head wind journal

Animal Antics

“I just wanted animals to do what they do. It’s very poetic, and unpredictable. You never know what they’re doing next.” — Heiner Goebbels, the director of “De Materie,” a Dutch avant-garde opera being performed at the Park Avenue Armory, on the use of live sheep in the show (New York Times Quotation of the Day, March 25, 2016).

Thanks to the universe and its animal lovers who post videos! Where would we be without them? Dying of boredom hunched over our computers, tablets and phones.

There is only so much work we can do in one sitting, only so much raunchy news and outright terror we can handle after a few minutes. And so we welcome the animals and their antics, no matter how silly. In fact, the sillier the better.

Cat videos outnumber all others (15 percent of Internet traffic, according to one article). Traditionally, dogs have been more popular pets in the United States, but cats now surpass dogs. They are easier to care for and take up less time and space in our busy lives. They may be difficult to train or stuff in cat carriers, but not to capture on video …

In the last week ALONE, here are the videos friends and family have emailed me or posted on Facebook:

Cat plays with new puppies
Cat plays with dolphin
Cats steal dog beds; dogs shake out cats or steal cat beds
Dog bounds into ocean for first time
Dog plays ball with machine
Dog greets owner after absence
Three dogs left home alone (and caught on camera) jump from couch to couch in living room
Dog plays with kangaroo. Kangaroo plays with dog.
Bird pecks dog on ass
Turtle plays ball with dog
Wolves and hyenas hunt together, proving Middle East peace is possible
Miniature horse and turtle munch on shared lettuce
Parakeet shoots down tiny ramp on tiny skateboard
Chicken rides on back of turtle
Butterfly perches on lizard’s head
Snails are pimped out with psychedelic designs to prevent getting squished. They look like walking Easter eggs.
Naked (hairless) guinea pig poses with food (lettuce, grapes, strawberry, cupcake …)
Baby goat with ADD runs around in a frenzy, jumps on other baby goats and knocks them down
Animals sniff flowers: cat, dog, fox, tiger, chipmunk, squirrel, gopher, rabbit, raccoon, owl, orangutans, lizard, donkey
Animals yawn: hippo, kitten, monkey, turtle, porcupine, panda, koala, seal, donkey

cat hanging on — Ho hum, get back to work you idiot

Yes, even animals get bored and tired and must take a break. Let those silly idiots videotape something else.

Living in Tree Houses

I love trees and have always wanted to live in a tree house – with certain amenities like a bathroom, microwave and Internet. I’d be fine with the light of my computer, iPhone and lanterns.

In fact, I’d make a good forest ranger, living in the mountains, keeping fire watch, ever on the alert for pyromaniacs and lightning strikes, big bears and wild cats. This profession especially appealed to me while working in crowded and cutthroat cubicle land.

When I played in trees and tree houses as a kid, watching for fires was the last thing on my 10-year-old mind. Playing with fire was more like it. My girlfriends and I disappeared into the woods after school and climbed up the big oak tree to the shack it held in its branches. The tree and its wooden treasure were on the property belonging to three brothers who went to our school. They were close in age, half French and half English as were many of my friends and neighbors in Montreal. The oldest of the three brothers was a bully, the next was a friendly clown and the youngest, our age, was a heart-breaker.

We were most afraid of the bully, so after we removed the “No Girls” sign covering the miniature door and stepped in, at least one of us kept nervous watch. We only stayed long enough to paw through a pile in the corner and find what we needed – strike a big-bulbed match, light a cigarette, take a few woozy drags, and rifle through magazines hoping to find naked people, having grown bored with National Geographic. We were disappointed. Cars and sports. We were never caught, but a big part of the excitement was anticipating the possibility. Who would chase us around, who would joke, and who would try to kiss us?

One afternoon we heard voices below and looked out to survey. It was our younger sisters! All four of them threatening to tell if we didn’t let them come up. We didn’t.

We always scurried down and left quickly but lingered in our minds, wishing we had our own tree house. I think we asked our fathers and were told it was dangerous or illegal. Funny how they had this mono vision photo in their minds of “women’s place,” aprons, frilly dresses and manners and girls being protected and there we were outside in all our free hours, wandering for miles, finding hobo camps, crawling out over ponds on massive tree branches, hijacking rowboats, outrunning the security guards and police and weirdo who waved his wiener. “Keep them safe” was the motto, but the reality was don’t think of them at all. While we may not have been directed to the soccer field and cheered on, we were left to define ourselves.

