Date with Wisdom

things I’ve figured out so far this month

So, I had a date with a younger guy this month, someone I’d connected with a while ago, and while we both felt something, we weren’t sure what. We’d made one date that got postponed, but then happened. This whole thing of dating makes me nervous, it’s so fraught with cultural and personal expectations, most of them not reality based, that it’s amazing that people even hook up at all, right?

And I will admit, to date someone younger pushed a lot of my fear buttons. Fear of getting old, fear of looking old, fear of being a fool. Fear of either being too attractive, or not attractive enough, or not attractive in the right way. Fear of facing my own wants and desires and the fear of not knowing exactly how the whole rest of my life will turn out. The unknown. Admitting the unknown in a culture that thinks it can quantify the future. Well, to this I say, “Hah!”

The evening went well, even when he pretended not to be surprised at my age, even when he shared with me he was looking for someone to start a family with. Obviously, not me, was what he was trying to say. And in between I read, “Someone with whom I believe I can quantify the future with. Make it as predictable as possible based on what I want, and believing this can and will happen.” I of course, was disappointed, trying not to take it personally, in spite of his, well, being too young. I enjoyed his company.

The good I took away from this, however, was as I talked with my daughters and friends, all only wished good for me. I was given permission to date who I will, my desire for companionship and one day love, was honored as something good and to be encouraged. It was my own fear of admitting that I did want and need a relationship that I believed somehow diminished me. I had to face my own unwillingness to admit that I was finding too much of my identity in autonomy, of being alone.

What I also took from this, is that I realized that I am looking for someone with imagination, someone who can do a risk/benefit analysis of life while integrating their imagination. Since some of the things I’m pretty sure I’m looking for are: kindness, intellectual prowess, being emotionally connected to self and others, curiosity, a found passion in and for life (I guess it is kind of a long list); I can now add to the list, having imagination, and well, OK, a great smile, which of course, would show all of the above.

I also found that I am not immune to bumping up into still more darkness inside of myself. I sometimes acknowledged to myself that I was scared of aging, and worried about how much I depended on looking young to be charming; how it was reassuring to look in the mirror and look pretty much the same day after day. Just recently, however, I smiled at myself in the mirror and exclaimed to my daughter, “I’ve got laugh lines around my eyes.” I liked them, at first, but then, it was the word wrinkles that trickled into my brain and consciousness, as in “old now.”

It is a lesson to love myself, my wrinkles, my 52 year old body that is not quite as glowing, but is hopefully more graceful in the acceptance of gravity, the same gravity that keeps me centered and sane. The same gravity that grounds me in the present, so that I can be here for my own family, in a way that younger parents can’t be. I don’t give up on loving myself more in the passing years, and I hold out this wisdom to my now grown children, continuing to give to them increasing love for themselves and others. I’m lucky to have children, and wrinkles and any wisdom at all.

So what else? I’ve found that we have different ways of being our most authentic self. We have our intellectual self, we have our emotional self, we have our embodied self, we have our sexual self and we have our imagined self, and of course, we have our shadow self. Who leads in our relationships? The intellectual self or the sexual self? The confident self or the scared self? We get to decide if we are connected enough to our shadow self. If we are not, our shadow self leads, with it’s own agenda. That’s when we get to repeat the same mistakes, over and over, and well, we all know how dull that is. (Sort of the antithesis of wisdom.)

We also get to decide how much each of these selves wants to show up, and how much we want to be connected to someone else through these selves. If our child self chooses in relationship, how is this going to work as we hopefully grow up? If our intellectual self chooses a mate, and our adventurous self kicks in, will we stay or leave?

One more thing. Honoring the holy in each other. How do we do that? I’ve found that if I enter into any relationship, I can choose to see the holy or the unholy. I can choose to take the gift that this person has to offer, or I can look in disdain and walk away. It’s not them, it’s me. It’s me choosing compassion, and if that person is not as self-aware as I would hope them to be, to offer understanding, and to take what, in their holiness, they do have to offer.

It’s a stand of hoping to offer to others whatever is the best in me, to them, for the taking; knowing that I am not diminished by what I give, but enriched by the opportunity, every day, to encounter the holy in others. Seeing my own face with laugh lines in the mirror, reflecting back my own holiness. Compassion for self, compassion for others, love enough for each day, still holding out hope for companionship and commitment, should it come my way. Still looking, still listening to the Moody Blues, I Know You’re Out There Somewhere.

