I-94

Last night I stayed up way too late fiddling around on my father’s computer; it was nearly 3 am when I lay down to rest, so I didn’t set an alarm, and woke up at about 12:45 pm.

I went over to Metzger’s, which opened in downtown Ann Arbor in 1928, to try their Reuben, as part of my ongoing Reuben Extravaganza. Several weeks ago, I tried the Reuben at Max’s Opera Cafe in San Francisco and was sorely disappointed. It was great looking but bland tasting. If I hadn’t spoken the words “corned beef” twenty or so minutes before the item appeared in front of me, I would have had no idea what the generic meatlike substance in the sandwich might be. It was nothing like the corned beef I remember now and then eating as a child.

I arrived in Michigan last week with a plan to try all five of Zingerman’s Reubens; it turns out there are actually eight. Some of them don’t say “Reuben” in the name, but that’s what they are. Zingerman’s Delicatessen opened the year I moved to California. I never went there to eat until a few years ago, with Amy. Next to the deli is a café called Zingerman’s Next Door. When my parents were first married, they lived in an apartment in the house that is now Zingerman’s Next Door.

I began, last week, with Zingerman’s tempeh Reuben. While I waited to pick up my order, I looked over at Zingerman’s Next Door, at a window in that house: Did my mother as a newlywed gaze out that very window once upon a time? I sat in the upstairs seating area and realized the view outside was of my own former high school, Community High, where I transferred after Huron High shared their (accurate) opinion that I had a drug problem. The Reuben was not very good. Seva’s tempeh Reuben leaves Zingerman’s in the dust, and I almost aborted my project right there, but decided I should at least try their basic Reuben, which turned out to be fantastic. It had about two pounds of corned beef in it that was even tastier than I remembered from childhood. (Unfortunately, even if you eat there, your meal is served in a plastic basket, so I had to bite into the sandwich, as many routinely do, but it caused my chronic TMJ soreness to flare up painfully.)

I did master the route to Zingerman’s and where to park and how to pay for parking. On my third and final trip there, I got the cowboy Reuben, which uses a softer roll, beef brisket, coleslaw instead of sauerkraut, and BBQ sauce instead of Russian dressing. The delicatessen is also a highly regarded grocery store, full of carefully curated and extremely expensive items. The sandwiches are pricey, too. The cowboy Reuben, with a side order and 18% tip, cost nearly $40. Thus I was astounded to find it mainly consisted of the large roll. The coleslaw was not a good substitute for sauerkraut, I thought; too bland. The BBQ sauce was overly sweet. I had tried a sample of brisket over at Ricewood on Packard in the past year and was dazzled by its rich flavor. Whatever that was inside the cowboy Reuben at Zingerman’s, I can scarcely countenance that it was brisket. It was a little flap of mushy, stringy beef that tasted like something you might encounter in beef stew. Not untasty, but not what I was expecting, and there also wasn’t much of it, nor of the other fillings, so this was definitely the most expensive piece of bread I ever ate.

(Zingerman’s, among other things, has a bakehouse where they make really wonderful bread of all sorts. No complaints about the quality of the roll that encased the otherwise unsatisfactory cowboy Reuben.)

Metzger’s, where I went today, is now in a little strip mall near I-94 and Zeeb Rd. It’s full of German memorabilia, including those blue plates of which my mother’s mother had several affixed to her kitchen wall. I had never realized those were German until today. My grandfather was German; his father was born in Germany, but my grandmother was Irish and English, and I had always thought of those as being something to do with her heritage, but I guess they weren’t.

My server was very sweet and the food was fine, nothing special. I will place Metzger’s Reuben above Max’s but several notches below Zingerman’s. The meat did vaguely taste like corned beef. Next week I plan to go to Knight’s and to have the Reuben there, when my father’s high school classmates have their monthly lunch. I’ve had it before, but having had so many other Reubens lately, it will be interesting (at least slightly) to see where it fits in the rankings.

On my way to Zingerman’s or Knight’s, I pass an apartment building on Huron in Ann Arbor once owned by my father’s grandmother. My parents also lived in an apartment there for a bit after they were married and before they bought their first house. They bought the house after they’d been married for two years because they were about to have a baby, which was me. Right across the street from that apartment building is the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, usually just called Rackham. The land it was built on was sold to the University of Michigan by that same great-grandmother of mine, who also ran her husband’s corset factory when he became unable to continue, and she served as the general contractor for a house she had built for herself in a nice neighborhood which now probably goes for two million dollars, though I can’t tell you for sure, because I can’t remember the address off the top of my head, and that’s enough about my forebears for today. My father had deep roots in Ann Arbor. He went to one of the same elementary schools I later attended. (My mother was born in Detroit and lived in Dearborn until she came to Ann Arbor to go to engineering school at the University of Michigan, where she and my father met at a summer job.) (So I guess that wasn’t enough about my forebears for today, after all, but now it is.)

