Families

“Four girls and four boys he had, robustious little heathens, every one of them, as he said himself. But good fortune is not only good fortune, and over the years things happened in that family that caused some terrible regret. Still for years, it seemed to me to be blindingly beautiful. And it was.”

Doesn’t that just say everything about families? Blindingly beautiful. And terrible regret. Inescapable.

I am reading Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead and having the unaccustomed experience of savoring every page. I don’t usually have the patience even to read every page, so eager am I to get on with plot and life. But the woman has a gift. She understands what it is like to be alive, what it is like to live simultaneously knowing the blessing of your own life and the dismay when others judge.

“I don’t think it was resentment I felt then. It was some sort of loyalty to my own life, as if I wanted to say, I have a wife, too, I have a child, too. It was as if the price of having them was losing them, and I couldn’t bear the implication that even that price could be too high.”

People think I have chosen my life, and in many ways I have. I have chosen not to be whipsawed by others’ judgments, no matter how close to me they are, no matter how well-intentioned. But did I choose to be alone? Not really. Still, it has been a blessing to me to learn to love solitude.

I love my mother, my sister, my brothers, their families. I would like to know them better, as people rather than as the figurehead roles they prefer to play in my life. It is a source of unending sadness to me that they see me only as the one who left, the one who does not behave properly, the one who is to be judged and found wanting. I am expected to behave in certain ways because….well, just because.

I have definitively opted out of that game. But should anyone want to start a new way of relating, I would be all over that. Like white on rice, like a duck on a June bug, as they say down South, where I come from. And where I can never return.

Ungardening

The world and I have each done our share this weekend. I pulled out the knee-high weeds, carving out new garden vistas by what is no longer there, then mowed herb garden paths in more creative destruction. Finally, I put in a round of new plants, though this morning early I had to rescue one that Toby dug up to bury his morning milkbone.

I made a little headway on the lawn. I had to have it brush hogged, you know, after a month of wet weekends had spawned hip-high meadow that choked and broke my modest power push mower. The front is cut back to ankle height, and the side yard, but there are wide swaths of the back that are rapidly going back to meadow. Rapidly.

All the time, I worked around an enormous (think the size of a medium size tree) branch that fell in the night. Jeezum. How could a branch that big fall? Good thing it wasn’t closer to the house. This will be a new test of my emerging network of helpers. Who you gonna call? It has leaves, so does that make it good for firewood? Or do I just have a major disposition bill to face?

After a long day in the herb garden—but most satisfying as I reclaimed my paths and put in several dozen plants—I took a quiet walk over the the vegetable garden. I weeded only yesterday! Biomass has exploded everywhere, weeds flexing their vigor, robbing my poor little emerging veggies of water and nutrient. Gardening is easy in Vermont this time of year—which lasts only a few short weeks before the light changes, second cut comes, and we start to get ready for the snow again—but ungardening is even easier.

Entropy! Our only hope is to go with it.

Instant gratification

Is there anything better than this?

I put the broccoli plants in last weekend, or was it the weekend before. Today I ate the pizza, lovely whole wheat pizza with thyme-roasted onions and grilled eggplant and red pepper flakes and oil-cured olives and the very first tiny broccoli flowers from those greenhouse-fostered plants.

Honestly, can you think of anything better?

Bookworm child

I do appreciate Jean passing the book meme to me. From childhood, I have found my best refuge in books. The summer I turned nine my house was a bookmobile stop. I remember the bookmobile ladies coming to my birthday party. It was the birthday that I remember hanging upside down on the neighbors’ monkey bars singing to myself, “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to” in mute protest.

It was one of the few occasions when my mother’s attempts to create a perfect child-centered word went badly astray. And who can blame her from trying? If I was nine, then my sister was six, the older of my two brothers four and the other a baby or not even. I was so excited when the girls up the road invited me to play, devastated when I came to realize that it was a put-up job to arrange a surprise party for me. I don’t think anyone has given me a surprise party since. And that’s a good thing. I was not a child who enjoyed surprises, nor do I enjoy them now.

An introverted and intelligent child, I never so much as tasted the easy cameraderie I saw others enjoy. Partly it was a numbers game, that in the tiny rural towns where we lived, there were few children with whom I had much in common. Partly it was the usual childhood stuff, learning to deal with the schoolbus bully and coping when best friends move away. But a lot of it was about learning who I am—introverted, intuitive, quiet but intense. I have a boisterous mask, but that has been slowly acquired to allow me to operate with people who are mostly very different from me. Those decades in New York were priceless in this effort!

From rural Georgia to Boston to Philadelphia to New York to Chattanooga and back to New York to here, my home in rural Vermont, books have been my best friend. From childhood, I curled up Jane Aiken Hodge’s The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, with Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, with Jane Eyre and Jane Austen. Like Jean, I initially missed the satire, but I craved the social observation. All these books I read over and over, along with anything that came as a Reader’s Digest book and any murder mystery. I loved plot and I loved characterization. I loved being taken to a different world. I still do.

1. Total number of books I’ve owned: Like Jean, somewhere between 2 and 3 thousand, but I have cut back to around 500 now. After years of hauling too many books around, I came to prize space and simplicity over objects, and disposed of all but the ones I really, really needed. This ongoing struggle against accumulation has required that I develop rules for what I really, really need, but in the degree that I successfully implement my own rules, I am free.

I have rules for clothes. If too big or too frumpy, it goes away. If you haven’t worn it in the last year, it goes away—unless you really, really love it. My rules all have the escape hatch for what you really, really love.

I have rules for food. If it’s not good for you, it doesn’t come in the house. If you ought to be eating it (vegetables!) buy it, plan a recipe, cook it, so that you have the option to do the right thing. Any waste is readily justified on the basis of option creation and compost.

And I have rules for books. Now I have my core books—probably no more than a hundred or so—and I have provisional books which are on their way through my home. Some of the provisional books are murder mysteries that I don’t need to own on literary merit, but it is handy to have a spare few just in case I hit a day when I have nothing to read and can’t get to the library. Some are home improvement or decorating or travel books that are handy, even if they aren’t—properly speaking—essential to my well-being. It got to be such a burden getting rid of books, that I have all but stopped acquiring them. Libraries fill the gap.

There are books I treasure because they bring me back to a part of my life. My foreign language dictionaries for college. Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategy for business school. A bond math handbook for those years at the bank. The Book of Common Prayer. Christopher Robin and Le Petit Prince. A strange little novel, not very good, called On the Marais des Cygnes written by my great-grandfather. My mother recently sent me some volumes of a children’s magazine called St Nicholas from the twenties that I pored through as a child, particularly the stories told around any three random objects: a spider, a bicycle and a bad boy, say.

There are books I keep because they said something to me once, or because I sense that they have something yet to say to me, although I cannot read them now. The former includes May Sarton’s books and James Hillman’s and almost all of Annie Dillard, although these days I find Dillard overly wordy and mostly unreadable. The latter group are the books I tried to get rid of but they would not let me: Isak Dinesen and George Eliot and my complete Shakespeare plays comprise a few examples.

Cookbooks, of course, have completely separate rules.

2. Last book I bought: Kay Redfield Jamison’s Exuberance, because I need to own it.

3. Last book I read: I just finished Margaret Drabble’s The Red Queen. Margaret Drabble is one of those writers whose work I will always read. Her books stay with me—literally and figuratively—for a long time. It took me about three weeks to read this book, which is quite unusual, since most books don’t last me three days. I don’t think it is her best work, but it is extremely interesting in the interplay of multiple plot lines and the blurring of one story into another. I particularly relate to the theme that we are each writing the story of our own lives—that the way we tell our own story is of supreme importance and that stories clash in the ether.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me: The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov. I wrote my master’s thesis on this book, which still speaks to me. Layers and layers and layers. If I had to pick only one book that meant the most to me, it would be this one with its echoes of Goethe’s Faust, its overlay of rose petal fragrance, and its exquisite rendering of the battle between light and darkness.

My favorite gardening book, Landscaping with Herbs by James Adams. Fragrance and flavor, wrapped up in beauty. And you can have it at home.

If I were able to pick something for the Christian tradition it would have to be Thomas Merton or CS Lewis or Thomas Moore or Henri Nouwen, but I don’t know how to pick. Maybe the Book of Common Prayer. The Bible seems an obvious pick, but somehow that is not so much a book to me as a more complex object, its impact both sharpened and blunted by how others have used it as an instrument of social conformity. Lately, I am branching into some Buddhist paths with Thich Nhat Han.

Heinrich von Kleist’s On the Puppet Theater is not so much a book as an essay, one that is so important to my world view that I quoted almost all of it elsewhere in this blog. http://vtdiary.blogspot.com/2005/01/end-times-in-garden.html

Among self-help books, I would have to pick Maggie Scarf’s Unfinished Business or Kay Redmond Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind, or even Parallel Lives: A Study of Victorian Marriage, by Phylis Rose, because she gave me a way to think about what marriage is not. I agree with Jean’s pick of The Highly Sensitive Person, by Elaine Aron, and would add The Introvert Advantage by Marti Olsen Laney. Who could ever suspect that extroverts think we are ignoring them on purpose? We introverts are simply not particularly interested in extroverts’ flapping and fluttering, but that, I suppose, is what offends them. And who could have imagined that extroverts routinely talk without thinking first? I am offended by that.

Murder mysteries and cookbooks—I can’t begin to pick. The truth is that despite an MA in comparative literature and an MBA to follow, these are the categories of my daily fare. Maybe another essay another day.

