Ann Zuccardy's Blog

Midnight Demons and Morning Angels

I awaken many weeknights these days in utter terror. I'd like to blame it on mid-life hormones, but I know better. On the weekends, I make up for it, sometimes sleeping 10 hours at a stretch with no problems. Clearly I do not have sleep issues. The weeknight demons are playing with me again.

I've written many times about the bright side of dark panic, which for me, usually means I am on the cusp of a creative streak or a personal growth. Sometimes, in the still of the wee hours, the sounds of the refrigerator humming or the dog snoring are magnified and I focus on them and come back to earth. To now.

Other times, it's words that tether me to now. Writing them. Reading them. Remembering the power of just a single sentence, a touch, a look, or a great idea conveyed in random symbols reassembled in my racing brain that say, "You are here. It's okay."

After I've done the relaxation breaths, hugged my dog and had a mug of warm milk, I turn to the words. I had no intention of writing through tonight's midnight demons, so I read others' words. Just two hours ago a dear friend mentioned my name on Facebook. She said, "Their authenticities (including my name with two other writers I respect deeply) yield a wealth of magic."

Wow, someone said something beautiful about my words. My words made a difference to another. Really? Yes, really. Okay, then.

I read the sentence again. And again. Yep, it's really there. I am not delirious with panic. The words are really there. Someone else is awake. I touched someone. Wow.

So, I'll just keep at it, trying my best, telling the truth as I see it and seeing if perhaps the beauty of another's words in my dark moments might provide a piece of driftwood in the swift current of my mind.

I hang on and float.

Midnight demons float dowstream and morning angels awaken.

How I Perfected Imperfection. Imperfectly.

She leaned back against the black restraint, closed her eyes, half smiled, ran a hand through her Toni perm and submitted.  A sliver of cotton underwear smiled coyly from where the slimming black leotard ended and the opaque tights that contained a gently jiggling mass of soft flesh began. 

And so my introduction to weight management for fashionable housewives circa 1978 commenced. 

I had ballooned to 125 pounds that summer and that was unacceptable for my 5'8" teenaged frame.  I knew I would never be the athletic type - that belief had taken firm root a decade earlier in gym classes where I'd vomit so I could be excused from the likely humiliation when I took last place in the running race as I always did. 

I knew it was best to accept that I would never be a perky cheerleader or a sports superstar and to resign myself to my fate as a housewife in training.  If I gave myself to the aggressive ministrations of the vibrating exercise belt at Gloria Stevens Figure Salon, there was hope that I could at least feign fitness and hopefully avoid a lifetime of counting Weight Watchers food exchanges and drinking Tab.   

The permed-hair woman in the black leotard was probably not older than I am now.  At 16, she is what I thought middle age was all about: lipstick, never swimming underwater at the beach, diamond rings and Gloria Stevens.  And it was okay to have a little extra flesh at her age, but at mine...well, that scale tipping past 125 would surely render me unlovable. 

I stumbled through college subsisting on beer, pizza and literature into the next decade of my life and well past the 130s lb. mark.  It didn't matter so much then.  I was declaring my independence and I didn't care much about what anyone thought. 

In my mid-twenties, I lived in New York City, newly married and vomiting at least once a week.  Except this time, 125 wasn't the magic number, 115 was.  At the height of the obsession, I weighed myself three of four times a day, more on the weekends.  At rock bottom, I hit 110 and stopped menstruating.  I thought that was kind of cool and I had no need for womanhood and babies anyway. 

I remember one weekend my husband left me in the house with a large bear-shaped cookie jar a friend had given us.  Pepperidge Farms Milano cookies - several bags of them - beseeched me from the bear's innards.  I don't know how many cookies I ate that day, but I do remember neeeeeding, anticipating, craving the next one.  And I liked feeling like my own innards might explode because feeling something, however unpleasant it was, let me know I was alive.

It might have been a dozen, maybe two dozen cookies, I don't know, but once I'd reached what I thought was my limit, I calmly positioned my head over the toilet and emptied my stomach to make room for the next couple of dozen.  I could not, would not, stop until every cookie was gone.  And when my husband came home and reached into the jar for HIS cookies, I made up a tall tale most certainly did not involve vomit!   