I took I-94 home, which was a hair-raising experience. The Michigander on I-94 in rush hour goes 80 miles an hour even if the car ahead of him is going 50 miles an hour, which I didn’t really have any choice about because the big truck ahead of me was going 50 miles an hour, and what’s the big hurry, anyway?

I had virtuously intended to take a walk after I got home, but it really was miserably cold. I went about half a block and then turned around and came home. It would have been more bearable if I’d had my warm base layer pants on and my fleece-lined flannel shirt, and I guess there was no law stopping me from putting those things on and going back out, but I didn’t. I put in a load of laundry and carried some of my mother’s bins of craft stuff up from the basement and sat on the couch with a comforter over me and read for a while and then passed out on the couch due to my heavy lunch, which besides the sandwich also featured onion rings and German potato pancakes.

Blood Transfer: The Beginning and the End and the Beginning

Today I called DTE, the utility in southeastern Michigan and, for all I know, the entire state of Michigan, to see about changing the email address associated with our account from my father’s to mine. The Probate Department was happy to do this; it required putting the gas and electric services in my name.

I moved from Ann Arbor to San Francisco when I was 20—43 years ago—and had always assumed I would live out my life in San Francisco. I have lived in the same apartment for 28 years, a tiny little place which perfectly meets my needs, and yet it also had started to seem a little sad: A youngish lady in her little studio apartment, then a middle-aged lady, then an old lady, then a dead and forgotten lady who for some reason had six brand-new hinoki cutting boards in a box in her closet.

The city has changed profoundly in those years. It feels a bit alien now, with one driverless vehicle after the other rolling by and Sam Altman just blocks away plotting the literal destruction of humanity at the hands of AIs. (Since they know what’s going to happen, why don’t they stop?)

I have spent a lot of time in Ypsilanti for almost four years now, and have noticed that I feel much more relaxed here. When you step outside (depending on the season), you’re actually outside, where it smells and looks like trees and flowers and grass. When someone now and then strolls past the house, they smile and say hello, unlike in San Francisco, where anyone under 50 appears to be terrified when addressed by someone they don’t already know.

Yesterday I had lunch with Amy at Seva. She asked if I’d been walking. I was temporarily confused and had to think about what she might be referring to. Walking? As in outdoors? Where it’s 23 degrees?

I got here a week and a day ago to find snow on the ground, where it remains, because only once has it gotten as warm as freezing temperature, which was a great day because the block of ice the car’s windshield wipers were encased in thawed enough that the wipers could be used again. It was the 31-degree heat (known elsewhere as the 31-degree cold) plus the warmth of the car’s running engine plus having the car’s heat and fan turned up to maximum that eventually did the trick. I was in Better Health buying some supplements and mentioned that it was 31 degrees out, and the store’s employees got all excited.

So, walking. It came to me that I had in the past asked Amy about the gear she uses for walking in the winter, and that that’s what she was referring to at Seva, where I had the extremely delicious vegan version of their tempeh Reuben. I had to confess to Amy that even the notion of walking had long since ceased to cross my mind, but that actually is a factor in my decision as to whether to reoccupy my childhood territory, now that I think about it, because I don’t have a car in San Francisco and get around by bike or cab, or on foot.

I ride my bicycle to work and to Rainbow for groceries, and I can walk to yoga, so at least some exercise is built in. In Ypsilanti, it is possible that I could not walk a recreational step for six months of the year. I would have to make myself do it, and until today I hadn’t. Indeed, another thing I explicitly love about being in Michigan is driving up and down in my father’s Subaru listening to music. (Pretty much forty percent of the cars in Ann Arbor are either Subaru Outbacks or Subaru Foresters. When I went to Arbor Farms the other day, more or less the Rainbow of Ann Arbor, I parked Dad’s Subaru in a row of four of those two models.)

Amy, in an admirably casual and low-key manner, mentioned how she herself stopped walking for quite a while, and how the day came when she reminded herself that she didn’t have to be ambitious about it; she could literally just walk around the block. I asked her how many days a week she walks, and she said she tries for six. Six days out of every seven?!? At zero days out of two, three or four months, I was clearly falling behind.

I decided to start putting “Walk” on my daily to-do list, even if it was just aspirational, and then I decided, on this very day, to exit the house, walk to the sidewalk some 15 feet from the front door, and come right back inside. But once I’d put on all the gear needed to walk 15 feet in the 23-degree weather, it was clear that I was equally well equipped for a somewhat longer walk, so I went on my parents’ walk, which takes about half an hour, and I enjoyed it: the bare branches of the huge trees reaching into the sky, the mindfully trying not to break my neck on the ice, the fresh cold air, the occasional bird chirp, the two kindred spirits who passed me going the other way.

