought to give one away.

For those who believe I still say I will pray for you.  "To whatever is at the heart of all this and cares" may not be much of an address but I don't think it's the dead letter office and prayer is as good a name as any.

Tradition is good, love is even better, and stories that encourage children to believe that hope shows up in surprising ways, the angels sing of peace, and the scraggliest Christmas tree can shine like a star are, I believe, mine to claim.

Reading Confucius

OK, there's no question that the email surprised me.  Actually I assumed that the writer had somehow gotten the wrong address because a) she wanted to send me a review copy of a book and b) she was doing so because she liked my website. I did my best mental Scooby Doo huh? and promptly emailed back that while I never objected to getting a free book she obviously had the wrong person.

But then she used the secret words: Barefoot on the Ground.

And that's how I got to read Confucius from the Heart by Professor Yu Dan, translated by Esther Tyldesley.  (Translators should be recognized and applauded.) Published by Atria in October, 2009.

I'm very glad I did. And not just because of a certain implicit flattery in the whole exchange.  (Just the thought that somebody else might be reading this besides those of you who love me and maybe do pity reads...wow.)

The back story on Confucius from the Heart is fascinating in itself--I had thought Confucianism in China had been pretty thoroughly relegated to the past and the bad old days before the Revolution.  However, the Analects were/are still being studied in the universities, at least as literature and history, and in 2006 Professor Yu Dan of Beijing Normal University gave a week long series of televised lectures on Confucius for the modern world.

To nearly everyone's surprise, apparently including Professor Yu Dan's, it was a hit.  (I'm not sure what would be comparable here--Socrates as an Oprah's Book Club selection?) Over ten million copies were sold in a short time.

Now it's been translated and brought to the English speaking/reading world.

I described to someone as the kind of book you keep reading long after youve closed the covers.  And it is.

At first it seems not so much simple as it does simplistic. Follow your internal moral compass.  Choose your friends wisely.  Govern yourself before governimg others.  Show respect to all.  Don't compromise your principles for public honors and material rewards. Nothing new.

However, as you continue to read, the point of the simplicity becomes clear: becoming  a junzi, the person who has found balance, equanamity, right thinking, and right action,  should be attainable by all.  The translator chose to use the Chinese word "junzi" throughout because, she writes, the concept has no satisfactory English equivalent. The simplicity of the writing does not suggest that becoming a junzi is easy, something that can be put on a poster and then absorbed.  Rather it is that becoming a junzi is a process that does not require an advanced degree or esoteric learning.

But that isn't what I mean by continuing to read the book long after it's been read.  When I started this review/essay I was sure I would be done over the weekend.  which was two weekends ago.  Looking back I should have listened to Confucius's statement that it is best to talk about one's achievements after they have been achieved.

Um, yes.

Recetntly I had the bad experience of finding out that someone I had referred a friend to, a person I thought was honorable, to be trusted, turned out to be not honorable, not trustworthy--in fact someone who tried to take advantage of my friend.

I woke in the night reading the lines that warn against those who are charming and say what you like to hear.  Choose a friend who tells you the truth, Confucius says. And you can tell this person because the words won't drip with honey and will not always be exactly what you want to hear.

May not make a funny fortune cookie, but I wish I'd listened sooner.