When we moved to Vermont in 1992, I was horrified to find that we both gained a few pounds almost immediately.  Living in the city we walked everywhere.  Living in Vermont, we drove.  Vermont, of course, was not the fashion mecca I thought New York was, so slightly baggy sweaters and jeans were acceptable to hide my back-up-to-125 lb. secret. 

It was probably the best thing that ever happened to me because my body remembered what it meant to be a woman somewhere around 120 lbs.  I became pregnant the one and only time in my life in 1993.  My daughter arrived in early 1994 and within just a few days I was back in my size 4 jeans (which still hang today, out of style and not my size, in my closet. I have no idea why). 

Obsessive weighing took over my life once again through my daughter's toddler years until one day I noticed my beautiful toddler copying my behavior.  After that, I became more secretive and shameful, not wanting to infect my daughter with the disgust I felt about my own body for so many years.  Eventually, between mothering, working full time, going through a divorce, aging and starting a high-fat gourmet food business (coincidence?  I think not!), I began to feel and look, well...mostly normal and the urge to purge waned a bit. 

But the anxiety remained - the incessant talk about weight and clothing size at family gatherings, the feelings of inadequacy and imperfection, the sense that how I looked on the outside and how much was in my checking account determined my value as a human being.  I still find myself occasionally rewarding or punishing myself with food.  "I don't deserve to eat lunch because I am behind at work" or "I must work for 10 hours straight without food to atone for being so inadequate." 

Last year, at 48, I took up hoop dancing, an art form, a meditation, a sport that required me to be in my body and to move sensually without apology.  Hardly the lithe, flat chested, flat stomached twentysomething shown in the instructional videos I watched, I was self conscious at first.  In fact, when I did my hoop dance teacher training last year, I froze and melted down, paralyzed by my imperfect body, but determined to push through the paralysis and past the voices of "you're not athletic and you suck at all things physical."  Every day, in the solitude of my hoop, I swirl away another layer of perfection's hypnotic song.   

And I laugh as this middle aged, lipstickless, diamondless little girl reveals a new layer of the pre-teen, pre-vibrating-exercise-machine-junkie, pre-inhibited child who desperately wishes she could have laughed all those decades ago instead of puking.   

Here now and healthy now, I work every minute of every day to take meals, menopausal body changes and personal challenges one moment at a time, perfectly reveling in life's imperfection.   

Silence=spaciousness

I am considering a silent retreat this fall; a few days of not speaking to any other human beings with no electronic devices, preferably somewhere warm. Yeah, I know autumn in Vermont is great, but I'm looking for different beauty. And it doesn't exist in a landscape. However, sun and warmth are crucial for me. Utter silence = vast space. I am ready to create this. I don't want to think. I want to breathe without having to take care of anyone or be "productive." Looking for suggestions - outside U.S. is fine.

I am Cleaning House, Creating Space and Giving Birth

Recently I met with the woman who developed Goddard College's M.A. concentration in transformative language arts.  The whole idea of doing this degree as opposed to an MFA is a serendipitous turn of events, but it feels comfortable as I approach my personal half century landmark. I love the idea of marking this transition with going back to school, but unsure about the specifics of what I want to study. I know it has to do with writing.  And it has something to do with teaching/coaching/mentoring too - but not in the conventional classroom model.  I suspect it has something to do with transformation and my obsessions with both birth and death as non-medical, normal, beautiful transitions.  Or maybe not. 

Maybe it has to do with finding my voice in recent years - through hoop dancing, through beginning to open my mouth and for the first time, give physical voice the words that flow out of my fingers so easily but lay quivering on my lips.  Maybe it has something to do with inspiring others in some way through these experiences. 

Maybe it has to do with social media tools that I intuitively understand and have been using for nearly a decade now - the way the tools allow this introvert to be out in the world on her own terms.  I write personal narrative here on my blog or on Facebook and Twitter and I generally get nine positive, connected, inspired responses to one nasty, hateful response.  So apparently my voice does evoke strong feelings .  And social media is part of my full time job, but is that what I want to study?  I don't know.  

Here's what I do know:  this degree would be about me - about my journey and yes, hopefully, it would contribute to something bigger than me in my job or to something meaningful in the bigger world, but at the very core, it has to be about MY burning questions, MY goals, MY strengths.   There is no other way for me at this point in my life. 