I went on this walk in the company of my parents a few times. When I first started doing it on my own, sometimes I couldn’t exactly remember the route. Where precisely did they cross this street? Perhaps at this tree? When I pivoted at the tree, I knew for sure that was the spot. Every cell of my body could feel my father doing the exact same thing.

After my mother died, with the next and final big task being to sell the house or buy it myself, deciding which to do took on more urgency, and for a while, I drove myself crazy trying to figure it out with my head. I was in a constant state of gloomy anxiety for weeks, and finally realized ruminating was never going to do the trick, because I could easily and convincingly think one thing and then its exact opposite all day every day.

I set that aside, and a period of great ease took its place: House? What house?
The first time it crossed my mind to move home was in 1989, just seven years after I’d moved to San Francisco. I’ve been stewing about it ever since, for 37 years. I probably can’t stew about it for 37 more years, but there’s also no way I can think of to hasten clarity. I no longer necessarily see myself living out my years in San Francisco. Though I still think cities are generally better places for old ladies on their own than small towns or suburbs are, I’m starting to feel that I do not wish to die on foreign soil.

My friend Lisa M. now and then says: Discover, not decide. That has become my approach. The great current of life is carrying me along in a certain direction even if my own rudder has fallen off. One day I will discover that I still live in San Francisco and work as hospital chaplain. Or perhaps that I live in San Francisco and am retired. Or I live in Ypsilanti and am retired, or work two afternoons a week as a hospice chaplain or grief counselor. Or live somewhere else entirely; my Cleveland associate pointed out that there are a number of places in the United States that are neither San Francisco nor Ypsilanti.

As I walked today, it seemed to me that putting the DTE in my name had been some kind of small but actual step toward moving here. I did not expect to find myself, so close to my end, rerooting where I first sprung up. I also wondered if this whole thing is a psychologically unhealthy attempt to keep my father alive by literally taking up his life: Living in his house, eating my breakfast at his dining room table, going on his walk. I once saw a movie called L’invitation au Voyage where someone important to the protagonist dies. The line I, probably incorrectly, recall is, “If you die, I’ll make you live again,” which the protagonist does by stuffing the body of his dead loved one into the hard case for a double bass and carrying the case around with him.

Another thing I did today was to call the City of Ypsilanti, which I have the highest admiration for, to see if the property taxes would go up when the house changes hands, as my Michigan associate had warned could be the case. When you call the City of Ypsilanti, you immediately are connected with an actual human being, and this person is always friendly and helpful. The friendly and helpful person in the assessor’s office today said the property taxes would not rise because this would be a “first-degree blood transfer.”

I had thought at moments that if I did buy my parents’ house, I would get rid of their stuff and put my stuff in it, but I don’t have very much stuff and I am also not much of an interior decorator. I now think it’s kind of pointless to get rid of a nice antique so I can put my crappy plastic folding table there instead, or to empty their junk drawer and fill it with my junk, when their junk appears to be of the same excellent quality as my junk.

When my parents arrived back at their own driveway at the end of their walk, my father often continued on past the driveway for a bit and went around a nearby roundabout in the street, maybe doing a little jogging. My mother would turn into the driveway; twice she fell there. When I look up the hill at the driveway as I am finishing the walk myself, even though they are gone now, I see them clearly still: My father breaking into a jog,  my mother at the driveway, turning, falling …

74

So, what generally happened is that my father got cancer, was treated for same, went on hospice and died. Five weeks before he died, my mother, with her brilliant, alert mind, and her keen interest in nearly everything, and her splendid sense of humor, had to move to memory care, where she in turn went on hospice and died, two years to the day after my father did.

(I guess I previously mentioned that about the two years to the day. It is a fact that frequently comes to mind.)

(Possibly every post from now on will start with that same news.)

(I had thought that it was lucky that my parents had me when they were so young, because they remained alive until I myself was old: I only have to live without them for 20 (?) years. But then it occurred to me that we were talking about, as Yiyun Li writes, every single day, for the rest of my life. Every single day, for the rest of my life, the two people I love most won’t be here. Not just one. Not just the other. Both. Both! Both!?!)

This entailed 74 flights on my part (so far) between San Francisco and Detroit, and I spent fully fifty percent of my time in Michigan over the course of three and half years (so far), so there may be more to say about all of that, but let’s get on with what happened today!

I had gotten an email in regard to the internet service for my parents’ house in Ypsilanti saying that if I switched the payment method to a transfer from a bank account, I would save $10 a month on the bill from now on.

That seemed good, but also, it seemed good to stop using a credit card, anyway. Not long after my mother died, I walked into a Chase branch in Ann Arbor to tell them the terrible news. They said they would close her accounts, including her credit card, and I would receive notice of this by mail. This of course did not happen, so I called Chase in early December to try again. I had taken the precaution of freezing her credit card online, and was startled when it incurred a charge. It turns out that automated payments still go through even if a credit card is frozen—just one of many very interesting things I have learned in the past three and a half years—the charge was for another year of virus protection for my father’s computer—and so I needed to actually close this credit account.

