Hanon exercises

Today I am thankful for our charming houseguest who usefully interrupted our evening routine, so that homework and dinner and everything happened later than usual, and no one seemed to mind very much.  By “no one” I mean, of course, “me.”

I took piano lessons for a few years as a girl.  My teacher was very dramatic former concert pianist, who, I believe, was also bipolar.  I was diligent about practicing but not especially musical or deeply interested in piano.  I was happy to take lessons, though, because piano lessons seemed like something one should do.  I had very definite ideas about what childhood should be, informed by reading (the Trixie Belden series, anything by Ellen Conford, Elizabeth George Speare) and TV, and piano clearly fit.

My piano teacher had me do Hanon exercises, which are repetitive fingering exercises.  My hands would march up and down the piano, unmelodiously, hammering out the notes and working out correct fingering.  In the mood I’m in now, I remember that I quite liked them, but that may be a complete lie.   Blogging right now, suspended between addresses, feels like Hanon exercises.  I am writing not for itself, but because I need to stay in shape.  I feel sharper in every way when I am blogging.  But I’m also vain, and miss writing for more people than can fit in my station wagon, or even a Mini Cooper (exuberant kisses for the people who know I’m here — you are more dear to me than crowds).  Regardless, I need to keep writing.  I need the energy that it gives me, the feeling of being a writer, the feeling of forward movement, of goal-full-ness to which I am addicted.

I wonder if there are Hanon exercises for writing?  I know there are prompts and memes and other supports for blogging.  I could do that, just to stay in shape.  I could make up my own meme and launch it and see if anyone pays attention to it: My ten favorite things about doing laundry.  But of course writing is different from playing music, because one is composing and playing at the same time.  I am writing the narrative that I’m commenting on.  And frankly not doing a great job of it tonight.  And this after a short and drab post last Thursday….  I hate that my momentum is broken.

So, since I can’t fill up this post with my own words, I give you Hanon exercises on YouTube.

 

Intentions check-in, quickly

Today I am thankful that blogging still gives me satisfaction.  I still want to do this.  I feel better when I do.

A quick intentions check in: I tried to apply my “get out of his business” attitude to Milo, and it worked!  We made an agreement that I wouldn’t fuss about his homework and practice, and he wouldn’t fuss about his homework and practice, and for one very lovely night it worked.  The nights since then have been topsy turvey, with a little backsliding on both sides, but I know that letting up is possible.  As for Daniel,  he is struggling under some burdens, and I am trying to listen rather than talk.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.   Listening feels better.  Last night he said I was rigid, and I just let it go — it wasn’t about me (although, really, I am rigid.  And I happened to be right in this case).

Poem for Wednesday

Today I am thankful that I am here, in this new and safe space, and that some dear friends have come with me.

I have loved this poem for 16 years, ever since I first saw it. I cut it out of a magazine and taped it to my kitchen cupboard in the first apartment I lived in in this city.  I lost the clip in moves since then, but I remembered the poem.  It means so much more to me now than it did when I first read it because I have come to know what it means.  I wanted to post it for a long time, but never did.  Right now is really the moment for it. 

A Presence
—Dostoievsky’s older brother
sometimes made him stand in a
corner, telling him, “And don’t
think about a white bear!”

You are the white bear I try
  not to think about, the file
untitled in my computer’s cache,
  you are the one piece of a puzzle
already burned, the rhyme no
  sentence of mine ever leads to.

You are the erasure leaving
  an impression, blank, on each page
of my pad, phone number with no
  name, connection that can’t find
its voice, the carryover never
  cancelled, not to be restored.

You are the amputee’s ghost
  pain, the debt redoubled on
full payment, the dissolving
  membrane whose unfriendly floaters
blur my lens, the emperor’s new
  son and heir, the lost white bear.

W.D. Snodgrass

Frippery at last

Today I am grateful for my lovely commenters.  Thank you all for helping me think through the things that drive me to post, and for being staunchly on my side (which is, of course, the side of the angels — if only everyone could see that!).