I attended a lecture at Goddard called Crafting a Living Through What you Love.  The first part of the process of hearing our calling involves cleaning house - examining myths and messages on what we're supposed to be through the messages and roles we've created for ourselves or that our family and friends have helped to create and use to define us.  And I've realized there's plenty of myth in my life and I've been working hard to clean house (energy vampires, verbally abusive people, constantly negative people, anything that just feels not-quite-right).  It is difficult to hear our own voices through the cacophony of these myths. 

The second part of the process is about cultivating spaciousness because your calling needs space on which to land.  And this is something I inherently know but have not been paying attention to.  I yearn for silence and solitude and yet I just keep committing to people and things and waking up with panic attacks night after night and then wonder why.  Yoga,  meditation and prayer have helped.  EMDR has helped immensely.  Taking naps helps.  Doing nothing on a sunny weekend when everyone says, "Oh you should be outdoors," helps too.   I am beginning to recognize that I do not need to apologize for needing more quiet time than most in a culture that rewards extroversion and movers and shakers.  I don't want to be a vice president of an insurance company - a very visible leader.  I want to be a quiet leader, by example.  I don't know what that means yet, but I know I can do it.  No questions asked. 

In the final part of the lecture I attended we were invited to listen Mary Chapin Carpenter's Jubliee (I suggest you listen to it while reading this post - the video is embedded below) and write about something that we were ready to lay down or put to rest.  What touched me most about this exercise was not the content of what I wrote, but the ease and confidence with which I read it aloud to a group of strangers as my eyes filled with tears. 

Ann as the creative writing undergrad student of 30 years ago would not have been able to do this.  She would have apologized for being stupid and uncreative, she would have mumbled, she would have believed the other writers were better than she.  What amazed me the other night is that now, as a 49 year old student, I felt none of this.  I wanted to read my work and I read it proudly.  Was I scared?  Hell, yeah.  Was I confident in  my ability to connect powerfully with others through my words?  Hell, double, triple yeah!  I am ready for self-directed study.  I am ready to share my words, my voice and I have no attachment to the folks with whom I don't connect.  I can release them. It's all okay with me.    

So, I am making space for something.  I can taste a little of what it is.  It's savory.  It's not sweet.  It's orange and yellow and earth tones.  It smells like an ocean breeze.  And it's a piano tune, likely played like a waltz.   

Or maybe it's a piano tune played like Jubilee.  

Being T.S. Eliot (with apologies to J. Alfred Prufrock)

One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good,
Than all the sages can.  –William Wordsworth

Let us go then you and I,
Where time stands still and I cease to try
To silence my soul for I’m not able. 
Let me toss these lenses and naked peek
Photoshopped memories that speak
Of ersatz wholesome holiness
And ominous churches with musty smells,
Prayers that save me from eternal hell.
Nefarious streets may eat me whole
If I eschew the assigned role. 
Which drags me to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not pretend you know the answer.
We cannot see, but know this cancer. 

In the room the women come and go
Talking of dress size and weight plateaus.

The silver rain that drums its fingers on marshy grasses,
The smoky fog that clings to barnacled rocks
Like a desperate lover jilted in wee hours.
Lingers upon shards of broken shells
Oh, the temptation to drown in peaceful waves of Prozac oblivion. 
Like a pink ribbon-trimmed baby’s blanket. 
But seeing it is nearly light,
Pop an Ambien and turn out the night.

And indeed there will be a price,
For the smoky fog that cries upon the beach
Drumming anxious fingers upon the deaf.
There will be time, it will be mine. 
To fearlessly sing, with full elation.
There will be time to birth and create,
And time for all the poems to write.
Censored not to bury the light,
Time is finite for you and me
My soul roars in tsunami
With each new analogy.
And the only voice I shall heed
Is the one that comes from inside me. 

In the room the women come and go
Talking of butt size and weight plateaus.

And indeed there is always a price
“What if?” and “Who cares?”
Should I have turned the car around?
To secretarial school. 
I could have been a soccer mom
Or a pool club doctor’s wife.
They will say: “She needs a haircut.”
My worn out jeans plaster my behind,
My jewelry modest, my Timex scratched.
They will say: “How dare she thinks highly of herself.”

