Oh, Jealousy

TRQ adored her grandmother, aka the game warden of Sublette County, Wyoming.  HOWEVER--(and TRQ always said this in a darkly warning voice)--Grandma Pat had one besetting sin.

Jealousy.

I never thought I was the jealous type myself, but it turns out that sometimes I am jealous of other writers' successes, even though I try really, really, really hard not to be.  And mostly I'm not now.  But yesterday when I read that a friend has a  new book on the NYT's Bestseller List, I got slammed sideways by an unexpected turbo-charged bolt of envy.  

I felt like gnashing my teeth.  Only I'm not sure exactly what "gnashing" involves and besides, do my teeth need any more abuse than the abuse I've already inflicted upon them over the decades?

Then I thought of this tiny poem I found in a collection of tiny poems by Rupi Kaur sitting on TRQ's kitchen counter the other day.  (Also, may I just say it's sometimes surprising what I find sitting  on TRQ's kitchen counter?)

Here goes--

How do I shake this envy

When I see you doing well

Sister, how do I love myself enough to know

Your accomplishments are not my failures.

You can maybe argue about the quality of the poem itself.  But the sentiment?  Yes, please.

How to End Up in a Sandbox Not on Purpose

I'll share my secret in just a moment.  But first I want to tell you about our Fourth.  WHICH WAS GREAT.

I'd been complaining all week about how the Fourth of July--which is actually one of my favorite holidays because you don't have to do much to prepare for it--isn't what it used to be.  Why?  Because (among other things) attitudes about fireworks have changed.  When I was a kid, we used to blow up our street.  And when my kids were kids, we used to blow up our street.  We had friends from New York stay with us over the Fourth once and they had to go into therapy after they witnessed a bunch of young males shooting off bottle rockets, and I remember thinking, "I like you, our friends from New York.  But you guys are weenies."

Well.  Times have changed.  We're all New Yorkers now.  At least in this neighborhood.

Anyway, we spent the afternoon in Bountiful with our son and his family there where my 8 year-old granddaughter showed us how she can turn a cartwheel now.  So I told her I used to be excellent at cartwheels.  Hello.  I used to do a tumbling routine to "Here Comes Suzy Snowflake" in rest homes at Christmas time when I was in grade school.  I was a cartwheel-turning savant.  And I figured I still am, even though I have not turned a cartwheel in a rest home for decades now.

I stood up.  Put my arms in the air.  Took a preparatory jump.  Turned myself upside down.  And landed squarely on my butt in a sandbox.  Which taught me this very important lesson:  just because you could do something when you were younger, that doesn't mean you can do it now.  Not everything in this life is like riding a bicycle.

But the good news is that people in Bountiful still believe in fireworks.  So we lit a few in the street to a playlist that included some Otis Redding.  And I went home, sore but grateful for a day that turned out to be better than good.

TRQ

TRQ called this morning to share her plans for the day, which include (among other things), walking the boys (a poodle and an almost poodle) and otherwise getting "lined up."  This was her grandmother's phrase.  Getting lined up means you're going to do your best to impose order on your worlds.  TRQ and I say this to one another all the time, knowing full well we won't succeed.

But whatever.

The Coach's parents died within 10 days of one another.  And because I was in my 30s and in the thick of living,  I thought that their deaths were a lovely, gentle thing.  They'd been married forever.  They'd had fourteen children.  They'd worked side by side, hauling potatoes and fruit down to the reservation.  How could they manage to be apart, even for 10 days?

So, yes.  Leaving this world within a few breaths of one another made beautiful sense.

But not long ago my brother Jimmy made the comment that he's so glad we have our mother here to call us in the morning and speak of poodles and plans and to anchor us still.

On the Road Again

A lot of my childhood memories involve the open road.  Being on it.  Going to places with the family because the Coach's work took him places.  I don't always remember the factual details of those travels.  Was I eight?  Or was I ten?  Was it early morning before the sun came up ?  Or was it dark because the day was almost over?  Were we in California?  Or were we in New Mexico?  But what I do remember was the intensity of feeling I had in certain moments.