However, Chase, instead of reporting my mother dead and closing her credit account, reported me dead and immediately closed my one and only credit account, as I discovered two minutes later when I tried to buy a little something online.

This was late on a Friday afternoon, needless to say. Fortunately, I was able to get it straightened out first thing Monday morning, when I discovered that I’d been dead all weekend and hadn’t even known it. (It wasn’t so bad being dead.) The person who helped me mentioned that the difficulties had “trickled down” into the checking account I’d opened for my parents’ trust after my mother died.

I don’t know if my premature but fortunately brief death had anything to do with the fraudulent use of the trust’s debit card that occurred a couple of weeks later, but that unauthorized use caused the debit card to be immediately canceled, and then anything using that card for automated payments had to be updated, which struck me as a time-consuming nuisance until I realized that some things were already using the bank account itself rather than the debit card, so there was less to do than I thought.

So changing Xfinity to use the trust’s checking account itself would also make life easier in the event of future troubles with the debit card. It took a degree of persistence to achieve this: The website was down, or that part of the website was down, or they just didn’t feel like it, day after day. Finally I made the change, and thus was extra annoyed when the next bill proved to be the exact amount it always is.

I briefly considered letting it go, since we were talking about $10 a month, but that is not in my nature, so I went to the website and had a word with Mrs. Chat, who disavowed any knowledge of any such offer and asked if there was anything “else” she could help with. So annoying. The proper question is not, “Is there anything else I can assist with?”, given that no assistance was offered, but rather, “How much more of your time would you like me to waste today?”

Easily finding a customer support phone number is of course a rarity these days, but increasingly, you can’t even email a lot of places. I went online to see how to get a human on the phone at Xfinity. I soon found a possible customer service phone number and the advice to try cursing and using the word “human.” Yes! Well within my wheelhouse, especially the cursing part.

I called the number and when the machine listed the few things I was allowed to say, I said, “I don’t give a fucking fucking fuck what you want me to say. I want to speak with a human. I am angry.” I wasn’t angry; that was theater, at least the first time I said it, but the second time I said it, it was a little bit true, and by the third time I said it, absolutely the case! And voila, about 30 seconds after the machine had answered the phone, I was speaking with a human.

The human asked how I was, and I sunnily said I was quite well, as indeed I now was, and I in turn asked how he was. He said, “You’re the only person who has asked me that.” To make a long story short, I did secure the discount and also signed up for a promotional offer that will last for a year and lower our bill even further. At the end of our conversation, the human said, “I wish all customers could be like you.”

I called my close associate in Cleveland to report this, starting with our customary greeting: “Is this the Complaint Line?” However, the Complaint Line actually was not open, an extreme rarity; my associate claimed she was “working.” I then tried my close associate in Michigan, who evidently was engaged in the same unsavory activity, and that’s why I had to write this entry.

Several weeks ago, I noticed the building next door appeared to be preparing to rent the apartment where the fellow was murdered. I saw workers turning up in the night, perhaps to clean. They set a coffee pot on the kitchen counter; lately a French press appeared next to the coffee pot, and I finally figured out that the people who sometimes appeared in the kitchen were not late-night cleaners but the actual new neighbors, two people so short all I can see is the tops of their hairdos. Also evidently two people who never, ever cook because there has been nothing whatsoever in their kitchen except that coffee pot and now the French press. Not a refrigerator magnet, not a painting on the wall, not a little plant on the windowsill. Nothing.

So I was enthralled today when I saw cleaning products lined up on the windowsill and one of those diminutive persons cleaning away (presumably). I had vaguely discerned that these were a man and a woman, but the one I saw today, whom I had thought was a man, is a woman, so we are talking about two teeny tiny lesbians (I guess). The person cleaning caught sight of me and gave me a blinding smile and waved. I smiled back and waved and gave her a thumbs up.

Then after that, I walked to Noe Valley for a haircut (a tidy bald fade with a two on top), home to take a shower and have dinner, and back to Noe Valley for yoga.

I imagine the two nice very small lesbians don’t know someone was murdered in their beautiful new apartment. They won’t be hearing it from me. I believe a landlord is legally required to disclose such a thing, but since the San Francisco medical examiner inspected a person covered from head to toe with stab wounds, bent into a pretzel, wedged into a hole in the back yard and buried under a ton of bricks (details altered to preserve the privacy of the dead) and discerned that there was no sign of foul play, I guess that absolves the landlord of that responsibility.