For I have hidden from them all.
Have closed the windows so they can’t hear,
Verbal abuse in a Corningware mug.
But measured life with their praise.
Now the waves sing from beyond.
Telling me that I’ve been conned. 

I have heard their whispers without sound,
Eyes that scan head to toe.
And when I am scratching to get out of my skin
With my hair swimming in a toilet bowl
Then how should I make a sound
That could grow in fertile ground?

In the room the women come and go
Talking of malls and weight plateaus.

Shall I say I have awakened in the night
And watched the clock hands tick off my life. 
Frozen like an ant in amber?

I have dreamed of tender touch
A shawl drapes the shoulders of humanity.

Would I have been wiser, in retrospect
After the music and poetry
After the casserole and petits fours
If bundled in a shroud of righteousness
I turned back to that fearsome god
And said, “I was wrong, I was wrong.”

I grow bold, I grow bold.
I shall wear my hair long and braided.

Shall I dare to write a poem?  To waltz across the ocean?
I shall stroll barefoot through the garden
Where my feet hear god in soil and sea.

I know she speaks within me. 

I have worn their robes in ill-lit rooms
Pouring my heart into the current style
Wavering terror with  a smile. 

I have tarried in the corners of this cave
In futile darkness flickers sequined dreams
Unraveling these basted seams.

I slept with two men in an airport

Good thing I had that Chinese woman pummel me in the chair massage station near my gate before I boarded my flight from Hong Kong to Chicago. "You like hard massage?" she demanded more than queried. "Yeah," came out more as a puff of air than a recognizable word forced out with several hard blows to my back. 

Arriving in Chicago 15 hours later, I continued to feel the effects of my Chinese chair massage - remarkably loose and as rested as one can hope to be.  Such smooth sailing gave me hope for an uneventful last leg of the trip.  I was wrong. 

My four hour layover in Chicago turned into five, then six hours as my flight home was repeatedly delayed and then finally, cancelled.  That's when I began to think of myself as a beef cow being led to the slaughterhouse. 

I understand problems.  I understand human stress and burnout.  I understand too much work with too little resources for I, too, live these challenges in my own work. What I don't understand is nastiness, devoid of compassion, attack and conflict.  I do understand the power of a thank you or a smile under the most stressful conditions.  And maybe I'm just a pollyanna or crazy, but even when I'm going on 24 hours of continuous stress, I do manage to sneak in a empathic word or a kind glance.  Silly me?  Maybe. But that's who I'll always be.  Guaranteed.

I don't remember correctly the entire sequence of events after my flight to Burlington was cancelled.  I do remember long lines of angry people.  I do remember gruff, understaffed United Airlines customer service representatives treating me as if I were the problem as they rebooked me on another flight from Chicago to Washington, then home to Burlington.  And believe me, I am a complacent passenger.  I do as I'm told.  I say thank you.  I don't give anyone crap when I recognize the futility of a situation.  Not in airports, and definitely not in my personal life! It became a challenge for me to "kill 'em with kindness" to see if I could get a smile or some semblance of compassion out of a customer service rep.  Nothing. 

After more delays, I made it to Washington where I ran, at what felt like a five minute mile,  across  multiple terminals to catch my final flight home.  I listened to a middle aged woman with a badly permed mullet and a track suit with white sneakers that had likely never seen exercise rant endlessly about her journey from Phoenix.  And that's when my sarcastic voice kicked in - all in my mind, of course.  "Shut the F up, lady.  Phoenix is nothing compared to where I came from.  Do you really think whining about it to your seatmate who looks oblivious to your silly little plight is going to get you anywhere faster?  Do you think big bad United really cares about you more than the other stranded people sitting here?" 

Several more delays later (I lost count), around 10 p.m. (I lost track), the flight to Burlington was cancelled and I knew I'd be sleeping in Washington that night, hopefully at a hotel as I was beginning to hallucinate from lack of sleep and my teeth were covered with the nasty film of crappy airline meals and foul smelling bacteria.  My hair still looked great, I must add, not at all modestly.  Thank goodness for my crazy hair which seems to always look better when I don't wash or brush it.  And really, with good hair, I believe I can conquer the world.  (Hallucinations in full swing now.)