5. Which five bloggers am I passing this to? Since we have already established in the previous section that I either cannot count or cannot play by the rules—or perhaps this overly conforming child is finally learning that I don’t always have to—I am passing it to any of you who want to do it. Despite my blog-absence of the last few months, I confess to feeling a slight reprise of those childhood slights that I wasn’t asked earlier. I was always the last picked for kickball, too. But I would have done this particular meme eventually even if Jean had not asked, since I am grown up now and I write about what I like. If something in my piece speaks to you, please do respond, but many of my favorite bloggers have done this one already. It would, as always, be great to hear from Robert at Beginner’s Mind http://beginnermind.blogspot.com/ or from Susan at Visual Voice-Net http://www.visual-voice.net/ but if I have missed your booklist in my absence, please forgive me.

Simply irresistible

If you were a perfume, you'd be named Simply Irresistible. Something in the way you move is just drawing admirers by the score. It's not just your overall pulchritude -- although there is that, of course -- but the entire package. Learn to own your charms, even if you're normally a more shy and retiring type. It's true, being impossibly charming does have its drawbacks -- although actually, who can think of one?

This is my horoscope for today, or one of them. I read several, always hoping to find the message from the universe that speaks to the most gnawing worry buried in my subconscious. Whenever I can tease those anxieties to the surface, I am better prepared to deal with them.

Goodness! There are so many! How can a person in good health with happy living circumstances and a fulfilling job have so many anxieties? My daily practice to count my blessings and count them again, and my considerable discipline (not always obvious to the casual observer) are powerful weapons against anxiety, but still the little monsters burble up in dreams of both the day and night varieties.

My best tactic to bring calm and peace to my life these days is walking. Springtime in Vermont is my vista as I stretch long muscles and click into a nonverbal space in my mind. When I return to my daily anxieties, I am always—every day—astonished at how small and warped and gnarly and irrelevant they are.

The stuff I fuss about mostly falls away, or gets slotted into a spot where I can deal with it efficiently. That’s stuff like the random $400 fraudulent charges on a credit card that I closed three years ago, but the company didn’t, resulting in my credit being trashed—despite twenty years of outstanding credit—and a month of unsatisfactory exchanges with the credit card company. It is fixed now, but I still have reservations about Chase/BankOne credit cards, although they have not quite hit my personal boycott list. Dell is still leading that list, although I have found a workaround: never buy a Dell and make sure that whatever computer you buy, you are not dependent on the company warranty. Annoying, time-consuming, but really very small in the grand scheme of things.

The big things you can’t fix. Serious health problems of family members. The little company in my area that imploded this week. Imagine that you are a talented furniture maker and you have been working for someone else but thinking about going out on your own. Your newest baby is very new (weeks, not months) and the baby appears to have some serious health problems, so you have put off launching your own business. Then imagine one day you go to work and you discover that your boss dropped dead over the weekend. Your paycheck is not there, everything is tied up in probate, and you—with difficulty—extricate your own personal handtools from the building before the doors are padlocked. Working for a small company in Vermont, you are always no more than one step from this reality.

What can I do for this guy? I can fast-track him with the small business counselor. I can refer him to potential lenders. I can intervene to get a faster response from unemployment…maybe. I can possible come up with networking possibilities for him, but to his credit, he has already pursued most of them. I can refer him—as much as he does not want to go there—for food stamps and aid to families with dependent children. I can even prioritize a small repair job that I need done at home because a couple hundred dollars makes a huge difference to this guy at this time. But most important, I can listen. And I can recognize that this life is really, fundamentally no different from mine.

The big stuff is really big. People we love suffer from health problems, from relationship problems, from the pain of watching loved ones suffer. All we can do is listen, help sort the small stuff from the big stuff, encourage, suggest more options, and agree that the big stuff is really, really, …..really big. What we can do is so very small in the grand scheme of things. But it is everything that we can do, and faith requires that we hold fast that it will be enough.

Postscript: Now this is what I love about writing! When I read my horoscope and sat down to write, I intended to write about how I came to Vermont for sex (it’s not exactly how that sounds, but close) and found that there are a lot of amazing and wonderful men in Vermont who seem to find me (yes, me! 50-year-old me!) irresistible. And look what came out of my fingers. Maybe tomorrow you will get the other piece.

The best day of the year

I count it a measure of my inexperience as a gardener that I still love planting day the best. Hours go into my garden plans as I scope out which plants like which others, how to lay out paths, what did well last year and what I would like to try this time. The fickle Vermont climate here in Zone 4 adds unpredictability, an insouciant invitation to try peppers and okra on the chance that this may be their year.

The Deep South, where I grew up, is so different in its seasonal sighs. There, flowering trees bloom every year in colors that are startling only in contrast to the gray, rainy winter. But here in Vermont, trees are blooming this year that last year did not. Old news to the locals that sometimes the blossoms freeze before spring, but this chilly truth requires an adjustment on my part. The higher peaks and lower lows of Vermont seasons also demand the observer’s keen attention, particularly if the observer wants to garden.

In the South, the long growing season allows for a more gradual slide from winter into spring, spring into summer, although most people still put in the largest part of their gardens all at once. The tradition is that you plant your peas on St. Patrick’s day, not that they are likely to do much before the heat of the summer comes. You plant most of your garden on Good Friday. In Vermont, our last reliable frost free date is Memorial Day, and there has been frost documented well into June. With this weekend’s perfect weather for planting, there must have been millions (billions?) of seeds nestled into plots and fields, covered over by a warm blanket of earth and gently nourished by last night’s soaking rain. Perfection!

We must be grateful for planting days like the last three. Now the race is on! Soon it will be the Fourth of July, sometimes barely warm in Southern terms, then August’s second cut of hay. And after the second cut, we feel the chill at our backs as we hurry to prepare for another winter. A critical skill for Vermont gardening is to read the back of the seed packet: days to harvest mean the difference between getting a crop and not.

I do love the planning stages. I love dreaming over my graph paper and my books, imagining the soft sweep of fennel behind a bed of tall marigolds. I love walking around my yard and pondering seriously the consequences of where I plant rhubarb, horseradish, and lovage. I will never plant Jerusalem artichokes again, and I am astonished that anyone would plant morning glories.

Sometimes I struggle because I so badly want to put seeds into the ground. At one level I am falling back into the seasonal patterns of my youth—surely it must be time! But I know that it is best to proceed systematically, laying in the paths, planning crop rotation and labeling as I go. Still I yearn to dream over the little seeds, to put them to bed as I conjure visions of tall, perfect specimens untangled by weeds.

Then one day it is time. This is it. There is soft sunshine in the morning and almost no breeze, but thundershowers are forecast for the afternoon. The garden is tilled, and the paths are laid out, if not quite properly clothed in newspaper and straw. A week of daily gentle showers has left the ground dry enough to work but moist enough to show a darker shadow of where the rake has been. It’s time to plant!

About two thirds of my garden is in. I am trying corn this year. There is a whole row of beans of different types, alternating colors so I can easily tell which is which for the freezer. I had no squash last year or the year before, so this time the whole bottom row, which tends to be wet, is a trial of three years worth of accumulated squash seed. There are beets and carrots and radishes. The vegetable garden gets the messy annual herbs, like coriander and borage and summer savory. And for serendipity, there are two kinds of melons. Maybe this will be their year.

I made some mistakes. According to my notes, sunflowers do not like pole beans and vice versa, but there is a long row of sunflowers behind the corn and the pole beans. We’ll see. Onion sets still need to go in, and maybe some seed potatoes for a new experiment. A big crop of garlic. And a variety of greens, which last longer for us than for Southern gardeners.

And the herb garden still waits. Seven of the eight wedge-shaped beds in the circle have been dug and prepped, and the planting plan which looked good on paper is evolving nicely. Having banished the weedy herbs to the vegetable plot, I am considering a veritable avenue of lettuces for this new garden just outside the back door.

There comes a day when the planning and the preparation aren’t done, but it is time to plant. So we respond to the day, we fling ourselves into the task. At the end of the day, we see that we have accomplished not only a good day’s work but also a turn of the season. And we turn our faces toward the joy of whatever comes next.

Vermont perfection

It was supposed to rain all this long Memorial Day weekend. But not so far.

Yesterday was one of those days that made me fall in love with Vermont. Bright sunshine, cool breezes, and black flies that respected my lavish application of Deet. I had to be outside, and I had loads of outside things to do.

The new herb garden—a circular design that makes the former above-ground pool almost worthwhile—is coming together. I’m taking this opportunity to visit local nurseries that have teased my interest for years, and I have some sparkly new dianthus, a look-at-me-wow vanilla allium, and a sample of each nursery’s idea of the ideal lavender to try in the new space.

The dogs are always happy when I spend time with them outdoors. Even Jake comes around, the old Lab the next house down who is alternately their buddy and their arch-nemesis. Max, somewhat recovered from last week’s ills, has happily buried, dug up, and reburied a piece of steak that I judged a bit too old for me to eat. We are still in the “all-the-cookies-you-want” mode, and after reading the current Ever So Humble http://everyday.blogs.com/humble/ I got both Max and Toby yet another cookie. Good dogs! How easy it is to lose patience with them, and how quickly they forgive!

The lawn mower is working again, and I have a nice, tidy border mowed all around the vegetable garden, preparation for the July explosion of green matter. The vegetable garden paths are in process, and in deference to the work required to get the new herb garden started, I am not even pretending to dig those raised beds this year. Let’s try the newspaper and straw right on trampled garden soil. Let’s just see. Gardening is a creative act, one experiment after another. The designs that seem so compelling indoors give way to new ideas that burble up while digging proceeds. What if and what if and what if. Some ideas work, and some don’t, and that is just fine.

A nap at midday (must preserve the magnolia blossom look) and another couple of hours in the garden, then it is time to put away tools. Lawn mower. Shovel. Fork. Wheel barrow. Garden plans. Was that a raindrop?