We tried more than once to erect our own forts, sticking to ground level, pulling bushes around us, but they were never as, well, uplifting or exciting as elevated hideaways with views. And they were easy to smash down as we’d soon discover. In those days, dogs ran all around the neighborhood and a few East Coast hurricanes traveled up the St. Lawrence lashing their tail ends over Montreal, which is an island in the river.

Today when I see little tree houses in back or front yards, I wonder who plays in them. Boys and girls, sure, but what kind of adventures do they have? Pre-fabricated like the tiny wood houses? Do they bring in their cell phones and computers? Do the parents stake out nearby? Keep careful watch from across the yard? From their tree-level windows?

Keep careful Neighborhood Watch on us all as we walk and drive by? Are they watching me snap these photos of their tree house? Don’t worry, I mean no harm, I’m not a wild dog or howling wind. Just a quiet observer. Listening for the lost voices.

Suicidal Tendencies

Something about running into the teenage boy in my building, the one with the angry expression, and then seeing “Suicidal Tendencies” carved into the alley cement a few feet from his car catapulted me back in time.

Back to when my sons were that age, still living with me but wishing they weren’t. Listening to that post-punk/thrash band Suicidal Tendencies and others like Alien Sex Fiend, Bad Brains, Biting Tongues, Buzzcocks, Circle Jerks, The Clash, the Damned, Death Cult, Death by Stereo, The Stranglers, Violent Femmes.

I didn’t hate the music, coming myself from rock ‘n roll era, but it was sometimes hard to take after the mellow 70s. And louder than 80s alt-rock Duran Duran, U2, Nirvana, Talking Heads, Blondie. I guess it was the underlying hard-edge anger of punk that got to me, the desire to be destructive, and I sensed some of that punkish attitude in my sons and remembered it from my own late teen years. We weren’t really punks, but we were pricks/bitches for that particular hellish period.

It’s not an easy time. We want to be free and yet we aren’t quite ready. We need our parents, usually financially and emotionally, and we hate them for it. And we also know everything. Old people are so stupid.

Fortunately I remembered how I felt and so was able to navigate interactions. Not perfectly, but with a desire to understand and communicate. In all honesty, I was still learning to grow up myself. I give myself credit for trying with sincerity.

My older son went off to college 100 miles away. My younger son and I were lonely and missed him. Then our cat died and we both blasted the music and drank and smoked too much. Then there was the unfortunate incident with my car, which resulted in my son’s doing community service, picking up trash on the beach in the early morning hours in fluorescent jackets.

He got my old car running again (I got a new one) and painted it with psychedelic designs and colors. The times when he had to give me a ride to work, I hunched down so no one could see me. His best friend’s father, who happened to be the city’s mayor, made him park down the street from their house.

By this time I was somewhere between suicidal and homicidal. When I had the chance to move, I did! I fled the not-yet empty nest. Luckily my son found a new job and home working for a few months with friends at the Grand Canyon. There I think it didn’t matter how loud they blasted Butthole Surfers.

My older son called from college. He wanted to tell me something. “You know, I used to think growing up meant that everything was going well. Now I just realized that something weird is always happening and we NEVER figure everything out.”

Too Kind?

“You are the kindest country in the world. You are like a really nice apartment over a meth lab.” – Robin Williams on Canada

Canadians have a reputation for being kind and polite. When I tell people I was born in Canada, they sometimes say, “No wonder you are so nice.”

Whether this reputation is deserved I don’t know. I remember my mother pointing out a boisterous group in Eaton’s Department Store in downtown Montreal when I was a kid and saying, “Americans,” meaning rude Americans. Meaning we would never act like that.

Like all generalities, how far does this stretch? Maybe there are rude farmers in Saskatchewan or uncaring city dwellers in Toronto. In certain parts of the United States, such as the Midwest, the people I’ve met are genuine and friendly. On our summer vacations on Cape Cod, I thought New Englanders were polite even if they spoke with a funny accent. And when I visit family in North Carolina, I am charmed by their southern soft speech and manners.

What is meant by “nice?” Good manners, politeness, can mask a lack of caring and even an underlying hostility. A veneer of niceness can be just that, not real, not soul deep. A group that is considered loud in one country may not be perceived as such in another, although it could be argued that part of being nice, or having respect for others, is taking the time to understand how others see the world.