Okay, I promised frippery, and frippery will be had!  Welcome to all the things that are getting me through a drastically cold winter:

1. The blanket dress

This is a very soft wool dress that I got years ago for something like 75% off the retail price.  It was languishing on the super-sale rack at a very fancy store because it rarely gets cold in the city in which it was for sale and because the dress flares out dramatically at the hips, and the women who shop at the aforementioned very fancy store  are happy to be on the cutting edge of fashion but only if it doesn’t detract from their seriously attended-to figures.   Since my waist doesn’t really go in, and my hips don’t really go out, I get a kick out of approaching an hourglass figure when I wear this dress — if you can have an hourglass figure when you’re wearing a giant tea-cozy.   I ignore the care instructions and wash this dress in the machine, so it gets softer and softer.  I love my blanket dress.

2. My taped-up boots

The red duck tape is a bit of stunt, I admit, but these are the warmest boots I have.  I need to replace them because the tear continues up and down the boot, not at all impeded by the tape.  I like wearing things to pieces.  I don’t have many new winter clothes, having blown my budget on boots for fashion, not function (more than one pair, none of which I want ruined) and this year especially I’m wearing just a few old things over and over.  Wearing things out makes me feel virtuous and helps me delude myself that I’m not really a clotheshorse and a spendthrift.   I bought some inexpensive boots from Lands End a few years ago and they are neither very warm nor very comfortable, so I want a new pair.   Right now I like these.

3.  My new coat

I got a new winter coat for Hanukkah.  My old one is at least 5 years old, and showing wear at the cuffs, the binding on the placket near the zipper, and the lining, which has already been partially replaced.  It’s not good for days that are below freezing.  My even older one is 10 years old, extremely warm, but the lining is ripped to shreds and it’s inconveniently long.   I love my new one (now 30% off!).  I don’t even mind that loads of other women seem to have the very same one.  We’re a warm little sisterhood.  I don’t understand coats as a fashion element, at least not in the winter.  My sister-in-law and an extremely fashionable colleague find this ridiculous — a coat is what most people see you in during the winter, it’s your public display of style, therefore it should be outstanding.  But I think winter coats are a nuisance, and no more of a fashion item than a shovel.  The idea of buying a new one every year befuddles me, even though it’s incredibly sensible from a cost-per-wear perspective (much more sensible than, ahem, another pair of fashion boots).   I don’t trust something to be chic and warm and durable.  So I soldier warmly on and pretend I’m invisible on the street.  (I also wear an extremely ugly pair of MBT shoes to and from work — I can’t say that they have remodeled my backside, but they have done wonders for my disgruntled lower back — so I hope I’m invisible on the street, because I’m not bringing my best game by any means.)

4. Winter tights

Unbelievably, my winter tights are warmer than jeans or corduroys.  Maybe women who are accustomed to cold weather know this already — I was stunned.  I have a Happy Socks pair, a pair of Hue sweater tights, and a pair of Wolfords that my sister-in-law gave me (unworn) after she lost loads of weight.  Those Wolfords are a dream, durable as brick and warm in 20-degree weather.  I can’t find a pair like them online — mine are patterned and the ones for sale this year are boring and solid (but probably very warm).  I may buy myself a new pair next year.

What I wish I had to get me through this winter:

I have a sample of the day cream for sensitive skin from this line, and I love it.  My skin feels like sandpaper in the mornings because our house is so dry, and I sleep with my face about 12 inches from the radiator.  A humidifier helps a little, but not much.  Surely this beautiful cream with the vaguely exotic name and European origins will make me radiant, glowing, and fantastically beautiful.  All for only $55!

Next in the frippery series: my hypothesis on why it is hard for me to be pretty at 40.

Intentions are slippery things

Today I am thankful for my delightful, extraordinary colleagues.  A lot of us have worked together for a long time, and in many ways we are growing up (professionally) together.  And they’re all great.  And our junior colleagues are smarter, faster, and better than all of us, and we all get on just fine.  (And I would say this even if I hadn’t had two strong drinks at an office happy hour this evening.)