Like this one.

I'm sitting in a diner booth with my family, checking out a laminated menu.  I look up and out the window and see a long, long stretch of road gleaming in the twilight, and suddenly, because I'm in an unfamiliar place deciding what I want to eat, I feel homesick.  Isolated.  Disconnected from my real life back in Provo where I have a dog and friends and my own room.  The road outside feels oddly menacing--something designed to bring into my life a whole big world that might change what I think I know.

The feeling passed.  But sometimes when I'm on the road now, the memory of that moment travels with me.

Getting All Zen. But not too Zen.

To deal with my occasional bouts of depression and anxiety I took a mindfulness course a few years ago.  I loved the instructor and I picked up on some useful practices, such as meditation, although I am not a good meditator, because I have an attention span of . . .

SQUIRREL!

. . . a dog.  And not a smart type of dog like a border collie either.

Anyway.  When I am feeling particularly anxious, I do some meditating, reminding myself that I am the mountain and everything else is just the weather and so forth.  It's helpful.  But occasionally this thought occurs to me:  if I get REALLY good at this--if I turn all Zen on myself--I might not be able to write funny anymore.

Not saying I'm that funny, but you know what I mean.

Here's the deal.  Humor grows out of some kind of emotional pain.  Or if not exactly pain, then certainly discomfort.  You know.  Like embarrassment.  Which is why you end up writing columns about the summer your family's eyeballs turned yellow because you all had the hepatitis and people fled when they saw you approach.  Not that you did much approaching of other people that summer because you were in bed feeling like you wanted to die and also your liver was hurting and also you could smell stale beer wafting through your open bedroom window that someone had poured in the middle of the street the night before.  Because that's how hepatitis works.  It turns your sense of scent into your super power.  SUCH A STUPID SUPER POWER IF YOU'RE A HUMAN!

Anyway.  It's useful sometimes to remember what E.B. White once said.  Turning pain into humor pays off in the end.  Or maybe he didn't say exactly that.

But he should have.

Sometimes a Complete Stranger Changes (Sort of) Your Life

Once upon a time a long, long time ago when I was on a road trip with our kids who were mere babies, I met an older woman bobbing around in a motel swimming pool with her grandchildren.  Also bobbing around was the blonde, good-looking mother of said grandchildren.  She and the grandmother treated one another affectionately so I assumed they were mother and daughter.

But wait!  They weren't!

In fact, they were ex's.  Ex-DIL.  Ex-MIL.

"You know," the grandmother said to me, "when my son and his wife divorced, I decided to stay on good terms with her so we could all enjoy the children together."

Or something to that effect.  I didn't have a tape recorder in the swimming pool with me that day.  But I've never forgotten the sight of her with grandchildren draped around her sun-browned neck.

Sometimes your childhood BFF's mom turns 90

And then you drive down to Provo with Gigi Ballif and attend a tea party in her mother's honor.  Which we did today.

It's always interesting to revisit the places and people you knew when you were a kid.  Ruth is a woman I admire endlessly.  She's intelligent, forthright, and practical with a social conscience--like a certain kind of Yankee woman, although she actually grew up on Long Island.  (Gigi told me stories about New York when we were kids and how there were these magic places there called "automats" where you just got your food out of machines.  The East!  So advanced!  Probably the food was even made by robots just like in The Jetsons!)

I will say, however, when I was a kid I was a little bit afraid of Ruth, even though she always made us Danish pancakes for breakfast when I slept over at Gigi's house.  I was trying to figure out today exactly why I was afraid,  and  then I realized then I was afraid of everybody's mother in those days. That was me.  A MOTHER-FEARING WEENIE.

Anyway.  I've been wondering if I ever scared anybody.  I doubt it.

But I hope I did.  At least a little bit.