Raindrops gathered into downpour, soothing sounds of rain on the roof, the sun is back out, and there it is. The rainbow. In what I have come to know as the field where rainbows come. Somewhere buried in my brain, there is a line from Goethe that I cannot quite retrieve, but the idea is this. Should we ever experience a moment in which we say, “Stop, moment, thou art so fair…” we will have met heaven on earth, and we will cease to strive toward heaven. It wasn’t quite that moment, but for what it was, it was perfection.

Just till Tuesday

By the time people are my age, we have generally figured out how to live in our skins. Whatever our own peculiar mix of talents and attributes, we have adapted. For myself, I know that I have a high need to be entertained and that I do my best work in the morning. I know that I derive new energy from the free flow of ideas. Creativity is my thing. And I know that I am introverted, that spending time with other people drains me, and I need to be filled up again.

Feeling calm, whole and happy for me means working around these personal truths. But sometimes the outside world’s demands don’t line up with my needs just perfectly. I find myself thinking, “If I can only make it to Tuesday…” Just wishing my life away. I have passed entire years like that—not a healthy life plan.

But really, if I can just make it to Tuesday….Tuesday I will mail the grant and be able to tackle the funding issue. I am already more relaxed than a few days ago. With days left and only budgets to finish, the grant will get done. It is on the downhill side, and as long as I carefully dedicate a few morning (productive!) hours, the work product will be adequate to suit even my harshest critic, myself.

I can handle a week like this now and then, but I resent facing time and space constraints. Acceptance trumps that resentment. There is never enough time.

Meanwhile, my garden has been tilled, and if my rows don’t get built and seeds don’t get in the ground on this traditional planting weekend, well, maybe later. Or maybe some of them not at all. I am lucky that my survival does not depend on my backyard crop. The new herb garden is laid out, and I have seeds to scratch in. In between trying to make those financial projections balance, I intend to go hunting for a few plants that make me happy: scented geraniums, perhaps, or creeping thyme. The gardens are supposed to be restorative for me, not one more set of “oughtas.”

Why have I allowed a work project (or two) to take over my mind and spirit this week? Why would I ever do that? Well, because this one project is really important. I have come to accept that I cannot do everything, but when I see something I believe in, once in a very long while…maybe once or twice a year…I can give up even my own peace of mind in pursuit of that ideal….but only once or twice a year, and only for a week. To tackle more would be an arrogant overestimate of my strength, as I have learned the hard way. It is a slippery slope, the thin end of the wedge that separates us from health, wholeness, love and goodness.

Breathe in breathe out

Vermont is not supposed to allow for weeks as stressful as this one. On the other hand, this is what my life in New York was like all the time, all the time. So can I take it a couple of weeks a year? Don’t ask.

We won’t catalog all the stressors, not the failing but beloved dog, not the identity theft experience, not the wild swings in expectations of my major funding agency. There are more, but really, I don’t want to catalog them. Stressed. Overstressed. Stressed in the extreme. How did I ever tolerate this level of total system toxicity?

Yesterday I spent the day at a major business networking event. With piles of work in my office, I had a hard time justifying it, and I did opt out of breakfast in the interest of a little strategic organization of one of my major projects. I felt much relieved for those few minutes in the office, and new assistant kept things moving while I headed for the big city of Burlington.

Checked in with board members who were having their first exposure to Expo, and networked, networked, networked. It’s funny to look back two years, when I was just getting ready to interview for this job that I now love; I went to Expo to scope out who all these people were and whether I could work with them. Oh yes.

Went to lunch and was lucky in my choice of seat with good company on either side and some of my favorite people at the table. Excellent speaker. The kind of presentation in which you say, “Yes! That’s what I have been trying to say. That’s what I mean. How did you know?”

Came home refreshed, reinvigorated and happy all over again.

Loving old dogs

Thanks for all your kind thoughts about my dog. Max is elderly and not eating well. He is down to 78 pounds from 93, but this is easier on his joints. He seems to have fleas and a bit of mange, which are creating hot spots. In the last year he has developed a heart murmur. But a little care and attention over the weekend seemd to help a lot. Both Max and Toby hate baths, but cold water on those itchy spots seemed like a fair trade for the horror of wet feet.

I have switched vets, or maybe just added one, but I am happier with the care Max is getting. The other one does a lot of large animals in their practice, and I felt they were not really paying attention but maybe that is a function of this busy spring season. The new one put Max back on antibiotics and explained that the murmur is likely to lead eventually to congestive heart failure and that it is not treatable with medication. It is the kind of thing that requires surgery, but they don't do that, nor do they really recommend it for older dogs. Nor would I consider it. Heart surgery for an 11-year-old dog is not the same decision as hip surgery for a bouncing 5-year-old.

Max is an old dog, but I could have him with me for some time yet. I haven't asked for a prediction of how long, and I don't really want to know if an end point is near. I just want to feed him cookies and scratch his chest and take him for walks. I want to listen to him lecture me about how there are never enough cookies for such a good dog. I want to sleep with him in the room as long as possible so that I can hear snuffly German Shepherd breathing. These days, my best measures of how he is doing are his general mood and whether he can make it upstairs at night. More and more often, he prefers to sleep next to the stove in the living room on the bed I made for him as joints got creaky and old bones needed cushioning from hard floors. And one day, I want to come downstairs to find that he has gone to sleep there for the last time. I want Max to have a good life, but I want him to have a good and peaceful death, too.

I love my dogs. There is a special joy in living with and loving old dogs. I have a friend who adopted one of the puppies we fostered over Christmas. A couple of times a week she has new stories of the horrors that Sweet Pea has wrought in her house: peacock feathers, yarn, candles, all lost! No item is safe now that Sweet Pea can reach the tops of the counters. But every story of treasures lost is overbalanced by the puppy's charm, the sheer life that she has brought into the household. Even their old dog steps a little more smartly in the company of this bright young thing.

Old dogs, when we pay attention, still have that same sprightly appeal in layers deepened over our years with them. Max is still drawn to men, he still can lift them off the ground if I don't pay attention, and he still lectures me in that deep baritone. What a talky dog! There is a depth, a richness, a pentimento of the puppies we once knew still there, but old dogs don't yank us around on walks, they don't destroy household items, and they can generally tolerate more schedule unpredictability. But this time of their lives--and ours--when the occasional bathroom incident occurs, we can just look at each other and shrug.

When the puppies were with us over Christmas, it was notable that they never overshadowed the big dogs. The puppies were fun, but they had small personalities and no depth of character. The big dogs oversaw the whole distressing array gravely, and they let me know that I was testing the limits of their patience, but that they would tolerate it, for me. Sometime in the next few months I may be ready for a puppy, but not yet. This is not the time for tiny, new, rambunctious personalities. This is a time for being with Max and Toby. This is a time for caring for and appreciating especially Max, who has good days and bad days. It is a different stage of life, and once we are more accustomed to it--all of us--then we will be able to welcome a puppy with open hearts. Breathe in now, so that we can breathe out. Thanks for listening.

New paths

On Friday I woke to doggy health problems. My well loved 11-year-old German Shepherd had a hot spot. Small things like this are big for Max, who has a replacement hip. Having come to me as a foundling, it was always a pretty sure thing that he would have the hip problems that are so common to the breed, and when he was five--far to young for me to accept the loss of this wonderful dog--his painful hips led me to get him a major operation, a hip transplant. The whole question of how one comes to the decision to spend a couple of thousand dollars on a hip transplant for a companion animal leads to some interesting discussions, but that's not today's topic.

For Max, post operation, any open wound requires him to go on antibiotics. An open wound puts him at risk of infection, which could rapidly go into the implant area. We are all obsessed with healthcare issues in Vermont these days, and as this well loved companion ages, I watch him tenderly. Whatever time he has left, I want it to be peaceful and happy and without pain. Some days I am overcome with my fear of losing him, although I know it is a day that must come. Some days, I just wail, please not quite yet. So I made an appointment with the vet, and by the end of the call, I was in tears.

My reason for moving to Vermont and the lesson I have continued to learn since moving here is that when emotion overwhelms me, it is time for some self care. The only thing on my calendar for the day was a dentist appointment, so I made a quick trip to the office and put up a sign: "Closed today due to medical emergencies." Many medical emergencies. My assistant's baby daughter in the hospital. A family member facing long term critical health issues. A dog in need of antibiotics. But mostly an emergency need to take a little care of myself lest I bite the next person who walked into the office.

I spent most of yesterday and today on the garden, laying out paths. The herb garden is new this year, and I am trying out paths of chamomile which grows wild here. I lay out my paths with string, then I turn the soil in the beds. As I go, I take the baby chamomile weeds from the plots and transplant them as much desired chamomile turf in the paths. The exercise of creating a path by cutting away the undesirable thatch of weeds between the paths is a meditation in itself.

The vegetable garden is in its second year. Last year I hired the plowing done, then laid out my paths with string, then dug a few inches down in the paths and put the soil on the beds to raise them up. Then I put down a layer of something covered by a layer of straw, and I had beautiful paths. The preferred underlayer was old dogfood bags, saved just for this purpose on long remembered advice from one of my gardening uncles. They turned out to be way slippery, and I didn't have nearly enough, so I tried black plastic on another row and then newspaper on another. Lack of planning turned experiment, and through the season, I found little difference in function on the paths.

The careful reader will note that this process is exactly the opposite of what I am doing in the herb garden. Vegetable garden--dig the path, herb garden, dig the bed. Throughout last year's growing season I nourished the hope that I would not have to rebuild the paths again, thinking of what it would take to pull out the remains of the dogfood bags and the black plastic, not to mention all my hard labor to move all that dirt. My favorite Vermont tractor guy showed up on Friday, he opined that he thought he could preserve the paths, and no, he wasn't worried about stuff in the garden. After the first pass, he stopped and used a knife to cut out of his plow blades the remains of dogfood bags, black plastic, and even a little pea netting unwittingly left.