My intentions were basically blown all to bits last night when I told Daniel that he really needed to go talk to someone to deal with his depression.  I didn’t actually use the word “depression.”  I just said, “I think you need to go talk to someone. … You come back to this place a lot, and when you keep coming back to a place that you don’t like and you can’t get out of it, you need to go talk to someone.”

And then we had a long conversation in which I like to think I was the model of good listening and extraordinary patience and non-defensiveness.  We wandered around some topics before he said that coming home in the evening makes him feel physically ill with stress.  I bark orders at Milo, I am rushing, there is no time.  I had thought this was settled, or at least relieved.  But no, it’s not enough, it’s never enough.  I said, calm as milk, “Tell me what your ideal evening would be.”  He didn’t know.  I said, calm as milk again, “Okay,  it’s probably a good thing I’m out tomorrow night, so you can do things the way you’d like.”

Daniel’s depression — and maybe it doesn’t rise to the level of clinical depression but I can’t find a better word for it — comes and goes.   He has some typical symptoms, although he is very productive professionally, very engaged with Milo.  If you met him, you would think he’s charming, erudite, funny, besotted with his son.  Depressed would be the last thing you’d think of.   But I think he’s depressed because when I talk to him about what would make him happy, all his answers involve someone else, or something else, or the world itself, changing.  I need to be different in the evenings.  He needs a vacation.  Shana needs to stop needing him so much (I happen to agree with that).  His place of business needs to be on more stable financial footing.  His colleagues need to be more interesting.  He needs more friends where we live.  We need more money.  Literature needs to be respected instead of new media crap.  All these things may be true.  But Daniel has surrendered his agency.  He has decided he can’t do anything himself to make his life better.  So, he doesn’t.

After our conversation in which I basically offered up that he and Milo would be better off without me in the evenings, I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth and I happened to wring the toothbrush so hard it snapped (not our Oral-B electric toothbrush, thank goodness.  Toothbrushes are very flimsy these days, by the way).  I came back to bed and said something about the evenings and how hard they are and he said, “You make it sound like it’s all about you.”

Reader, I looked him in the eye and I said, “Oh, no.  It’s not about me.”  Calm as milk, unremitting as stone.

Because, it’s not about me.  I can give Milo fewer reminders, and let homework and practice and bedtime and cleaning-up-after-yourself slide a bit.  Probably I should.  I’m starting to, or trying to start to, or intending to.  But our evening routine is well within the normal bounds of middle-class, two-job, parent-child life.   I am no Tiger Mother.  And I can’t manage our life around his depression.  I’ve tried, until my anxiety at suppressing myself and trying to make everything perfect and calm and un-depressing for him makes it impossible.   (Which takes about four hours– these circumstances send me right over the edge of anxiety). And, frankly, I don’t want to teach Milo that it’s not important to do homework, or clean up after himself, or practice his instrument.

Do I sound awful or uncaring or un-self-aware?  Maybe I am such a bitch in the house that I make my husband physically ill.  (Daniel just came downstairs to report that the evening was ideal, stress-free, and all tasks finished up ahead of schedule.  Dammit!  There goes my hypothesis.)  But I’ve taken responsibility for Daniel’s depression, or whatever the DSM-IV it is, for such a long time.  I’ve advised him to get help.  I’ve advised him to exercise, take Omega-3 fatty acids, take better care of himself, put down his burdens.   I believe with every cell of my body that this, really, is why we don’t have another child.  I do.  I understand the biological hurdles we faced, but I honestly believe that if Daniel hadn’t been depressed we would have cleared those hurdles, somehow.  Given his depression, it’s probably a blessing we failed.  And I never say that.  I never think that, except when he is struggling like this.