That's when one United Airlines representative (one who did manage to smile just a little) told me and two men I'd befriended that we couldn't get to Burlington until the next day,  "No, there are no hotels, but the seats in terminal C have no armrests between them and are quite comfortable for sleeping," she told us.  After we begged for food, she gave the three of us (me and my two friends) food vouchers, but by this time all that was open was Dunkin' Donuts. 

My two friends and I were now bonded and obviously in this together.  And maybe this makes me less of an independent woman, but I have to say, I was relieved to be in the company of two gentlemen who allowed me to go first down the escalator, who waited while I used the bathroom in a deserted part of the airport and seemed to understand my fear about sleeping alone in an airport. 

We dubbed ourselves "abandonmates."  Yes, United Airlines pretty much abandoned us - no food unless we asked for it. No blankets for sleeping.  No, "I'm sorry I can't help you."  And worst of all, not any semblance of human compassion.  We found our way to terminal C where we were to spend the night.  I was slightly excited about running through a deserted terminal and checking behind all the empty ticket counters to see if I could find pillows and blankets for us.  It reminded me of my childhood fantasy about being locked in a mall overnight.  Yes, hallucinations were thoroughly in charge now. 

I found three blankets and my two friends and I hunkered down for the night.  By this time, I was so out of it, I wasn't sure if I could sleep and I questioned the wisdom of popping an Ambien to help with the process.  Ambien won.  I felt safe.  I felt compassion and security with my friends and I swallowed a sleeping pill.  All I remember as I drifted off was clanging of the change recepticles of a bay of pay phones as if someone was obsessively trying to remove money from them.  It went on and on and on.  Or maybe it didn't.  I don't know.  Snippets of what I thought profound poetry drifted through my drugged mind.  "Oh, I have to remember to write this as a poem," I thought...and then I thought no more. 

I awoke four hours later to an airport coming to life in the early morning hours.  We still had five hours before our rebooked flight left.  I worked a little.  In all my burnout and exhaustion all I could think of was work and how burnt out I've been feeling.  I ranted and raved in my own mind about work until it dawned on me.  The compassion I was so craving from the airline personnel was the same compassion I felt unable to give myself. 

So, I sat in the awakening terminal C and did my dirgha breathing.  Calming breaths at first for compassion and then a little later, the breath of joy to breathe new life into my body.  I even meditated for a short time.  Cross legged on an uncomfortable bench, I forced myself to smile ever so slightly and to breathe.  I held the smile for about 10 minutes.  Yes, I cared that I looked like an idiot.  Yes, I care more about compassion and peace. 

The rest of the story is rather dull.  I made it home to Burlington, was reunited with my luggage and drove home from the Burlington airport consciously forcing myself to be alert. 

As I write this, I am still exhausted even though I've slept for a few hours and I am trying to figure out if this story is about travel hell or human compassion.  It's about human compassion.  What would it take for those United employees to have some sensitivity training and for irritable travelers to be trained in the art of compassionate assertiveness.  What is the power of a thank you?  Of a kind glance?  Of deep breathing into a different state?  What is the difference between the weary traveler who becomes abusive and swears and the weary travelers who become friends and help and protect one another as my two friends and I did? 

I don't know the answers.  It's a much bigger issue than an airline issue.  I'm noticing it in other places in my life - the places where I'll walk away from a confrontational person versus the places where I will calmly try to have a conversation versus the places where I, too, realize I am human and my potty-mouthed, judgmental self kicks in.  But she rarely stays for long.  These days I'm learning to thank her for her contribution and working on not engaging her.

Yeah, this is rambly.  I don't care.  I'm working on something bigger.  Understanding.  Empathy.  Compassion.  Self.  It's got to begin there.   

Moving inward, venturing outward

There's no doubt about it.  I am burnt to a bloody crisp on several levels.  Birthdays are always a good time for me to evaluate where I've been and where I'm headed.  This year I had the added bonus of getting out of Vermont for my birthday and the distance provides extra perspective. 

Hot flashes and panic attacks followed me to Asia.  Darn.  I sat still, breathed, slept, drank tea brews that tasted like motor oil and promised relief.  And the message that has echoed for months in the darkest corner of the loneliest panic as well as in the deepest calm after morning meditation is "move inward, venture outward." 

The time has come for me to spend more time alone.  Quiet.  Discovering new places both inside me and in the world, on my own terms, in my own slow motion way.  Not to spend more time at home, oh no, home isn't the place in Vermont where I live, but to spend more time in the home of my own thoughts, in observing and recording via words. 