Here's a lesson! Don't worry about the stuff under the ground. Just plow through it, then cut away the excess. Here's another. There is no way to preserve those paths. I have laid them out again, and I suspect that I will be a little less vigorous about moving dirt this year, maybe shoveling just enough to suggest terraces on the gentle slope. And I will use all newspaper. Five paths, five bales of straw, and it will be good to go again. It is hard to have to rebuild paths, but it is easier the second time.

In spiritual practice, too, it is building the path the first time that is the hardest work. We keep relearning the same old stuff, or at least sometimes it seems so. But it is easier each time we tackle an old battle. And sometimes we learn a new technique, like digging the beds instead of the paths. I have been reading a wonderful little book called Taming the Tiger Within: Meditations on Transforming Difficult Emotions, by Thich Nhat Hanh. Each right-hand page has a short thought which floats in visual space; each left-hand page is blank.

Here's one: Recognize and embrace your anger when it manifests itself. Care for it with tenderness rather than suppressing it.

Here's another: Sometimes we are overwhelmed by the energy of hate, of anger, of fear. We forget that in us there are other kinds of energy that can manifest also. If we know how to practice, we can bring back the energy of insight, of love, and of hope in order to embrace the energy of fear, of despair, and of anger.

And one more: Faith is the outcome of your life. As faith continues to grow, you continue to get the energy, because faith is also an energy like love. If we look deeply into the nature of our love, we will also see our faith. When we have faith in us, we are no longer afraid of anything.

Thich Nhat Hanh also wrote another wonderful book that Robert of Beginner's Mind gave me when I, a Christian, asked him in all sincerity about what attracted him to Buddhism. When he first gave it to me, I got bogged down in the introduction, but the book itself, Living Buddha, Living Christ is a rich treasure I have just begun to tap.

I have missed writing. It is one of my daily practices (the other is walking), and this blog community offers me real connections. I've had a crazy winter, and I'm feeling a little overstimulated, a little bruised. Time to build some new paths.

Thanks for noticing

The brass ring that represents the end of my technical worries seems just beyond my fingertips. One more (please, just this one more?) connection problem with new laptop and home network, and I believe that I will be back operating on all fronts.

I have really missed blogging. I have missed writing. But spring has come to Vermont whether I document its coming or not, and its unexpected glory has swept me away all over again.

Thanks to everyone who noticed my absence. Back soon, I trust. Meanwhile, here's another good horoscope for anyone, any day.

Something seems to be holding you back. Something seems to be preventing you from reaching your full potential. Whatever it is, you must get over it quickly because very soon the kind of opportunity that only comes once in a lifetime will be heading your way. Let go of your fears. Anything is possible if you want it enough.

Blogless

Is it something about the time of year? Are we all outrageously busy making the mental/physical/psychological shift of season? Where have all the bloggers gone? Maybe it is just the unrepresentative, unscientifically sampled group of blogs that I read, but we all seem to have fallen off the blog-wagon. I include myself.

In my case, it is partly the disruption of changing seasons, but mostly ongoing computer issues. I continue to be optimistic that I am near the end of my techno-trials, but who knows? I am renowned for unrealistic optimism, which I consciously choose in contrast to blind cynicism, hurtful not only to originator but to surrounding, innocent parties.

I wrote several blogs in my head yesterday. One on the joy of (almost) completing the bathroom wallpaper, along with memories of wallpaper projects and holiday projects of the past. When you are a single person who enjoys home improvement, the large blocks of time tend to be holidays, so when asked what you did for Easter, you are likely to respond “Wallpapered the bathroom! It is awesome!” Long Thanksgiving weekends will likely bring an outing to friends for dinner but may also include several hours taping diagonal squares on the kitchen floor for an experiment in special effects with wood stain. It turned out beautifully, thank you, but I failed to cover it with a good finish coat to protect it, enamored with shellac as I was in those days. But we live and learn, and we entertain ourselves making ourselves at home.

Another blog only in my brain was about the hike the boys and I took up Smugglers’ Notch. We drove as far as possible on the Smuggs side to where the road is closed, then hiked up the road to the notch. Not a tough climb by any means, the walk was made easier by being on highway most of the way. We met one woman and her two-year-old Golden Retriever as we were going up and they were coming down; we met a lone photographer as we descended. Otherwise, it was a glorious but solitary outing.

Max and Toby were in heaven with so much room to gallop and romp, and I loved the crisp air, the sunshine, the trickle of melting snow, the views—my heavens! the views!—everything except the slidy parts. The last third of the trip was on snowpack, still over two feet thick in some sections, and while my knees and my untutored Southern lack of balance on snow and ice can tolerate going uphill, the downhill return was something else altogether. I looked for crunchy spots, zigzagged back and forth avoiding melty areas and even water flowing across blacktop where black ice can lie hidden. Tiny, tiny steps. All the while thinking about whether it really was very smart to go hiking only with two elderly dogs. If I took a header off the side of the mountain, Toby would never leave me, but would Max know to go looking for help? Would anyone understand his doggy variant of “Timmy’s in the well?” But the slippy, fearful episode lasted only a few minutes out of what was otherwise a glorious morning, and we made it home safely. We would go again of course, but I might be more careful about climbing ice unaccompanied. It looks so different coming back down!

So it was back to the bathroom wallpaper and the realization that one is almost as much at risk on a ladder at home in the bathroom--particularly slipping around on wallpaper paste--as slipping around on ice. At least outdoors on a sunny Sunday morning, there is the possibility that other people will happen by, a possibility that is considerably smaller in my bathroom.

The world is a scary place if we allow it to be. It is also a glorious place to explore. Again, if we allow it to be.

Adventure

Another horoscope for any day and for anyone:

You cannot be too adventurous today. Do things you would not normally do and be open to people you would not usually think of conversing with. Most of all, keep away from boring people and boring places. You have lived too long in the comfort zone - now it is time to stretch yourself physically, mentally and emotionally. This is also a great time to travel.

Signs of spring

Snow’s almost gone. Daffodils pushing through the soil.

Lots of new rocks in the house—Toby is so glad to see them that he can’t be parted from his favorites. Moles or voles plowing the field, fun for dogs to chase, what would they do if they caught one?

Masters golf tournament in the news, which means down South there’s strong sunshine and flowers, neither for us quite yet. Peepers are heard in southern New Hampshire, surely any day for us.

Parsnips ready for the digging, maybe even a forgotten onion or two. Startling green chives! Catnip and evening primrose already coming in strong. Time to lay out the new herb garden.

Spent the morning taking off nasty old black plastic shutters, all except the upstairs sets, for which I will need help. I was afraid the house would look too bland without them, but I quite like its plain Greek Revival lines.

Spent the afternoon working on wallpapering the bathroom. Another nasty, tiny-flowered, shiny vinyl replaced with a gorgeous leafy lattice pattern, courtesy of e-Bay. Inch by inch, this house will be mine.

Fundamental matters

From yesterday’s New York Times op-ed piece commemorating Albert Einstein’s miraculous 1905: “Quantum mechanics does not merely challenge the previous laws of physics. Quantum mechanics challenges this centuries-old framework of physics itself. According to quantum mechanics, physics cannot make definite predictions. Instead, even if you give me the most precise description possible of how things are now, we learn from quantum mechanics that the most physics can do is predict the probability that things will turn out one way, or another, or another way still.”

I believe there is a physics of human behavior as well. Whenever we think we know what makes someone tick, we are bound to be mistaken.

Think of conflict between people. If you and I disagree on some matter, it would be nice if we could simply agree that we each have our own view of the situation and move on. The more emotionally charged the matter, however, the less likely we will be able to do that, as least not without a lot of practice in analyzing the matter and resolving to separate our purposeful actions from our emotions.

If I cannot make that separation, then I will start to blame you for disagreeing with me. I may get very angry with you that you dare to have a contrary opinion. Soon I will decide that it is all your fault. And you may be doing nothing more than holding steadfast to your right to be yourself and to see the world in your own way. If I listen to your words and your tone and I observe your actions, then I may have a better chance of predicting your reactions, which may be driven by some past interchange.

I am not suggesting that we enter into psychoanalyzing each other, which I view as just another manipulative technique, but certainly it is more pleasant to deal with people who have better developed social and emotional skills. I’m thinking of a particular group in which I participate that operates for all the world like a dysfunctional family. Sometimes it seems that the mildest question or contrary opinion sets off incoherent, babbling, spitting rage. The effort of dealing with long past, unresolved conflicts—which had nothing to do with me—may soon cause me to opt out of that particular organization.

All the hidden vectors on human behavior make people unpredictable, but what quantum physics tells us is that the idea of predictability is illusion. It’s as if two pool balls collide in the middle of the table and rise straight up into the air. Traditional physics says this cannot happen. Quantum physics says it doesn’t happen often.

It is still worth studying traditional physics, and it is worth working hard to try to understand our friends, our colleagues, our lovers and our families. Every observation is grist to that mill. I spent decades unable to feel or display anger at even the most intrusive behavior, then more years—some would say—being angry at everything. Now I am learning to avert other people’s anger without responding in kind. I am learning to say, “I understand that you are unhappy with me, but your anger will not make me behave in any way I do not choose for myself.” It is behavior worth practicing.

It is also worth remembering that the world and its inhabitants are inherently unpredictable. That observation strips away our false sense of safety, but it gives us the possibility of blinding joy.

Redux

I had the same conversation twice today. Speaking with two different friends, I heard the same lament. One planning to become a therapist, one who would rather die than encounter a therapist, they both are warm, wonderful, emotionally alive women, if somewhat conflicted. These women have known sorrow, both of them, in kind and depth that no caring human would wish on another.