No Answers Whatsoever, But at Least Quite a Number of Questions

Some things being pondered today. One is the difference between the general situation and the particular situation. The general situation is that my father fell ill in April of 2022 and died in late 2023. My mother died on the exact same day two years later, which is to say one month ago today. In between, some 30 other people died, including a person of utmost importance to me, two friends, the spouse of one of those friends, the person who owns my building, my uncle, my neighbor (by murder), a fellow who did odd jobs next door (by murder), plus plus plus. 

(After the persons murdered my neighbor, whose body lay in a pool of blood in the back yard for a week, they then moved into his apartment, 20 feet, give or take, from my own kitchen window. I had to put down my shades for the first time ever and leave them down, because I didn’t really want murderers to get to know the look of my face. Was justice served in the end? No. The persons who did this got away with it, but at least they are not 20 feet from my kitchen window any more.)

Or did my mother die a month ago? Who was it exactly who died, given that she began going away a little at a time seven years ago? It seems that I am having to lose her twice, which doesn’t seem quite fair, given that I never wanted to lose her even once. Both losses are painful, in different ways. Sometimes she suddenly comes back to me as she was a decade ago, or two decades, or three, and then a wave of terror sweeps through me: How could that entire person be gone?

Yet the loss of my father feels like the more wrenching one in that he was exactly, precisely himself until about 48 hours before he died. He had been obliged (by me) to take up the role my mother had vacated years earlier, due to dementia, the job mainly entailing listening to a lot of tedious chit-chat. (He was nice about it. Once after listening to a particularly boring soliloquy, my mother said, “I’ll never get these minutes back.”) Therefore, when he died, he was the person I spoke to more than I spoke to any other person on earth.

He was entirely here, and then he was entirely gone. 

My mother, on the other hand, wasn’t quite herself, then was less herself, then this, then that, then even less, and then a final very gentle and peaceful moment. Whoosh. Gone. But who had gone?

So. The general situation is bad. I am overwhelmed by loss and sorrow; on top of everything else, in the month since my mother died, I had to have all four bottom front teeth pulled. I will get a bridge. It is not a catastrophe. I am extremely lucky I can get a bridge, but come on, a whole entire mother and four teeth gone within a few weeks of each other?

I obviously can’t tell all of this to everyone I ever speak to, but it feels weightily present all the time. But what does that weight consist of exactly? If I faithfully remained in just this moment, breathing the way my yoga teacher says to (“Inhale … belly rises … exhale … open your mouth”) and noting the input at the various sense doors over and over (I see … I hear … I smell … I taste … I feel in my body … The emotion most noticeable right now is … ), would there actually be anything other than the specific situation?

I have to say, I have gotten extremely good at sinking into the present moment over the past three and a half years, of necessity, and maybe an intensification of that practice is the entire answer. Or would that be spiritual bypassing: using my spiritual practice to avoid the kind of work one might do, say, in therapy?

Not only can I not tell all of this to everyone I ever speak to, it has often felt that I can’t tell it to anyone whatsoever, partly because it’s too much and partly because I’m increasingly particular about what kind of listening other people do. Being a chaplain kind of makes this worse. Unsatisfactory listening is glaringly obvious. If I tell someone something and then they never allude to it again, that’s not good. But then, if they ask a whole bunch of questions, that’s also not good. If they make a pronouncement about my experience, not good. If they tell me how I should proceed, extremely not good. If they laugh outright, absolutely and completely intolerable, and it is surprising how often that has happened. I have the gift, it appears, of being utterly hilarious no matter how emphatically I tell someone that what I’m about to say is not funny.

The most helpful person for me to talk to has been my Zen teacher, Joshin. We speak every couple of months. His advice has often been spot on, but that is half an hour or an hour just now and then. I haven’t seen my actual therapist often because I frequently end up in a rage during our sessions, but I decided I was overloaded with unshared woes and that I’d better see her regularly again. At our very first session, when I told her about something sorrowful—after warning her that it was sorrowful—she laughed merrily. It is surprising how often that has happened. I did not schedule a second session and concluded I was just going to have to carry all of this on my own? Or, like, share a tiny bit with literally everyone, including random strangers who happen to be passing by as I’m going in or out of my apartment building?

It seems that something needs to be done. It seems to me that the giant weight results in my acting in ways I feel remorseful about later (such as yesterday on the phone with the person at Fidelity). After such moments, it seems that the task is to be a better person. But who is the person who needs to be better? The person who was talking to Fidelity yesterday and, ahem, threatened to move every single one of her cents to Vanguard, or the person who bought her neighbor $100 worth of flowers and chocolate after he lost a parent?

No, I think, as Paul Haller of the San Francisco Zen Center says, that the task is not to be a better person but to reduce suffering. I am sure I did not improve the Fidelity person’s day; she probably underwent some suffering. But I can say for sure that I did. And what is the nature of that suffering? It consists entirely of reactivity, or the fruits of reactivity, the knotted-up stomach and so forth. When does suffering occur? The same time that anything whatsoever can occur: now. The only suffering that can be alleviated is that which is occurring right now, because that’s the only kind there is. The suffering of the past and the future cannot be alleviated.