Me and The Night and The Music

I took myself out on a date last night. I wasn’t totally sure about the whole thing, maybe not so sure I’d like myself that much, but Ben Sidran, one of my favorite jazz/bebop artists was in town at the Dakota last night, and I didn’t want to miss him. I even told my daughter, voicing my apprehension, “At least when you could smoke in clubs, it gave you something to do, rather than just sit there.” I don’t even smoke.

I tried really hard to find someone to go with. One guy turned me down, acting as if I’d asked him for a life commitment, and my closer friends were just too overworked to plan to be out downtown on a Monday night. So, it looked like it was going to be just me and myself. And it was.

Strange how hard it was for me to go, really. But once I made the commitment to go, it did become fun. I worried about parking, no big deal. I worried about sitting alone for the evening, and that didn’t even happen. When I bought my ticket, they were getting close to being full and asked if I’d mind sitting at a table with someone, so I said, “No, I don’t mind.” This was after all, an adventure. I'd been a fan of Ben Sidran ever since I was a teenager, and when I'd seen him over ten years ago in concert, it was incredible, and so I knew this concert would be wonderful.

But when I got up to the second floor, and approached the table, the middle aged guy sitting there looked very surprised that he was sharing his table. It felt very awkward, and I started thinking maybe I could get another seat, but the place was filling up fast. He subtly used his left hand so that I could see his wedding ring. I was there, however for Ben and the boys, not to pick up men.

So, I decided to take things in hand and asked, “So, how are you?” It broke the ice and after that it was fine. A little awkward, in that the servers assumed we were together, but we clarified that. I ordered a glass of wine, he ordered dinner, separate tabs. When his chocolate souffle came, it was enough for me to savor the smell. I learned at the end of the evening, when we shook hands and said goodbye, that his name was Kieran.

And, once the music began, it didn’t matter who sat across the table, or that I was on the second level, without the greatest view. The music was amazing. Ben Sidran played piano and told his stories in his captivating way. And the other reason I was there, to hear 92 year old Irv Williams play sax didn’t disappoint, either. I’d seen Irv Williams with my ex, Steve, and his parents before we had married at the Riverview Supper Club, what seemed like a million years ago, and so to see him again, at 92, was incredible.

In the break I got to know my table mate a little better. He was originally from London, traveling in town with his son for their business. He was a mathematician. We talked about psychology, our families, and our businesses. I drank my one glass of Malbec slowly throughout the night, he ate his dinner. I was happy just to be out and listen to live music. The encore song was Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and Irv’s sax was as sweet as Kieran’s chocolate souffle had smelled. I was somewhere over the rainbow, on a date, with myself. I think I'll ask myself out again sometime soon.

Sink or Swim (or Float)

Being a single mom gave me many opportunities to be both very poor and financially creative. There was always an undercurrent of impending loss in my life, anyway. I was brought up to believe that anything good, was probably too good to be true. And then, there you’d be with egg on your face, thinking that something good might actually happen, to you.

I gave up believing things being good was an impossibility, and I do hold out that life can even be mostly good. I can remember when I was first married, at all of 21, living in a beautiful new apartment complex in Edina, newly home from a honeymoon to Paris and London, and I asked Steve, “Will it always be like this for us?” I was asking him, really, “Can I finally just let my guard down and live?” His answer was “Of course.” So, I believed him for a blessed while.

And, of course, things weren’t always like that. Because things are not always like one thing or another. Things, being life, are always changing, unless we’re trying really hard not to change them, and that brings with it it’s own strangeness. That, however, was probably the last time I really believed that things could just always be really wonderful. Finances, too change. As much as we can tout financial planning, frugality and the like, sometimes things are hard, and sometimes, people who are not that good with finances seem to always have enough. Finances, like life circumstances are fluid, not set.

I’m at another crossroads, as I now know there are many in life. My small business is going okay, but not enough to support me. I still have my day job, which only partially supports me. So, in trying to explain where I’m at to someone, I simply said, “I guess I just have to wait for the universe to shift. Someone else might say, they are waiting for an answer from God, but I’m waiting for my good energy to come to fruition.” To which he replied, “God helps those who help themselves.” A saying that I’ve come to dislike, (and I told him so) as in this is a time in my life where I’m: a) too weary to help myself, b) have helped myself repeatedly to no avail, or 3) see a). I’ve been to this place before.

So, mulling this over, driving into work, I thought of the saying “sink or swim.” This didn’t seem like a good option either, when you are weary, you can’t swim, but you don’t really want to sink, either. Unless of course, you are Virginia Woolf, and that is just a sad, sad story. So, I decided to tell myself that there is a third option, float.