Recently I read an op-ed piece that Canada may lose its polite reputation now that hip and handsome Justin Trudeau is prime minister. He will lead the country to jostle for more space and recognition on the international stage, to speak up more and not always kowtow to the craziness or arrogance south of the border or anywhere in the world. If so, I hope he does not lose his manners and confuse trumpeting bellicosity with leadership as certain aspiring American politicians do.

Unfortunately, kindness is often mistaken for weakness. Those of us who are good at listening and who hesitate to interrupt or steamroll are not perceived as having strength or ideas of our own, if we are even seen or heard at all. Of course, it is our responsibility to speak up when necessary, but it is difficult and not always well-received by those who are used to taking up all the air space.

Recently, a friend accused me of letting others take advantage of me. It’s true, I sometimes listen more than I care to and I don’t always say what I really think for fear of being unkind. But I draw the line at being walked on, by anyone. So I responded to my friend’s accusation that she doesn’t know me very well if she really thinks that. She answered that I wouldn’t be hearing from her again! Defriended me on Facebook, of course.

These rude door-slammings are not what any of us need, personally or in the world. Even if we feel angry, we still need to talk respectfully if we are to have any hope of workable relationships – if we are to diffuse the ticking time bombs, keep the meth labs from blowing up, the weapons safely stored, the drones happily delivering Amazon goodies. The world needs diplomacy and compassion more than ever as we face difficult truths and differing realities.

Phobic Minds Do NOT Want to Know!

How many types of bugs live in your house right this minute? More than you might think! Science weighs in. (Washington Post, January 19, 2016)

Aaack!

Skimming the morning headlines, this one about bugs catches my eye. I don’t want to know the answer. I am bug phobic and the idea of crawling into the attic or under the house to inspect for insects is my worst nightmare.

After living in pest-free homes for 10 years and feeling safe and smug in my new, second floor apartment, I was horrified the other morning to see my cats chasing a roach across the living room carpet. Not the biggest I’ve ever seen, but not the smallest either. I jumped up, almost spilling my coffee, and tried to trap it under a bowl. It eluded me and ran under a big copper pot I used for firewood near the fireplace.

I considered running right out and buying spray, but decided to bide my time. At least, so far anyway, it had not run under my bed. I kept my eyes open the rest of the day, annoyed that my sense of calm had been disturbed.

Surely such a well-maintained building would not have roaches, like many of my older beach apartments. Memories of putting away my husband’s shirts and encountering a HUGE roach waving at me from a hanger. Of waking up in the middle of the night to cat commotion – and a GIGANTIC roach climbing the wall. In that case, I chased the creature down with adrenaline, emptying a whole can of bug spray until it limped under my wicker shelf unit. There it remained since I was too afraid to move the shelf and check. Years later when I moved my son found its desiccated body.

In that apartment I also used to get flying beetles during the summer, at least one a day. They were clunky, bonked themselves into the window and were easy to trap under bowls. Sometimes I was brave enough to slip a piece of cardboard underneath and run outside. My neighbors must have wondered what I was doing, flinging bowls into the air. Other times I lacked courage and the bowl – or bowls – would sit there a long time. One day my mother-in-law came over. “What are all these bowls?” she asked. “There’s a bug under each one,” I told her. She loved to tell that story on me.

Another time my mother was visiting and in flew a beetle. She calmly walked over to the window, curled her hand around the buzzing bug, and carried it out the front door. Clearly I did not inherit my bug phobia from her!

But back to the current invader. The next morning, there it was on the kitchen floor, my cats hovering, nose to nose. Again, it was faster than my bowl and ran under the refrigerator. I scurried straight to the drugstore and the pest control section, armed with memories and internet research. The “bait station” will poison a roach but not before it returns to the nest and poisons the rest. The idea of a “nest” nearby, say inside a bedroom wall, next to my sleeping head, sends me totally to freaks-ville! And if I only kill one roach, what if others come looking on a search and rescue mission, the big guns, the big kahunas? The ones like they have in Texas that FLY or in Madagascar that hiss?

I carefully placed the bait stations under the frig, copper pot, bookshelf, kitchen and bathroom sinks. I talked to the manager of the building. We’ve never had roaches, she assured me. We spray outside regularly. Maybe it came in with something, like paper bags from the grocery store.