How, then, does one alleviate suffering? Paul Haller says: By taking refuge, in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. What are these? The capacity to be aware and awake in this moment, and our historical teacher, whether human being or myth. The way things are—the truth—and also the teachings of the Buddha. The community of practitioners: friends and supporters to one another.

The words of Christina Lehnherr, also heard at the San Francisco Zen Center, seem helpful here, as well: Reaction is a way of not fully experiencing. 

So I think the task of alleviating the only suffering I can really alleviate, which is my own, has to do with deepening my capacity to tolerate my own experience in just this moment. There is a thought and memory component, too: Can I recall that it never goes well to call Fidelity or the bank or the wellness director for memory care when I’m already annoyed, and that it probably won’t go well this time, either? Sometimes I can remember that and sometimes I can’t.

But having spoken sternly to the person at Fidelity, shall I forgive myself or shall I not? I think the only answer is that I have to, because having done an unskillful thing + berating myself is, say, 100 units of misery launched into the cosmos, while having done an unskillful thing + warmly congratulating myself for the same is more like 73.4 units of misery, obviously better.

A friend lately said that if she does the latter, she feels like she’s letting herself off the hook. I quite understand that. It seems intuitively wrong to warmly commend ourselves for inflicting harm. What if it was great harm? At the extreme, shall I praise myself for having committed murder? And yet, am I more likely to alter my behavior in an atmosphere of self-hatred or one of self-love? Without a doubt it is the latter. I guess a key point is that this does not in any way foreclose doing everything I can think of not to repeat the undesirable behavior. 

I Still Exist

Written quite some time ago:

A couple of nights ago, Marvin began to shred the mini-blinds for the millionth time. It was the end of a long day, and I snatched him out of the blinds with dispatch, plus uttered a discouraging word or two. I was slightly surprised then to see both cats walk out of the room shoulder to shoulder, not to be seen again until the following morning. At the door, they paused and one of them directed a withering glance at me over his shoulder.  (“I’m surprised he didn’t give you the finger,” said my new therapist, Dr. T. I’m sure he would have if he could get that finger to work independently.) (Not my therapist any more.) (Not for more than two and a half years.)

It genuinely has been difficult with these cats. I assumed that I would automatically love them, because who doesn’t love a cute little kitten? I was dismayed to find that my strongest feeling was irritation, which blossomed into rage. I yelled and screamed and swore. I brusquely pushed them off counters. No little bones were broken and no blood was shed, other than Marvin’s blood the day of his solo accident behind the stove, but this was not good and I felt like the world’s worst person. I knew my neighbors were hearing all of this—hearing the Buddhist curse at her cats—and I was also afraid I was going to have a stroke. Swearing at home became so common that I found myself doing it at work, seemingly shocking at least one co-worker. (Her reaction was in jest, I realized months later, when she used the same word.)

I discussed all this ongoingly with my father, who is the person I’ve talked to the most over the past year and a half, and also with whomever I happened to be talking to, including my new Zen teacher, J., who asked if there was a way I could find the dharma in this behavior. All I could come up with initially was that I was certainly noticing what the cats were doing. I was not tuned out, though I’m not sure a very different behavior, enraged constant reactivity, is therefore automatically a virtue.

I consoled myself with the fact that maybe the global pandemic has caused stress I’m not consciously aware of, making everything harder, and certainly there are difficult things going on closer to home that affect me. I realized that one gift of this period is that I now, alas, really understand how someone comes to hit a beloved spouse or defenseless child—how rage ignites and explodes. If a patient at the hospital were to tell me about engaging in domestic violence, it’s not that I would now approve of it, but I would get it.

Of course I have tried a million things to adjust this dynamic, one vow of better behavior after the other. I don’t want Marvin and Duckworth to be scared of me. I don’t want my neighbors to think I’m an ogre. I don’t want to be the foul-mouthed chaplain. I don’t want to have a stroke. I don’t want to be awash in guilt and remorse.

I couldn’t bore you with the details if I wanted to, as I don’t have notes on all that, there was so much of it, but a few things stand out as having been helpful. Things are much, much better at this point.

It was clear that counting to ten was entirely out of reach, as it seemed that I could go from perfect calm to blind rage in less than one second. It was seemingly completely uncontrollable, but I discovered that I could, sometimes, count to one, which is enough to re-engage the rational brain: The lizard brain cannot conceive of numbers. Counting to one didn’t make a huge difference, but it made a little difference.

When I began doing Dr. Weil’s 4-7-8 breathing, under the auspices of Dr. T., I began to spend more moments each day with my parasympathetic nervous system engaged, even if 4-7-8 breathing didn’t seem to bring immediately wonderful results, and that was a good feeling.