And now, dear readers, I don’t know what to do, but I feel a very useful sense of calm about it.  Usually I don’t know what to do and it makes me cry and scream silently with my hands covering my mouth hidden in the bathroom with the lights off.  Now, I don’t know what to do, but I’m not the main actor.  (He’s not on the verge of acute harm to self or others — then I would have an obligation to act for him.)  I need to love him, and not tie myself in knots.

I promised frippery, didn’t I?  I wish I had some!  In the next post, I will have a picture of my duck-taped boots and other things that are getting me through the winter.  Daniel’s mood seems to have improved a bit since I spoke to him earlier today.  Maybe it was a passing cloud.  But that damn cloud passes a lot.

 

 

Poem for Wednesday

Today I am thankful that it was ten degrees warmer than it’s been in weeks.  Milo announced a few days ago after reading the weather page that the past month’s temperatures have been ten degrees below normal.  Today it was lovely, sunny, almost springlike.  I took a long walk back from a lunch date with a friend with my coat unzipped.

Celia, Celia — Adrian Mitchell

When I am sad and weary,

When I think all hope has gone,

When I walk along High Holborn

I think of you with nothing on.

Review

Today I am thankful that I wrote the book review!  I wrote it yesterday, despite Daniel’s repeated incursions onto our only computer (there was really only one incursion and I glared at him so much, and sighed so much, and made such a production out of it that he didn’t try again), despite the constant and loud drone of construction equipment outside our window.

And now, I feel all written out.   And I feel that I shouldn’t open this post by crowing about the book review (should I say something other than “crowing”?  Is that too braggartly?  Is braggartly a word?  WordPress thinks not.)  I want to tuck it away at the bottom, like a p.s.  I will share my darkest moments here, but am reluctant to talk about something good happening.  That’s weird.

Daniel and his family are reluctant to talk about the possibility of bad things happening.  I once asked Daniel to get me Masha Gessen’s memoir about breast cancer, and he kept forgetting.  Eventually I told him, “You know, reading that book won’t make me get breast cancer.”  I am perfectly comfortable thinking about doom.  I always ask doctors for the worst case scenario.   Perhaps I hope these thoughts work like a vaccine.  They inoculate me against the worst actually happening — I can’t be outsmarted or taken by surprise.  (I’m wrong about that — I know.  I kind of know.  But it is a comforting form of magical thinking.)

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about great things happening.  It seems like a strange and unrealistic thing to do.   It doesn’t prepare you for anything.  It’s not a way to outsmart an unsafe universe.  Thinking about great things — that’s what sets you up for trouble.

I’m actually a reasonably happy and optimistic person who believes that most broken things can be fixed and that people are usually trying to be good.  Is that true, though?  Happy, yes, but maybe not optimistic.  My obsession — no, my appropriate but unappreciated spousal concern — with Daniel’s health stems from my fear that he will be disabled or housebound later in life.  Maybe I’m happy, but I don’t trust happiness to last unless I work all the time to earn it.  And I have to show people that I worked hard to earn it.  I can’t just be plain happy.  I am the ant, never the grasshopper, and everyone around me has to know about my anti-ness (anti-nomianism?  anti-disestablimentarianism?  If I say something clever, is that anti-pithy?  Sister, take it from here, please)

Maybe I’m not happy (although I am awfully tickled by my own bad puns).  Maybe I’m some other kind of thing that I don’t know how to name or describe.   Hmm.  That will have to roll around in my head like marbles for a few days.  After Poem for Wednesday, I will write about nothing but frippery for three posts in a row.

Blogging and Time

Today, I am thankful that the things that are causing me to be vexed and impatient and stressed are good things.  I got into a tizzy this morning because I had to do so many things before going to brunch (and we were very late).  Okay, brunch.  How bad can it be if I’m going to brunch?  (Which was quite nice, by the way.)

I don’t know what to do about my time problem.  I haven’t enough, and I get really cranky lately on weekends because I know I have so damn much to do, yet I also know I can’t do it all, and I know I have to stop and I want to stop, and yet, I have so damn much to do.   And moments in which I have nothing to do make me cranky and unnerved.  How can I possibly have nothing to do?   I am on a war footing all the time.