So, in this personal new year, I will be saying no to many more social activities - the after work drinks, the lunches, the opportunities to be on boards of directors and to perform volunteer work.  Not all, but some.  The constant extroversion has worn me out.  The desire to say yes to others because I so want to liked and don't want to offend - it burns a hole in my stomach. It is not who I am.   

Simultaneously, I will be venturing outward in new ways.  More travel is in the works as my daughter heads off to university next year and I will be freer.  I used to travel a lot prior to her birth and now the time has come to do it again. 

Going to graduate school is a 28-year old dream that must be pursued now.  Not for professional development, but for me.  Just because I want to. 

A trusted intuitive reader told me last year that I would attract more opportunities to speak, present and teach in this year.  She was right.  They came out of nowhere, it seemed.  Most of the time they terrified me, but I know this is also part of the venturing outward I can only do well when I simultaneously turn inward. 

Finally, and most importantly, it's time to venture outward with more writing.  Boldly. I am quite sure that anxiety that has eaten holes in my insides for 49 years is the result of not speaking my piece.  And I realize that speaking my piece will not always be met with enthusiasm by everyone.  Communication is funny that way.  No matter what you say or how benignly you believe you say it, everyone experiences it through their own lens of experience. 

So be it. 

Inward.  Outward. 

Here we go, my perfectly square 49th year.  

Perfectly square ah-ha moments

The bolt of understanding, freedom from anxiety and fear, the sense of peace all this meditation and deep breathing is supposed to bring...there was not one ah-ha moment today as I celebrated my perfectly square 49th birthday. 

I wandered through some Chinese herbal markets where very few spoke English and all was quite foreign to me. I decided to try the tea that promised to cleanse my liver and clear heat from the body.  Seemed like a good choice given the amount of drinking I'd done the previous night.  The thick, oily black tea arrived in a small bowl and I observed others bending down low to their bowls to drink without picking the bowl up.  One woman giggled at me.  The tea was the color of overcooked coffee that had been sitting on the burner all day long, but much thicker and oilier.  It contained 24 medicinal herbs I've never heard of and had the viscosity of Hershey's syrup.  I took a deep breath and two gulps later it was gone.  I fought the urge to gag for a few minutes and then just breathed, my slow dirgha breaths to calm my overactive brain.  Inside me, I could feel the goo sliding down my esophagus into my constricted stomach making me feel better, or so I hoped.  I had a sudden flash of panic, "What if it has a laxative effect and I'm out here alone in the street and I have no idea where the closest bathroom is?"

During the trolley ride back to my hotel, I'd hoped for some sort of hallucinogenic ah-ha moment brought on by the brew I'd just drunk, but no luck with that.  All I could think of was my discomfort.  My rumbling stomach, my crazy hair in 95% humidity, figuring out which coin I needed to put into the little box at the front of the trolley, wondering if the reason I felt so wobbly and weak in the moving trolley was because it's just part of being 49 or if I had contracted a Ladies Home Journal disease of the week. 

I felt my anxiety level begin to rise, my breathing became shallow and my heart pounded in my ears annoyingly.  And I reminded myself for the umpteenth time that my wacky brand of anxiety is entirely learned behavior.  It is not how I was born.  It's what I learned as a child.  It's part of a legacy that serves me sometimes and that I have learned to manage better than I did when I was 7 and throwing up in gym class because I was terrified of attempting anything that would draw attention to my clumsiness.  But it still catches me sometimes - even now as a worldly perfect square.

So, I've recently been asked to speak, out loud, about an ah-ha moment, in a formal setting.  And I've no idea where to start.  I flip through the pages of my 49 years on my birthday, today searching for the right story.  The story that won't piss off my family, the story that connects with others, the story worthy of the wisdom of 49 years of reflection.  And I come up blank.  Is it the moment when I was 7 and I decided I did not believe in God (at least not the way it was being fed to me in the Catholic tradition), or about being laid off from a job and almost losing my house through bankruptcy as a single parent who was too proud to ask for help.  Is it the moment my family disowned me when I moved to New Orleans because that's not the sort of thing we do?  Or is it the multiple health scares, each time wondering, "Is this the time they tell me I'm beyond help and I'm going to die?"  Is it the birth of my daughter 17 years ago, in our apartment in Winooski, the single most profound moment of my life, or is it camping in the bush in Zimbabwe? 