I noted this to my daughter, Kathleen, who in conversation, brought up the “God helps those who help themselves” adage. I told her about my addling float, to sink or swim, and she wisely said, “Well, floating is what you are supposed to do if you are drowning.”

The Art of Ennui

en·nui   [ahn-wee, ahn-wee; Fr. ahn-nwee] noun
a feeling of utter weariness and discontent resulting from satiety or lack of interest; boredom: The endless lecture produced an unbearable ennui.
Origin:
1660–70;  < French:  boredom; Old French enui  displeasure; see annoy

Synonyms
listlessness, tedium, lassitude, languor.

I think at times that I have perfected the art of ennui. I have it again. I’ve just finished the last paper, in the last class for my second master’s degree. This one in Human Development, so now what? I’ve always believed in the beauty of relationship. It is what drives us, fulfills us and does, as simple as it sounds, make life worth living. That wonderful sense of sharing who we are with someone who cares. Someone who gets us.

This is what I now have space for, have almost given up on, which is in part, the substance of my ennui. Waiting for a chance to live life in relationship. Even when I was married, my ex toured the states and the world, literally. I closed on our home, alone, Steve was in Italy. I moved in, alone, with my then two children.

There’s a wonderful movie called A Simple Twist of Fate with Steve Martin in which he asks his daughter if she is experiencing ennui and then he engages her in a way in which her ennui dissolves, in the relationship, in the moment, in the magic. I’m longing for a moment like this today.

I’m both excited for finishing this program, and sensing such a sense of emptiness. If I fill up with achievement, then what? I’ve achieved enough. I know this. I’ve searched for the secrets of the universe, and guess what? For anyone who cares to know, I think I have most of it figured out. But this love/relationship thing, outside of my family, eludes me.

I’ve bought new music, Beth Orton and Dusty Springfield, music to ennui by. Waiting for the universe to step up and surprise me. Make ennui a thing of the past, or just little pieces of it, here and there to be a counterpoint to joy.

Lights Out

This weekend the lights started to flicker in my bathroom. Eventually, the lights wouldn’t go on at all. Must be the switch. The bathroom window looks out into the middle of some weird empty middle space in our four-plex, so it’s not really a source of light. So, more or less, depending on the time of day, like say morning, getting ready for work, it’s dark in there.

I was going to buy a new switch yesterday, but picking up a prescription for my daughter after work yesterday was like study in frustration, people not reading the prescription, not having the prescription and driving all over hallelujah looking for it. My daughter cannot take the generic of one of her medications, and at one in-store pharmacy, where we usually go, they filled it generic, and after waiting for it, and finding it was generic, not name brand, they informed me they only had 1/2 the amount of the name brand and would not give me that amount, but would call around for me, to find out who might have the name brand. So they called another pharmacy, to which I drove during the rush hour, with a frozen pizza (which I’d bought at the first store) thawing in my car.

At the second store, I wait for the twenty minutes they asked me to wait, picking up some ice cream, this time. Then they said, “It will be ten more minutes.” Fine, we wait, sitting on the little bench near the pharmacy with our ice cream getting softer all the time. I finally get to pick up the prescription and once again, it’s generic. This time, it’s taking all my patience, I want to just scream, “Don’t you read the freaking prescription when you fill it?” As the clerk says, “Oh, can’t she just take the generic?” I smile, and say, “No, she can’t take the generic, and that’s why we drove from the first store, who called this store to make sure you had this.”

This store, at least, as the pharmacist at the first store had told me, has the name brand of this particular drug. Now, they are nice, sorry, trying to hurry for me. We replace the melted ice cream with a new container, and finally, I’m on my way home at nearly 7:00 pm in the evening. I’m too tired and too hungry to try to find a hardware store and pick up a replacement light switch. I bake the frozen pizza which turns out funky from being thawed out in the car.

I must be getting old, because at times like this I remember that good customer service used to exist. That there was a time in the past, that had the first pharmacist called to the second pharmacy, at the second pharmacy they would have had that prescription, name brand, actually waiting for me. This is when I’m so disappointed with America, with our mega-stores, and our culture that debates whether we should still teach our children cursive, when pharmacists don’t read and look like they are so overwhelmed, when I sit and wait for my daughter’s prescription and I hear elderly folks say things like “What? $285.00 for this month’s worth of my prescription? Why, last time it was $190.00 for six weeks. I can’t pay that.” It’s depressing. Like getting ready for work in the dark.