I am anxious (duh!).  I am anxious about losing my writing momentum.  I love feeling that I’m a writer.  And I’m having to step up.  I’ve been asked to review a book.  I can’t say anything more specific about where or what, but it’s a big deal for me, and I’ve set aside time tomorrow to write the review.  And what if I don’t finish it?  And what if I can’t write it?  What if I have nothing in fact to say?  Writing this review will (not would, not conditional, actual) be such a big step for me.  It’s writing for me, in my own voice, not on my professional subject but on personal subjects.  If I can’t do this, my sense of myself as a writer will be severely bruised.

I had tremendous momentum at the end of the year.  I read the book, made notes, had thoughts during yoga practice and put everything on hold while I scribbled an idea on a post-it note.  But now, the heavy tides of everyday life are pulling me down.  I was complaining about the difficulty of finding the time to Daniel — who himself complains constantly about not having time to write himself.  He said, “You have lots of time.  Look at all the time you spend reading blogs and doing your own blog.”

My parents almost never fought.  The only times I recall them having spats was when my father asked my mother to make a budget and account for how she spent her money.  That did not go over well: “I spend my money on care for your children.  I spend my money on groceries for this family.  I spend my money on doctors appointments…”   I feel the same way about time — don’t ask me to justify how I spend my time.

But I’m going to justify it anyway: this blog is what is making me a writer.  Without it, I’m not writing.  Without this blog, I would never have agreed to do the book review.  And this blog takes time.  I have introduced a significant new practice into my life, and I’ve devoted more minutes a week to it than yoga, or reading, or other good and nourishing things.  I’m still figuring out how everything else flows around it.

This is one of those weird and unsatisfying-to-write posts that I am tempted to delete.  But I have to confront the fact that this is a new practice.  Thinking of it that way resonates with me.  And practices take time, and it means other things slide.  They should be less important things, and they are, but I turn out to be the kind of person for whom very little is unimportant.   That’s why I am pissed off.  All the things I do are important to me, and so are the many good things that I can’t do.

 

 

Intentions check in

Today I am thankful that it was Indian food day in the office cafeteria.  It’s damn cold outside and one of my bad-weather boots is held together with red duct tape (really — I made the repair this morning.  The red is very nice against the brown suede of the boot.  Too bad it’s not an effective fix.)  so I didn’t want to leave the building for lunch.  Everything in my office cafeteria tastes  like cheap Italian dressing, except the quite nice Indian food.  Lentils, ahh….

So what’s happening with my intentions?  This checking in business seems antithetical to the spirit of intention setting in the first place.  In yoga parlance, checking in seems to be grasping, directing, rather than letting go, observing-without-judging.  On the other hand, it also seems like a good way to make change.  I want not to forget this.  I want to have different habits.  I don’t know of another way to create them.

Intention 1: Sitting in the living room: Dorothea, on Thursday night: “Let’s go sit in the living room.”

Daniel:”Why?  We don’t have to” (turns back to newspaper)

Dorothea: “No, really, let’s go sit in the living room” (but starts to chop an onion for supper)

Daniel: “No. It’s okay.  We don’t have to. Why…?”

Dorothea: “Well, I mean, I don’t understand why you don’t want to do it now, because you said it’s important to you and I’m offering to sit in the living room now, so…”

Daniel: “Okay, let’s go sit in the living room” (while remaining rooted to his spot in the kitchen and not taking his eyes off the paper.  The living room stayed dark and un-sat in.)

When confronted with Daniel’s complaints, I look for behavioral prescriptions.  I need him to give me specific instructions on what to do.  But what he really wants is not so much a different way of doing, he wants a different way of (me) being.  My sweet husband isn’t really that into doing.  It’s the theory, the tone, the atmosphere, that counts for him.  Alas, I am tone deaf, colorblind.  When you don’t get something, you… don’t get it.  So I want behaviors — I can work backwards from those and figure out tone.