I can't find a single ah-ha moment that I want to share, though I suspect I'm working on one now that is not ready for prime time. 

I'm looking too hard.  I'm drinking strange brews and my body is dizzy and in pain on this, my perfect square birthday. 

I shall sleep now.  And pray that my dreams will tell me which ah-ha moment is the right one to share.   

How I met my sidekick

My daughter, who is now 17, approached me one rainy weekend about a decade ago, brows furrowed, mouth tight.  I recognized her I'm-about-to-launch-into-a-serious-speech look because it's exactly how I look when I'm thinking so intently that I lose track of everything, except my very important thoughts, which must be voiced immediately, lest I explode. 

"Mom," she boldly proclaimed brown eyes wide, "I think I'm a sidekick." 

"Unh-hunh," I absently answered. 

"You're not listening.  I just told you I'm a sidekick," her voice rising just a notch.

"What does that mean?" I asked. 

"You know, I'm a siiiiiiiiidekick," she persisted. 

"Okay, you're a sidekick," I responded, not at all sure of what she was telling me. 

She sensed my confusion, planted her feet firmly, hands on hips and said, "Siiiiiiiidekick, mom!  You know, when you know what other people are thinking."

 And then her intention dawned on me, "Ohhhhhhh, you mean psychic! Is that what you mean?" 

"Yes," she said, with the accompanying eye roll that I would come to know and love in the teen years. "Psychic." 

"What makes you think you are psychic?"  I asked. 

"Well, I don't really know, it's just a feeling, like I know what people are going to say or do before they say or do it.  Do you know what I mean?"  she asked, leaning in and looking concerned.

"I know exactly what you mean.  I think we all have the ability to sense what is going on with others.  We don't all pay attention to it as well as you do, though," I told her. 

She didn't skip a beat. "Well, it can be our secret.  Don't tell daddy.  I know he would think it's silly." 

I believe we all have a little sidekick.  Not groovy, mystical, mysterious psychic (the word conjures up  negative connotations for some), but that part of us that observes, quietly and diligently and comes to spot-on conclusions derived from all the senses.  We can all do it.  We simply forget how to. 

Most of us lose touch with it as we age.  Our culture does not reward quiet observation.  Our culture rewards extroversion and speed.  And who has time to sit still with their sidekick while working full time, raising a family, paying bills, developing a career and driving to playdates? 

I remember as a child, frequently knowing when a baby was going to cry, the next words the teacher was going to say, sensing others' moods accurately without any words ever being uttered.  I cannot tell you how I figured this stuff out.  I have done it as an adult too, but often minimized or dismissed it.  I cannot predict the future or read minds, I simply observe my physical world through every sense.  And occasionally I am unable to observe accurately if my monkey mind gets too active.  This made me quite anxious in my younger years.  If I had a dime for everytime my parents or teachers called me oversensitive (as if being sensitive was a disability), I would be able to retire now. 

I didn't nuture my sidekick for a long time. She's always been there, afraid to let herself be known for fear of being deemed weird.  But I'm coming up on 50 in the next year and I don't care much about weird anymore.  I care about real. I care about speaking up and being known.  I care about being recognized as a master of personal essay.  And I care about protecting my sidekick from  people who suck the wind out of my sails.  

I've made peace with my sidekick.  She is quirky, often waking up in the wee hours in a cold sweat panicked because she "just knows" something is not right.  But she is also wise and funny and she never steers me wrong.  And she's no longer embarrassed to be part of my life. 

I've met my sidekick and she is welcome to stay. 

Where is your sidekick?  

Slow is the new chic

My mother tells the story of how I was well over a year old when I learned to walk.  I didn't crawl, I didn't cruise while steadying myself by grasping surrounding furniture.  I observed others' walking patterns quietly, figured out what felt good to me and then got up and walked in my own time in my own signature circuitous way.  No amount of cajoling or modeling were going to make me walk until I knew I could do it my way - with complete confidence.  And it's how I've lived ever since.

Of course, I don't remember any of this, but after 49 years of repeating this process with a million different skills, I recognize that the way I learned to walk is the way I do life. 

Slow.