One, let’s call her A, or Anne, lost a child in a particularly heartbreaking way—suicide, or was it accidental suffocation? One hardly knows which interpretation would be more difficult for a mother to accept. And brutal, unseeing life lurches on.

The other, let’s call her B, or Bella, grew up with a schizophrenic sibling who took all her parents’ attention, threatened her with repetitive bodily harm, and executed his cruel intent. Is it because she is finally secure in the love of her husband that she is now reliving those bad old days? I think maybe so.

Two amazing women. And each of them said to me today, “You know, I don’t really want to explore it all. The pain was real, but it is in my past. Most of all I want to move on. Aren’t there some techniques in the toolbox I can have? Why must I wallow in past sorrows? Honestly, I have done that to death and beyond. When can I see some relief? Some hope?”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the mental health field offered such support?

It does. I know it does, because I have thrice walked through my own private demons in the company of some caring professional. At last I have learned to respect and protect my own history. It is not for public consumption, nor is there any longer any cathartic release to be had. It is private. It is sad. So now, I tell what I want and I withhold what I want, and that is how it is.

The therapeutic process has many benefits, but my friends are right: it is tools we need, not catharsis. I still struggle to identify manipulation before it hurts me, and I know I am making progress because now the manipulators succeed less than half the time. It is still tough, but I am learning. More tools, we want more tools.

Losing my mind

A friend has pointed out that he is…well, difficult…whenever his collection of technological devices fails to operate in perfect synchronicity. Those are the times, he says, when his wife finds him contrary, and his co-workers keep their distance. I wonder.

My entire staff, consisting of two older ladies sharing a half-time job, recently resigned in protest over my failure to appreciate them. My suspicions of their hidden intent must remain unspoken and unblogged. In truth, I did appreciate them, but my approach to professional relationships may be somewhat chillier than many other people choose, and more than many people presume of me, given my warm and enthusiastic social mask. Let’s just say that I have been burned on the office "friendship" front in the past, and I choose to keep my friendships quite separate from my working relationships. I love my friends, and I appreciate my colleagues, and I know the difference, thank you very much.

But maybe my long term distress over Dell’s abysmal customer service, persisting in multiple iterations since late December—are we into our fourth month of repetitive disaster? did I mention that the power supply failed over the weekend?—maybe that distressing sequence of experiences has taken a toll on how I interact with humans. Maybe I have also been…difficult, contrary. Perhaps my casual reference to offline storage of my thoughts, experiences, memories, even my emotions have their being in the bits and bytes of hard drive and web server. Maybe more of me than I suspect exists offline. Outside my pitiful brain. In laptop and desktop, in e-mail attachments and shared files. My self might exist in mechanical objects that have become distressingly vulnerable to the ravages of power spikes, dust, and mechanical failure.

What a hoot! I have often celebrated the miracle of offline storage and the way it demonstrably expands my mind. But my personality? Can I really park bits of my very self offline? And if I am deprived of that opportunity, do I lash out at people who stand between my self (the real and central me) and my ability to access those bits that are stored offline? I would like to think that I retain some distinction between the parts of me that are really me and the parts that are outside, but I just don’t know.

Now if I can just shed the image of being someone who tortures little old ladies for the fun of it, which surely was never my intention. But actions are the mere shadow of our intentions, which pave the road to hell. Actions are what make the difference in our lives, driving regret and renewed resolve to make it all better next time. Actions are the residue of the moment, leaving in their wake all manner of consequence, which shape the moments of tomorrow, the field on which we play out whatever it is that comes to us next.

Business school was most liberating for me, a child of excessive responsibility, and one of the most critical things I learned was to accept the lessons of each day, but then to move on with the rallying cry, “Next!” Time to stop beating my breast. I did in fact appreciate my staff: I honored their efforts even as I pushed them to improved performance that did not excuse them as old ladies. To have done less would have been to diminish them. And yet, I confess my fault that I was unable to lead them to yet another triumph in their lives of many such. And having recognized my failure, I turn my face to the spring sun and cry anew, “Next!”

Happy Easter!

I love Easter. What could be a stronger expression of the triumph of hope over despair, light over darkness, life over death? It is trust in this triumph that is the heart of my value system.

Rooted first in metaphor, my world view swerved over into outright belief in the tenets of Christianity some years back, not that you would know it from my recent church attendance record. That transition had some interesting steps, but it started by deep and thoughtful consideration of what I knew of my own experience to be true, then expanded to a few key concepts taught by others. Without any attempt to be definitive or complete on this beautiful Easter morning, I offer up a few of them.

Opposite things can be true—hold them in your mind without trying to resolve the contradiction. Dealing with the death of a loved one or the loss of a friendship calls us to grief and rage. At the same time, we know that death comes to each of us and that loss is our lot on earth—that truth requires acceptance. One loss after another, sometimes it seems that way, until that final loss of our own lives resolves into who knows what. Personally, I don’t need to know what comes next—I have quite enough to manage to process what is going on in this lifetime. Perhaps if the Buddhists are right and we have multiple approaches to truth, perhaps in my next lifetime I will get to chew on that issue.

Despair is a sin. As a person who has battled depression from time to time, this was a hard one for me. My nature is sunny and upbeat, but my biochemistry sometimes goes in the opposite direction. How can that be?

If you hang around churches very much, soon you will notice that people may stay away for years but come back for holidays like Christmas and Easter, but even more they come back for major life transitions—joyous ones like weddings and baptisms, sad ones like funerals—and for comfort in times of trouble. Churches persist because they bring comfort and because they deliver the message that we mere mortals must look beyond today’s sadness in our own lives to a bigger picture. If we insist on focusing only on our own pain, only today, admittedly real and deserving our care, but if that is all we see, we are guilty of despair. So I had to learn to see beyond my immediate moods and let my heart lift up my biochemically challenged brain. This ongoing practice takes a lot of private time, and my family and friends often don’t understand where my moods are at any given time, but life is better now.

Despair is an interesting word—it means literally the lack of hope. In French, “esperer” means “to hope.” Some years ago, working in Brazil, I was startled to see the copy machine display the following message: “Espere!” It turns out that in Portuguese, this simply means “Wait” but it gave me a giggle to get an inspirational poke from the copy machine.

Start from where you are. We all have our individual challenges and demons; likewise we all have unique gifts. What if we were to put aside the demons for a little while? Not pretend they don’t exist, just set them aside. What if we were to spend even one day celebrating the glory of our own lives and of those we love? What if we were to aggressively follow the advice of the copy machine as I first heard it: Hope! Take a day to celebrate hope. No, I didn’t say hop, but that might work, too. Have a happy, hopeful, hoppy Easter!

On anger and letting go

One explanation of depression is having one’s limbic system flooded. Anger or other strong emotion can cause a backlash into dullness or absence of feeling, as happened to me after yet another Dell meltdown yesterday afternoon.

So I get a memory error when the system powers down—is that any reason to propose yanking out the hard drive? That would be putting in the fourth hard drive in the second system in eighteen months, all in the futile attempt to get one operational system. We will draw a curtain over the events of the past three months, during which I spent many, many hours to rebuild my system. I was not at all pleased with the idea that I was going to have to start over from the beginning, and got even more agitated when the technical support guy suggested that perhaps he would just send out a system swap. When he couldn’t come up with a better solution, this first tech support guy proposed transferring us to another area, then promptly hung up on us.

Over my tearful protests, the next phone support technician took the onsite technician through one component at a time and discovered that the underlying problem was a wireless card, not even a Dell-installed component, a very easy problem to solve, and one that—thank heaven!—need not require further Dell involvement. I’m sure that Dell is as happy not to deal with me as I am not to deal with them.

But today, I still have the anger hangover. I feel grim and heavy and gray and touchy. And despite taking the precaution of eating carbs for lunch, I took out a couple of bystanders in collateral damage. Everything looks more dire when depression rules, even when you try to compensate for your gray-tinted specs. In truth, I should have called in sick, but it’s hard to get sympathy for an overstimulated limbic system.

I’m thinking now that maybe it is time to say goodbye to Dell, even with two years left on the warranty. The sheer stupidity of proposing a system replacement to solve a problem with a wireless card amazes, shocks and offends. But in the overall scheme of life and death, love and humanity, I can’t afford to waste a particle of energy on Dell. When the next problem with this system occurs—and I feel certain that it is when and not if—I think I will call my local support guys. If there is something that needs to be dealt with under the warranty, then I will pay someone else to call Dell. Or not. Honestly, life is too short for this. There has to be a better way.

Meanwhile, I find myself craving the support of my friends who are put together the same way I am, friends who are known for being difficult, prickly, obnoxious and angry. Today I was all those and worse, and now I want to rest in the company of someone who will say, “There, there. It will be better tomorrow.” I want to hear from someone who says, “I don’t care what other people say about you, I know you’re doing your best.” I want to be with people who aren’t always nice, because they are always trying to push a good cause one more step ahead, even on days when they don’t get the strategy just right. I want someone to make me a cup of tea and ask if I’m okay, then when I say “Well, sort of,” tell me funny stories to make me laugh or read me to sleep. All so that we can all get up and do it again tomorrow without the anger hangover, without the same nonsense, with our reserves rebuilt by the loving care of those who know us best.

Entropy?

I wrote this one morning a few weeks ago:

There is a level at which I find the concept of entropy comforting. Daily life is full of small defeats: peeling paint, computers that need repair, wrinkles and graying hair. Outside of the tale of Dorian Gray, however, the direction of change flows predictably in one direction. We know that if the paint peeled last summer, more of it will peel next summer, and it is important to think about what to do next. Never once has it happened to me that peeling paint repaired itself.