What Daniel wants is to walk into a home in which sitting in the living room is a possibility.  So, hardy behaviorist that I am, I am going to continue telling myself that, at any moment, I should be willing to drop that chef’s knife and sit on the couch.  Whether or not we get there is secondary.

Intention 2: keeping intention in mind on the commute home: Well, I haven’t forgotten about it.  I set a reminder in my work email/calendar.  Every day at 5pm I get a note saying “Intentionality, Shalom ha’bayit [peace in the house], What are you going to do about it.”  Of course, I ‘ve taken to dismissing the reminder without reading it.   On the way home, I’m likely to think about dinner, or the day, or some ridiculous song, or work.   I may let this intention go.  I don’t think I can be focused every minute.  Some time has to be for idling, for brain static.

Intention 3: Stay out of Daniel’s health business.  I cheated by spending a lot of time saying, “Are you okay?… Are you feeling okay?… How are you feeling?… I just want to make sure you’re feeling okay.”  But I refrained from giving specific instructions, so that’s something.  Over the last few days, I’ve been less anxious about Daniel’s health, as has Daniel (that’s not a coincidence).  Daniel has his annual physical tomorrow and his doctor will test the hell out of him.  When he gets his results back I will be extremely tempted to 1) disbelieve Daniel’s report that his doctor says he is in good health; 2) get back up in his business.

I try too hard to get things right.  When I was in high school, I was a (slow) hurdler on the track team.  The trick to running hurdles is to run as normally as possible — don’t jump over the hurdle, don’t make it a big deal, just get your lead leg up a little higher and snap it right back down, and bring your back leg through strong and fast.   “Just run” as my coach said.  I could never just run.

I cannot believe that relaxing helps, that trying less hard has benefits.  I try very hard to try less hard. I burst into anxious tears when people say, “Just relax.”  (When people told me that I needed to relax to get pregnant, I just about turned purple.  If that were really the case, infertility treatments would never work, because they are as relaxing as a tax audit.)

But for the last couple of days, perhaps entirely by coincidence, the tone has been a little lighter.  Milo did his homework and housework tonight with little prompting or fussing.  Daniel has been doting and sweet.  He raised a sensitive issue that I’d held my tongue about, without me prompting.  I decided to wait and see before I jumped in, and it worked.  Trying less hard appears to be working, at least today.

(Is this a boring post?  I feel like details of domestic life drag on the screen.  Or maybe I find it boring because I’m not crazed with emotion and anxiety.   This is probably a good thing — the year started out very intense, and I need a little respite, even if it means some prosaic posts.)

Poem for Wednesday

Today I am thankful that wide-legged trouser jeans are back in style!  I love them, but am currently without a pair.  I had intended to forswear shopping till I bought my new Passover outfit and shoes, but there’s no way I can resist, even though I should.  And have I mentioned I also could use a new pair of bad-weather boots?  Saving for a laptop?  Me?  Oh, right.

I’m also thankful that, I approached a meeting today thinking about what I could get from the meeting, rather than what the ostensible purpose of the meeting was.   This felt like a big deal to me.  I usually focus on following directions and sticking to the plan, not imposing my own will (except on Daniel of course!).  Everyone walked away happy, and I have an invitation to go on a junket in a city I’ve always wanted to visit.

Windows is Shutting Down, by Clive James

Windows is shutting down, and grammar are

On their last leg. So what am we to do?

A letter of complaint go just so far,

Proving the only one in step are you.

Better, perhaps, to simply let it goes.

A sentence have to be screwed pretty bad

Before they gets to where you doesnt knows

The meaning what it must of meant to had.

The meteor have hit. Extinction spread,

But evolution do not stop for that.

A mutant languages rise from the dead

And all them rules is suddenly old hat.

Too bad for we, us what has had so long

The best seat from the only game in town.

But there it am, and whom can say its wrong?

Those are the break. Windows is shutting down.

(Guardian, April 27, 2005)

(for you, Sister!)