I worked with pausing and calming myself, and then realized that this, while certainly preferable to losing my temper, was actually an attempt to force the anger to go away. I was careening between both extremes, of spewing the anger outward and trying to squelch it—everything but the middle way of fully experiencing it and choosing my actions. I began to try to notice how it really felt inside when I got so angry, and saw that it was largely a sad feeling, actually. From the outside, this practice looked just the same as trying to bury the anger, but the purpose and experience were different.

I have continued with the 4-7-8 breathing, as it does seem to be increasing a general sense of calm, and am doing alternate nostril breathing, as well. My nervous system is in need of repair after this Angry Cat Owner Year (or So), and so is Marvin’s. Sometimes I hold him while I do breathing exercises. (4-7-8 breathing has also fallen by the wayside, as indeed has my whole entire father. It never really did that much for me, but I am finding alternate nostril breathing genuinely calming.)

I began to ponder how I might forgive myself for all of this horrible behavior on my part. People do all kinds of dreadful things and still must live on. There are people who do kill animals, or human beings. Is self-forgiveness really possible? Is it desirable? Is there something wholesome in not forgiving oneself?

I’m reading a cat book in which the author says most cats don’t like to have their bellies stroked and that if a cat presents his belly, it may be pursuant to clawing and bunny kicking she who tries to touch his stomach. The author says that if a cat really does want his belly petted, that is a high compliment, and one that both Marvin and Duckworth offer me nearly every day. They still love me. (They still love me!) In fact, it lately crossed my mind that they may be way ahead of me, enlightened teachers waiting for their idiot housemate to catch up.

One morning I reached down to pet Marvin and it crossed my mind that because he doesn’t have a conceptual notion of the past (I don’t think), he isn’t angry about what happened before. He has, in effect, forgiven and so is happy in this moment, as he waits for my hand to stroke his dark fur. He is giving the world the gift of his own happiness, and that is why she who has yelled at her cats or he who took a human life should indeed practice self-forgiveness: to give the world the gift of a happy person, mostly free from remorse and guilt, and who has learned at least a little something from her actions.

Light

(Click photo to enlarge.)

You Can’t Keep Them Down on the Farm After They’ve Seen Paree

I seem not to have made any notes about visiting my parents in June of this year, for the first time since COVID. Well, I did do that and it was wonderful to be with them, as always. I saw Ginny and Amy, as always. I had lunch with Uncle Rick. Sally and I took a walk in the peony garden at the foot of the Nichols Arboretum. The arboretum and peony garden were designed by the person, an Italian count, Aubrey Tealdi, who was the first chair of the landscape architecture department at the University of Michigan. He lived in my childhood home and designed its stunning gardens, which featured pathways filled with gravel imported from Italy. Our lilacs were originally planted by Count Tealdi.

Last week at my flute lesson, my teacher asked if I like sushi, which I do, and asked me to imagine I’d eaten too much wasabi, as one can from time to time. He said imagining that explosive feeling is helpful for playing the flute, and for the rest of the lesson, he called it the too-much-wasabi feeling. The following day at work, a patient told me that someone had brought him sushi from outside the hospital the day before (the day of my flute lesson) and he had ingested too much wasabi and become acutely ill.

Marvin has lately been trying to get out the front door of our apartment, so finally I let him run free. He immediately went everywhere, and was wild and wailing after being carried back indoors. I’ve had to go back to putting him in the bathroom every time I exit my apartment or have to bring my bike in, as I did for several months after adopting him and Duckworth. There is no such problem with Duckworth currently. I can throw the front door open and leave it that way indefinitely (with Marvin in the bathroom) and he will not venture out.

Yesterday I had a sewing lesson in Berkeley, where it was a lovely autumn afternoon. Afterward, I took a walk with a friend up and down the Ohlone Greenway.

At my flute lesson today, my teacher reminded me to blow to the back of the nasal cavity. He said it takes most people twenty years to learn to do this, but that I’ll be able to do it in five. Shamelessly fishing for a compliment, I asked why that was. He said it’s because I’m smart, and added, “Most people don’t have question like you have question.”

I’m obviously never going to be a fantastic shakuhachi player, and so it often seems like a waste of time, though lately it occurred to me that, besides the very detailed awareness of the body it requires, maybe it’s mainly about my relationship with my teacher. Once a week, I spend an hour on Zoom with this very congenial person; the flute is what connects us.

I also have this idea that maybe all this work will translate to amazing trumpet playing some day. I thought my teacher might get a kick out of hearing me play one of the little shakuhachi tunes on the trumpet, so I dug the trumpet out of the closet after my lesson today and discovered that the main thing that is true about the trumpet right now is that I’m very, very rusty. (My chops are way, way down.) I’d have to practice for a while to see if there is anything I can apply from the Japanese wooden flute. For now, I reburied it in the closet.