Slow is becoming more apparent in my work life and in many facets of my personal life.  And I am amused but not surprised to see it becoming fashionable. 

Two decades before Americans started hearing about slow in the media, the grassroots Slow Food Movement began to support sustainability, the connections between our food and nature and between food and ourselves.  Slow food has been about purposefulness, commitment, tradition and harmony with the earth. 

There are many reasons slow is fashionable now.  I suspect increasing worries about climate change and feeding the earth's population combined with electronic gadget inundation in every aspect of our lives, social media and information overload are the biggest reasons.  We crave a less complex life.  Everything is being reinvented in slow: food, art, money, gardening, travel, even parenting. 

Me slow?  With a creative, often anxious brain that never shuts up and more activity stuffed into a week than most people stuff into a month?  Yes.  Slow is the way I approach new tasks in a world that expects us all to move very, very swiftly.

I ponder endlessly before taking action and my actions quite often, are based on gut instinct.   I cannot often tell you how I arrive at decisions or ideas.  I can only tell you if they feel right.  And that process is slow and often not data-based.  I have to sit with thoughts and ideas, sleep with them, see how they feel in my lungs, stomach and how they reflect on my face.  I need to feel my thoughts through every sense. I used to think I was a freak.  Now I know I'm slow. And it's chic.  That makes me giggle to write.  And sometimes it makes me cry to live.

I am more aware of my own tendency to want to go with the crowd and move faster these days because, after all, life is exciting and I am creative and inspired by just about everything.  I want to try it all.  As I see it, just a couple weeks from my 49th birthday, there's a pretty good chance that my life is more than half over.  And I haven't done even a tenth of what I believe I need to do. So how do I balance these whirling thoughts with the slowness that is me when all else is stripped away?  I haven't figured this part out yet.  This dichotomy is  causing me anxiety, waking me often in the wee hours of the morning.  My head says, "Do it, do it, do it," while my gut and my soul say, "Watch, observe, perseverate and then, if you feel connected to it, do it."  All the while, I am aware, ever so aware of my mortality, my career in paralysis, my biggest urges demanding my attention - more solitude in which to just write, write, write. 

Slow is the way I gave birth, slow is the way I eat and write.  Slow is how I run.  Slow is even the way my daughter came into the world.  Perhaps she has my slow gene.  Two weeks overdue, I gave birth in the middle of our apartment.  She was born just as the sun came up after a 27-hour long labor.  Slow to breathe and blue, the midwives said, "Talk to your baby."  So we talked softly as we watched her skin turn pink, starting at her torso and radiating gradually outward to her limbs.  Slowly.  It's as if she was waiting to check out the world, to ensure it was safe before deciding to be part of it.  I understood this intuitively.  I knew she was going to be okay because I recognized myself in her. 

I remember a teacher in second grade who seemed concerned that I never smiled in school.  She frequently asked me what was wrong and she spoke to my parents to find out why I looked so serious.  After all, I was 7.  Apparently, in her mind, that meant constant laughter and smiling.  I wasn't an unhappy child then.  I simply remember, with wisdom beyond that tender age, thinking, "I need to observe for a while before I smile.  I must feeeeeel it.  I must feel safe."  I also remember thinking that if I wanted to appear "normal" I should learn the fine art of smiling just because it's what I was expected to do to make others feel good about me.  I remember feeling conflicted most of my childhood, wondering why people spontaneously would walk up to me and ask, "What's wrong?"  So I learned to play the game and smile benignly so as not to bring everyone else down with my slow-to-smile-ness.

I awaken most mornings these past few weeks in a state of anxiety, which I now recognize as a necessary part of my slow approach pattern.  It is my friend who tells me I need more time to observe, to ruminate and to dip my toes in the water before diving in.  In a world where extroversion, swift movement and quick innovation are rewarded and expected and pain is to be avoided, slow is not the easiest approach.  It's tedious, often roundabout, frequently full of doubt.  But it's also sensual, contemplative, determined.  So I sit with it.  It is mine. 

As I awaken each day, I am aware of my fear of breathing, walking and smiling in an uncomfortable, laboring world where so much feels trite and pointless. 

I wait patiently for the soft familiar voice of my own intuition, the part of me that's giving birth to something I don't understand to tell me, "Breathe.  It's okay to be in this place now."