Yes, I have been bringing in plants from the nursery, pots from the garage, and more paper bags than usual from the nearby Trader Joe’s. Keep me posted, she said.

After several days, no reappearance. Knowing it may be a free rider, a hitchhiker, rather than a permanent resident has reassured me somewhat. But I will NOT read the article about the latest scientific study on how many other bugs are lurking around. I honestly don’t want to know if it’s more than I think. I don’t want to think about it at all.

TGIM … Welcome Back Monday

Is it possible to feel totally whacked out and yet calm and clear at the same time? Bumbling but happy? That is how I felt today. A sense of profound gratitude for all I have. For feeling I am in the right place for me and all is well.

But, as I read on a friend’s Facebook posting, the week between Christmas and New Year’s is the week when you don’t know what day it is. Are you at work, between families, at the airport, staring at boxes in the garage, lounging in your flannel pajamas, flip-flopping around the corner, flipping through a book, wanting to get out for a hike or sleep all day? Finishing up the holiday cookies or grinding away with the NutriBullet? Should you be serious or silly?

Think about the year ahead or lurk in the shadows?

I stopped in at Trader Joe’s for a few items, thinking it would be quiet. Wrong! Everyone from five miles around plus straggling visitors was there. Toddlers and grandpas. Mothers and young guys.

No one was moving fast. Like we were all in a trance. We were bumping into each other, but none seemed impatient or upset. One young woman was reading off the ingredients to the “green juice” to her husband. Another was letting her kids run around wild and for some odd reason it seemed okay. Others were filling their carts, piling high, overflowing. Preparing for the week ahead, for returning to normal life. Let it be Monday.

I asked one of the clerks where the aspirin was. Oh we don’t carry stuff like that, she said. Another clerk overheard and pointed to the booze. There’s all the pain reliever you need, he joked, in his Hawaiian shirt. I laughed, didn’t feel the need to tell him I hadn’t had a drink in 26 years. I appreciated the humor.

From there, I go to Armstrong Nursery. Study the trellises, not knowing exactly what I need.

Back at home, I measure the balcony wall for a trellis and unpack the morning glory seeds. I print out the tasks I plan to accomplish in the coming days when normal life starts tomorrow.

My cat comes out of the shadow, walks across my keyboard and settles into my lap, her head in the crook of my arm.

These Clerks, They Are A-Tryin’

I don’t know whether it’s this crazed time of year, or the demands of retail jobs in general, but lately I find several clerks are not paying attention to me. I am a small woman with a soft voice, so I make an extra effort to speak clearly. Even through my dark glasses, I can see their glazed expressions.

“I’d like $25 on that gift card.”

“Sure, $75 you said?”

“I’d like a plain coffee to go please.”

“Is that to go and do you want room for milk?”

“Did you say you wanted the receipt emailed to you?”

Actually, I didn’t say anything about the receipt at all. I was too busy punching in my membership number, my mother’s maiden name and date of birth, hitting No to requests to feed animals and the homeless, entering Debit or Credit and figuring out when to slide the card or wait! no, this is a chip card, insert and wait …

Most of the time I have pretty good luck with clerks. I understand how difficult the jobs are. I was fired from my only retail job and that was decades ago before multi-tasking became a prime requirement. While in college in the LA beach area, I worked for The Broadway (sold and renamed Macy’s in the ’90s). I did okay for a shy person and enjoyed helping people. The problem was they moved us from department to department, so we never really learned merchandise well. I especially liked women’s clothing and gifts and stationery and could usually figure out what items customers needed or would like in those departments. I ran into trouble when they moved me to men’s underwear. Sure, I met a lot of cute guys and their fathers, but what a mortifying price to pay. Then the corker was being moved to draperies. Draperies! What the hell does a 19-year-old know about the best fabric to pick for a West-facing, oceanfront mansion window, let alone color and measurement? Some wealthy biddy complained about my lack of interior design expertise and that was the end of my 6-month retail career.

Today I wouldn’t last even a week, I’m sure. Customers are more demanding and clerks are expected to do about 10 things at once. These are trying times and they are trying. Everybody’s in a hurry. If a line doesn’t move fast enough, someone shouts out, “This is dreadful, unacceptable!” I admit I feel impatient at times too, but most of the time it’s only a matter of five minutes and I can read the latest magazine covers as I inch forward: “At Last! <Famous Name> Reveals Dying Wishes!” “Ten Ways to Drive Your Man Crazy in Bed!” Behind the woman in yoga clothes who is complaining in a loud voice, I can’t help wondering why she feels her time is so important. Is she on her way to perform open-heart surgery? Is she late for yoga class?