Another good reason to persist with the shakuhachi is that any kind of creative endeavor is excellent self-care, which my work requires. Making things. I make soup, I make sentences, I (soon will) make shirts (and then a simpler work top, and a tablecloth, and a housedress), I make sounds.

Also, the shakuhachi could not be more low-tech.

And that is what happened today, as in today today. I’m caught up!

The Duckter

(Click photo to enlarge. That is the name of the toy.)

Untoward Cat-Related Event #7814

While practicing the flute (this being late in June of this year), I decided to try to toss the cats’ more luridly colored tunnel (the “Mewnicorn,” which they love) into the closet, where I put all their toys each evening, instead of waiting until the official portion of the evening program that pertains to this, which involves a flashlight and knee pads. Of course they heard the sound of this prized item being handled, possibly even mishandled, and rushed into the living room. While I was trying to kick the tunnel into the closet, my foot got stuck in it. Somewhere along in there, while shrieking obscenities, trying to kick the tunnel off my foot, and flailing around with my left hand, wherein was my flute, I bumped the little sharp edge of the mouthpiece that one is supposed to carefully protect, or else perhaps it happened when I used the flute to deny Marvin entry to the closet.

Also, my music stand fell and scraped and bruised my face, though if I was practicing, my music stand would still have been in the living room rather than in the closet, so maybe this was two different incidents. As the music stand fell, I remember thinking, “My eye!” and feeling very grateful afterward for the bone that surrounds the eye.

I ended up deciding that I had better try to make the spring deadline for board certification, after all, and in a frenzied burst of energy, finished everything up and sent it in not a few weeks before the deadline, but by the deadline. In mid-July, I met with a new committee and I passed! After they gave me the good news, they asked if I had any questions. I asked if they would mind if I did one screen shot of their smiling faces. It’s a really nice thing to have: a photograph of a very joyful moment indeed. Two of the committee members (there were four) said that they would want me to be their chaplain if they needed one, and they said they could feel my calm presence from their respective locations. They also offered some thoughts on where I could seek to improve. They could have just failed me on those particular competencies, meaning I’d have had to make a third committee appearance. I really appreciate that they did not do that.

In August of this year, it was wonderful to hear a Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me program that was taped in front of a live audience for the first time in about a year and a half. One of the guests was a hydroponic lettuce farmer, who spoke about how fun his work is. Trying not to sound condescending, Peter Sagal asked what’s so fun about growing lettuce. The farmer said something like, “What I like about lettuce is it doesn’t talk back when you’re trying to do your thing.” That’s what I like about lettuce!

Both of my jobs offer a limited number of free counseling sessions each year. I decided to avail myself of this benefit, and began seeing a therapist in September of this year. At our first or second session, Dr. T. taught me Dr. Weil’s 4-7-8 breathing. There’s a video online of Dr. Weil doing this and saying afterward that he can hardly talk, he feels so great. I didn’t notice any immediate benefit, but it is true that you can’t simultaneously do this and scream at your cat, so I guess it is helpful to that extent. I have kept at it, and do often notice that the 7 part is pretty pleasant, and, more generally, it has oriented me toward calming myself: activating the parasympathetic nervous system.

A huge spider appeared on my living room ceiling and remained there for weeks. Don’t they need to eat? My father said he was having a similar question about a small spider in his bathroom. Finally, I decided to try to relocate it. My father texted to wish me well in my “spidetarian endeavor.”

In late September, which is almost now, I had my first sewing lesson, with a very nice teacher in Berkeley who has a large, wonderful basement workroom. We are working on making a pattern from one of the button shirts I wear to work, so that I can make my own with any cotton fabric I want.

That same day, I met my flute teacher in person for the first time, when he met me at North Berkeley BART to hand over the bamboo flute made for me by Monty of shakuhachi.com. My teacher was quite shy in person, very different from how he is on Zoom. He drove us a block or so away from BART, and I got out and gave my new flute a preliminary try. My teacher lent me a hard case for taking it home on BART. I also bought a soft case for everyday use, and a little cover for the mouthpiece end.

At work, I visited a man whose cancer has recurred, who speaks in a very roundabout way about his predicament, often referring to himself as “one.” “One does not like to think one is hugging one’s wife for the last time.”

At our second or third visit, he kept saying something about my having such conversations with many people. I finally figured out that he was saying I must therefore have some basis for judging whether someone is good or bad, and whether their life has been worthwhile. I asked him, “Are you asking if I think you’re a good person and if your life has been worthwhile?” He confirmed that’s what he was getting at.

I paused and said with strong emphasis, “I think you’re a good person and I think your life has been worthwhile.” I very nearly burst into tears after I left his room.

Green and Yellow

(Click photo to enlarge. This photo was taken three and a half hours before I fetched Marvin and Duckworth from the SPCA. Since then, this window has never been opened except under close supervision.)