As sometimes happens, I got to the end of the paragraph and the flow of words stopped, usually a sure sign that there is something wrong with what I have written. I couldn’t immediately see where it had gone wrong, so I filed away this apparently inoffensive fragment for later, and a few days ago, it came into focus.

Dead wrong. The observation is simply wrong. It is rooted in the elegant pronouncements of physics, or rather the more superficial and dreary aspects of the mechanical world. This world is predictable, with bodies in motion tending to remain in motion…and all that. But plain old physics does not account for spring.

It’s early yet, so the snow is just going, the mud is still passable, and we don’t yet see green bursting forth all around, but already something in the air has changed. There is new energy all around, and it is neither dreary nor predictable, even though it happened to us just a year ago. Spring! What theoretical construct can account for it?

I used to know physicists, and the ones I esteemed were focused on the sub-microscopic world of particles. It still tickles me to remember that in that world, a particle might be one place, then somewhere else altogether—the “quantum leap” that is not tiny as in common parlance, but very, very large. If the laws of mechanics are dreary (if comforting in their predictable nature), the world of quantum mechanics is sheer possibility. Maybe that’s a better theoretical model for life as we know it, but still, how to explain spring?

As is probably clear by now, my science education was sketchy, and I am not really looking to re-immerse myself in biological mysteries like the Krebs cycle, which always made my eyes glaze. Even if I understood the science behind the rush of new life about to happen all around us, I don’t think it could possibly expand my delight that after a long winter of breathing in, now it is time to breathe out, to sing, to dance, to run up and down the hill back of my house in sheer exuberance and exultation that it is spring!

Options

My compost methods (see previous post) are not, I think, so very unusual, and I don’t really beat myself up over the waste, which is not waste at all other than the money spent to purchase vegetables I don’t actually get inside myself.

You may notice that I make a concerted effort not to beat myself up over anything; rather, if I see that I am doing something that seems inappropriate or wrong, I just stop that behavior and replace it with more positive actions. Negative reinforcement doesn’t work on my staff, my dogs, or anyone else I have ever met—why would I want to try it on myself? Apologies are sometimes in order, but the exercise of public self-flagellation does not accomplish much, in my opinion.

Rather, I work hard to treat myself well, including organizing my life so that I can be strong and healthy, and that means having the option of good food at home. My diet is working very well these days, rich in high quality protein, whole grains and vegetables. Organizing food is different in rural Vermont from New York City, where greengrocers were on every other corner and one could purchase beautiful produce on the way home, no matter the hour at which one came home. In Vermont, I am home early and once home, I don’t want to leave my cozy nest. That means if I have good food—including vegetables—at home, I will eat them. If not, well, …not.

So I buy four or five vegetables a week, in addition to the basic onions, celery, carrots, garlic, coriander, and ginger. I figure I spend maybe ten dollars a week on vegetables, many of which end up in the compost. But some of them end up in me, and that is the goal of the exercise. I am paying ten dollars a week not for compost, but rather for the option on vegetables, the capacity to do something for my health every day that I would not have if I didn’t buy vegetables. And no, frozen won’t work—the holistic experience of peeling, slicing and cooking is part of the health benefit I am seeking.

Option preservation. This is something I first learned at business school, the concept that when choosing among alternatives, there is value in the one that keeps your options open, particularly when you have the ultimate alternative of compost. It’s a powerful guiding principle, particularly when dealing with people. Far too quick to draw lines between good and bad, we humans cope better when we create strategies that keep our options open. Do I dump the boyfriend? Write off the sibling or the friend who has been uncommunicative? Refuse to deal with the person who makes life difficult? Why? Aren’t we usually better off if we create an environment in which the annoying person has room to do the right thing, the creative thing, the loving thing? The observable fact that they don't often take it should not influence our willingness to create the right environment.

There are, of course, occasions when it is right and proper and even loving to make a clean break, but they are few in number. We tend to know them when we see them. For me, I find that when I think maybe I ought to make a clean break, I really need to redouble my efforts at bridge-building, even if bridge-building involves redefining the relationship in some fundamental way. Seeing the other person whole, speaking to the other person as an independent entity capable of making his or her own decision, and avoiding the trap of manipulating that person into doing what I want—all that practice often does redefine the relationship and makes room for shifting into new roles without the mutual flagellation that so often characterizes the ways we humans treat each other. I may not be able to see what the new options look like, but that should not prevent my pursuing new options in all faith that a better way will open up before me.

When I know--not think, but know--that it is time to make a break, then it is kindest to go ahead and do it, without second-guessing myself or pulling punches. But that’s only when I know, and that has happened only half a dozen times in my life, as compared to hundreds and hundreds of occasions of renewed bridge-building. More specifically, making a sharp break has only been necessary when the other person in the relationship has been unwilling to consider more than one option for dealing with me. If the game is defined from the other side as do-what-I-want-or-else, I will choose—with regret—to go for “or else.” This was the case when I left my husband twenty years ago, and also on the few occasions when I have needed to fire someone, and maybe a handful of other occasions. It appears that I don't take this step easily, and it may in fact be the challenge of this lifetime that I learn when it is time to let go.

There is a truism in dog training that in a group of dogs, the dog who barks is not necessarily the problem. If you look closely, you will find that there is another dog engaging in psychological warfare, egging on the hapless barker. The challenge for the trainer is to train the barking dog that he has the option to bark or not to bark, to enable him to ignore manipulative machinations and become a happy dog. Likewise, the goading dog needs to learn new ways to entertain himself and suppport his own self-esteem. It’s all about creating and preserving options, so that we can choose the right ones: there is always another way!

I Think I’ll Call Him Harvey

Most people buy their compost at the garden store or by the pickup-truck-load. I buy mine at the grocery store. I buy cauliflower and eggplant, kale and cabbage, apples and oranges and lemons. Then I put them in the refrigerator and wait. Sometimes I cook them, put them back in the refrigerator and wait. After the appropriate time has passed, I pull them out of the refrigerator and add them to my compost bucket, which during these winter months sits right in the kitchen. A full bucket prompts a trip up to the compost pile the far side of the garden, and these days I make that trip on snowshoes.

The dogs and I headed up to the compost pile yesterday—it is one of their favorite outings, but then what isn’t? that’s why you gotta love dogs—and found a flurry of tiny tracks around the coffee grounds emerging from the snow. Aha!

In these days of early spring, we have had a visitor, an unusual white skunk, or so it appears to be. Some authoritative sources opine that it is a skunk with such wide white stripes that it only appears to be white. Sometimes he likes the garage, sometimes the barn across the road, but the dogs are mightily offended that he thinks he can hang around here, and they are intent on teaching that intruding critter a lesson, so I am keeping them a little closer to home.

Having done a little research into what one does about visiting skunks, I have chosen to take refuge in fiction and hope. I don’t actually know that this is a boy skunk, but I choose to believe so. I would prefer to believe that it is a boy skunk on his early spring trip through the neighborhood looking for girls rather than a girl skunk about to settle in to have babies in the garage. I have no basis for this belief, but cling to it nevertheless.

People have a lot of theories, ranging from shooting the skunk in the head to trapping it then putting a blanket over the cage, but all of the theories fall apart around the general topic of skunk spray. None of these approaches seems really practical, and I don’t really (yet) have anything against old Harvey, named for his appearance as a harbinger of spring.

More old friends

So, did you miss me? I missed blogging, but my laptop was in need of a little loving care. Sadly, I’m not sure it has recovered from its display (heh, heh..) of temperament, manifested by flickering screen and a weird bluish overlay of random pixels. But at least I know where to take it now, and I have discovered that I actually can survive a weekend offline.

In one way, my survival technique displayed just another maladjustment in my wiring—I went in to work last Saturday and again on Sunday, something I have not done for a few years. The lingering effect of my hard drive crash in December is just now subsiding, and I am beginning to dig out of the giant hole into which I fell. I am making progress.

It is also a sign of progress that I don’t like working on weekends. I view this realization as an indicator of health. There were years and years during which I simply did not allow myself to question whether I liked to work weekends—it was a given. Had to be done. And I paid a price in deteriorating health, which is now slowly being restored by exposure to the glorious Vermont countryside, attention to the rhythm of seasons, and the company of beloved old dogs. Even work—in an appropriate measure—is part of the cure.

Having worked so much on the weekend, and having spent far too much time with the legislature in recent weeks (not that they aren’t lovely people and committed and all), I felt justified in hunting down an old friend for lunch on Wednesday. Hooray! Not only could he make it, he introduced me to Royal Orchid in Montpelier, a blessedly warm, wonderful, little place with delicious and inexpensive Thai food. I can imagine working my way down the menu with repeat visits, and I am likely to do just that when they open up a new location half a block from my office. I am very, very happy with this news.

I am even happier to have rediscovered a friend from over twenty years ago. As a young bride of twenty-three, I had left Georgia (the state, not Georgia, Vermont…as I have learned to say) to follow my husband to Boston. Barely I can remember how intimidated I was by this cold and busy northeastern city. I made my husband go with me on the “T” the first time, and when the train came in, I was sure I would be sucked in front of the train, dying in a sad, unrecognized and unintended imitation of Anna Karenina. I still sometimes feel very Anna Karenina in subways, but I am no longer intimidated by the biggest cities, not after twenty years in New York.

In Boston, with the best part of a masters in comparative literature completed, I was almost unemployable, but found work as a archivist. It is an obscure profession, so I will explain that this work is something like being a librarian, but with lots and lots of loose paper, with most items being unique. My boss was the first full-time archivist hired by the illustrious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and her charge was to develop programs to document the development of contemporary science and technology, with particular attention to MIT’s role.