Not only do customers expect smooth, fast-moving service from clerks, employers do also. Clerks are doing more than just helping one customer at a time. They are reassuring those in line they’ll be right with them, thank you for waiting. They are greeting customers as they come in the door. “Welcome to Best Buy! Welcome!” They are answering the phone! Giving directions, hours, checking to see if an item is in stock. Handling difficult transactions with flaky random-access computers and bar-code readers. Helping co-clerks do the same when they get stuck. Helping surly customers. Those with expired coupons or pouches of coins or multiple returns all on different credit cards. Those who complain about poor service and write nasty reviews on Yelp.

So I guess I can forgive an occasional distracted lapse, glazed eye and deaf ear. Feel my heart leap when a friendly worker takes the time to joke with an old(er) lady. Knowing that if I were in his or her uncomfortable shoes, I’d be that much closer to losing what’s left of my sanity. And for sure the job.

Oliver and Wayne

At the end of August this year, two well-known American doctors died within hours of each other: Oliver Sacks, M.D. and Wayne Dyer, D.Ed. They were close in age, the former 82, the latter 75, but far apart geographically, 4,900 miles between Sacks in New York City and Dyer in Maui, Hawaii. In my opinion, they were also far apart philosophically and in what they offered the world.

Dyer was certainly the more famous of the two. After a rough childhood in Detroit, spent partly in an orphanage, he joined the Navy and then attended Wayne State University. With a doctorate in counseling, he ran a private practice, worked as a high school guidance counselor and became a popular college professor focusing on positive thinking and motivational speaking. By the time he was in his 30s, he had published many articles and his first book Your Erroneous Zones. The book was a best-selling success and so Dyer quit his job and hit the road.

He went on to write more than 30 additional books, produce audio tapes and award-winning films, appear on television shows and lecture around the world, often appearing on PBS stations. His message of relying on the self to overcome restrictive social norms and other obstacles was delivered in a down-to-earth, folksy manner that appealed to many. Other early books include Pulling Your Own Strings, The Sky’s the Limit, Manifest Your Destiny.

Gradually, he crossed over into other realms, adopting Eastern wisdom, the teachings of Christ (if not the religion), and various spiritual philosophies such as the Law of Attraction. He urged people to be Christ-like or Buddha-like (kind, loving, peaceful) without following organized religion.

He was not without his critics and accused more than once of plagiarism. Your Erroneous Zones clearly builds on Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy developed by psychotherapist Albert Ellis in the 1950s. (Ellis’ first book, A Guide to Rational Living, appeared in 1961.) Dyer took a workshop from Ellis but never acknowledged his work or apologized after Ellis wrote to him. Ellis called this behavior unethical and unprofessional but also credited Dyer for grasping and clearly explaining his concepts, and for helping many people.

Oliver Sacks lived a quieter life, devoted to research and a behind-the-scenes chronicling of his patients and their diseases. A neurologist, he specialized in disorders of the nervous system, which includes the spinal cord and the brain. His many books were well-received best-sellers and included Migraine, A Leg to Stand On (about his own experience of losing awareness of one of his legs after an accident), The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (about patients who cannot recognize faces, a condition from which Sacks also suffered), Seeing Voices: A Journey Into the World of the Deaf, The Island of the Colorblind, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (a music lover and pianist, he and the book were featured in a PBS special) and Hallucinations. His book Awakenings, about treating a patients with encephalitis lethargica, was made into a movie with Robert De Niro as the patient and Robin Williams as Sacks.

Like Dyer, Sacks had some difficulties in childhood. Born in London to Jewish parents (both doctors), he and one of his brothers were sent to central England, along with many other children, to escape the German bombs in 1939. For four years they endured harsh treatment, unknown to their parents.

Fortunately he was able to finish his education in London, encouraged by his parents to follow his fascination with chemistry and physiology and earn his undergraduate and medical degrees from Oxford.

