Breathing Room

I felt kind of bad later about what I said about the very slender gentlemen in San Francisco. Even though there are a lot of them, that doesn’t make them a type; each is a human being doing his best to care for himself and to find a moment of happiness or two in this vale of tears. And even though I don’t find them attractive, I’m sure there are many who feel a melting sensation when they run by, so I apologize, thin San Francisco tech men.

Yesterday my sister came over to discuss our house-related efforts, and we established a tentative timeline which called for me to take my stuff and get out already at the end of my next visit, on May 20, to be followed by an estate sale, painting, cleaning, and window washing.

My idea now is to let all that happen, which will proceed without my oversight because I won’t have anywhere to stay and can’t really justify the cost of a hotel if my only task is going to be to nitpick over the painting job. Then I plan to come back and stay for a week in a hotel and walk up and down in the empty, freshly painted house and make a final decision.

After we had that discussion, I felt distraught: The end is in sight. As night fell, I felt just miserable and realized that part of the problem was that I was cold. Here is one thing I’ve learned about this: There is no point in turning on a space heater nor in sitting on a couch with a blanket cozily over your lower half, because when you walk out of that room or rise from the couch, you’ll really be freezing. It’s better to put on more layers or swap a layer for a warmer layer. Indoors!

My apartment in San Francisco is often a toasty 74 or 76 degrees or even warmer, between the sun streaming in the bank of windows in the living room and the radiator, which seems to be accountable only to itself and often comes on when it’s 80 degrees outside. The thermostat in Ypsilanti is set to 70 degrees (colder at night) and thus it is 69 degrees in the parts of the house I visit most often (colder elsewhere, including in the basement) and I am not willing to pay to have it be warmer than that. That probably is already warmer than my father kept it, and so I am often chilly.

A nice wool base layer helps a lot, and there is also no law saying a knitted hat can be worn outdoors only. Now I am chuckling, remembering a sibling telling me not long ago that our childhood home in Ann Arbor was freezing cold in the winter (this I do not remember, of course), but my father wore a warm hat inside the house, so one could not complain about the cold unless one was also wearing a blizzard-proof hat inside the house. I do remember touching a certain radiator and being delighted when I found it warm.

In Alcoholics Anonymous, there is the relapse-prevention advice, “HALT: Don’t get too hungry, angry, lonely or tired.” I got sober in Michigan in 1979, where that saying was amended to “CHALT: Don’t get too cold, hungry, angry, lonely or tired.” When I realized yesterday evening that I was just plain cold, I put on more clothes and then had a good chat on the phone with a friend, and I felt much better afterward. Besides listening with compassion and noting that maybe one approach is just to put my focus on what I know I need to do about the house, she put forth the idea of introducing a playful note: “Oh, goody! I don’t have to decide that right now!”

However, this morning, I felt extremely bad again, like I might even be nearing some sort of psychotic break. Is it possible I actually cannot go forward without my mother and cannot do the grieving that parting from all her stuff would entail?

I had planned to spend a lot of time here this summer and was looking forward to it, so this morning I ran that by my sister, who has endured much more “We’re having an estate sale / we’re not having an estate sale / we are having an estate sale / we are definitely not having an estate sale” than any one person should have to, not to mention considerably more “If I don’t buy the house … / if I do buy the house … / if I don’t buy the house  … / if I do buy the house … ” 

She has been listening to this literally for years now, and again this morning responded in her characteristic kind, generous, and gracious manner, saying that I have worked so hard taking care of our mother, the estate and the house, it would be nice if I could enjoy one—or two—last vacations here. Ah!

I’d like to think that I could achieve a happiness, or equilibrium, that is unconditioned—not dependent on these or those circumstances—but I must say that I felt much better as soon as it was clear that May 20 will not be my last day here.

I did my whole morning routine, which takes about an hour and which had fallen by the wayside amid the early arrivals of the roofers and the painter, and I had breakfast, and I felt happy that I get to play house for a while longer.

I told my friend last night that I can easily list ten good reasons to stay in San Francisco, ten good reasons not to, ten good reasons to move to Ypsilanti, and ten good reasons not to. I try not to think think think, but there is still plenty of thinking. Last night I picked up the Sayadaw U Tejaniya book I brought with me, and this was the second paragraph I read: “Whenever you get this feeling of not knowing what to do, just wait. Don’t do anything.”

(The book is Don’t Look Down On The Defilements They Will Laugh At You.)

I can’t really do nothing; it’s not fair to the other two heirettes. But I figure any moment of mindfulness that can be had is all to the good, that little bit of space free from any story.

It has been very helpful to participate in my sangha again. So many things I’ve heard Howie say in these past weeks have been just what I needed to hear. I am noticing that when he talks about delusion, one of the “three poisons” in Buddhism that are understood to cause suffering (the other two being grasping and aversion; different words may be used for any of the three; the poisons are also called defilements), instead of saying anything about confusion or being unmindful, he consistently and specifically refers to this as being the delusion that there is a separate, permanent self.

So no wonder I’m having such extreme problems with this decision: I’m not just trying to figure out what will bring permanent happiness, free of suffering, to a self that doesn’t even exist, not to mention that there is no such thing as permanent anything and no such thing as a life that completely avoids suffering—I’m trying to figure out how to achieve the impossible for some imaginary person who will exist in the future. That is, who won’t exist in the future, either.

I have noticed that there are two phases to this thing: The one where I think a lot, trying to deduce the needs and wants of my future imaginary self (so futile), and where I am filled with unease, worried I will make a catastrophic mistake, and then the one where I am doing better with my relaxed, continuous attention a la Sayadaw U Tejaniya, where I feel a great ease: Either choice, or some other choice, will be fine! All is totally, completely well. The trick is that I can’t decide to be in that latter state; that is merely grasping for something that is not present. The practice is the relaxed attention in as many moments as possible, and then voila, I find that the ease has returned on its own.

Pretending today that this is my house, I did some things to make it a little lighter and more open feeling: Just because my parents put that thing there doesn’t mean it can’t be relocated. I raised some shades that by custom are closed, and I moved some pieces of furniture. The improvement was immediate.

In the afternoon I took a walk. It was overcast at almost every moment today, 40 or so degrees, and windy, which makes a big difference for the worse, but I chose the right stuff to wear, and quite enjoyed the time outdoors, tromping along. I passed a woman with a baby slung to her back, and then I encountered her again later and she asked me if her baby was sleeping. A neighborly moment.