Oh, what a great time we had! There were only a few of us, and as the baby of the group, I spent most of my time in the basement unwrapping brown paper packages—the relicts of a previous part-time archivist who had collected rooms (rooms!) of material that was uncataloged and unidentified. It was like Christmas every day.

We had a tiny collection of letters from three generations of geologists, including one who wrote back from Sherman’s march through Georgia (the state) about interesting rock formations along the way. We had the obligatory papers of the founder, William Barton Rogers about whom I no longer remember anything other than bits of doggerel. One day I found an Isaac Newton holograph. We had papers of cancer researcher David Baltimore and physicist Victor Weiskopf and strobe photographer Harold Edgerton and of an all-women’s architecture firm from the turn of the last century. And to put it all in some kind of historical perspective, we had the imposing historian, Gregory Sanford.

Yes, that Gregory Sanford. The one who is now the Vermont State Archivist. He was already imposing, as anyone who has met Gregory can imagine. He is very tall, even when he tries to compensate with self-effacing demeanor. And when he braided his mustache into that enormous coal black beard, then to me as a young woman of twenty-three, fresh from Georgia…it was terrifying. Or would have been if Gregory had not been so obviously and completely a sweetheart.

Gregory was working on grant funding to do an oral history project with some of the outstanding scientists and thinkers at MIT. His own passion was for his work with George Aiken, and nobody was surprised when the grant ran out and he returned to Vermont. “Have to,” he said, never using too many words. “God’s country, doncha know.” Years later when I thought of moving to Vermont, Gregory’s comment—one of those gruff, off-hand comments that mask deep feeling—went into the mix.

We heard later that he had become State Archivist and everyone agreed what a wonderful thing, that Gregory who loves Vermont so dearly should be the person officially charged with preserving state activities and functions in paper and in bits and bytes. It’s the perfect job for Gregory, and he is the perfect man for the job. I’ll tell you that my stock went up mightily when I mentioned to friends that I was having lunch with the State Archivist (capital letters required). One friend’s eyes got big, as she gasped, “He’s wicked interesting!” and another requested a real Vermont story, just for her.

But for me, the joy of Wednesday’s lunch was neither Thai food nor consorting with a Vermont icon. It was the deep pleasure of seeing an old friend again, a friend who is very much the same as he was over twenty years ago. Gregory is still tall (6’6” although he always seems taller to a short person like me), but the beard is white now, and not quite so intimidating. The habit of running his hands through his beard while he talks is the same, and the eyes are the same. The energy of a man who loves his life and his work are exactly the same.

In many ways we don’t know each other at all. Gregory is now a family man, with long established relationship and teenage daughters, about whom he is clearly besotted. I no longer have the husband I had twenty years ago. Gregory has spent most of his years in Vermont and in love with Vermont. I have lived and worked a lot of places, and my twenty years in love with New York City are clearly a complete mystery to Gregory. But I still see the shy, oversize man who noticed when he intimidated the 23-year old me, and was kind. Maybe we each conquered our shyness—to the extent we have—in radically different ways, Gregory by embracing the home that he loved, and me by embracing change. Whatever the rational backdrop, I still see a friend. And what a gift that is!

Exuberants Anonymous

Ever since I finished Kay Redmond Jamison’s new book, Exuberance: The Passion for Life, I have been googling around in the expectation that at any minute affinity groups will spring up on the net. Can’t you just imagine the array?

XA: Exuberants Anonymous, in which participants learn to accept that we are exuberant personalities, that we aren’t always as organized as others might wish, and that we have a tendency to bounce in other people’s parts of the Forest. We might go through the exercise of visiting people on whom we have bounced and asking their forgiveness.

X-Anon, for people who love (most of the time) exuberants, but would like to teach them some basic manners without crushing their spirits or would like to figure out how to get a little help loading the dishwasher, preferably the same way every day.

X-a-Teen, for early-identified exuberants, to address the special needs of teenagers who are more teenager than most, perhaps preventing those early painful losses of friendship that can recur through life.

ACX: Adult Children of Exuberants, who can get together to vent about how distressing that Mom is still irrepressible, that Dad won’t stay home, and that when either of them comes to visit, locking the study door for a couple of hours a day is the only option that really works.

I don’t mean it to sound silly, least of all because I do greatly appreciate the work accomplished by various twelve-step groups. But it is kinda silly from a few points of view.

First, exuberance is a character trait as well as a set of behaviors. It is largely innate, although some thoughtful exuberants think there is an element of nurture as well. Although we may be clumsy and unwittingly intrude on others parts of the Forest, our character is not an illness like alcoholism or a pathological behavior. The negative effects of abuse of alcohol or many different drugs are well recognized and dwarf the impacts of the most outrageously bad over-exuberant behavior.

Second…anonymous? Yeah, right.

Third, there are many, many affinity groups on the net for us exuberants. We can read about gardening and about the slow food movement. We can get directions on how to reupholster a chair…then proceed to do it over the next fourteen hours. Those of us who are isolated geographically can find the most cosmopolitan and interesting friends, while luxuriating in the beauty of the Vermont countryside.

Finally, and most important, while we may need to learn to be more polite or more organized or even how to stand up for ourselves—we don’t need comfort for being made as we are. We are what we are…and it is glorious. I certainly don’t think I have been deprived of the melancholy end of the mood spectrum, leaving me with plenty of common experience with other humans. Occasionally, I have wished that life were more….even. Still, resilience of mood has carried me out of many a low period and eased many a touchy social situation. I, for one, would not want to be any different.

Exuberance!

On this beautiful Vermont Sunday morning, I am finishing up Kay Redmond Jamison’s Exuberance: The Passion for Life, a wonderful book chock-a-block with insight and love. Moody creature that I am, I have long held Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind as one of the very few books I must own. Ironically, I have given away many copies, but I don’t think I currently have one in the house.

Where that book was a declaration of the problem, sometimes raw confessional and sometimes hesitating hypothesis, this new Exuberance is the mature work of a gifted mind and a generous spirit. It makes me happy to count myself among the exuberant and it inspires me to apply that gift honorably and compassionately in the daily challenges of my own life.

I haven’t yet reached the end of Jamison’s book but already I have one big payoff. Those of us who are exuberant, who love life…we are different from others. The benefits of being made this way are many, and if we had a choice to make, we might choose to be exactly as we are. But there are undeniable shadows: the tendency to depression, the threat that we may merely skitter from one dilettantism to the next, and—perhaps most painful, the social judgments and penalties we suffer, even from those who claim to cherish us.

Early in the book, Jamison caught my attention by harking back to the efforts of Pooh, Piglet and Rabbit to take Tigger down a notch.

"[T]he other animals, who are more usually overshadowed by the ebullient Tigger…gather power from the need to reestablish order and to exert moral authority. The ballasting animals act out of concern, outrage and often a trace of envy as well. When necessary, they band together to take the erring animal in hand.”

“Rabbit, for one, in the wake of suspicions that Tigger has bounced Eeyore into the river, determines that Tigger is ‘too bouncy.’ He goes further: ‘It’s time we taught him a lesson.’ The problem with Tigger is that ‘there’s too much of him, that’s what it comes to.’ Eeyore, the aggrieved, is indeed offended: ‘Taking people by surprise. Very unpleasant habit. I don’t mind Tigger being in the Forest,’ he says, ‘because it’s a large Forest, and there’s plenty of room to bounce in it. But I don’t see why he should come into my little corner of it, and bounce there…”

“Rabbit concocts a plan for Piglet, Pooh, and Rabbit to take Tigger to a place he has never been before, to lose him, and then find him again the next morning. He will be, Rabbit assures Piglet and Pooh, ‘a different Tigger altogether…he’ll be a Humble Tigger…a Sad Tigger, a Melancholy Tigger, a Small and Sorry Tigger, an Oh-Rabbit-I-am-glad-to-see-you Tigger.’ Tigger will be deflated, unbounced, newly appreciative, and cut down to size: ‘If we can make Tigger feel Small and Sad for five minutes,’ explains Rabbit, ‘we shall have done a good deed.”

“Far from losing Tigger in the Forest, of course, Pooh, Piglet and Rabbit themselves become hopelessly lost in the mist. Tigger effortlessly finds his way out. Pooh and Piglet, after much aimless and anxious wandering about, eventually make their way to the clearing, but Rabbit remains stranded, unable to navigate back to safety. The maligned and still very much bounced Tigger bounces to Rabbit’s rescue, and into a different perspective: ‘Tigger was tearing around the Forest making loud yapping noises for Rabbit. And at last a very Small and Sorry Rabbit heard him. And the Small and Sorry Rabbit rushed through the mist at the noise, and it suddenly turned into Tigger; a friendly Tigger, a Grand Tigger, a Large and Helpful Tigger, a Tigger who bounced, if he bounced at all, in just the beautiful way a Tigger ought to bounce. “Oh, Tigger, I am glad to see you,” cried Rabbit.’” (Exuberance, pp. 74-75)

Known in the intimacy of my family circle by the nickname Pooh-bear, I was never properly recognized as more of a Tigger, but I have suffered Tigger’s fate repeatedly over the years until at last I learned the central lesson that all Tiggers must learn—to cherish my own bounce. Suppose the other animals had succeeded in de-bouncing Tigger. What is a Tigger without a bounce? Certainly no longer a Tigger. How unkind!

Now when someone tries to “take me down a notch,” I try to respond with patience and politeness. Where originates the impulse to rein in my behavior? Have I stepped on toes? Have I been insensitive? Is it time to take a breath and recognize that my own enthusiasms are not the only good ideas in the world? Compassion is a daily practice, not a character trait.

Accepting this shadow side of my character is productive, but allowing even the best-intentioned friends, lovers and colleagues to “take me down a notch” is not. In this central power struggle, I have racked up heavy losses, not willfully as so many perceive, but because I know one fundamental truth: that I cannot be different from how I was made.