Following his internship, he traveled around Canada and the United States, completing a residency in San Francisco and fellowships at UCLA. In the mid-60s he moved to New York, where he practiced medicine and taught at several colleges, including Columbia University. In 2015, he published his autobiography, On the Move: A Life, discussing his homosexuality publicly for the first time. He also revealed in several articles that he was dying of brain cancer. To the end, his fascination with physiology, the brain and what makes us human kept him busy writing it down as his own perceptions changed daily.

The New York Times referred to Sacks as “the Poet Laureate of Medicine.” His Columbia colleagues honored him with the special position of Columbia Artist for bridging the gap between art and medicine.

Of the two men, I favor Sacks. It’s tempting for me to compare them so I can back up my preference, but I realize they occupy separate worlds and perhaps even appeal to separate groups of people. Each in his own way was helpful.

Dyer was out there and up there talking about the nebulous world beliefs and how certain ideas helped him and can help us. His motivations were I’m sure good ones, although he made a hell of a lot of money preaching to the righteous (and wealthy because they deserve it) choir. I think I read his first books and found them useful. They were not what you would call deep books and much of his advice I’d already heard, free and with more sarcasm, from my parents and grandparents.

He lost me when he crossed over into the quasi-religious realm – and when he moved his hands constantly while talking. So irritating. Around and around they went, like his statements, going nowhere.

“You’ll see it when you believe it.”

“We are not human beings in search of a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings immersed in a human experience.”

“I am a creation of the Divine Mind; all is perfect, and I am a genius in my own right.”

“Know that everything will happen at just the right time, at just the right place, with just the right people.”

Statements like this, that basically mean nothing, that promote “We create our own reality” drive me crazy. I doubt that the family that heads out on Sunday and gets killed or maimed by a drunk driver or a madman on a rampage really thinks that they were in the right place at the right time with the right people.

However, if Dyer has encouraged flawed individuals to accept themselves and pursue their dreams, perhaps he made a good contribution to humanity. As one of my friends said about some of this philosophy, “At least it keeps people from shooting one another.”

Sacks was a life-long atheist and suffered from severe shyness. He was not one to get up on stage and tell others what to think or how to act. He preferred to quietly examine the mysteries of the brain, the oddities of human nature and let the patients do the talking. By looking at what didn’t work in bodies and brains, he was able to contribute to what could work, based on science, not magical thinking. (Some critics accused him of being overly dramatic and using his patients to further his literary career.)

“My religion is nature. That’s what arouses those feelings of wonder and mysticism and gratitude in me.”

“In examining disease, we gain wisdom about anatomy and physiology and biology. In examining the person with disease, we gain wisdom about life.

Dyer claimed that a spiritual healer cured his leukemia and actually died of a heart attack. Sacks, on the other hand, faced his terminal liver cancer realistically, no divine intervention necessary.

“I am now face to face with dying. But I am not finished with living.

“It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me.

“I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.

A Place for Everything

My favorite part of moving is settling in. Finally. All the rush-hassle of packing, arranging movers, schlepping items to the Good Will or new home and living with ceiling-high piles of boxes subsides. Energy slowly creeps back, each day a sliver closer to being able to walk and think without creaking.

Figuring out where everything goes, the human trail of do-dads and odds and ends and artifacts and books and notebooks that I drag from home to home like a colorful kite I hope to fly.

My sister and I are both our engineer father’s daughters, with an innate sense of organization. An ability to be both creative and logical. Just as I can organize a story in logical fashion and my sister a website, we can also figure out the most efficient way to lay out and store items. And to make them look good too.

Each new home presents a unique set of challenges. What worked beautifully in one kitchen, such as putting all the pots and pans in a cupboard next to the stove, doesn’t work in another, with the stove cupboard so narrow it will only hold a wire rack. Or the bizarro cupboard with 6-inch deep shelves that worked for cookbooks now replaced by a pull-out wood tray that wobbles and sticks and makes all the plastic ware fly out onto the floor.

My sister is fortunate enough to have designed her kitchens and other spaces to exact specifications. She takes a place for everything to a level that would have awed our OCD father. That is a challenge, of course, just as working with what’s there is also a challenge.

I’m always pleased when items fall into the right place and are aesthetically appealing too. It doesn’t always happen immediately. Sometimes I sit in a room for a few weeks before it hits me that the couch would look better a few inches over, the tables and lamps need to be switched, and the ottoman should be moved out of sight completely. (It’s a small room.)