Already crowding into my brain, I hear the attacks. Remember? I have heard them all my fifty years. “You can be different if you want to. If you loved me you would be different.”

Yes, I can try to be more organized, although given my phalanx of to-do lists and computer-aided productivity tools, I am already pushing the limits of carving time into tiny, purposeful bites. These tools serve one important purpose: to help me remember to do what I have said I would do.

Yes, I can devise tricks and schemes to keep my ebullience in check, to keep from bouncing all over other peoples’ parts of the Forest. This is the reason that I bring knitting to meetings—how it works, I cannot explain, but it does keep me quiet. Thank heaven for Vermont, where knitting in meetings is tolerated, if not exactly welcomed.

Yes, I can try to be sensitive to others’ needs. I can carve out time and intention to ask what others need or want. Still, I don’t think it is really fair to require that I read minds or take on managing the happiness of other people. My ex-husband used to play a particularly nasty game called Guess-what-will-make-me-happy-no-that’s-not-it. Attempts to elicit some inkling of what would make him happy were met by stony silence and another game called If-you-persist-in-being-yourself-I-will-declare-you-BAD. Maybe it’s true that he couldn’t do any better, but neither could I. In the end there was nothing I could do but leave, and it still breaks my heart.

The same story has played again and again with family, friends and lovers. I’m very bad at leaving, but the major lesson of my first fifty years of life has been learning to say goodbye, learning to say, “I do love you, but if you can’t accept me for who I am, then I will have to accept…finally…that I can’t be around you.” I can only hope and pray that I may get a different cosmic assignment sometime soon.

For all the changes I can make, all the changes I have made with respect to how I operate in the world, I cannot change my central character as a person of exuberance. The times I have allowed someone dear to me to convince me to try…have taken me down a road to disaster. Now I see any such attempt to change me as arrogant, flinging back into the face of God the gift of who I am. Now I see that I have limitations on what I can do with these very particular, very specific gifts. Bound by the laws of time and space, also by the looser bonds of probability and of human frailty, I need to choose carefully where I invest my talents. I pick my battles more consciously now, and I recognize that the decision rules have less to do with optimization and more to do with heuristics. Having moved past the stage of defining what my values ought to be, and even past the stage where I feel obliged to impose my value on others, I am now in a stage where what counts is the daily practice of applying my values to my own life.

So what’s today’s big challenge? On this Sunday morning, like most mornings, it is taking the time to center myself, to thank my Creator for making me just the way I am, and to think through what adjustments I may need to make in my own outlook and behavior in order to find the most loving solutions in the world. Let’s start with gratitude to Kay Redmond Jamison for sharing her life (how personal a gift!) and her work. She encourages me to treasure the gifts that I have and to invest some few precious hours in thinking, writing and play.

I have a friend who is fond of saying that there are two ways of dealing with people in the world—you can build them up or tear them down—and he chooses to build people up, speaking to their best selves and drawing out their highest impulses. I think he is absolutely right, but it is the way of the world to want to tamp down exuberance. We exuberant ones are the cheerleaders, but who will cheer us on? Bouncy creatures that we are, even Tiggers need to be built up from time to time.

Thank you, Dr. Jamison, for daring to publish a book as edgy and unfinished as An Unquiet Mind. Thank you for coming back to us with your later, mature thoughts on how to live with Exuberance. You cannot imagine how you have touched my life, how you have inspired me. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Living large

Kay Redmond Jamison’s new book Exuberance has to strike a chord with anyone who…well almost anyone. The childlike love of the whole wide world blessedly comes to most of us, if not all, and for some of us, it persists throughout out life. I count my blessings every day that I am a person of enthusiasms. As much as my moods can irritate more even-tempered friends and colleagues from time to time, mostly they appreciate my up moods, particularly in contrast to the times my anxieties betray a need to crawl back into my introvert’s shell for renewal.

Some days it seems that being upbeat is a social burden. People like to be around me when I am bubbly and fun and outgoing and extroverted…and not really entirely myself. Or rather it is myself, but it is the version that I choose to show to the world. In astrological terms, it would be the ascendant (Sagittarius) or mask that I must learn to wear as an interface to the outside world. With a sun sign in confident Leo and three or four planets in soupy, sensitive Cancer, I desperately need some kind of mask to interpose between my stormy self and the outside world.

Astrology or psychology or myth, like most people I try on stories (adult child of an alcoholic? Sagittarius rising? smart aleck kid? just plain bad? child of God?) that explain who I am and what I am in the great big world out there. Kay Redmond Jamison’s book is a compelling version: I am a person of exuberance.

I recall the exact moment some twenty years ago or more when I became aware that I simply must leap from passion to passion. A brainy child, I was horrified by this insight into my character. It was as if I inhabited someone else’s life. But I remember the moment, complete with where I was standing in a hallway in my white-painted, parquet floored Brooklyn apartment, the very moment when I accepted that my intellect was not the driver of my life, even if I could count on it as a governor of my wildest urges. And I have been happier since I accepted this truth about myself.

It explains a lot. Like how a kid from a tiny town in North Georgia found herself working on Wall Street. Funny, when I graduated from college, my greatest aspiration was to be competent at something, anything. Now I don’t think it is immodest to claim that I am extremely competent on a number of fronts, not that I don’t fail from time to time, not that I am perfect. But the lessons I learned on Wall Street built on the insight of exuberance as driver: live large, think big, …because what you can imagine, you can build. You start with a plan, a strategy, a concept and you keep putting pieces in place until it is time to change the plan, the strategy, the concept.

An important piece of the puzzle is the b-school concept of option preservation. I have an idea of how things can be, and I know what some of the pieces are, so I work on those. Sometimes I don’t really completely understand how all the pieces fit together, but I recognize that certain pieces keep the dream alive, so I work on those. Thus does faith work in support of passion, even in the absence of intellect.

Another important piece is learning to scope a problem on a large enough scale. As an analyst, I followed basic industries including paper, steel, chemicals, commodities, and I learned how to approach high fixed costs. Old-fashioned industries require major leaps of faith just to make investments to stay even on the competitive front. Hundreds of millions of dollars, recouped pennies at a time. I think of the new air-laid non-woven paper machine that went into one client’s factory and of the product manager’s prediction that over the coming years we would see numerous new products using this technology. And so it has come to pass: Clorox wipes, furniture polish wipes, wipes for nail polish remover, wipes that carry shoe polish, LED screen cleaner wipes, antibiotic wipes…and now the newest Preparation H wipes.

It is truly a big, wide, wonderful world with millions of tiny steps to pay for multi-million dollar machines. It all starts with a concept, a strategy and with exuberant embracing of the dream. It continues with hard work to keep options open, fed every day by more exuberant enthusiasms and passions. This is the stuff that life is made of, at least my life. How about yours?

Town Meeting Day

Yesterday was my second Town Meeting Day in Vermont, and it passed companionably and uneventfully. I attended two Town Meetings yesterday—the Town where I live and the largest Town in the county—and spent my time as others did, chatting, laughing, and comparing knitting. I am pleased that I learned just yesterday how to do double knitting and how to make mittens with thumbs.

The experience was different from last year’s introduction. Last year, I just soaked up the atmosphere of this amazing tradition, a pure democratic process in which everything that needs the stamp of voter approval is put forth, discussed, and voted by the people who attend. I was impressed by the skills of moderators, the broad acceptance and observation of Robert’s Rules of Order, and the overwhelming courtesy of all participants, even those who got excited about their particular concerns. This year, I was able to sit back and observe more clearly that in Town Meeting, like any other effectively managed meeting, most of the hard work and decisions have already been structured for the voters, making the meeting itself almost a formality. Almost.

Since the tiny non-profit I represent receives funding appropriations from nine area towns, I go to Town Meeting in the mostly unrealistic fear that my organization’s funding may be questioned, or worse, that my neighbors may start pelting me with rotten vegetables that they have been hoarding just for this occasion. Truly, Vermonters are more polite and reserved than that, but you never really know what public outburst of some private disappointment may surface unexpectedly. Over the coming weeks, I will hear if appropriations in the other seven towns survived, but for now, like my neighbors, I can turn my attention to starting seeds and looking to spring. Town Meeting Day is the traditional day to start seeds indoors.

I have also come to see Town Meeting Day as useful allegory for decision-making. In my ongoing struggle to establish boundaries for myself or for other people who seem heck-bent on intruding on mine, Town Meeting Day provides a happy model. To the person who has strong opinions about how I run my personal life, I say, “That’s very interesting. You are of course entitled to your opinion, but since you are not a resident of the Town of Karen, you do not have a vote.” The sputtered, “But-but-but…you can’t do that!” is countered with a calm, “Thank you for your input.”

It also works as I try to change how I make my own decisions. You see, lots of people have input into the decisions that are made at Town Meeting, but the final decisions are made only by the people who show up. There were many years in my life during which the Kid and the Grown-up struggled over decisions. The Kid would whine, “But I want to play more,” while the Grown-up overruled with, “First, we pay the bills.” The Kid would then compromise by getting the Grown-up to agree to have ice cream for dinner. It was the Kid who got the Grown-up to agree to have a house and a dog. It was the Grown-up who exulted in the delight of intellectual stimulation of work and tamped down looming health issues. The Body’s requirements, whether for rest or exercise or relief of stress, were simply ignored. Now that the Body shows up for Town Meeting, the overall decisions are better. Proposals to have ice cream for dinner are roundly voted down by both the Grown-up and the Body, but the Body and the Kid gang up on the Grown-up (who can be an old grouch) and get more physical activity into the mix. We are all happier in this new system. We are all happier in Vermont.