So far, I have really lucked out with the turquoise bureau. Originally enamel black with a slight Chinese accent, my mother bought it after dad died and she moved into a modern condo with a whole new look, including bright red and green glossy tables.

It was her bedroom bureau until she married our step-dad. I think he used it for awhile. When they bought a larger house, the bureau was moved into the guest room and painted white. A neutral palate for neutral guests, or for those of us in the family needing safe havens, including me, my son, and my niece (at different times).

The bureau has big, deep drawers and when I visited I was able to comfortably tuck away my basic items. But as time went on, I noticed the drawers began to fill up with my mom’s and step-dad’s overflow. They took up photography and my mom calligraphy and designed greeting cards and eventually got computers with all the design software. Each time I yanked open a drawer it got harder and harder, with paper and photographs and camera parts and computer gizmos jammed together and spilling over. Finally, there was no space in the bureau at all for guests and so I would just lay all my clothes on the other twin bed. (There was no room left in the closet either, which my step-dad filled with his elephant-sized Ansel Adams cameras.)

After our step-dad died and mom coped with running a big house by herself, I didn’t have the heart to say anything about the bureau. She finally agreed to downsize close to my sister and the time came to give away much of her furniture. I asked for the bureau and my younger son transported it in his truck from Hermosa Beach to La Jolla.

I had the perfect spot for it in my office, a little alcove in the wall. And I knew right away it should be painted turquoise, my favorite color. I hired my artist-photographer-musician friend Patrick to do it – bright shiny enamel. It pleased me to look at it every day and know it held all my office supplies beautifully.

Then I moved around the corner and what do you know, there was an alcove in that office too! And now, two years later, I move again. This time I have a walk-in closet off my office – and the CLOSET has an alcove for the bureau. They were made for each other. The moving guy couldn’t believe it when he hefted it in.

Yes, some things are a perfect fit, fall into their right place.

Saying Thanks

The other morning I was sitting at the hairdresser’s letting my color sink in. My iPhone rang. I almost didn’t answer, since one, I did not recognize the number, and two, my iPhone is new and the last thing it needs is a color job. Something made me accept the call anyway, holding the phone a few inches away from my ear.

It was a gentleman – I say this in the full wonderful meaning of the word – calling to thank me for a story I’d just written about him in the local newspaper. I was so surprised I almost fell off the swiveling chair. Do you know how seldom anyone I write about says thank you?

It has been a full year. In that time, I’ve written 14 stories about local churches and synagogues. Of all the ministers and rabbis I interviewed, only one said thank you. (One accused me of misquoting him, but that’s really another story. Okay, I did get a word wrong, but he invented whole paragraphs!)

Before that, maybe two people sent thank you cards and took me to lunch in three years as a way of thanking me for stories. In general, saying thank you has fallen by the old-fashioned wayside. Thank you cards belong to another era. Nowadays when someone, especially a young person, sends a card, it’s considered exceptional.

Why is this? Is there a decline in manners? Are people too busy? I leave it to historians and social analysts to answer. My guess is that there’s always been a mixture of civility and rudeness depending on time and place. Loosening standards of dress and social interaction is not always a bad thing. Working hard and having less time for tea parties and calling cards is not always a bad thing. Two parents working because they love their careers and also need two incomes is not a bad thing either. But do we have to let go of all standards of caring, all time to say a thank you and teach our children to say thank you? I hope not. And hope is out there in cyberspace in the many creative forms of insta-thank yous.

Nowadays there is a lot of emphasis on “expressing gratitude.” Feel grateful for all we have! Take time to thank the universe for every morning and night! Thank our bodies for getting us out of bed and walking us through the day. Thanks for friends, family, dog, cat, parrot, food, yoga, music, new book ….. you get the idea. Even express gratitude for BAD things. They are teaching us something, even if it is just new swear words. I assume death lets us off the hook here, that we can then be eternally grateful, ungrateful or just plain non-existent.

The problem with gratitude is that it only goes so far. It is like a selfie of the soul. It’s silent and yeah, selfish. Thank you universe for acknowledging wonderful me.

Not thank you OUT LOUD to another human being. Thank you for being a good friend. Thank you for understanding. Thank you for being there. Thank you for helping me move. Thank you for keeping your advice to yourself. Thank you for the birthday wishes, the Christmas present, the dinner you cooked.

Thank you for the wonderful story you wrote. I tell you, that made my day. And my week and my month. And it may have to do me for another year.

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